Thanks to the budget

Published in The News on June 23, 1996

I wonder why some people are opposed to the recent budget.

After all, it's only fair that city-dewellers should have to bear the brunt ofthe additional taxes, for they did not vote for the present government. 

And if it seems that the budget is in favour of dacoits, smugglers and feudalists, why should anyone object? It's their leaders who made the budget!

Let's all be thankful that the heavily polluted air we breathe has not been taxed.

Karachi

Shakir Lakhani

Pakistani politicians' extravagance

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2026 

EXTRAVAGANCE: The recent reports about planes taken by two senior politicians to foreign countries and having them parked there, costing massive amounts, reminded me of the Quaid-i-Azam who had refused to go abroad for medical treatment as Pakistan happened to be a poor country. This is a classic example of extravagance. 

Shakir Lakhani 

Karachi

Why do Pakistani men want many children?

I've always wondered why most Pakistanis believe that birth control is a heinous sin for which the punishment is the Fire. There was a neighbor of ours (a Memon) who had seventeen children from one wife. Another Memon had nine (he looked so much like me that even his three year old daughter once came running to me and sat in my lap instead of his). He would have produced more, but died of heart disease in his forties.

I once told another Memon (an industrialist) that Pakistan's problem is the exponential growth of its population and we should limit the number of our children to two or three. He was so angry that for a few minutes I was afraid he might attack me. "What kind of Muslim are you?" he yelled. "Don't you know we need more Muslims in the world to convert others to Islam?"

We've had a half blind peon (a Pathan) for thirteen years. His wife gave birth to their eighth child (another boy, his sixth son). He's been married for sixteen years. When I think of how tough it was for me to raise three children, I wonder how this guy has managed to feed his wife and kids despite earning the minimum wage. 

But one thing I know: as long as the mullahs keep on saying that Islam doesn't allow birth control, these guys will go on breeding like rabbits. 

Persecution of minorities in Pakistan

The creation of Pakistan was meant to allow the minorities of India (mainly Muslims, but Sikhs and Christians as well), to practice their religion freely, but gradually it has come to mean that the country was created in the name of Islam. I can easily prove that this was not the case, one only has to read the speeches made by the founder (Jinnah) to see that he was strictly secular. For this reason, the non-Muslims of Pakistan are persecuted so much that millions of them have left the country after 1947. Karachi, for instance had many Goan Christians when I was in school, but today one rarely comes across them. Some of them settled in the UK, others are in Canada and the US. 

The problem was that before partition, the British did not trust Muslims (who had been the rulers before they colonized India), so they employed Christians in all government departments. I once asked a retired KPT accountant (a Muslim) how many Muslim officers were employed in the KPT before 1947. His answer shocked me. There were no Muslim officers, there were only three Muslim employees among hundreds, and among these three he was a clerk, the other two were a driver and a watchman. Among the officers were Hindus, Christians, Parsis, and even Sikhs (very few of whom lived in Karachi at the time). Even in the 1970s, when I was working in the petroleum industry, there were many Christians in senior management positions. Perhaps this is one reason why minorities have always been discriminated against by the majority in Pakistan.

Imran Khan and his supporters must be disillusioned

One must admire Imran Khan's supporters for believing that he is the most popular man in the country. An elderly woman I know was so concerned that he was suffering in jail that she kept asking everyone to pray for him to be released, even though her own husband was in critical condition and near death at the time (he died a couple of months later).

Now that the so-called long march by his supporters to get him out of jail has fizzled out and most of the party's leaders have either been arrested or gone into hiding, he and his supporters must be wondering why people didn't come out protesting against the imposition of emergency and governor's rule in his home province (KP). One answer is that he's not as popular as they believe. In the last general elections his party got thirty percent of the total votes cast. But since only half the electorate turned out to vote, the net result was that only fifteen percent of the people voted for him. That's not something that should make anyone believe he's the most popular leader in the country. Add to that the thirteen years of bad governance by his party (even today, residents of that province go to Karachi or Lahore for medical treatment), so why should the common man support him?

Yet, despite all this, I get messages and fake videos from his supporters purporting to show that he is massively popular. 

Trump is fuming because he didn't get the Nobel Peace prize

I can't understand why some Americans still support a madman like Trump. The man is a deranged narcissist who should be locked up. He is incensed that this year too the award was not given to him, but to a women lawyer (Navi Pillay, the well-known human rights activist). He keeps saying that if for nothing else, he should get the prize because Obama also got it. 

Can't those who still support him or work with him realize that he poses the greatest danger to mankind since Hitler? He's doing everything he can to damage the environment by increasing global warming. Not only that, they actually believe him when he says that he stopped many wars, when the truth is that he started another war that has now expanded and resulted in the death of hundreds of people. 

I only hope Trump is removed before he destroys the planet. There are signs that some Republicans are disillusioned with him and will not support his party in next month's midterm elections. I hope his party loses badly and he is impeached successfully. The danger, of course, is that he might do something drastic like using nuclear bombs to force Iran to surrender if he sees that he's going to be impeached or forced to resign.

Flydubai drama: was it staged to benefit Netanyahu?

Almost everyone on social media believes that the attempt to crash a Flydubai passenger plane was staged by the Israelis to boost Netanyahu's chances of winning the forthcoming elections so he can be elected for another term and save himself from spending the rest of his life in jail (he's been convicted for corruption). Whatever happened, it will definitely scare the Israelis for many years. They will wonder if they can ever trust the airlines of the UAE or any other Muslim country. Of course, they have only themselves to blame. Killing thousands of Muslims just to retain their illegal occupation of Palestine is not going to gain them the sympathies of Muslims worldwide.

I doubt if there will ever be peace in the Middle East. The US will always support Israel, despite polls showing that more than half of Americans no longer sympathize with the pariah state. 

As for the failed so-called hijacking, it's not clear why the crew were sympathetic to the hijacker, why there were two pilots among the passengers who landed the plane, in fact, why they chose to land at distant Tobuk in Saudi Arabia, even though there were nearby airports in Jordan and Israel. Until all these facts are known, people will continue to believe that the hijacking was planned and executed by Israel. 

 

 

 

Every day a crisis

As the days go by, I can't help wondering why our leaders can't see that the country is fast moving towards another break-up. Every day there is either a suicide bombing or an attack on the police or the army. It's just like what was happening in East Pakistan before the Indians invaded and forced it to secede. The problem then, as today, was the intransigence of one leader. It was Mujibur Rehman in 1971, it's Imran Khan today. At least Mujib was open to negotiating with the authorities, but Imran and his minions are adamant that they will not accept anything less than their leader's release from prison. No wonder that even India has raised this issue in the United Nations. They know fully well that if Imran gets to lead the country again, it will disintegrate.  

Meanwhile, Trump is doing everything he can to destroy the planet. He has banned projects to promote solar and wind energy, as well as  electric cars. He just wants to go on drilling for oil. One can be forgiven for thinking that the forces of evil have brainwashed him. What surprises me is that a third of Americans still support him, despite it being evident that he is a psychopath. 

Might is right

The US-Iran war proves something we've always known: "might is right and "big fish eat the little fish". Right now, even though Iran has so far successfully defended itself, the way Trump barks and threatens to annihilate it (and knowing him, he's perfectly capable of using nuclear weapons to force Iran to surrender), Iran has very little choice but to agree to most of his demands.

Now that the Houthis (aided by Iran) are on the warpath against the Saudis, poor Mohammed bin Salman must be having a hard time getting to sleep. He must be regretting his lavish lifestyle, buying fifty million dollar paintings and spending his wealth on other useless stuff.. He must also be worrying that one of his own kinsmen might carry out a coup and remove him from power. He should have spent his country's wealth on building up a strong army. The ruler of Qatar squandered his country's wealth, gifting a 400 million dollar air plane to Trump. I won't be surprised if all the Gulf kings (who are illegitimate rulers, owing their fortunes to the British and the US) must be making plans to flee from their countries if the war lasts much longer. 

Houthis' attack on Saudi Arabia

Muslims have been fighting and killing each other since the early days of Islam. It was a convert from Judaism who caused a split by proclaiming that Ali is God (much as Christians said the same thing about Jesus). Then Islam spread both towards the East and the West, with Iran's Muslims following the Shia version. I remember the Shah of Iran saying, "We can't stay idle while hundreds of Shias are being killed in Yemen". The two sects are now different religions, each calling their version Islam. 

So it's no surprise that the Houthis of Yemen (who are Shias) have entered the war and attacked Saudi Arabia. There is a widespread belief that the US and Israel have told them to do so. In just a couple of days, the poor Saudis have been reduced to begging the US and Israel for help. Perhaps Pakistan may also be trapped into taking sides and sending troops to the war torn region. It is, of course, the Saudi's fault. They should have spent more on increasing the size of their army instead of buying paintings costing fifty million dollars.

It looks like the beginning of a world war.