Will Musharraf Be Given a Fair Trial?

The azaad adliya has summoned the former president/dictator/COAS Gen. (retd) Pervez Musharraf to defend his November 3 actions. This was to be expected, and in one of my blog posts in the aftermath of Musharraf’s resignation I called for his fair trial. I support the decision to bring him to courts. But would it be fair? There is a big question mark. Assuming for a minute that Musharraf appears in the court (which is highly unlikely), what will the CJP ask him? “How dare you sack me?” The big word here is ME! This is more like the affected party being the judge. In fact it is exactly the case. So my first reservation on this case is whether or not this will turn into a personal vendetta.

I follow JANG newspaper despite it being a highly biased one but it does cover a wide range of news in Pakistan. I read today that a team is getting ready to encircle Musharraf in Britain. First of all, this is more like the Imran-Altaf game we have seen earlier. Second, and more important, the team is headed by the one and only Lord Nazeer Ahmed. Who is he? Well, the title says he is a British MP who loves to poke his nose in Pakistan’s affairs. Seriously, what is his business in Pakistan? In my 10-month stay in London so far I have never ever seen a newspaper or channel covering the likes of Lord Nazeer. Apparently, he is more famous in Pakistan. Our media (a part of it) loves him, but then they should also love Richard Holbrooke in that way because Lord Nazeer is no different. Naam se koi Pakistani nai hojata!!

Abid Sher Ali of PML-N, famous for exposing the Dogar Daughter marks case, has expressed his views that Pervez Musharraf should be hanged. I agree on the condition that Nawaz Sharif must take the lead.

Another ardent writer , famous for spying activities, (yeah Ansar Abbasi) wrote that the top brass of army has somehow told him that they will remain neutral in this case. I really respect the passion of Abbasi when he writes against Musharraf, but then he should register for a blog and write his own views there. Anyway, I highly doubt this claim. The army will never back away from its former chief. This is more like Abbasi’s own wish. He also said in one of his columns that Kayani is a nice man and wants democracy to flourish. But we do have a bit of saying that about all army chiefs before they take over!

And lastly, this case could not have come at a better time for the government. An attempt will be made to hype up the proceedings and divert attention from more pertinent issues – as usual.

..of this and that

This is yet another random post of things that are just crossing my mind right now. I’m consumed in preparing for a theory test for my driving license on Monday. Its sooo stupid! Some questions are silly. Take this for example:

You are driving a car and some driver cuts harshly infront of you. What will you do?

A) Sound your horn
B) Accelerate and curse the driver
C) Stay calm
D) Show a hand gesture

Obviously the answer is C. But I’d rather do everything else than C

Also I’ve to learn hundreds of traffic signs which are in use in this country, even for trams despite them not being in this region. And then there is this hazard perception test – which is actually good – where you are shown video clips and you have to identify hazards before they develop into danger. The early you sight them, the more points you get. A can of red bull before the test is a certainty

Elsewhere I’ve had a lazy project week. Got some EEG data of epilepsy patients to work on. The data looks like rubbish. Seriously! Have a look at one of them:

I’m loving N97 and Nokia in general. They have made Ovi Files free which makes all my files on computer accessible via phone. Syncing via the new Ovi Suite is very cool too. N97 is really the step in the direction of future mobile computing. With the likes of iPhone, N97 and some others some people wonder what is to come next? Well, a lot more can come. What I’d like to see is an inherent USB connector on phone which can be just pulled from inside and connected to the USB port of computer rather than having a USB connector cable I know its gonna take valuable space on phone but maybe if we can reduce the size of USB ports on computer that won’t be an issue? Why have separate cables! This is one thing I dream of seeing in phones

Jumping to Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif is acquitted of plane hijacking case. So now the CJ thinks hijacking can be forgiven – for the sake of democracy. He should’ve rather been hanged. The suspicions of Sharif’s investments in the lawyers movement have grown exponentially and ofcourse the truth will never come out. One of noon-leaguer was arguing that how can someone hack a plane from sitting outside, the hijacker needs to be in the plan…i think it was Hanif Abbasi (former Jamati who couldn’t stand that JI was boycotting elections and suddenly changed his Quaid from Qazi to Sharif). Well, in literal terms, that’s true. But then you can never blame the PM/President for anything. They don’t do it themselves – they always get someone to do it for them!! I was never a fan of CJ, but the way he was restored, I thought to myself that I was wrong about him – but now I’m forced to revert to my original thoughts.

Credit card fraud by an MPA in Pakistan has captured some space in news and despite the CCTVs recording the event, the lady is adamant and claiming a conspiracy is being hatched against her! And also got a pre-arrest bail from the court. What a great system of justice! This incident brings up two thoughts:

1) Why are credit cards so insecure? I mean, anyone can take my card and shop with it! Why aren’t there PINs associated with them? Even better idea that comes to my mind is fingerprint recognition on card readers – don’t tell me its hard to implement. Seriously, credit card security needs a complete rethink.

2) How on earth can she deny those charges? And why is she not in jail yet?

And finally, some cricket. Ashes is going in full flow and Aussies are set to lose the second test. Pak threw away two games against Sri Lankans. And why does Misbah even play in the team? Also I don’t think Fawad Alam can be a permanent opener. Shoaib Malik doesn’t deserve a test place. He doesn’t even bowl, not that he should. So why not have a pro batsmen instead? I won’t be too harsh though, the team needs time. And besides, we’re the champs

Update Shupdate

I know I haven’t been updating the blog lately but that’s just because I’ve been involved in a lot of mental exercise in the past few days. My project was crawling at a snail’s pace before halting at a dead end. Before I could look any further in to it, my dad announced his arrival. This was a welcome break, and I was looking forward to it. He was here for a short 4-day visit during which we visited Manchester, Birmingham, Coventry, Stafford and some places around London and talked about many issues relating to me, family, sports and politics! Before he checked in I was religiously followying (yet another) plan according to which I was wakign up early, going to the gym and spent the rest of the day knowing exactly what to do (and what to eat as well). The plan got derailed and I lost direction. After dropping off my dad at Heathrow, I spent that and the following day trying to figure where and why was I stuck in the project. Yes, I did find that out and I knew it wasn’t easy. Just to give you a feel of it, I was writing data to a memory card from my microcontroller. I compiled and downloaded my code and ran it. The first attempt was fine. After a reset the processor showed bizarre behaviour. Another reset, it was fine. And on the next the same problem. So on every alternate resets my code was working despite having no changes in it. Then today, the behaviour changed. It worked only on the first attempt after download and from then on everything was lost. The last six hours, and some days, I have been stepping through the hundreds of lines of badly written program trying to figure out the problem. I missed the calls on my phone – just to show the level of concentration (although the mobile was on vibrator mode) . Oh and did I say the phone is N97? Ok more on that later..back to code! I closed in on the problem today, and it turns out some integer was overflowing in a particular statement and because of which everything else was (somehow!!!) for no obvious reason affected. For now, I’ve completed stage one of the project and can relax for a day (only ).

Oh yeah, I exchanged my old 5800 with my dad’s new N97 and despite what the lovers of the fruit company say, this is some serious phone. I’m not comparing it with other phones, because the underlying theme is different. Hardware is good, could’ve been better too but the build is brilliant and the slide is sexy! Ofcourse there is no need to post pics as you can just google for tons of them

That’s the update as Pinky asked for. Hopefully the next post will come without a big gap. Now that its getting a bit late I guess I should leave the lab and head back home, and hope to enjoy my success with a nice movie.