Wordfall, by Kaleem Omar

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has produced a sea change in the way countries go about developing and acquiring weapons. Smaller defence budgets have reduced the influence of traditional military powers in the market place while at the same time inducing ever-greater attention to the cost implications of acquisition decisions, cost-effectiveness tradeoffs, and even to the acquisition process itself.

This is the theme of a paper by two leading American research scholars on arms issues, Andrew W. Hull and David R. Markov of the Washington-based Institute for Defence Analyses (IDA). 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 »

President Musharraf’s offer at the SCO summit in Shanghai to provide an energy corridor to Western China and the Central Asian Republics could yield billions of dollars in economic benefits for Pakistan.

Addressing senior executives of the All China Federation of Commerce and Industry (ACFIC) in Shanghai on June 14, and later addressing a summit meeting of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in the same city on June 15, President Pervez Musharraf said his government was trying to convert Pakistan into an energy corridor for Western China and the landlocked Central Asian Republics, through the seaport at Gwadar and new rail and road networks. He also offered to extend the proposed Iran-Pakistani-India (IPI) gas pipeline to energy-deficient Western China. Read the rest of this entry »

Sold to the world by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a plan to withdraw from some of Israel’s Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law, Israel’s so-called “Convergence Plan” is the latest move by the Zionist state to further the colonisation of Palestinian land and the expulsion of its people.

The diabolical scheme is aimed at permanently annexing Palestinian territory west of the West Bank, sealing Palestinians in from the east, and surrounding a series of Palestinian Bantustans. The plan will annex all Palestinian territories and resources west of Israel’s monstrous Apartheid Wall, also known as the “New Berlin Wall” and the “Segregation Wall,” consolidate the annexation and ethnic cleansing of occupied Jerusalem (al-Quds), and ensure that Palestinian rights continue to be negated and violated. Read the rest of this entry »

In the Karachi of the old days, the city of my youth, one often used to hear people whistling a jaunty tune as they cycled home at night after a movie. Many things in Karachi have changed since then, mostly for the worse. Which probably explains why nobody in Karachi whistles anymore – or, if they do, they do so in secret, as if it were a crime. Indeed, whistling has become so rare now that a whole generation of Karachiites has grown up not even knowing how to whistle – at least not in the way that many members of my generation could whistle entire songs in the old days, including catchy ditties like “Awaara Hoon Mein”, “Jambalaya” and “The Happy Whistler” Some of us could even whistle classical pieces like Ravel’s “Bolero” and Dvorjak’s “New World Symphony”. 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 »

With no significant additional generation capacity due to come on stream for at least another two years, the fast growing demand for power is likely to exceed the country’s total installed generation capacity by the middle of next year.

According to the latest Pakistan Economic Survey, which was released by the Ministry of Finance just before the June 5 announcement of the federal budget for fiscal 2006-07, the economy has grown at an average rate of over 7.5 per cent per annum in the last three years, thus positioning itself as “one of the fastest growing economies of the Asian region.” Read the rest of this entry »

The long list of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people includes its totally illegal occupation of Jerusalem, known to Muslims the world over as al-Quds. Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem dates back to 1967, and the Zionist state has ignored numerous UN resolutions calling upon it to withdraw from the city and other occupied territories.

Now, the Israeli government has announced it will confiscate the right of Palestinian citizens who hold foreign passports, in addition to their required Israeli-issued ID and Palestinian passports, to continue living in the future capital of the Palestinian state. 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 »