4th March

Beyond the Boundary

The article talks about the increasing muscle power of terrorist forces that are finding safe haven in Pakistan while creating unsafe environment for the world. The recent attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team just proves that.

The attack proves that sports is not beyond politics at all. This is the first time that cricket has been a direct victim of terrorism. The attack brings all the plans of hosting ICC World Cup in South Asia to hold. Pakistan is out of question now. Bangladesh is fighting mutiny from its own army while Sri Lanka is into a civil war owing to its war against LTTE. That leaves India who recently faced the worst terrorist attack on 26/11. With elections coming on, it’s another opportunity for terrorists to strike who currently, rightly said by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, find safe haven in Pakistan. Unless there is a concentrated pressure on Pakistan to dismantle the terror infrastructure in the country, it will not only become a sports pariah but also make its economic rescue bleak. 

What is also needed for the Pakistani polity is to shun the internal tussle which has cost them their country becoming almost a failed state. While the centre in Pakistan cedes power in Swat to Taliban, the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif believes the war against terror is America’s war and not Pakistan’s. It’s high time to persuade leaders in Pakistan that while democratic debate is fine, it should not be at the cost of putting country in peril.

Power To The People

The article talks about the recent developments taking place in the social networking sites to tackle the issue of user privacy with Facebook announcing to put any future change in its terms and conditions to the user vote.

Facebook floated a document giving each of its 175 million users, a say on how the website should run. It also maintained that any change. Any protest on its terms and policies would only be binding if at least 30% of its users votes. However, the company reserves the rights to introduce new features without user consent. There are several social networking websites who face the issue of user content privacy and control and they cannot get away with it since their business depends on it. Many sites struggle to find the balance between profitability and user information privacy and control. Users feel to have stake in these sites since they contribute to it. However, they are often ignorant about what should be private and what should be public.

Efforts have to be made to make a striking balance in how much private information should be made public. But still it’s long way to go.