KO – Page 6

The dark side of Dubai

April 8, 2009 by KO

A great article on the worlds capital to globalization and slavery: “The Dark side of Dubai: Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports:”:http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

bq.. … “The thing you have to understand about Dubai is – nothing is what it seems,” Karen says at last. “Nothing. This isn’t a city, it’s a con-job. They lure you in telling you it’s one thing – a modern kind of place – but beneath the surface it’s a medieval dictatorship.”

…There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

A short doc on the impact of Aghanistan on Pakistan, and vice versa

March 21, 2009 by KO

The video is a bit alarmist – this is a good article with a more balanced view: “Our skewed world view won’t let us see the real Pakistan”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/15/jason-burke-pakistan bq.. First for the good news: Pakistan is not about to explode. The Islamic militants are not going to take power tomorrow; the nuclear weapons are not … Read moreA short doc on the impact of Aghanistan on Pakistan, and vice versa

Return of Justice, Pakistan edition, as Zardari exits backstage

March 16, 2009 by KO

A number of people asked to me about whats happening in Pakistan, so to answer some of their questions – and also because today is a momentous day in Pakistan’s history – here is what happened this weekend, March 12-16, 2009. In my opinion, the most important (good) event In Pakistan’s history!

The endless boredom of Saudi Arabian youth

March 8, 2009 by KO

What do you in in a country where a king and his not-so-royal family owns everything, and gives the entire population a stipend so they go off somewhere and don’t bother the king? “Go drag racing!”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/world/middleeast/08drift.html?ref=world

bq.. This may be the most popular sport of Saudi youth, an obsessive, semilegal competition that dominates weekend nights here. It ranges from garden variety drag racing to “drifting,” an extremely dangerous practice in which drivers deliberately spin out and skid sideways at high speeds, sometimes killing themselves and spectators.

For Saudi Arabia’s vast and underemployed generation of young people, these reckless night battles are a kind of collective scream of frustration, a rare outlet for exuberance in an ultraconservative country where the sexes are rigorously segregated and most public entertainment is illegal. *They are, almost literally, bored out of their minds.*

“Why do they do it?” said Suhail Janoudi, a 27-year-old sales clerk who was watching the races from the roadside with a faint smile around 1:30 a.m. *”Because they have nothing else to do. Because they are empty.”*

A short history of Asif Ali Zardari

February 18, 2009 by KO

Asif Ali Zardari hails from a feudal background – what that means is his father owned land, probably around a few thousand acres somewhere in rural Sindh. The locals who live and farm on the land pay the landlord a rent, or often times rent + half the produce from the land. Generally, this is the only legal source of income for most landlords.

Asif’s family didn’t have much land as compared to the larger Sindhi landlords, and like every other Pakistani landlord, their farming practices were backwards and highly inefficient, making them in essence relatively poor, as compared to the other much larger land owning families in Sindh. While always immensely rich compared to the average Pakistani, Asif grew up with a chip on his shoulder as the class he measured himeself against was much wealthier. Perhaps thats where his innate desire to go overboard on the pursuit of wealth grew from.

Feudal landholders in Pakistan are generally not very rich, despite impressions to the contrary. Their landholdings don’t generate much income. With the spread of industry and urbanization, a number of landlords have become much richer as their lands were near growing cities, hence increasing their value many fold – which enables them to sell off bits and pieces to add to their income.

The deadweight loss of Bakra Eid

November 19, 2010December 7, 2008 by KO

The gift giving season which is Christmas is just around the corner, and once again billions of dollars are going to waste:

bq. in general, people spend a lot more on presents than they’re worth to those who receive them, a phenomenon called “the deadweight loss of Christmas.” A deadweight loss is created when you spend eighty dollars to give me a sweater that I would spend only sixty-five dollars to buy myself.

The full paper “The deadweight loss of Christmas”:http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/freakonomics/pdf/WaldfogelDeadweightLossXmas.pdf – is a short, and interesting read.

While economists estimate that up to a third of the value of gifts exchanged at Christmas is lost, as the receivers value the gifts lower than what the giver bought them for, Bakra Eid is a bit like Christmas where everyone buys and receives the same gift – meat!

While there are other, non-economic benefits to the production and giving of the traditional Bakra Eid gifts, as an economic activity Bakra Eid is more akin to the Titanic, with all the hard work and effort required to save up a 100 billion rupees wrecked, with a few hardy survivors gobbling down their gifts, and the vast majority seeing all their hard earned cash slaughtered, with a few choice pieces of meat left at the end.

Zardari: We don’t need no Education

November 20, 2008 by KO

Atanu Dey has been writing about the “importance of education in the third world”:http://www.deeshaa.org/category/education/ – it’s basically the only way to to rise out of poverty, a point which “Nicholas Kristof made recently”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin:

bq.. Quick, what’s the source of America’s greatness?

Is it a tradition of market-friendly capitalism? The diligence of its people? The cornucopia of natural resources? Great presidents?

No, a fair amount of evidence suggests that the crucial factor is our school system — which, for most of our history, was the best in the world but has foundered over the last few decades.

p. Pakistan just turned it’s back on this whole education thing by appointing Senator Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani as Minister for Education. This is someone for who an arrest warrant was issued by the Supreme court of Pakistan, for ordering a family to _hand over five minor girls for marriage to a family to compensate for a murder in Jacobabad._

President Obama

November 5, 2008 by KO

The following “comments from Reddit”:http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/7beo2/obama_wins_the_presidency/ sum up the world’s feelings:

bq.. Dear Rest of The World

We didn’t fuck it up

Signed,

America

p. The reply:

bq.. Dear America,

Congrats!

Regards, Rest of the World

Naomi Klein – The Shock Doctrine

November 2, 2008 by KO

!http://ko.offroadpakistan.com/images/2008/naomi.png! This book is a must read for countries like Pakistan, which have already gone through multiple rounds of “shock therapy” at the hands of the IMF, and are just about to sign on the dotted line for yet another one.

The book doesn’t rail against capitalism, rather it rails against the extreme right-wing ideologues who wormed their way into economic seats of power in the US, and into the IMF and the World Bank. The problem with neoconservatives is that they live in a bubble full of right wing fantasies, and never condensed to step out into the real world and see how far their neo-liberal fantasies had diverged from the real world.

What looks good on paper often pans out different in the real world, especially in corrupt societies like Pakistan – and this is one factor which the IMF never seems to account for properly. In a poor country like Pakistan, regressive taxes like Central Excise Duty on services and sales tax on everything (even drinking water!) are highly regressive, and with Pakistan’s highly corrupt taxation system just give more of an incentive to people to stay further out of the tax net. It’s a vicious cycle… but read the book for criticisms of the IMF and their achievements in the developing world.

bq. In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. “#”:http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book

Pakistan is about to make a deal with the IMF..

The great Pakistani stock broker bailout

October 27, 2008 by KO

The Karachi stock exchange crashed all the way from “16000 to 9000”:http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/fds/hi/business/market_data/stockmarket/11745/twelve_month.stm – and in the process bankrupted a lot of stockbrokers and other large players. Taking note of this severe crisis, the govt. rushed in to save the day, for stock brokers don’t loose money in this country! First, the govt. changed the rules of the game – not once, not twice but thrice!

In Pakistan, stock brokers make money by borrowing from banks and using that borrowed money to play with the stock market. By law, they have to return that money along with interest in X days, while retaining all the profit. This being Pakistan, now that the value of the stocks bought on borrowed money has fallen below the amount of their loans, the stock brokers have conveniently changed the time they need to pay it back to a full year – and arm twisted the govt. to throw money at the stock market by buying shares at higher than market prices so the stock brokers can cash out and let the govt. bear the losses.

Depending on how you add up the various billions the govt. has already thrown at the stockbrokers, the total amount has already reached 150 to 200 billion rupees. The law changes alone are worth many billions – without them the entire stockbroker industry was effectively bankrupt.

In a surprise twist to the tale, a few govt. organizations have grown a backbone, and refused to just hand over govt. money over:

bq.. Four of the federal organizations have expressed their reservations on provision of a fund amounting to Rs20 billion to Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) for pulling the share market out of the prevailing crisis.

According to sources, the Federal Government directed the State Life, National Bank, National Investment Trust and Employees Old Age Benefit Institution to extend Rs20 billion to KSE.

*The federal bodies are of the view that the fund created with the money of the poor, pensioners, insurance holders and others should not be provided to KSE.*

These bodies have already extended Rs5 billion to KSE in a bid to support the market.

p. Kudos to the above for resisting this blatant transfer of money. In the long run, the stocks might even make money, but pension money should never be gambled, even if there is a good chance of winning.