Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Lawyers In Love

In recognitition of those Pakistani attorneys who have bravely stood against the truncheons of government thugs in defense of that nation's laws and constitution, I offer the the following encouragement from the Roman poet Ovid:

The purpose of laws is to prevent the strong from always having their way.

He who would not be idle, let him fall in love.

Love is a thing that is full of cares and fears.

The wit of man has devised cruel statutes,
And nature oft permits what is by law forbid.


Passion persuades me one way, reason another.
I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse.

She who resists as though she would not win,
By her own treason falls an easy prey.

The bow
If it never be unbent,
will lose its power.

Though strength be wanting,

the will to action
Merits praise.

What we call birth
Is but a beginning to be something else
Than what we were before;
and when we cease
To be that something,
then we call it death.

When worse may yet befall, there’s room for prayer,
But when our fortune’s at its lowest ebb,
We trample fear beneath our feet, and live
Without a fear of evil yet to come.

Let others seek safety.
Nothing is safer than misfortune,
Where there’s no fear of greater ill to come.

Jove send me more such afternoons as this.

"Nobility lies in the man, my prince, not in the towel. "
-Richard Burton as Thomas a Beckett

Good show, counselors.

Bloody good show.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

They appear to be quite courageous indeed...

Cassandra said...

Well, I still find I have nothing intelligent to add. Since I quit writing, I seem to be at a loss for words most of the time. Probably should have happened a lot sooner :)

Sorry. Nice post.

Pile On® said...

Yes, there is all that.

And there is also the possibility that their actions might ultimately lead to the Islamists taking control of a nuclear armed country.

I just dunno.

KJ said...

Go lawyers.

If they take control of the nukes, they'll never use until everyone in the world signs a liability release.

portia said...

Careful, Pile, he's arresting teachers as well. Poets, too. Seems the only folks without worry under Musharref's State of Emergency are the leaders of the Taliban.

Pile On® said...

Well now if he was arresting the teachers in those Saudi funded madrasas that would be okay by me but I doubt that is the case.

Anyway, who knew Pakistan had any poets?

Cassandra said...

When I was young and foolish (as opposed to being old and foolish) I used to work with a goodly number of Pakistanis as well as Nigerians and Hindus (Indians) on East-West Hwy in DC. It was an interesting experience.

I was newly married then, and much more liberal. It changed me (Portia might say it warped my view of life). I was a huge admirer, for the most part, of their work ethic and their values but that led my thinking in directions that had the results you've been reading for the past few years :p

It also causes me to think we'd be extremely naive to believe we understand anything that's going on in that part of the world. Eastern politics don't tend to play out the way ours do over here. They are far more patient, for one thing, and things are rarely what they seem on the surface. We Americans love to call 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. But Bhutto hasn't exactly closed off any of her options, has she? She now seems to be distancing herself from some of her erstwhile supporters; that signals to me, at least, that political viability is as important to her as it is to Musharraf and her checkered history suggests her professed love of democracy is ... well, let's say just that.

As for power sharing, it's an amusing concept but the Taliban must find the prospect of divided government just too delicious for words. Pile's cynicism isn't exactly unwarranted. I don't like what Musharraf is doing one bit, but if Bhutto succeeds in weakening him to the point where he can't fight off the extremists and the shared democratic government is toppled by the Taliban, will the people of Pakistan really be better off?

I wonder. It's a dangerous game she's playing. I hope she is ruthless enough to play it competently. But women so seldom are, at least on the grand scale.

Cassandra said...

Damn, I'm tired :)

That will teach me to comment before reading the paper! It appears she finally has gotten off the rhetorical pot:

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, under house arrest for the second time in a week, called on President Pervez Musharraf to step down and threatened to boycott an upcoming parliamentary election as odds for a political alliance between the two seemed all but dead.

Speaking from Lahore, Ms. Bhutto demanded Gen. Musharraf resign as president and army chief. She accused his military-backed government of quashing political dissent while ignoring an increasingly aggressive Islamist insurgency.

Ms. Bhutto, in a telephone interview with The Wall Street Journal, also ruled out working with Gen. Musharraf in any future government. She expressed hope that a coalition of opposition political parties could pressure him to end emergency rule imposed earlier this month. Thousands of Gen. Musharraf's opponents -- many from Ms. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party -- have been jailed since then. Private and some international television broadcasts have been blacked out, public protests have been banned and several Supreme Court judges, including the chief justice, dismissed.

"We reached the conclusion he's an obstacle to democracy in Pakistan," Ms. Bhutto said in the interview. "He would raise our hopes, only to have them dashed."

The rupture with Gen. Musharraf, who continues to have the backing of the Bush administration, marks a significant departure for Ms. Bhutto.

******

I guess this makes it even more important that she is a strong leader. Hope she is - she will need to be.

Anonymous said...

Ham.

The only solution is a succulent, shank portion slow roasted with clove and apricot glaze. No, they won't eat it even if we spiked it with their own poppy from the border tribes, but if rolled into little balls and thrown at the General Presidante or even the Eva Gabor'e, they would all run screaming "pig, pig"! and the kryptonite of America's farms would drive them to their knees, begging Allah's forgiveness for coming into contact with the forbidden pork.

Or we can spike their goats by feeding them sausage. Then after they have slaughtered the goats for their feast we can laugh and point at them and call them infidels, and tell them that all 70 virgins just had a good show with Prince Charles, or Hugh Heffner, or Barney the Dinasour or whatever western devil we can come up with that is more horrible than suffering 1,000 deaths in the name of Allah.

Wads, they be. Scare me they none. Fate is manipulated, but dwell on what is without, futile excersizes lie fertile ground for apathy.

Cassandra said...

Soooooooooo......

Who do y'all like for the SuperBowl?

Because other than this mess, that is one area where yours truly has even less idea what the helk is going on. I don't think I've watched a single game entire this year.

Cassandra said...

Well, I cannot even think of anything snarky to say, and that is a sad comment in and of itself :)

Hope no one has been kidnapped and impregnated by aliens.

Because I really hate it when that happens.

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