Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.
Game of thrones
As we have just celebrated the 146th birth anniversary of the Quaid, people of this country wonder why Jinnah’s vision of a modern democratic welfare state was derailed and converted to a security state, whose citizens are insecure, facing curse of terrorism and extremism. State sovereignty was compromised when Ayub Khan took over and decided that Pakistan would serve as a client state, serving interests of foreign powers, jeopardizing long-term national interests of this country.
Instead of focusing on developing human resources by investing in education and health and boosting our agricultural produce, today we face basic food shortage, brain drain and flight of capital. Natural oxygen generating trees are being felled around periphery of Lahore, reducing this city of gardens to the worst polluted city, whose citizens inhale toxic air.
The once green pastures in the vicinity of Shahdara are the latest victim of this insatiable greed. Lahore was already facing issues of smog because thousands of trees and agricultural land towards Kasur and Indian border were wiped out and converted to concrete jungles. Similar is fate of all major cities of Pakistan. Food shortage is net result of this mad rush, because whilst population is increasing, agriculture producing land is shrinking.
The chickens have come home to roost. Pakistanis are facing hardships, food price escalation, energy shortage, security of life and private property. Totally oblivious to plight of citizens and national economy, the political leaders, across divide and paid establishment are busy in power struggle and political manoeuvring etc., irrespective of which political party is in power, or whether the country is under dictatorial rule. They all seem to be in nexus with real estate mafia, eager to park and launder their black money. Endless grant of amnesty schemes for powerful land mafia is common between PTI, PML-N, PPP, PMLQ, MQM, JUI, Musharraf junta etc.
MALIK TARIQ ALI
Lahore
Political rulers destroy the country
Feudals, bureaucrats & left-overs of the establishment game in Punjab politics is an eye-opener that Wednesday was the day when assembly according to constitution was to vote on a No-Confidence or Confidence motion. The 120 million people in Punjab and many more in the country were surprised when this didn’t happen because neither PTI nor PDM have the number of votes that proves that the sitting government has lost authority to rule or justify colossal of taxpayer’s money wasted on running this political drama. Each and every day this game lingers on, every penny spent on running this musical chair will be unjustified and illegal.
The year 2022 was just another reflection of remote-control functioning of our so-called sovereign government, dancing on the tunes of IMF, FATF and the capitalist mafia trying to strangulate and dis-empower the people of Pakistan. Alas! We failed to learn any lesson from 16 December’s double tragedy and we continue to follow the same path of destruction. “Mir bimar howey jis k sabab – Ossi Attar k Londey sey dawa letey hu”
Due to the planned destruction of our education, social values, merit and the promotion of adhocracy we have become a dead society, no body realizes the value of time and money. These are planned methods to destroy the economy further through imported bankers’ mafias; the value of our currency is sinking every day and so is the value of people’s savings and investment. All this threatened to become zero, nullifying the work and achievement of whole lives. Our erstwhile ruling elite is power drunken and unable to understand one minute lost means 240 million minutes lost in this pseudo democracy which is nothing but a curse.
ALI ASHRAF KHAN
Karachi
Earning money online
The web after opening its eyes has gone through many stages – Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0 (Web3). Web 1.0, viewed by experts as the “read-only web”, was implemented from 1989 to 2005. It comprised web pages joined by hyperlinks without the additional abilities of the users to change anything. Or you can sum up the concept of Web 1.0 synonymous to this – it was designed to help people better find information.
The start of a new decade, 2000’s, saw a new form of Web: The Web 2.0. Set in motion from 2005 to present day, Web 2.0 describes the current state of the internet: With more user-generated content and usability for end-users. The new version of the internet for the first time shook hands with its users allowing them to participate actively in the experience, making it a “read and write web”.
Many users overtime found that the control of the content they were making were in the hands of tech behemoths – Big companies like Google, Youtube, Facebook etc. These companies took a fair share of the profit the creators were making and also were in control of the things the creators were saying. The concerns of less ownership and restriction of freedom of speech gave birth to the idea of a new and decentralized web-Web3.
Web3 stepped forward with clear aims: to bring decentralization and token-based economies to the internet. To promote decentralization, decentralized applications (DApps) would replace the centralized apps with more user involvement than ever before. Users of Web3 could connect to applications and protocols directly, removing the need for third party intermediaries in the process.
In other words, it is “read/write/own” version of the internet. With a decentralized platform, content creators not only have more say over their creations but also could contribute their thoughts in how the platform runs. Also, without the usual cuts of the intermediary parties on a creator’s revenue, content creators earn a higher share of profits from their creation than from Web 2.0.
SHAHZEB RIZWAN RAJA
Via email
