Counterpunch has published a longer, even more entertaining version of the op-ed piece by Mohammed Hanif that had appeared in the New York Times a few days ago. An excerpt from this account of General Musharraf’s speech on Pakistan TV:

I have been accused of punctuation abuse often enough to take these things in my stride, but for the 40 minutes that General Musharraf spoke in Urdu, he didn’t use one proper sentence.

He replaced his verbs with hand gestures, nouns slipped off his shrugged shoulders, adjectives quivered under his desk.

And when he said, “Extremists have gone very extreme,” it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound - if you would only pour him one last one.

Consider this; in the middle of his speech when everyone was silently urging him to get to the point, losing the thread of his diatribe about how judicial activism was responsible for the rise of jihadis in Pakistan, he abruptly said, “I have imposed emergency,” then looked into the camera, waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and said, “You must have seen it on TV.”

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(Thanks, Freddy Deknatel)

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Asma Jahangir writes in today’s Washington Post:

LAHORE, Pakistan — It was close to midnight last Saturday when Gen. Pervez Musharraf finally appeared on state-run television. That’s when police vans surrounded my house. I was warned not to leave, and hours later I learned I would be detained for 90 days.
At least I have the luxury of staying at home, though I cannot see anyone. But I can only watch, helpless, as this horror unfolds.
The Musharraf government has declared martial law to settle scores with lawyers and judges. Hundreds of innocent Pakistanis have been rounded up. Human rights activists, including women and senior citizens, have been beaten by police. Judges have been arrested and lawyers battered in their offices and the streets.
These citizens are our true assets: young, progressive and full of spirit. Many of them were trained to uphold the rule of law. They are being brutalized for seeking justice.

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(Thanks, Elizabeth Angell)

Also: Bhutto now placed under house arrest.

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To become a writer, says Picador’s Andrew Kidd, you must become a reader first. And if your book fails, you can also aim to be a reader last. It is a noble thing to be. (The argument is sound, of course, but it leaves a small stain, a bit like a leaky diaper. Or maybe I’m being a little testy. The link was sent to me by my editor who had worked hard on my novel. Is she trying to tell me something?)

There is an old New Yorker cartoon in which a patient sits forlorn on an examination table as a doctor in a white coat says to him something to the effect of, ‘It looks like that novel inside you will have to come out’.

It’s a playful take on a cruel myth: that every one of us could, if only afforded the right circumstances and means, produce a plausible, publishable book. And it’s probably this myth, along with irrational dreams of J.K.-Rowling-like riches, that accounts for the astonishing results of a YouGov poll this August. Ahead of movie, sports or rock star, glamour model or fireman, the most coveted job was ‘writer’.

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