The report has claimed that two British police officers were spotted visiting Jemima's home in London's Fulham Tuesday along with her former boyfriend, actor Hugh Grant. At one point, Jemima reported that two of the cats were missing before one was apparently returned by a neighbor. The cats are worth up to US$2,000.

The other one is still missing.

Jemima gave Grant a pair, which he took with him when the couple split this year.

Now what that has got to do with Shaukat Aziz, we don't know. His photo insertion could just be a gaffe - an honest mistake - or may be there's more to it than the simple story. Is the cat in Islamabad? Is he the cat? Does he have it? If so, did he steal it to get her attention?

Aziz is a self proclaimed "lady's man" - if news of his tell-tale encounter with Condi Rice, as mentioned in a most recent published book is any indication.

In a biography titled "Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power" by Newsweek chief of correspondents and senior editor Marcus Mabry, the author writes that Aziz had tried to seduce Rice. (He bragged - to Western diplomats, no less - that he could conquer any woman in two minutes).

But Imran Khan was in London the week or the week before the cats went missing. Did he have anything to do with it?

I think the photo insertion it's just one of those silly mistakes all of us make or just a coincidence that Aziz's photo is at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Such gaffes by the media have happened  before too. One such was by CNN when one of its  live transmissions showed an "X" sign over not so popular Dick Cheney (US Vice President) as he addressed a meeting...

"Officials within Pakistan’s security establishment informed this writer (Dr Kazmi) that British Intelligence might be in possession of a tape recording of the Musharraf-Altaf conversation, which could undermine both (the) controversial figures. In the conversation, Musharraf and Altaf Hussain come across as ruthless manipulators with little regard for the life of Karachi’s citizens or for ethnic harmony among Pakistanis."

"Leaks from Pakistan’s security services have been instrumental in encouraging Pakistan Tehrik-e- Insaf (PTI) Chairman and former cricketer, Imran Khan, to announce that he and his lawyers would file a case against MQM Chief Altaf Hussain in London. Imran Khan called Altaf Hussain "Pakistan's biggest terrorist and mastermind of the Karachi killings."

Going back to author Herman's comments on Benazir's most recent article, I am reproducing it below verbatim. It presents Musharraf as the victim, an icon in the making, or already made, who seems to be facing the anti-Muhajir sentiments of the establishment and the elite, as Herman suggests.

Herman writes:

Readers of Benazir Bhutto's commentary ("Democracy for Pakistan," editorial page, June 8) who are unfamiliar with Pakistan's history need to be aware of certain facts:

1. As prime minister of Pakistan, Ms. Bhutto proved to be one of the most incompetent leaders in the history of South Asia and was dismissed in November 1996 by Pakistan's president for what he called her regime's "nepotism, corruption" and "mismanagement." During her chaotic administration in the mid-1990s scores of people were being murdered in the streets of Karachi every day.

2. Her return to power, or that of her Pakistani People's Party, would almost certainly trigger a return to anarchy and open the door to a Taliban-style fundamentalist coup. Ms. Bhutto dismisses this possibility as "nonsense," asserting that "more than two-thirds of Pakistanis are distinctly moderate" in their religious views.

The same appeared true of Iranians in 1979 as well. But when Iranian liberals and human rights activists convinced the U.S. to withdraw support from the shah, just as today's Pakistani liberals are urging us to do to Gen. Musharraf, the result was Ayatollah Khomeini.

Khomeini's Tehran successors would do anything to bring a similar radical Islamic republic to power across the border in Pakistan -- especially if it meant gaining access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

3. The current hatred of Gen. Musharraf has little to do with the nature of his government. His real "crime" is that he is a Muhajir, the son of one of millions of Indian Muslims who fled to Pakistan during partition in 1947. Although it was Muhajirs who agitated for the creation of Pakistan in the first place, many native Pakistanis view them with contempt and treat them as third-class citizens.

Ms. Bhutto herself, as prime minister in the summer of 1995, referred to Pakistan's Muhajirs as "rats" and said they had "bad blood." In an interview with India Today, a Muhajir spokesman responded that "we have bad blood; it was this blood that built this country."

Even for Western-educated Pakistanis like Ms. Bhutto (the scion of an elite Sindhi family), the sight of a common Muhajir like Gen. Musharraf as Pakistan's supreme power holder is intolerable. Pushing for his fall has little to do with "a return to democracy." It is far more a matter of restoring Pakistan's equivalent of Jim Crow.

4. Gen. Musharraf has not only been a good ally for America, he has been good for Pakistan: Per-capita wealth and income have advanced significantly; tensions with India over Kashmir, which at one point in 1999 led Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war, have eased. At considerable risk to himself, Gen. Musharraf has tried to rein in the forces of jihadism and end foreign support for fundamentalist madrassas.

His regime has hardly been perfect. However, compared with the Maliki government in Iraq, its record is impressive, especially in fostering a safe, relatively open and secular Pakistan. Yet it is precisely that Pakistan that the country's liberal elites now want to put at risk, thanks to their hatred of Gen. Musharraf. Ms. Bhutto's column is not only an exercise in hypocrisy, it is a display of short-sightedness on a massive and tragic scale.

Arthur Herman
Charlottesville, Va.

(Mr. Herman is completing a full-length study of Gandhi and Churchill, which will be published by Bantam Dell in 2008.)

Why Most Moderate Pakistanis Now Dislike America

Then there is a photo of George Bush followed by the following statement hyperlinked to a WNBC blog:

The U.S. will continue to support President Musharraf because there is no substitute for him in the army who can, and will, give the kind of support the U.S. wants in the war on terror," said Lt. General Hamid Nawaz, formerly Pakistan’s Secretary of Defence.


The blogger, who calls himself or herself, "The Onlooker" has then added his or her comments and as I read it, I was impressed but angry too. I think the blogger does want us to get angry and relate with it. I did. Many will do too.

It is an eerie coincidence that the blog kind of articulated my subconscious opinion of things which somehow is still holding my inner voice from speaking out in words. This is where social contract begins and individualism ends I think. Never the less, this afternoon I decided to be creative and tooned a new cartoon out of an original one by Mike Luckovich. It somehow characterizes what The Onlooker has written in his or her blog. That's one hell of a coincidence.

We have been debating whether we should put up the toon on the front page of our website or not. It is disturbing I think, but poignant enough, and takes you to the fringes of harsh truth, stark reality, the black and white arena where you have to call a spade a spade to make your point. Here is the toon. Click on it for a larger view, if you want to:



The toon and the blog from The Glasshouse combined, tell all. The blog, typed in color green is reproduced here below for all: I liked it, loved it. I don't know who the blogger is though. It says "Onlooker". His/Her blog has given me the courage and the wit to put up the toon on the front page. And we have done so.

Here's the blog, courtesy The Glasshouse:

Okay Americans, you have a democracy, a constitution that guarantees your rights of liberty, free speech and a rule of law. Simply put, no government official in your country can crash through your door in the early hours of morning to beat you up, kidnap you to be tortured at length or more simply, put a bullet through your head.

Okay, so you have an incompetent for a president, but then you have no else to blame but yourselves, as a majority of you elected him. Fine, you might have made a human mistake, but then at least you are saved by a political system that gets rid of him once he serves his term (or gets impeached).

Yes, it was extremely tragic that some 2973 people died during the September 11, 2001, attacks. Many of us were devastated by the loss of these hundreds of innocent civilian lives.

(By the way, we are also emotionally distraught by the estimated 64,500 innocent Iraqi civilian men, women and children who have died so far in the aftermath to the war aimed at eradicating those never-to-be-discovered WMDs)

But here is my question:
 

In today’s Pakistan, a country where the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is illegally held in confinement, then physically manhandled and then put on trial on mendacious charges, can any ordinary citizen hope for a modicum of justice? The clear answer is no.

For example, we have hundreds of people ‘missing’, that is they have been picked up by mysterious ‘agency’ personnel who refuse to be answerable in any court of law. Why? Because they act for Musharraf. And no, these missing people are not typically religious extremists - a large number of them happen to be Musharraf’s political opponents from the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan who have been labeled as ‘enemies of the state’.

Reality states that Bush’s so-called ‘War on Terror’ has allowed his supporting cast to create their own Guantanamos all over the place.

Right now a majority of the civilians in Pakistan are demanding their basic fundamental rights. And what are these? An independent judiciary, a free press, a rule of law, and free and fair elections. Not really much for 165 million people on this God’s earth to ask for, is it?

So then is why the US opposing the people of Pakistan by propping up Musharraf?

The answer might be simple as this: Bush has blundered badly in his ‘War on Terror’; Iraq has been a complete debacle and Afghanistan is shaping to be that way. The US had been counting on Musharraf without any ‘Plan B’ or ‘Plan C’. So the US Administration has foolishly decided to cling onto him as if he offers some kind of life boat to a sinking ship.

The problem is that Musharraf has been 1st mate on Bush’s ship from the day it set forth and is no position to provide a miracle rescue. In fact, the situation is often the reverse; he has been counting on US support and largesse to protect him during his times of crisis.

So the basic point is Bush-Cheney & Co have goofed up badly and there is no earthly reason why 165 million Pakistanis should be made to pay for someone else’s willful blunders. But by continually propping up Musharraf, Washington is behaving towards 165 million Pakistanis as if we are of no consequence – in other words relegating us to a level of collateral human fodder.

That is why we are coming to despise the USA.

Previous Blogs:
Our Doolittle retired Generals
In Islamabad, 'Czech' means 'Check'