SiD’s Sphere!!

i have a lot to write. lots goin on in my mind. have mentally composed so many blog posts. but everytime i open this window i close it again. i dont feel like writing.
usually i rant on my blog, and on some rare occasions there are posts that are actually worth reading. but now all of a sudden i dont want to share my thoughts with the outside world anymore. ive decided to go back into my shell where i belong. roll up in my cocoon and wait till i feel like writing again.
till then, goodbye blog. i will be back, maybe.

Here I lie
in a lost and lonely part of town
Held in time
In a world of tears I slowly drown
Goin’home
I just can’t make it all alone
I really should be holding you
Holding you
Loving you loving you
Tragedy
When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on
It’s tragedy
When the morning cries and you don’t know why
It’s hard to bear
With no-one to love you you’re
goin’ nowhere
Tragedy
When you lose control and you got no soul
It’s tragedy
When the morning cries and you don’t know why
It’s hard to bear
With no-one beside you you’re
goin’ nowhere
When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on
Night and day
there’s a burning down inside of me
Burning love
With a yearning that won’t let me be
Down I go
and I just can’t take it all alone
I really should be holding you
Holding you
Loving you loving
Tragedy
When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on
It’s tragedy
When the morning cries and you don’t know why
It’s hard to bear
With no-one to love you you’re
goin’ nowhere
Tragedy
When you lose control and you got no soul
It’s tragedy
When the morning cries and you don’t know why
It’s hard to bear
With no-one beside you you’re
goin’ nowhere

this past week was filled with visits to and from friends. sat and talked for hours at a stretch with so many of them. and each one of those conversations left me more and more puzzled. with shak and rafia i was discussing how everything we do in this day and age is wrong; backstabbing, cheating, lies, deciet is the cry of the day. and we have all conditioned ourselves to accept this as as acceptable. lately i have been in a state of cognitive dissonance abt it all but other’s ppls attitudes has been really troubling. all my friends, ive come to know, believe that because its not possible to survive in the dog eat dog world anymore without adopting all the wrong means urself, it is ok to take the wrong road to success. the end, they believe, justifies the means. but what end??? is worldy success and wealth all that matters? is that why we’ve been sent down to this Earth? if life is all about trampling others in the rat race to success and fame, and if it is all abt the survival of the fittest(read: meanest, dishonest, corrupt), then why do we all pretend to care abt humanity anyway? and how does one escape a world where selfishness and greed govern the minds of mortals?
sara, shaffo and aj on the other hand are more worried abt how i am conducting my personal life. here’s a conversation with aj.

Aj: i’m sure u re doin all this in the spirit of self sacrifice, but u dont realise that its more than ur own life ure ruining.
Me: self-sacrifice?? think again. im doin this coz i dont want to take another blow to my self esteem. im in denial.
-long silence-
Aj: babe, u better take the blow right now than take it later. its goin to be much worse later.

sara’s been the most persistent with the same advice.

sara: why dont u realise what ure doin to urself??
me: coz i dont care abt myself.

sometimes i feel like screaming…’back off, leave me alone’.. to all these ppl who care so much. but thats only coz i dont have the strength to take their advice seriously. coz i cant let go. coz my heart and mind are both numb with pain. coz i dont see a way out. coz i m a bloodsucking parasite.

1. The Most Beneficent (Allâh)!
2. Has taught (you mankind) the Qur’ân (by His Mercy).
3. He created man.
4. He taught him eloquent speech.

Apaa Begum just passed away a few minutes back. Not many ppl know still. ammi was just goin to send me next door to parsa aunty coz she was alone at home. I went into my room to get my dupatta when bhaii called from the hospital that the doctors have given up. now ammi has gone to break the news to parsa aunty.
i have no words. may the blessed angel rest in peace.

dont know what happened to my template but it wasnt showing my side bar so i changed my template. which means i lost all the links. ill link to all of u soon. feel so lazy abhi.
the previous post is just a report that i wrote for my pak hist class.

Using Napolean as a mouthpiece, George Bernard Shaw makes a telling comment on British Imperialism, which is no less ? if not more ? apposite to the American imperialism of our time. He says: There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find an Englishman doing it; but you will never find an Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle.

• He fights you on patriotic principles;
• He robs you on business principles;
• He enslaves you on imperial principles;
• He bullies you on manly principles;
• He supports his king on loyal principles and cut off his king?s head on republican principles

America is no different.

• It claims to act in terms of international law; but feels free to subvert international norms whenever it wants.
• It supports the authority of the United Nations but turns its back on the U.N. to suit its convenience.
• It globalizes trade in the name of fairness; and most unfairly usurps the major trade benefits to its own advantage.
• It launches a war to secure the largest oil reserves in the world but pretends it fights for peace.
• It claims to act in the name of democracy, but leaves behind battered states wherever it has gone.
• It fights a war for peace, but makes huge profits by the sale of arms that follows.
• Its peacekeeping results in war.
• Its war brings no peace.
• No sooner are its interests maintained, it leaves behind debris of enfeebled states.
• It is never at a loss for an effective moral attitude.

Many empires throughout history have used their military strength to enforce, and subsequently maintain, their interests so that trading and access to resources are in their favor. From the ancient empires of Rome and Greece, to more modern empires, such as the various colonial and imperial powers of the past few centuries, to the superpowers of the former Soviet Union and the USA that emerged from those violent ?great games?, to the modern day remaining imperial super power of the United States.

Wars are primarily fought over resources and trade. President Woodrow Wilson recognized that this was the cause of World War I:

?Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry??

Thomas Friedman said in his book A Manifesto for the Fast World:

“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist –McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

It was for the same reasons that the British had to fight the Dutch and the French and the locals in the subcontinent in Battles like the Battle of Swally, Seven Years’ War, Opium War of 1840, Anglo-Mysore Wars, Anglo-Maratha wars. If a list was to be drawn up of US military interventions in the past century, a gory truth would be revealed in the numerous pages that would be filled. From Vietnam to the Gulf War to the recent War on Terrorism have all been means of acquiring fast diminishing resources.

The US would like the world to believe that its interventions are motivated only by “humanitarian” or ?democratic? impulses. But an in depth analysis proves otherwise. The locals who are always under suspectful eyes are treated just as ruthlessly as the British treated the Indians after the war of Independence.

Every country the USA invades is left in ruins necessitating subsequent ?nation-building. Such a ?nation-building? occupation involves ?defeating and disarming any local opposition and establishing a political authority that enjoys a monopoly or near-monopoly of control over the legitimate use of force. This is the same tactics that Britain used when it introduced technological advancements in colonies like India and slowly and gradually gaining control on Diwani rights.

Even though a pretense of local rule has been established from the beginning, even during direct military occupation as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq; a central goal will be to achieve some of what colonialism in its classic form previously accomplished when the British let the local rajas rule their territories while they reaped greater benefits.

Thomas Friedman in 1999 rightly described the impact of American military on its economy in the following quote:

?The invisible hand of the market never functions without the hidden fist. McDonalds cannot prosper without McDonnel Douglas, the builder of the F-15 fighter. And the hidden fist that guarantees a secure world for the technologies of the Silicon Valley is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.?

Many of the features of contemporary imperialism, such as the development of the world market, the division between core and periphery, the competitive hunt for colonies or semi-colonies, the extraction of surplus, the securing of raw materials to bring back to the mother country, etc. are similar to how the British managed to gain a strong foothold in the subcontinent three and a half centuries ago.

From a power perspective, ?free? trade in reality is seen by many around the world as a continuation of those old policies of plunder, whether it is intended to be or not. Today neoliberal policies are seeing positives and negatives. Under free enterprise, there have been many innovative products. Growth and development for some have been immense. Unfortunately, for most people in the world there has been an increase in poverty and the innovation and growth has not been designed to meet immediate needs for many of the world?s people. Global inequalities on various indicators are sharp. For example,

• Some 3 billion people ? or half of humanity ? live on under 2 dollars a day
• 86 percent of the world?s resources are consumed by the world?s wealthiest 20 percent

Back in the 17th century the East India Company adopted Mercantilism as a form of trade. Mercantilism as described by Adam Smith is

?.to enrich the country [city or state] by an advantageous balance of trade. It discourages the exportation of the materials of manufacture [tools and raw material], and the instruments of trade, in order to give our own workmen an advantage, and to enable them to undersell those of other nations [cities] in all foreign markets: and by restraining, in this manner, the exportation of a few commodities of no great price, it proposes to occasion a much greater and more valuable exportation of others. It encourages the importation of the materials of manufacture, in order that our own people may be enabled to work them up more cheaply, and thereby prevent a greater and more valuable importation of the manufactured commodities.

This way, resources flowed out of India and into Europe. This is the exact situation that we witness today. Countries which have the most resources specially oil are captured by the allies against War on Terrorism or fall prey to the Multinational Corporations which reap enormous profits to send back to their home countries (the developed western nations). The less developed nations are only viewed as service providers, and if possible that is what America considers is to be maintained, in order to preserve the wealth and balance of power. According to Noam Chomsky, the role of these third world countries as seen by America is:

?to provide resources, cheap labor, markets, opportunities for investment and, lately, export of pollution.?

Even financial institutions like IMF and World Bank are instruments that Washington uses to control weaker nations. The Bretton Woods agreement creating the IMF made the U.S. dollar the standard to which all other country’s currencies were pegged. The World Bank’s original priority was to extend reconstruction loans to countries that would become importers of U.S. goods. The idea was to help rebuild war-shattered, non-profit-making infrastructure like roads and ports with government-backed loans, so that later they could serve as the means for private-sector trade and profit. The policies of these institutions have been devised in a way that the indebted countries? currencies continues to devalue making the dollar stronger allowing USA to impose imperialistic policies on these countries. This could be compared with how the British in its colonial days gradually increased its control on all financial sources such as Diwani Rights and control of all foreign trade to be able to manipulate the local rajas to be their subordinates.

To control other nations’ values and perceptions through cultural means, such as media, language, education and religion, purportedly ultimately for economic reasons is considered just as important by the American imperialists as was considered by the British colonists to prevent a local uprising. America has used globalization to its advantage by flooding homes around the world with American culture and values while maintaining a superiority complex. English has become a universal language making it possible for America to dictate ?culture? to the rest of the world. Most of popular literature, music, and entertainment is rooted in America. Even though the British did not have the technology to achieve this on the same scale as the Americans, their missionaries, by contributing to health and education, won the hearts of the downtrodden local population. Where they could not win support easily, they resorted to force to convert people to Christianity. In this way they were able to gain intellectual control over the locals.

Political control is another method adopted both by Americans now and by the British in the past. The Americans support regimes that are loyal to them, e.g. Pakistan. On the other hand, they overthrow regimes that refuse to obey the Americans on grounds of democracy or corruption. Saddam Hussein has been the latest example. The British accomplished the same by their Doctrine of Lapse through which they dethroned rulers like Nana Saheb and Rani of Jhansi?s son. Another excuse the British used to depose rulers they disliked was on charges of mismanagement. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Oudh was deposed in this manner.

Americans also employ the ?divide and rule? policy crafted by the British to achieve their imperialistic purposes. They provide arms to both the sides engaged in a war as in the case of Pakistan and India so that it can influence the policies of both the nations as long as they stay dependent on US. The British played similar intrigues on local rulers.

For Britain, military overstretch, the degree of interventionism, the degree of control directly and indirectly became major concerns and resulted in World War I. The United States of America may be heading the same way.

?Rome?s most enduring gift was the formula for empire itself … it?s being used again now, by the new Masters of the Universe. But Rome?s story offers a warning too: No empire should ever believe in its own immortality. At the time it seems impossible to imagine a world without it. But one day, even the mightiest temples and grandest monuments lie in ruins. No empire lasts forever.?

theres so much happening and unhappening aaj kal. some times the vacations seem a drag and at others, i wish life could always be this peaceful.
the 2 day at the mehendi were such a bore. IF i ever get married and thats a big IF, remind me not to have a mehendi. and if i do have it, only my friends and some cousins will be invited. if u dont really know the bridegroom, u cant even join all the ppl havin all the fun at a mehendi. its no fun watching ppl dance to the dhol when u can just tap ur feet.aaaaaaaaaaaargh!! i so wanted to get up and join them. btw ive never danced in front of ammi. she doesnt know i can. hehe. it was such a blast at habiba’s weddin when we stayed up all night and danced to our heart’s delight. i hope we have the same fun at shermeen’s wedding next month, even though ammi said she wont allow me to stay over at her place.
ive already told the whole world abt the trouser incident and dont feel like repeating it here for the umpteenth time. waise bhi, im goin to remember this one forever so i dont really need to record it. hehhehe
the books are comin along reallly slowly. i sleep most of the day and then just roam abt the house like a zombie when i get up. half my time is spent answerin phone calls, which has really started irritating ammmi too. hehehe. i cant help it if so many ppl want to tlak to me.
i misss schoool.. no not IBA. i miss SCHOOL. i miss aarish and shakiba and mohsin and peti and sara and shaffo and bilal. i miss the burgers and the pizzas and the rolls and the chips and the cokes. i miss the teachers and the classes and basketball and bunking.