By far greater pleasure lies somewhere inside, in association with right people by achieving or at least seeking win-win situation, and especially, in loving SOMETHING to an extent that one is ready to die for it, be it anything worth naught. That kind of emotions and endeavours bring a sense of restfulness and accomplishment that everyone has to discover for himself and master over in his own particular way.

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Many people believe in conspiracy theories. To them 9/11, London attacks, Mumbai attacks, war against terrorism and recently OBL fiasco all are but parts of a single play so wisely planned that the US want to get control over the Muslim world and rising China. Such suspicions became strong in aftermath of Saddam Hussein whose regime was toppled after alleging him of possessing the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) which would never be found out later. Unfortunately, in the era of mass media one cannot know for sure who is doing what.

True, Pakistan should not blindly trust the US rhetoric about the agenda in the region rather it should act in accordance to its own national interest. Certainly we have suffered at the hands of extremists more than any other nation. These terrorists have killed our 35,000 civilians, 5000 Pakistan Army troops and damaged Pakistan’s economy worth $ 47 billion. It is time we began cleaning our own backyard be it by working with the US but the cleaning should be according to our own definition not as dictated by the US. Such a cleaning must ensure that our homeland is not used for terrorist attack anywhere in the world.

Unfortunately we as a nation have never striven to be self-reliant. Our anemic state is aid dependent and corruption addict. Trade is scanty. The most well-known export of Pakistan that the world knows is terrorism. Survival without the aid is not impossible but so painful for the ruling elite that the addiction simply does not permit our leeches to live without it. Either way a common Pakistani has to suffer no matter Pakistan gets aid or not. The conditionalities attached to such foreign aid have made our sovereignty so porous that it has become non-existent. In such a situation ‘sovereignty issue’ becomes little ridiculous for many.

Again the question of being self-reliant comes up. There is no way perhaps because there is no real coherent will. More importantly what about our defence hardware requirements? Will China replace the US? China seems not to be so interested in throwing cash on the table nor would it be ready to replace Pakistan’s American brand defence system completely. At the moment Chinese want money not hegemony in the region. Pakistan’s military needs make Pakistan and the US relations mandatory for Pakistan although China which is known as the all-weather-friend of Pakistan might be the last lifeline if a US led cyclone hits Pakistan. But why do we not try to make our own military hardware? Sadly we are not much interested in Science and Technology. Few are working but they are helpless. So the apparent solution lies in dependence, a bitter pill that we have to swallow.

It is not time for tantrums in the conduct of our international relations. We need to make a planning for coming decades and act accordingly. There is no quick fix. So long we are an aid dependent nation we are not sovereign. So long we permit militants to operate from our territories we are at risk of foreign invasions. We shall truly become a sovereign and respectable nation the day when we are not dependent on foreign aid, not when we beg it.

07 December at 23:47 ·  Comment Share

• You and Amjad Hakro like this.
• •  

    Amjad Hakro really so excited to witness a drop of sanity among the ocean of blather around, well when did this happen? 

    07 December at 23:54 · Like
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    Aijaz Soomro well i am also glad witnessing this happening
    http://www.dawn.com/2010/12/07/cnics-for-eunuchs-from-jan-1.html 

    07 December at 23:59 · Like
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    Amjad Hakro thanks Aijaz for sharing such an enlightening bit of update 

    08 December at 00:01 · Like
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    Aijaz Soomro My pleasure!! but i am not feeling it right to employ them in anti-polio campaigns because already we have so badly failed such ventures at the hands of primary masters n mistresses. what do you think about it? Do u think our crazy ignorant people would take it seriously? 

    08 December at 00:09 · Like
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    Amjad Hakro No I don’t think so. Why a certain gender be left behind only because of certain stereotype attached to them? Right amount of oversight, training & guidance can surely impart much needed vigilance in them. “Crazy ignorant people”… Well public opinion & support take some time to gain momentum. 

    08 December at 00:14 · Like
  •  

    Aijaz Soomro ‎”Right amount of oversight, training & guidance can surely impart much needed vigilance”
    I wish it happen so!! 

    08 December at 00:21 · Like
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    Amjad Hakro I’m not being an optimist, but would rather like to ask u whether eunuchs are unfit for getting employed in an ant-polio drive 

    08 December at 00:24 · Like
  •  

    Aijaz Soomro
    I am afraid not because of their being eunuchs but because of non-compliance on the part of our society and ill social status given by our crazy ignorant people to eunuchs. 

    Well, success of anti-polio has nothing to do with the gender of anti-polio staff scientifically but socially that may be no longer true. here in our society problems are manifold. Likewise I don’t think our primary school staff is fit to the task either. I am afraid, with eunuchs it might exacerbate the predicament due to increase in non-compliance and until public opinion gains momentum we might end up endangering thousands of children at the risk of disability due to polio.

    Similarly I don’t think they should be burdened with all such kind of tasks which need home to home and street to street wandering and thus increase chances of them being mocked, discouraged or molested until collective perception of our society about eunuchs changes.

    In the context of eunuch rights, My heart goes out to them when I see them begging their very survival from so-called legitimate genders. I think they stand on equal footing as we are. The only difference they can’t reproduce, I think scientific advancement would cheapen such happiness knocking at their doors soon!
  • 08 December at 01:18 ·  2 peopleMuhammad Yaseen and Amjad Hakro like this.
  •  

    Amjad Hakro appreciated, good argument 

    08 December at 16:40 · Like

   

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In 2006, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended that the four-century-old remedy of quinine for treating severe malaria in adults should be replaced by artesunate, derived from a Chinese plant called sweet wormwood. But, acting cautiously, it said it could not make a similar recommendation for children until a further trial on this age group had been carried out.

The outcome, published online by The Lancet, found that using artesunate reduced death from severe falciparum malaria among African children by 22.5 per cent compared to quinine.

The trial was conducted in nine African countries, in which 5,425 badly-infected children aged under 15 were given either artesunate or quinine. On the important question of side effects, artesunate was well tolerated, the study found.

The risk of coma or convulsion and, after treatment, a low-blood sugar condition known as hypoglycaemia were all lower in the artesunate group than the quinine group.

“Artesunate should now become the treatment of choice for severe malaria for children and adults worldwide,” according to the study, led by Nicholas White, a professor at Mahidol University in Bangkok. Malaria causes an estimated 800,000 deaths every year in African children.”

It added: “If four million African children with severe malaria every year were to receive prompt treatment with parenteral artesunate instead of quinine, and the benefits were similar to those recorded in this trial, then approximately 100,000 lives might be saved per year.”

Source: AFP

“I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state. “Yesterday I travelled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get ‘insaf’— justice — from India, and now believed that Azadi — freedom — was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I travelled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones. “In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

Arundhati Roy

October 26 2010”

Source: Dawn

Factors in selecting optional subjects for CSS:

1.  Previous know how

2.  Current interest

3.  Aptitude

4.  Scoring capacity of a subject

1. PREVIOUS KNOW HOW:

A. Look at the list of all subjects, choose few attractive subjects out of the list depending upon your previous knowledge or qualification. Say 8, 10, 12 subjects closely or remotely related to your know how.

2. CURRENT INTEREST:

B. Go through the syllabi of those subjects to find out whether you have interest in topics of that subjects.

C. If you don’t have interest in a subject, do not opt it. If you do have interest, then see the past papers of the interesting subjects.

3. APTITUDE:

D. See the past papers of the interesting subject to know whether you would be able to prepare that subject according to requirements in the past papers. Once you have checked the past papers, then it is you and only you to ‘feel’ and draw a conclusion to whether the particular subject is appropriate for you or not.

4. SCORING CAPACITY:

E. After finding an appropriate subject, you must check scores secured by top candidates in previous years. This score-checking will give you idea to how many marks that subject gives usually with a good preparation.

F. If score-checking is reassuring, you may opt that subject.

By following above steps, I am sure you would find the best subject-combination possible according to your previous knowledge, interest, aptitude and scoring level of a subject.

COMMON MISTAKES:

1. A new candidate asks senior candidates or CSPs to tell them a list of optional subjects and he  starts to read them without checking subjective factors.

2. Many candidates are found hunting for scoring subjects that, they believe, will do miracles regardless of their preparation thereby ignoring their preparation and the personal factors.

NOTE: The way of selecting optional subject explained above is an opinion of a CSS candidate.

Candidates Applied :                              11887
Candidates Appeared :                          7759
Candidates Passed (written) :   638
Male Candidates Passed :                      480
Female Candidates Passed :                  158
Pass Percentage :                                      8.22

Download the list of successful candidates in CSS 2010 (written part) here

FOR COMPARISON:

Final Result of CSS 2009

Candidates Applied:                              9056
Candidates Appeared:                          5707 (63 %)
Candidates Passed (Written Part):  0905 (15.8 %)
Finally Qualified:                                    0895 (15.7 %)
Male Candidates:                                    0683 (76.3 %)
Female Candidates:                               0212 (23.7 %)
Disabled Candidate:                              0001

Final Result of CSS 2008

Candidates Applied:                              6571
Candidates Appeared:                          4247 (64.6%)
Candidates Passed (Written Part):   689 (16.2%)
Finally Qualified:                                    684 (16.1 %)
Male Candidates:                                    527 (77%)
Female Candidates:                               157 (23%)

From above comparison, it can be deduced that the number of applying candidates is growing while the pass percentage is on decline. However, it is encouraging to know that the total number of finally qualifying candidates remains stably higher when compared to the results of years preceding 2008.

This video contains views of professionals of Journalism at Columbia University on ‘The Future of Journalism’. I found it very interesting.  In particular, views of June Cross, Associate Professor Broadcasting, touched me so much. She opines that Journalism is going through period of transformation and metamorphosis.

“TV did not kill radio. Radio did not kill print. Print (has not been killed by the internet). The internet is going to transform all of us. It’s painful going from being caterpillar to a butterfly. That’s the way I choose to see it.”    June Cross

I just cannot stop myself from sharing it with you.

The CSS examination offers a very illustrious and challenging career that attracts  many a graduate. Similarly it has been my passion as well.

These days I am in Lahore with aim of CSS preparation in mind. I was willing to join an academy for preparation. In between I happened to meet my old friend Dr Farhan Phulpoto CSP FSP and CSP Dr Ali Raza PSP at Walton Academy Lahore. These  guys suggested me to not to join any academy for preparation keeping in view I am not a beginner. They were of the view that hiring a teacher of repute for English subject only would be the only thing I need at most. Further they shared many useful ideas when we discussed about my optional subjects.

The optional subjects in my mind were Muslim History and Culture, Journalism, Sindhi, International Relations and Public Administration. Farhan suggested me to drop IR and Public Administration and pick Psychology instead. Whereas Dr Ali Raza was suggesting Sociology plus Muslim Law.

One thing common in both of them is that they are prohibiting me to opt IR and Public Administration because these subjects according to them are low scoring subjects.

Now I am seriously thinking about choices before me. Muslim History and Culture, Journalism and Sindhi are confirmed to be opted. In a few days I have to decide about the remaining subject(s) as well as to whether I should join any academy or not.

With hands joined before Almighty Allah, I pray to Him for showing me right path and instilling in me sufficient courage and determination to proceed.