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Comment by aerostable_slug | Hacker News Reader

> Most of 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

Yes. Similarly, Pakistani intelligence knew where Bin Laden was. Oh wait, SOME Pakistani intelligence knew. The issue we're seeing is internecine conflict and a lack of effective governance. Saying the hijackers were Saudis so therefore the entire House of Saud is liable is reductive at best.

I'm not defending said House, but OTOH blaming the most public power base for everything associated with the country ignores the fact that they don't have control over their own power bases (much like Pakistan, a total s-hole that I can't wait until we're disengaged from).

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I'm Pakistani, it's not a s-hole. It's a lovely country full of lovely people who are helpless against the burden of colonial legacy, corrupt landowners and a way-too-powerful army.

It’s possible for people to be “lovely” but also the reason for why the country is in bad shape. I’m Bangladeshi, and folks there are very kind. My dad has stories of traveling through rural parts of the country and a villager walking miles out of his way to make sure he got back to his car without getting lost.

But they’re also a big part of the reason why things are the way they are. From the tolerance of corruption, to the lack of organization. You can say the exact same things about parts of the US that other parts of the US would regard as “shit holes” (rural Georgia or Mississippi). People are very nice! But that’s not sufficient for a developed civilization.

the root of this is poverty unfortunately, not the people. They are not the problem.

I’m terms of real gdp per capita, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India is richer than the US was when it had been a stable multiparty democracy for more than half a century already. You know what was poor? Utah when the Mormons first got there. Hostile wasteland, not like Bangladesh where fish jump out of ponds into your pot. But look what they managed to do with land nobody wanted.

Maybe you can invite British Queen back.

No, I disagree, I don't know where you get your number from, I couldn't find anything to support your argument. I don't believe anything about GDP anyway. For rich country, GDP means how much they can rob; for poor countries, GDP is how many slaves you have. Poverty is a downward cycle unfortunately, democracy is not going to help with anything.

100% agree with your comment. Culture makes the people and the people make the culture.

My point is more that the feedback loop is something that was put in place generations ago and most people are just stuck in it. We should pity such people, not despise them.

To be clear, I don’t think we should “despise” anyone and I wouldn’t call any place a “shit hole” because it’s rude.

But insofar as the term is commonly used as a shorthand to describe places marked by dysfunction, Pakistan (and to be fair Bangladesh) fit the bill—notwithstanding nice people, great food, and pretty scenery.

Dysfunction is a great word to describe it, I will accept that :)

That's a fair statement, and I should have been more clear about separating views of the government, sects of the government, and many of the actual people.

Lovely people who overwhelmingly support death sentence for apostasy.

I remember Zakir Naik pointing out that the US has the death sentence for revealing military secrets and no one blinks an eyelid; that apostasy is a kind of treason that people don't so much support, it's just a matter of fact.

Religion is easy [0]. Those who commit apostasy are given time to reflect and repent to become muslim again, it is not like they are not given chance to turn back and live.

[0] https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2011/04/30/i...

And that makes it acceptable? C’mon!

And this, my friends, explains why so many people murder in the name of Islam.

Thanks for your honesty.

This is the opinion of one of those "lovely" people. If this is how a significant section of pollution thinks, good luck cleaning the shithole

Bullshit. In World War 2 when the Nazis invaded Western Europe my grandparents joined the resistance. I have no respect for people who just let things happen. What’s worse is all those who flee from Pakistan to Western countries are all able bodied males. The ones that evolutionary speaking are best set up to join the resistance.

There's not much point being part of a resistance when the large majority of your countrymen are opposed to you and your values. Resisting foreign invaders is one thing, and makes sense: the invaders are generally a small fraction of the size of the populace, and are using some type of force to gain control. But resisting the majority of your country's population is something altogether different, and really quite futile.

Pakistanis who flee Pakistan because they don't want to live that way are doing the right thing; most people there like the way things are there, so trying to change their opinions is not likely to go well, and very likely to get you imprisoned or killed.

I think you don't realize that when something is all you've ever known, you don't realize it's wrong. I know a lot of those immigrants who went abroad to study, swearing they'd come home to improve things, but once they were abroad they realized how much better life is with the freedoms in the UK or US. And once they realized that, they wanted to raise their families in that environment. Would you grudge them that?

There comes a point where you have to stop blaming colonialism for the corruption of your own people. Pakistan has been an independent country for 75 years.

That's barely 2-3 generations vs 350 years of colonialism. Most of government and the civil service is aligned around colonial lines with heavy weightage on the top. As other commentators have pointed out, systemic poverty and a lack of education prevent the kind of uplifting that would allow the country to shrug off colonialism.

2-3 generations is enough to see an upward trend. South Korea went from proper third world to completely first world in that timeframe.

I think there's been a pretty strong upward trend, but not much compared to South Korea for sure.

We had a setback in the 70s, first with the war with India and then 80s where Zia weaponized religion (with western support!) to fight the USSR in Afghanistan. We're still reeling from that. All the nastiest laws you read about in the news (death to blasphemers, rape victims getting jailed for adultery) are from that era.

But I think if you look at poverty, literacy graphs etc, you'll see an upward trend. Even democracy seems stronger than it was when I was a child, though I think we've regressed when it comes to media freedom.

It's a country that committed genocide against its own people.

"3,000,000 people were killed during the genocide, making it the largest genocide since the Holocaust during World War II" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide.

If that's your only criteria, the US must be the worst of the lot for ethnically cleansing an entire continent to claim it.

I grew up in the 90s and remember the ecstatic cheering when Bangladesh won its first cricket match. The decisions that led to that genocide were topdown driven by a racist military brass, not ordinary people who were told that all the fighting was against India.

Of course that doesn't excuse the genocide and everyone who partook should be treated no different from a Nazi but you can't lump the entire population in with that.

Every shithole has its redeeming qualities.

The gang rape issues alone keeps pakistan firmly in shithole territory for my mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Pakistan

I wish you would edit your comment to indicate that the country of Pakistan is not a s-hole but the current government is and possibly also the fanatical religious culture is.

I also think that s-hole is not an appropriate description of Pakistan. Saying that, the frequently used idea that countries with extreme human rights violations are just "bad governments" is very reductionary. Similar to Russia, it's not just Putin, it's the society that shares certain values. I am not inviting to demonize any society or culture either — but to accept that these problems have deeper roots than a corrupt goverment or religious extremists with power.

The fanatical religious culture is an integral part of the overall culture of the people of that country. It's not being forced on them by some outsiders.

No, it's being enforced by empowered insiders. That's the culture the British created (ie. empowered insiders in their pay/control exploiting divisions and racial hate to subjugate a populace).

The British left, but those insiders and the "elite" culture is still there.

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