Iran says it will no longer attack its neighbors

It's only a week since its leadership was killed and Iran caused havoc in the region. Even today it attacked Dubai airport. But suddenly, it announced that attacks on its neighbors will stop. What is the reason for this change? The only reason I can think of is that the neighbors must have begged for a chance to return to normal, maybe they even promised to ask the US not to launch attacks on Iran from their territories.

Whatever the reason, for the next six months at least, Dubai and other cities in the region will no longer be the same as they were before the war. Dubai, particularly, is an artificial entity, being a major financial centre. The foreigners who had bought property and were doing business there due to zero income tax will no longer want to continue. Most of them have probably left, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get out of the war-torn region. Hong Kong and Singapore will probably regain their earlier reputations as major financial hubs. 

The population of the GCC countries are bound to demand explanations from their governments for putting them at risk. Why did the UAE get too friendly with Israel is something its leaders will have to explain. It's going to be a tough six months for the sheikhs and princes. 

Israel fools the US into another war

Israel finally got what it wanted: a war between the US and Iran. But it will have to pay dearly. Even though negotiations between the US and Iran were practically concluded, with Iran agreeing to most demands, Israel forced Trump to attack Iran, killing its top leadership (including the Supreme Leader Khamenei). 

What Israel and Trump hadn't taken into account was the fact that its allies would be directly in the line of fire. It's been three days since the war started, and there is panic in Dubai and other states in the region. Foreigners in the UAE are reportedly paying 300,000 dollars to escape to Saudi Arabia by car. If the war lasts another two weeks, food shortage in Dubai may cause riots (as most of its food is imported).It will take many months for things to return to normal, but one thing is certain now: Westerners will never regard the region as a safe haven. Cities like Dubai, Doha and Bahrain will no longer be the favored destinations for Europeans.

With oil prices predicted to soar to 200 dollars a barrel, the future looks bleak. Inflation could hit the US, and Trump's party will be soundly beaten in the mid-term elections in November. I hope Trump is booted out and impeached for his crimes.

Stock Exchange massacre

It happens every couple of years. The Stock Exchange Index gradually increases for a few months, then there is a minor crash, then shares rebound and the cycle is repeated. This time, however, the crash is huge (from 190,000 to 160,000) and no one can explain why this is happening.

One reason could be (and probably is), the daily suicide attacks in KP and the bombing of Afghanistan. This war has been going on for a long time, as about 40,000 terrorists were allowed to enter Pakistan by Imran Khan, and they are wreaking havoc.

Another reason could be the impending attack on Iran by the US. If this happens, and Iran retaliates with attacks on neighboring countries, it will be the Third World War (which, by the way, has already begun, according to Ukraine President Zelensky).

There is another explanation that I heard on Twitter. It seems that whenever there are signs that Imran Khan is about to be released from jail, the market goes down. The man said that even though some businessmen voted for Imran in elections, they are scared that once he is let loose, he will again destabilize the country. 

Whatever the reason, I'm glad I got out of the share market about sixteen years ago, as I needed money to buy my present apartment.

Trump's war on iran

It's evident that Trump wants to bomb Iran so that a major threat to Israel is eliminated. In fact, there are conspiracy theorists who say that Israel got the Epstein files released so that Trump would need something to distract public attention from his pedophile activities. What is ignored, however, is that the US will be able to weaken China by bombing Iran to its knees.

China buys eighty percent of Iran's oil. After the US capture of Venezuelan oil, which was also China's major source, loss of Iranian oil will be a major problem for China. If Iran falls, China will have a hard time finding new sources of oil. This is Trump's real intention: remove China as the other superpower. 

But will Iran surrender? The US demands on the Iranian leadership are unrealistic. Even if Iran gives up developing its peaceful nuclear program, sanctions will still remain in place. So Iran gets nothing, and if it does comply, its leadership will be forced to resign and flee. Iran, therefore, has no choice but to fight until death. 

Epstein saga and the evil white men do

 I'd once thought that white men were inherently good and incapable of doing anything wrong. It's because I'd been educated in a missionary school where the teachers always praised the British (even though most of them were not white). Slowly, as the years went by, I began to see that most white people were racist and thought themselves much superior to black and brown people.

My father, of course, knew that the colonizers were corrupt to the core. Once I remarked that a British judge could never be bribed. He replied, "Oh yes, in his own country, he would never take a bribe, but here he could be bought with a few hundred rupees".

Another time I read an article about Palestinian "terrorists" in the Readers Digest. The name of a prominent Palestinian, George Habash, was shortened to G. Habash, to prevent Americans from finding out that there were Palestinian Christians as well.

Then there was the BBC declaring jubilantly that Lahore had been captured by the Indians in 1965. When Pakistan's cricket coach (Bob Wilmoor) was found dead, the BBC openly hinted that heavily bearded Pakistani cricketers had killed him.

Now that the Epstein files have been released (despite every effort by Trump to block it), we know the depths of evil that the white race can stoop to. I'm almost convinced that Epstein did not commit suicide, he was murdered in jail. 

Imran Khan fails to get support from the people of Karachi

Imran Khan's supporters, encouraged by the turmoil in Iran, thought they could persuade the Pakhtuns of Karachi to rise against the government. It was a miserable failure. Only a few people attended, the ground was practically empty, so his henchmen made speeches on the road. 

It's easy to understand why the Pakhtuns refused to fall for his latest gambit. Imran Khan's province (KP) is reeling due to the stoppage of smuggling from Afghanistan, and this is affecting Pakhtuns all over the country. They realized that by paralyzing Karachi, the whole country would be affected and they would be the ones to suffer the most. Besides that, inflation is under control, prices of commodities have decreased due to prevention of smuggling them to Afghanistan, so the people really support the present government. Also the failure of Imran's party to improve conditions in KP (the only province under its control) has made his party very unpopular. Let's hope Imran Khan realizes now that it's better for him to remain quiet and remain in jail for another three years at least.

Jungle rule: Trump's invasion of Venezuela

Embed from Getty Images

For weeks, Donald Trump had been talking of invading Venezuela and arresting its president. Yesterday the unthinkable happened: US forces captured the Venezuelan president and his wife while they were asleep. This is pure jungle rule. Trump is behaving like the neighborhood bully. Last week he said that the US would bomb Iran if demonstrators in that country were killed by the government. Of course, if he does attack Iran again, the Iranians would become more united. But would he threaten the Saudis if they did the same thing?

What I don't understand is how the US could simply walk into Venezuela and arrest its sitting president. Obviously, there must have been agents on the ground who kept the US informed of the Venezuelan president's whereabouts. But why hasn't the same thing been done to Cuba, which is avowedly anti-US? Is it because the Cuban people support their leaders?

It seems that Trump wants to control all the oil left on earth. He doesn't realize how much fossil fuels are responsible for global climate change. 

Rape case decision proves our judges are still living in the Stone Age

It's been evident for a long time that the state of education in the country has been worsening and the latest case involving the apex court's decision in a rape case proves that the mindsets of our judges is like that of those who were living in the Stone Age. Recently the same court ruled that taking DNA of a woman violated her dignity, while in another case, even though an accused woman had agreed to her DNA being taken, the court didn't allow it.

In the latest rape case, the poor victim was not believed as she didn't provide torn clothes or other evidence to prove that she'd been raped. Her contention that the rapist forced her at gunpoint was not believed, and the judges held that it was not a case of rape but consensual sex. The poor woman will have to live the rest of her life as a shameless woman because she failed to pass the two-finger test (which has long been discarded as proof of women's promiscuity).

Perhaps the judges thought that it wasn't rape because she got pregnant. An American senator once said that a woman cannot get pregnant if she's been raped, and can get pregnant only if she's agreed to have sex. Perhaps our "honorable" judges also believe this, as the rape victim did get pregnant. Whatever the case, our judges should be selected only after being vetted thoroughly.

Trump's million dollar gold and green card

Embed from Getty Images

I'd never have guessed that the US economy is in such a bad state that it needs foreigners to get US citizenship for a million dollars (which is equivalent to 300 million Pakistani rupees. I know a few people among my near and distant relatives who have that kind of money, but I can't understand why anyone like that would like to live permanently in the US, now that we know how unstable that country is. But then, there are gangsters in Russia and Africa who would definitely love to settle there. In fact, as Trump said, there are about 40,000 who have applied for the gold card, some of whom may be Pakistanis.

Come to think of it, I've never wanted to live anywhere other than in Pakistan, even though I could have gone to the US in the 1960s, even though most of my life has been spent in struggling to survive. If I'd gone to the US and spent 50 years working in jobs I didn't like, I'd have gone crazy. So I suppose it's been a good decision to remain in the country I grew up in.

It's almost imposssible to enforce the minimum marriage age law

The Peoples Party deserves praise for trying to protect women in the country. It has passed the minimum marriage age bill for girls, requiring them to be married only after the age of eighteen. The only problem is that it's virtually impossible to ensure that this law is observed. One reason for this is that people in the rural areas of the country do not register the births of their children. But the main reason is that people believe that Islam requires that girls should be married as soon as they reach puberty (which most do at the age of twelve).

I once heard a judge say that he has no choice but to allow marriage of underage girls as that is the law of Sharia, even if the country's law prohibits the marriage of girls who are not yet eighteen. Naturally, if an educated man has this opinion, what can a layman say?

There is another reason: the sale of female children by men who don't earn enough to survive or buy narcotics. A maid servant once decided to go to the court for getting a divorce from her husband. the man came with ten others, demanding that his three female children should be handed over to him. He didn't want his wife back. It turned out that he'd already sold the girls and wanted to get the money from the buyers so he could continue buying drugs. In such a scenario, it's impossible to protect Pakistani girls. 

Finally, army confirms what I said long ago about Imran Khan

I think it was in 2017 (before Imran Khan was elected prime minister) that I tweeted about Imran Khan being a psycho and a security risk. It was retweeted immediately by an eminent journalist and read by more than 50,000. The journalist (Omar Qureishi) received a lot of flak from Imran Khan's followers.

In yesterday's press conference, the DG (ISPR) said the same thing repeatedly. The question arises, why were some army generals and judges not able to discern what even a layman like me could see plainly? Why did they openly support him in destabilizing the government of the day? I don't know if it'll happen in my lifetime, but a commission should be formed to find how a psycho was able to fool the establishment and formed a government that could have led to the country disintegrating again.

In the two years and three months that he's been in jail, Imran Khan has repeatedly proved that he's a mentally unstable person. Of course, there is more evidence to prove it, like his marriage to a woman who is said to believe firmly in black magic and such mumbo jumbo. But sad to say, many people I know still think he's a messiah who will lead Pakistan to greatness.

Why is Trump pardoning criminals?

President Trump is behaving like a modern-day Julius Caesar. Not only does he think he's above the law, he's apparently thinking that he can do anything illegal and get away with it. His bullying tactics to coerce the president of Venezuela to resign prove that he's mentally unbalanced. His order to attack all boats on the Venezuelan coast, his order to all airlines to stop going to that country is not something that the president of a democratic country should do. Yet he's doing it, and apparently no one can stop him.

His latest is a string of pardons to hardened and convicted criminals. The president of Honduras was serving a 45 year jail sentence, but Trump simply pardoned him. Then there was the Ponzi scheme guy who defrauded 17,000 Americans of 1.2 billion dollars. He has been pardoned after serving only 12 days in prison. The latest is a senator belonging to the Democratic party (Henry Ceullar) who was scheduled to be tried next month (together with his wife). Yet he too has been let off by Trump. Obviously, Trump is not doing such things because he loves them. There must be something in it for him too. We'll know soon enough. 

UAE has stopped issuing visas to nationals of poor countries

When I visited Taiwan in 1991, my hosts were amazed that I had gone to Singapore first. "What's there is Singapore?" one of them asked. "It's all artificial". I agreed, even though I went to Singapore later due to pressure of my family members. The same holds true for Dubai and the rest of UAE. Why do people want to go there? I would like to mention here that I've visited the UAE four times, not because I like it (I don't), but because I have close relatives living there. 

So, I'm not upset over the UAE government's refusal to issue visas to people of poor countries like Pakistan (although, in a sense, Pakistan is a richer country than even UAE, but more of that later). It  seems that Pakistanis under the age of 45 do not stand a chance of getting a UAE visa, unless they have rich relatives there who can sponsor them. 

Despite so many people not getting visas, flights from Karachi to Dubai are full, even though most of the people going there are not the kind I would like to be friendly with. Most of them are laborers working there, but some have invested heavily in real estate in Dubai. Those are the ones who've made their millions in Pakistan, but have no faith in the country's future.

Trump being cordial to Mamdani shocks Americans!

Embed from Getty Images

Lo and behold, we saw another side of Trump when he met Mamdani. He even asked Mamdani to say yes when the New York mayor-elect was asked if he still considered that Trump is a fascist. This is definitely not the Trump we know, as we've seen how rudely he treated Zelensky. Let's hope that Trump changes and becomes a really nice and lovable person. 

But the question remains: will Mamdani be able to persuade billionaires like Trump to pay more taxes on their properties? It will indeed be a miracle if that happens.

I can't help comparing the situation of New York with that of Karachi. If only the taxes paid by Karachi residents were used for the city's development, it would not be the world's least livable. That can only happen only if the city is made a province. Unfortunately, that won't happen for a long time.

Why the 27th amendment was needed

It's been an open secret for a long time that the judiciary in Pakistan is not really independent (that's the case in most countries of the world), but no one ever said so in public. The twenty seventh amendment has merely legalized something illegal, which is why it's not being resisted so fiercely by lawyers (who came out twenty years ago to protest massively against the removal of then Chief Justice Iftikhar Choudhry by the late General Parvez Musharraf). In fact, the only retired army general so far tried and convicted by a civilian court was Musharraf himself, which made him stay out of the country for a long time (he'd been sentenced to death, but the sentence was later overturned). Until that time, it was unthinkable for any judge to do such a thing. That's the reason why the 27th amendment grants lifetime immunity to the present and future army chiefs (as well as   naval and air force chiefs).

As for granting immunity to the president of the country, that was already part of the constitution, but perhaps Zardari thought it was necessary to reinforce that clause.

There is of course the Imran Khan factor. His cases will no longer be heard by judges who like him, or judges whose mothers-in-law want him to be freed (this actually happened in the past).

Why have so many from Azad Kashmir settled in the UK?

Among the many misconceptions Pakistanis have is the belief that the British constructed the Mangla dam and gave citizenship to those who were displaced when their land was taken over for the dam's construction. Apparently such people do not know that the dam was constructed twenty years after the British left the subcontinent.

The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) was signed in Karachi in 1960 under the aegis of the World Bank. This agreement gave three rivers to Pakistan and the other three to India. I remember waving to Nehru and Ayub Khan as they were going to the President's House in an open car. Nehru waved back to me, while Ayub was staring at a pretty girl standing a couple of feet away on my right. Karachi was the capital of the country at the time, another fact that most Pakistanis have forgotten. 

It's been 65 years since the treaty was signed, and it has survived despite so many wars between the two countries. But the Hindutva activist prime minister (Modi) of India has revoked it recently, which will mean a death blow for Pakistan if it is not restored. 

So the British could not have given citizenship to so many people from Azad Kashmir, as the UK had nothing to do with Mangla dam. What happened is that every family in the area was compensated heavily for their lands by the Pakistani government, as a result of which almost all of them migrated and settled in the UK, which was the favored destination at the time.

 

Mamdani creates history

Embed from Getty Images

Most people had lost faith in democracy after seeing people like Trump and Modi getting elected. But there is some hope after all. With Zohran Mamdani getting elected as New York's first Muslim mayor (besides being the youngest so far), the people of that city have proved that they cannot be fooled by the Zionists and billionaires who did their utmost to defeat Mamdani.

I didn't know there was so much hatred against Muslims in the US until I saw a video posted on Facebook. In the video a young man is seen calling Mamdani a communist and die-hard Muslim, who would impose Sharia law in New York if he was elected. He also warned New Yorkers that their women would be forced to wear the all-enveloping burkha. 

But the most threatening tone was that of Trump himself. He warned that he would cut federal funding to the city if Mamdani was elected. Now that it has happened, he said that the US has lost its sovereignty and a communist has taken control of New York City. I don't know if it was Trump, but one US politician has claimed that Hamas has taken over NYC. The richest man in the world (Elon Musk) alleged  that the election process was a scam.

Mamdani's victory and those of other Democrats proves that Americans are not satisfied with Trump's performance. Trump and his Republican supporters should change their policies or they'll be routed in next year's mid-term elections. 

Racism in the US

We saw a lot of racism and prejudice against Muslims when we were kids in school. Even though our Catholic teachers were brown (like us), we could see that they thought Muslims were inferior. There was one male teacher who used to say that Muslims were backward and inferior to Christians and others. But we assumed, as the years went by, that most Americans and Europeans were now free of prejudice, despite occasional incidents of policemen killing blacks in the US, and Pakistanis being beaten up in the UK.

It seems that we were wrong. I've seen so much hatred of Muslims on social media that I'm shocked. A class fellow of mine (a brown Catholic and a US citizen) posted a video on Facebook in which a young boy is spewing hatred against Muslims in general and Mamdani in particular. He warns residents of New York that if Mamdani is elected mayor, they will soon see Sharia law in their city. 

But the most surprising thing is Trump's racism. He has allowed only white South Africans to immigrate to the US, and today he's asked the Pentagon to be ready to invade Nigeria to save the Christians in that country. I wonder why he didn't say anything when the Israelis were killing Christians in Gaza. In fact, all churches in Gaza have been demolished and the Christians there pray in the open. 

Banning political parties is not the answerr

Many political parties were banned in the past, but that has never worked. Bhutto banned the National Awami Party (NAP), but it resurfaced as Awami National Party (ANP). For some time, even the Peoples Party was banned, it once contested elections as PPPP (Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians). After the recent failed march to Islamabad by the extremist TLP, the government is considering banning the party, but this will make the party even more popular.

In fact, the TLP (Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan) is already very popular among Pakistan's largely illiterate population of those who follow the Barelvi version of Islam. The Punjab government is planning to take against those who have financed the party in the past (there are about 4,000 of them). The party head (Saad Rizvi) has gone underground, but in a raid on his house, the cops found gold and currency (including Indian rupees) reportedly amounting to more than a hundred million. The TLP chief also has 95 bank accounts, and the party "owns" three hundred and thirty mosques as well as 223 madressas. 

All this proves that extremism in Pakistan is rampant and will be difficult to eliminate merely by banning politico-religious parties. One wonders why the government did not take any action when the party was building mosques and seminaries on government land. But perhaps it was because the TLP was encouraged in the past to destabilize Nawaz Sharif's government by those in the Establishment who wanted to remove him from power and install their puppet Imran Khan in his place.

 

Ungrateful Afghans: will they ever change?

Afghanistan has always opposed the existence of Pakistan, right from day one. It opposed the creation of Pakistan, claiming most of the territory of the new country (despite their former rulers having accepted the Durand Line as the border). India helped them claim that the two provinces of Pakistan (KP and Baluchistan) belonged to Afghanistan. Pakistan helped Afghans in expelling the Soviets from their country. They seem to have forgotten that India did not oppose the Soviet invasion and did not boycott the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow (most countries including Pakistan boycotted). 

The Taliban government currently in power has allied itself with India to destabilize Pakistan, their foreign minister even supporting India's illegal occupation of Kashmir. He was unable to justify his government's treatment of its women. He forgot that Pakistan gave refuge to three million Afghans (half of them are still in Pakistan).

After years of bomb blasts carried out by Indian-supported Afghans, Pakistan decided that it could no longer stay silent. After Pakistan's bombing of the terrorists' sanctuaries in Afghanistan, the Taliban begged for a cease fire.  The cease fire agreed in yesterday's talks in Doha and more talks in Istanbul to be held next week, perhaps the Taliban may agree to stop terrorist activities, but I doubt if they will ever change. They want Pakistan to hand over its two western provinces to them, where they want to impose their version of Islam. Pakistan should retaliate whenever a terrorist attack takes place in the country. That's the only way to defeat them.