SEISIMIC SHIFT
There’s been a deep shift in the citadel of Islam, aka Saudi Arabia, over the past ten days, which could have a significant impact on the Kingdom in coming decades. The groundbreaking ceremony for the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) held 50 miles away from Jeddah, is the beginning of a realization...
FOR THE PRICE OF A FEW F-16’s
In January, Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman and Co-Founder of the MIT Media Lab (and that’s not the Mozang Institute of Technology), announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the Lab was launching its “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) Initiative. Needless to say the announcement did not cause any ripples in the Pakistani Ministries of...
ONE STEP FORWARD TWO STEPS BACK
Last week Shaukat Aziz spoke about increasing Pakistan’s per capita income to 1500 USD by 2015. I can safely say that no one, including the opposition, would want to see anything other than that, the main question of how we’re going to get there remains a mystery. Fifty years after independence from the British, Pakistan...
WHEN EDUCATION BECOMES A JOKE
We, Pakistanis, are the masters of the “quick fix”. Whenever a serious problem is identified, cohorts of Ministers and Mandarins arrange press conferences and outline measures which will immediately fix the problem and transform Pakistan into world leaders in the identified sector. Take our unplanned and chaotic cities, where land is allotted to whoever is...
