A little joy, and the usual sack of complaints

The reason for this small joy, believe it or not, has to do with Facebook! I never had thought I would one day say I am actually happy at some development to do with one of these social networking websites, but I stand humbled.

A Gordon Poyser and Carmel Corbo of Canberra were served a foreclosure notice for their home by their mortgage lender through - you guessed it - Facebook. And the Aussie court in question was nice and wise enough to uphold the method used as valid. If you want to read the details, go here:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AUSTRALIA_FACEBOOK?SITE=MOSTP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Its hard to express how much I enjoyed reading it. Especially the bit in the article where someone says people don't join Facebook thinking of it as another means through which the government or debt collectors can contact them. Or the bit where someone else raises the question of how Facebook users envision the site being used. Take those two and contrast that with the website's spokesperson comments, who says the company is pleased. Hahahahaha! Fucking brilliant, if you ask me. Served those Facebook suckers right to be served on Facebook. Oh, I do hope that many thousands and millions such cases happen soon, and such "social" spaces start including aspects of society other than socialising.

And yes, any of you who want to charge me with indulging in schadenfreude, please, by all means, be my guest!

As for the complaints, I am still stuck on Pakistan, our errant sibling. Well, actually, I am also feeling considerable ire towards Arundhati Roy in a related matter, but that deserves a post to itself. Talking of Pakistan, it makes me wonder what its people think of its actions or words, given the awe-inspiring inconsistencies in the nature of those actions or words.

So first a 'defence analyst' called Zaid Hamid blames an international conspiracy, which includes "Western Zionists, Israeli Zionists and Hindu Zionists" (go figure), for the recent terrorist strike in Bombay, adding helpfully also that Indians were too incompetent to pull it off, messed up the whole operation and hence the dead 'terrorists' etc. Now a lawyer called CM Farooque claims that the lone arrested terrorist was actually picked up in Nepal by Indian agencies with the help of Nepali forces in 2006, along with about 200 other Pakistanis on business trips to Nepal, for the specific purpose of being implicated in such Mumbai-like incidents. Yes, we are suddenly a lot more capable than Mr Defence Analyst would like. But this lawyer, I really need to know where the hashish he is smoking comes from.

Pakistan claims that 2 fighter jets of the Indian Air Force violated its air space last week. Then their President Mr Zardari and a spokesman for their Air Force, both say a day later that it was a "technical incursion" which was "made by mistake". India denies any such thing ever happened. Pakistan sticks to its guns. Now, Pakistan has lodged a formal protest with India about the matter, and is seeking an explanation. An explanation about something that you have yourself already described as a mistake and a technicality? Come on, don't you have more important things to do?!

Also last week, Pakistan's defence minister said during a TV interview that Maulana Masood Azhar (a terrorist who was released from an Indian jail in exchange for a plane-full of hostages) had been placed under house arrest but would not be handed over to India. And today, their high commissioner to India, Shahid Malik, says that he is not just not under house arrest, but is in fact not even in Pakistan. You don't know for sure where one person is, and you say you don't need help taking down terrorist camps?

Ah, the list goes on. There are many aspects I haven't even touched upon, such as the comments made by Mr Zardari, and how they stand compared to other officials from his country, or the various reports in various media outlets, and of course, the official endorsement or rejection of them, as per convenience, and the all important distinction between voiced intentions and actual actions. Its true that contradictions of such nature exist everywhere in the world. But to indulge in them so blatantly when the spotlight of the world is shining bright in your face, that takes something. Either big balls of titanium, or a big dose of blind stupidity. But then again, putting on two faces simultaneously has always come easy to Pakistan.