Wordfall, by Kaleem Omar

If C is for Condi and D is for Democracy, C is also for Chevron – the US oil company that has named one of its oil supertankers after Condoleezza Rice – and D is also for Destruction – of the kind that the Bush administration has unleashed on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Bush administration’s original name for its invasion of Iraq was “Operation Iraqi Liberation”. But when White House officials realised that the acronym for the name spelt “OIL”, they hurriedly changed it to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Read the rest of this entry »

KARACHI: It is not every day that we, in this country, have something to cheer about. But on Friday we most definitely did. For that, of course, was the day the Supreme Court handed down its decision to cancel the sale of the state-owned Pakistan Steel Mills (PSM) – the country’s biggest industrial enterprise – to a consortium of buyers comprising a Russian company, a Saudi company and a Pakistani company for a mere $ 362 million (Rs 21.68 billion) at a rate of Rs 16.8 per share.

One says “a mere $ 362 million” because the 4,457 acres of land alone, which is part of the Steel Mills, is worth more than that at current prices. It seems fishy, to say the least, that the price of this land was not included in the Privatisation Commission’s evaluation of what PSM is worth. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a lot of hype in the international press these days about the emergence of India as an economic powerhouse that is likely to rival China in the next few years. The rapid growth of India’s IT export earnings is often cited as an example of the economic and technological progress that India has made on recent years. But there is a darker side to this rosy picture. According to the World Bank, about 500 million Indians still lack access to electricity. That’s nearly 50 per cent of India’s population of 1.1 billion, and more than the total population of the European Union. Read the rest of this entry »

KARACHI: Pakistan’s electricity tariffs are the highest in the world. The problem is compounded by the fact that successive governments have continued to impose a variety of duties, taxes and levies on imported furnace oil used by oil-fired thermal power plants, which now generate more than 50 per cent of the nation’s power.

In order to accelerate economic growth, the government, among other things, needs to do away with all these imposts to reduce the cost of electricity generation. This reduction in generation cost should be passed on to industrial consumers and farmers in the form of mandated lower electricity tariffs. Read the rest of this entry »

A monolithic concept of capitalism no longer exists, perhaps never did. As Philip Kotler, Somkid Jatuspripitak and Suvit Maesincee note in their study “The Marketing of Nations”, today’s global economy is one of “capitalistic diversity.” Even beyond the three versions found in the “triad” – American, European and Japanese – there are further variations that are distinctly East Asian, Latin American, and reflections of other countries, the co-authors of the study note. Read the rest of this entry »

KARACHI: If Liaquat Ali Khan was the greatest prime minister this country has ever had, as he undoubtedly was, it is also true that his wife, Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan was an equally great personality in her own right. Today marks the 16th death anniversary of this great lady, who died on June 13, 1990 in Karachi at the age of 85.

To mark the occasion and commemorate Begum Liaquat’s services to this country and to the women of Pakistan in particular, the Mir Khalil-ur-Rehman Memorial Society, which is named after the late founder of the Jang Group of Newspapers, is holding a function at 3.30 pm today (Tuesday) at the ICN auditorium in the Al-Rehman Building, I. I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi. Read the rest of this entry »

Jenkinson’s Law, which is perhaps the ultimate law when it comes to budgets, states: “Budgets don’t work.” Given this gloomy pronouncement, what chance is there that the budget for fiscal 2006-07 announced on June 5 will work? Not much chance, I’d venture to say – and here’s the reason why.

Budget-makers in Pakistan have traditionally tended to overestimate the revenue side and underestimate the expenditure side. So it would come as no surprise if we were to see the same thing happening this time, with actual revenue receipts falling well short of original budgetary estimates and actual expenditure rising to well above original estimates. Read the rest of this entry »

The White House on Tuesday promised full public disclosure of the results of a military probe into the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians by American forces in al-Haditha on November 19 last year after renewed accusations that the US Marine Corps tried to cover up what could be one of the worst criminal atrocities committed by US occupation forces in Iraq.

Twenty-four innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, died in the killing spree by a Marine unit in al-Haditha, a town 200 km northwest of Baghdad. The unprovoked attack came when Marines went on the rampage following the death of a Marine driver who was blown up when his Humvee military vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. Read the rest of this entry »

KARACHI: At a pre-budget briefing for journalists in Islamabad on Monday on the performance of the national economy, Dr Salman Shah, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance, Revenue and Economic Affairs, said that the country’s economic growth had been “internationally acknowledged” and that all the economic indicators were showing a “positive trend.” Read the rest of this entry »

There is hardly any area where the US government’s penchant for double standards does not apply. The latest example of this came on Tuesday when the US Defence Department, headed by Donald (“Weapons of Mass Destruction”) Rumsfeld, in its annual report to Congress warned that the pace and scope of China’s modernisation of its strategic forces and other surprising military developments could pose a credible long-term threat to the United States. Read the rest of this entry »