Month: January 2010

by B. R. GOWANI

In the first week of January, a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti. Over a 100,000 people died.

Long ago, the United States had made a pact with God that it is never going to let Haiti become independent—economically and politically. The US has succeeded— which means the God is stronger than the devil.

Pat Robertson, as usual, showed how cruel a man of God could be. He has not yet forgiven Haiti for revolting against the French colonial rule in 1804 and becoming the first republic to be led by blacks, and also the first independent country in Latin America. For this man of God, Haiti’s independence was “a pact with devil!” In other words, what he is saying is that the colored people should make a pact with God by staying under the white yoke. And this white Taliban has the CBN or Christian Broadcasting Network at his disposal.

The US army got a chance to reoccupy Haiti. By the way, this is the island where Columbus first landed in 1492 thinking that he has reached India.

The US navy has an excuse to cordon off Haiti more firmly and not letting any Haitian refugee to reach the US shores.

Time for the opportunist whites to be photographed and filmed with poor devastated colored victims. We have seen it so many times.

The US reporters could show their racism unrestrained by portraying Haitians as thugs and looters.

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta had a chance to be not a doctor but a hero.

Israeli Defense Force found a place to gain some publicity and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a chance for a little PR. He told the 200 member IDF team:

“You have raised human spirits and elevated the name of the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.” “As many plot against us, distort and muddy our names, you have shown the real IDF.” “The Chief of Staff has told me that the other militaries were astounded by how quickly we arrived at the scene and began to work.” “Those who have seen the IDF over the years, operating under seemingly impossible situations and missions, are not surprised.” Ask the Palestinians.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by GAIL DINES

For all those women who think men are interested only in sex and not conversation or intimacy, think again. A New Jersey based company, ironically called True Companion, has come out with what it calls the “the world’s first sex robot”. This is, according to news reports, a life-size rubber doll that has all the “necessary” orifices. Why the big news? After all, this is not the first time that the porn industry has come out with a sex doll. The company Real Doll has been around since 1996 and offers “ an extensive list of options, including 10 female body types and 16 interchangeable female faces.” Offering to customize the doll to the desires of the particular consumer – color and shape of pubic hair, fingernail colors, hairstyle, ethnic features etc., — — the company boasts that “If you’ve ever dreamed of creating your ideal partner, then you have come to the right place.”

True Companion is trying to build a business on the deep insight that some men want more from their ideal partner than silent beauty. For about $8,000 True Companion offers a doll that actually talks in response to various stimuli, generating nuanced and complex sentences such as “I love holding hands with you.” Douglas Hines, the owner of True Companion, wants the customer to be able to “talk and relate to” the doll because he has come to the great realization that “Sex only goes so far – then you want to be able to talk to the person.” At last, men have discovered that for most women – and perhaps a few dolls – conversation matters! Well, it’s a start.

As ridiculous as this robot may seem to many of us, it actually makes perfect sense in a society saturated by porn, where the average age at which boys first view porn is 11 years. Boys and men are socialized by porn to see sex as lacking in connection, intimacy and emotion. Sex in porn is all about penetration; as chrisfjohn, commenting on the robot on the Huffington Post, said “the great part about porn is that you don’t have to deal with all of the emotions and drama of a relationship.” For chrisfJohn the robot is a bit too emotionally connected – he doesn’t want to “have to listen to it talk.”

For Don E Chute, on the other hand, the price is a bit steep because, he calculates, for that amount he could buy “roughly, 80, $100 hookers.” To be fair, many of the comments do see the problem with the robot-as-partner idea, but the misogyny still drips from some posts, as in the case of AZ85283, when he asks “Mothers, what the hell are you raising?”

Of course, it’s not the mothers but the pornographic culture that is raising men who are increasingly seeing women as interchangeable with sex dolls. If a doll with three orifices can stand in for a woman, then it doesn’t bode well for women who want to be seen as equal to men and deserving of full human rights. To see just how gender specific this is, can you imagine women shelling out thousands of dollars for a male doll, no matter what size his manhood, even if it did say, “can I make dinner for you”?

Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. Her latest book, Pornland: How Pornography has Hijacked Our Sexuality, will be published in July by Beacon Press.

Counterpunch

by THANGAVEL APPACHI

An Indian actress who supports the right of women to have pre-marital sex has been criticised by one of the country’s most senior judges.

Kushboo is being prosecuted in her adopted home state of Tamil Nadu for outraging public decency.

She is trying to have the proceedings against her dropped by appealing to the Supreme Court in Delhi.

But Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan was not sympathetic towards her arguments, saying they were “difficult to accept”.

Cultural taboo

“It is difficult to digest her statement,” he said. “We cannot accept her contention that she did not commit any offence.”

Kushboo, who is now also a prominent TV show host, said in a 2005 interview to a magazine that there was “nothing wrong in women having pre-marital sex, but they should follow all precautionary measures”.

She said that it was also “not fair on any educated youth to expect his wife to be a virgin”.

The remarks stirred controversy in a conservative country where pre-marital sex is still a cultural taboo.

Some Tamil nationalist political groups accused the actress of making derogatory and obscene remarks against Tamil culture.

Several cases have been filed against her across Tamil Nadu in various courts under different sections of the Indian penal code.

If found guilty, she faces imprisonment or a fine.

Feminists and human rights activists have joined the fray, arguing that the cases against her amount to harassment and are a breach of her right to free speech.

BBC for more
(Submitted by Harsh Kapoor)

by KAVITA N. RAMDAS

Fifteen years ago in Beijing, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton said firmly, “Women’s rights are human rights.” Today, after eight years of nonexistent U.S. support for women’s reproductive rights, Secretary of State Clinton is reviving women’s hopes around the globe by affirming the Obama Administration’s support for the International Conference on Population and Development Action Plan.

This historic agreement, signed by 179 nations in Cairo in 1994, outlined a visionary 20-year strategy for making family planning universally available by 2015. For the first time, a global consensus acknowledged that the empowerment and economic independence of women and education of girls were integral to meeting global population and development goals. It was the first time that an international document clearly stated that women had the right to determine their own reproduction. Principle 4 of the Action Plan states: “ensuring women’s ability to control their own fertility, is a cornerstone of population and development-related programmes.”

The founding president of the Global Fund for Women, Anne Firth Murray, noted that the Cairo declaration was the first major UN document that defined women as independent sexual beings, not merely child-bearers or mothers. In her words, “This was a revolution in women’s empowerment.”

From villages in Bangladesh to urban favelas in Brazil, women used the language of Cairo to push for concrete gains in accessing reproductive health and rights. In many ways, worldwide family planning has been a huge success: the global birth rate halved from 1950 to 2005. Many women around the world now view their right to freely and responsibly make decisions over their reproduction, free from coercion and violence, as a basic human right.

Yet, for some, the commitment to spreading freedom around the globe stops far short of ensuring women’s reproductive freedom. At a recent House foreign affairs committee hearing, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) aggressively questioned Hillary Clinton about whether the Obama administration’s policies on reproductive health included access to abortion. Clinton responded unapologetically: “Family planning is an important part of women’s health and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”

We are going to need more straight talk of this nature, and walk our talk, if we want to ensure that the groundbreaking gains of Cairo are not eroded by a growing conservative and religious backlash. Despite the dedicated work of the United Nations and women’s rights advocates worldwide, more than 500,000 women still die annually from preventable childbirth-related injuries and illnesses. According to Population Action International, one in 65 women in developing countries risks dying during pregnancy or childbirth in her lifetime. Many of these are related to complications arising from unsafe abortions. In Mexico alone, up to 500,000 illegal abortions occur annually.

Secretary Clinton’s speech comes on the heels of a dismal global conversation on climate change that made it all too clear that we must find ways to effectively offset carbon emissions. Population growth and climate change will collide in ways that will put all our lives at risk, and will most grievously harm the poorest countries. In the Global Fund’s own experience, when girls and women have greater access to education—not just the three R’s: reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, but also the three C’s: courage, contraception, and choice—their improved health leads to positive community outcomes including economic growth and sustainable development. We agree with columnist Ellen Goodman: “if we can lighten the burden on the planet while widening the chances for women,” that’s our kind of offset. And, at least on the issues of women’s reproductive rights, this is proving to be our kind of State Department.

KAVITA N. RAMDAS is President & CEO of the Global Fund for Women, an NGO dedicated to advancing the rights of women.

Ms. Magazine for more

by James Febebebo

To the ordinary observer, Nigeria has a multiparty system which presupposes that there are more than one political party. Even with this presupposition, any keen observer who has carefully watched and studied the political tide as well as outcomes of previous elections, will know and understand that the supposed multi-party system is simply a sham.

When people consider the definition of democracy and relate it to what happens in Nigeria, they will certainly notice lapses and disparities. As defined by former US President, Abraham Lincoln, democracy is “government of the people, by the people and for the people” which when properly analysed produces a situation where the electorate have to vote for candidates of their choice in competitive elections, who, as elected representatives, bring home the dividends of democracy to those who chose them.

A basic feature of democracy is competitive elections where various political parties contest available elective positions in a competitive manner and produce winners cutting across various parties at the end in polls adjudged free and fair. The frequent landslide victories of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in previous elections in the country have raised some dust over Nigeria’s claimed multi-party status.

There seems to be a situation where only the ruling party exists in the ‘flesh’ while all others exist only in name, going contrary therefore to one of democracy’s key prerequisites that there should be competitive elections among different existing political parties.

Several arguments have, however, been made in favour of the ruling party by party faithful, one of which is that the party is the largest in Africa and has therefore in its midst great politicians who are qualified and capable to be elected either as governors or as president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. This line of argument by supporters of the PDP falsely paints a picture that says only those in the PDP can win elections in Nigeria.

The membership of other parties in the country cannot in any way be said to be poor, as the country’s 150 million people also comprise hundreds of people who neither subscribe to the ruling party’s ideology nor want to be members of the party. This clearly explains that just as there are qualified and successful politicians in the PDP, there are as well other capable and renowned politicians who form the membership of these other parties. For a long time now the ruling party had dominated the political scene in the country and almost forced into oblivion all other parties which seemed not strong enough to face it in the polls. As a result, only the ruling party had stood to gain politically from elections in the country, as the party had claimed almost all available elective positions at the federal, state and local government levels. But the legal tussles which often follow the announcement of victorious PDP candidates are indication that other parties reject the outcome of the elections.

Daily Independent for more

by TODD MILLER

Following the modern recipe for corporate enterprise, the directors of Mexico’s increasingly powerful murder-for-hire firm, the Zetas, have begun to diversify from the company’s principal activity of providing armed enforcement for the drug-trafficking Gulf Cartel. According to U.S. and Mexican officials, the group has gone into the lucrative business of stealing and selling contraband gasoline. It steals from Mexico’s nationalized petroleum company PEMEX, and resells to Texas oil companies, including one run by a former Bush administration insider.

Were the group not known for countless brutal murders in Mexico’s endless and ever-more violent drug war, it might be considered the poster child of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), able to see a business opportunity when there is one, and to cut through trade barriers like a specialized drill cuts into a highly pressurized steel pipe carrying oil.

This is not only an example of criminals tapping savvy entrepreneurial skills to make another few million bucks, it is also an example of U.S. policy blowback: the perversely unintended result of a failed policy. On one hand the Zetas have been able to take advantage of NAFTA partly because of the “two way overland highway of contraband,” aptly described by political economist Jeff Faux, that has been greatly facilitated by the agreement, and which now includes companies that cook deals with organized crime.

The real power of the Zetas, however, that clearly sets them apart from Mexico’s other hit squads, comes from their roots. Before the founding members of the Zetas deserted an elite unit of the Mexican army, they received highly sophisticated training by U.S. Special Forces in anti-narcotic operations. This tale of oil thievery thus becomes a compelling one, especially as the U.S. public scrutinizes the ten-fold increase in “drug war” aid to Mexico under the Merida Initiative. Since 2008 Washington has pumped over a billion dollars into Mexico, with millions designated to military and police training. There will be more in store for 2010 if the funding passes later this year in Congress.

The Zetas first came to the attention of Mexico’s Attorney General’s office in 1999, after somewhere between 30 and 60 recently U.S.-trained soldiers defected from the Airmobile Special Forces Group (GAFE), an elite Mexican army unit specializing in counter-narcotics activity. GAFE units were trained in the United States by the “Snake Eaters,” the 7th Special Forces Group, famous for their role in building up and training armies in El Salvador and Honduras in the 1980s. Between 1996 and 1999 the Snake Eaters trained over 3,000 Mexican soldiers, mostly in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It didn’t take many of these soldiers long to realize that their talents could be put to much more profitable uses – running drugs, extortion, and kidnapping for ransom, for example. The 1999 GAFE defections gave birth to the Zetas, but things didn’t stop there. Between 2000 and 2005, over1,300 more of these elite soldiers defected. The GAFE desertion rate of 25% towers over any other branch of the Mexican military.

NACLA for more

Scientists at NCI have identified a novel form of cell division in lung cancer cells and reported those findings in PNAS online the week of Jan. 18, 2010. It has been known for many decades that normal tissue stem cells produce daughter cells with differing potentials for self-renewal and specialization through a process called asymmetric cell division. An immortal DNA strand hypothesis states that stem cells asymmetrically divide their DNA strands during cell division as a means to prevent DNA replication errors. While some evidence for the immortal DNA strand hypothesis exists in normal stem cells, the theory has never been proven and has never before been tested in cancer cells.

To investigate the immortal strand hypothesis in human lung cancer cells, NCI scientists performed a series of experiments termed ‘pulse-chase’ procedures. They found that a small population of laboratory lung cancer cells as well as cells in lung tumor samples asymmetrically divided their DNA strands. They also found that the frequency of asymmetric division could be modulated by changes in the cell’s microenvironment, suggesting the process may be regulated by neighboring cells as well as by other factors. The scientists then discovered that asymmetric division of DNA correlates with the lung cancer stem cell marker, CD133. The characterization of asymmetric cell division and its modulation in lung cancer cells provides insights into tumor initiation, self-renewal, and growth, as well as strategies to develop novel targets for treatment. Future work will aim to link this division to the cancer stem cell hypothesis.

National Cancer Institute

by HAMID DABASHI

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice — Martin Luther King, Jr, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” 16 April 1963

The only reason the world at large should take notice of what American pundits think of the Green Movement in Iran is that their self-indulgent pontificating reveals much about the troubled world we live in and that they think they must lead. Indeed, one of the most magnificent aspects of the unfolding civil rights movement in Iran is that it acts as a catalyst to expose the bizarre banality of American foreign policy commentary and its limitations in dealing with the rest of the world. Those in American circles that are of the “bomb Iran” persuasion are lost causes just like the Ku Klux Klan. It is the equivalent of what in a different context Martin Luther King Jr called “the white moderates” that warrants more attention.

Perhaps the single most important problem with American politics, policymakers and pundits — left or right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican — is that they think that anything that happens anywhere in the world is about them or is their business. The imperial hubris that seems definitive of the DNA of this political culture wants either to invade and occupy other people’s homelands and tell them what to do, or else disregard people’s preoccupation with their own issues and impose, demand and exact “engagement” with them, whether they want it or not.

Take the most recent piece of nonsense published on the civil rights movement in Iran by Flynt and Hillary Leverett, “Another Iranian Revolution? Not Likely” ( The New York Times, 5 January 2010), which has absolutely nothing to do with or seriously to say about the Green Movement, and yet everything to reveal about the pathology of American politics as determined inside the self-delusional Beltway cocoon.

As early as mid-June 2009, the Leveretts defending the fraudulent election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (“Ahmadinejad won. Get over it,” Politico, 15 June 2009). That millions of Iranians had poured into their streets and put their lives on the line did not seem to bother the Leveretts. In addition to a condescending tone, in which the Leveretts partake freely when talking about a groundbreaking civil rights movement about whose origin and disposition they are categorically ignorant, the chief characteristic of their take is that they keep fabricating non-existent targets and then shooting them down. The result: what say has everything to do with the besieged and bunkered mentality inside the Beltway and absolutely nothing to do with the Green Movement. Chief example: “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” they believe, “is not about to implode. Nevertheless, the misguided idea that it may do so is becoming enshrined as conventional wisdom in Washington.”

Whoever said it was? No scholar or otherwise serious and informed observer of Iran writing in Persian or any other language and still in her or his right mind can predict — or has predicted — that the Islamic Republic will or will not fall, and even if it did, one way or another, it would have nothing to do with what “conventional wisdom in Washington” opts to enshrine or not to enshrine. If there are folks inside the Beltway who think the Islamic Republic will fall any day now, Abbas Milani will become the American ambassador to Iran, or the Iranian ambassador to the US, depending on the season of his migrations to the left or right, and Lolita will soon become required reading in Iranian high schools, well that’s their problem, and yet another sign of their dangerously delusional politics. That hallucination has nothing to do with the Green Movement, and thus the Leveretts need not have sought (in vain) to discredit a monumental social uprising of whose origin and destination they are oblivious.

Al-Ahram for more

by GITAU WARIGI

American televangelist Pat Robertson is not a wise man. This is a guy who goes before his “Christian” TV show called the 700 Club to say that Haitians are “cursed” people.

According to him, the explanation for their current calamity is that they had made “a pact with the Devil” 200 years ago. It was a terribly gross thing to say. And this from somebody who once sought to become the President of the United States.

What startled me was to hear a perfectly normal-looking, middle-class Kenyan say the same thing over lunch the other day. Evidently, there is an unfortunate incomprehension about voodoo – which is a trademark of Haiti – and what the likes of Pastor Robertson deem to be Satanic.

Missionary types who spread Christianity in Africa fell into the same confusion about tribal cults which they dismissed to be witchcraft. Voodoo is simply a cult, no different from, say, freemasonry. Only that the former is a poor man’s cult while freemasonry draws membership from elites and, therefore, is made to look more “civilised”.

The important thing is that voodoo has a cultural and psychological purpose in Haitian society which an outsider, like the missionaries of old, will be prone to totally confuse. The “scientific” explanation for Haiti’s latest disaster is straightforward enough. The poor country sits on a microplate of the earth’s crust that is tightly squeezed between the North American and Caribbean tectonic plates.

Now and then, a catastrophic earthquake is bound to occur because of this pressure. The last time it happened was in 1946, but that earthquake struck the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which shares with Haiti the island called Hispaniola. Yet such rationalising makes absolutely no sense now to multitudes of shell-shocked Haitians, and for good reason.

What is more, atheists such as Richard Dawkins (he wrote the famous God Delusion) are having a field day over the Haitian catastrophe. Which God, they ask, can allow such pitiless suffering? It is a valid question. With tens of thousands dead, and millions more dislocated, humanitarian experts are estimating that it will take a generation to rebuild Haiti to where it would have been. The earthquake was a disaster comparable only to the 2004 East Asian tsunami.

The other day I chanced on the Internet a blogger going by the name Pasteur who was witheringly sarcastic of summons to attend a Sunday Mass service outside the ruins of Port-au-Prince’s cathedral. “What for? To pray to who, when my home, my family and my life have been destroyed? For me, there is no God any more,” he wrote. His pain and despair were plain.

And I quite understood why he felt that way. All over Haiti, such are the questions being asked. The irony is that Haitians have traditionally been a deeply religious people. Things have changed so much that only a handful of delirious women attended last Sunday’s Mass at the ruined Haitian cathedral. For some unfathomable reason, Haiti has been a special target of nature’s wrath in recent years.

In 2008, four savage hurricanes swept through the country in a row, causing devastation which destroyed a third of the impoverished country’s economy. Then along comes the January 12 earthquake, and you wonder . . . why do these repeated catastrophes focus their fury at the only predominantly Black nation in the Western hemisphere? And what bad luck doomed Haiti to be the poorest country there?

I can imagine, for people like Pastor Robertson, the answer lies in the Biblical tale of Noah and some curse he is supposed to have delivered upon one of his sons. There are plenty of people who have chosen to pour cold water on Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade’s dramatic plea to Haitians to abandon their God-forsaken country and return home to Mother Africa.

President Wade is even offering them land to settle. You could say the invitation was impulsive and, considering the daunting logistics of such a mass migration, it could be an impractical idea as well. Putting all that aside, President Wade’s offer is uplifting and poignant.

It is a cry of solidarity which is coming from the heart. Others like Rwanda and Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have followed suit by offering some emergency financial support for Haiti. True, the sums are quite modest compared to what is pouring in from the rich world. Yet the offers are more heartfelt and deeply touching.

gwarigi@nation.co.ke

Sunday Nation for more

by Pervez Hoodbhoy

DARK clouds are gathering over Pakistan’s universities, portending a conflict that is likely to be long, bitter and uncertain in outcome. On one side are those who say that PhD degree holders must have, at the very minimum, undergraduate-level knowledge in the relevant discipline.

On the other side are PhD aspirants, together with their supervisors, who demand unearned degrees. They hold that passing examinations and taking courses is unnecessary and an affront to their dignity. The first volleys have already been fired. Earlier this month about 100 students, registered for the PhD degree at Quaid-i-Azam University, angrily mobbed the executive director of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) as he entered the campus. Their demand: cancel the current requirements of passing the international Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) as well as taking and passing graduate level courses. They say that producing research papers entitles them to receive the highest degree in their chosen discipline.

To his credit, the HEC officer stood his ground. He pleaded that removing essential graduation requirements would make their degrees meaningless, that they really did need to know subject basics before doing research etc. But these obvious and sensible arguments cut no ice with those who believe that PhD degrees are a birthright. Rhythmic cries of “hum nahin mantay zulm kay zabtay” (we will not tolerate tyranny!) reverberated across the campus. This leads one to wonder: for how long can the HEC withstand such pressures? What if the floodgates give way?

Some background: a tidal wave of cash hit Pakistan’s universities between 2002-2008. The 10 to 12 times budgetary increase set a new world record while the accompanying hype touched the skies. Advised by the HEC’s newly appointed chairman, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, Gen Pervez Musharraf grandly declared that the annual production of PhD degree holders would be boosted from 150 per year to 1,500 per year. Incentive schemes encouraged teachers — often of doubtful academic merit themselves — to take on PhD students by the score. Academic quality, already low, nose-dived.

In 2006, pressed by persistent critics to include at least some minimal quality checks, the authorities finally made the right decision. They declared that a PhD candidate must ‘pass’ the international GRE undergraduate-level subject test administered by the Education Testing Service, Princeton. But the meaning of ‘pass’ was a hot potato that was not touched upon for another two years. Finally, in 2008, passing was declared as achievement of 40 percentile or better in the subject test.

Even this ludicrously low pass mark drew howls of protest. PhD students saw their degrees endangered while their supervisors saw their incomes threatened: every single registered PhD student was a cash cow worth Rs5,000 per month. The money went into the teacher’s pocket. Banded together by common interests, teachers and students lobbied to get the pass mark reduced still further. Others demanded that if testing was to be done at all, allow it to be done locally. Proponents of international testing were dubbed as ‘foreign agents’ and passionate arguments of national ghairat (honour) being at stake were thrown around.

But international tests of subject competence are simply indispensable. First, science is a global enterprise and rules for assessing competence in a particular discipline are universal. Local evaluations and testing mechanisms cannot compete in validity and quality. Second, in a society where ethical standards in the teachers’ community are no higher than among politicians or shopkeepers, the impartial and cheating-free nature of international testing is absolutely vital.

There is nothing particularly difficult about these international tests. As some readers may know, they are pitched at the bachelor’s level (i.e. 16 years of education). Chinese, Indian and Iranian students easily score in the 80-90 percentile range. American universities use them as entrance requirements, with medium-quality universities requiring results in the 70-80 range and the very good ones in the 80-95 range.

But achieving even 40 percentile has proved to be too difficult for most Pakistani PhD students even at the end of their PhD studies. This is especially alarming since they have had the advantage of three to four years of additional study. The pathetic quality of undergraduate education in Pakistan is surely responsible for this unfortunate fact. The intensity of the opposition to testing becomes understandable.

Dawn for more
(Submitted by reader)