All threads that are locked or marked for deletion will be moved to this forum. The topics will be cleared from this archive on the 1st and 16th of each month.
shiv wrote:
Don't hold your breath. Pakistan has seen worse crises. They are survivors. They know that you have to start lying hard and fast and their 3.5 will definitely rescue them. Pakistan's real failure will come only when India achieves an economy that is a decent percentage of the US economy making US aid irrelevant.
Doc, indeed, and for me its based on my cricket experience watching India play. Many times, when the match is at about the 75% point, I have a good enough hunch as to whether India is going to win or loose, and most often, my hunch turns out to be accurate.
Likewise, I don't get that feeling that India will rid itself of this TSP abomination as a result of these floods. No doubt if TSP were a normal country, they would be clamoring to better themselves, and there would have been an opportunity here. Now, I must add that most of TSP is probably more normal than the Pakijabi monsters. And these floods don't seem to have caused much damagae to the ruling TFTA Pakijabi elite. More importantly, I don't not see any ebbing in Pakijabi thirst for Indian blood, which is their sole reason for existance, and furthermore, I don't see the white boys deviating too far away from their equal equal as well; they are as determined as ever to prop up their Pakijabi terrorist assets.
Pakijabis have probably taken a long-term view. They are not overtly raising the temperature with India for fear they will loose support among the more discerning whites. They want to keep the moolah flowing, re-build, and several years hence, its back to the more shrill, give me Kashmir or else.
It appears that TSP has seen through the worst of the floods, then as things stand today, I don't believe this has been a game changer for India. Its just that TSP lost a few quick wickets, and the 3.5 have stepped in to take over the batting.
I checked, the image in the Dawn story is from Associated Press; AP has precisely one image from this visit by Rajiv Shah to a Sukkur relief camp. http://www.apimages.com
image id: 100825021569
Photo by Khurram Shahzad.
If there was a banner or something on the camp, why didn't the photographer take a snapshot of it?
There are older pictures of Sukkur relief sites - no banners visible.
e.g., see image id: 100822015325 100818018663
shiv wrote:
They say "975 Km of roads are destroyed" but the Islamabad Gilgit distance is just 330 km
Wiki:
The Pakistani section of the {Karakoram} highway is 806 km long. It starts from Abbottabad (though N-35 of which KKH is now a part, officially starts from Hassanabdal). The highway meets the Indus River at Thakot, and continues along the river until Bunji, where the Gilgit River joins the Indus River. This is the place where three great mountain ranges meet, the Hindukush, the Himalaya and the Karakoram. The western end of the Himalayas, marked by the 9th highest peak in the world, Nanga Parbat can be seen from the highway. The highway passes through the capital of the Gilgit-Baltistan, Gilgit, and continues to the beautiful valleys of Nagar and Hunza, along the Hunza River. Many of the highest mountains, lakes and glaciers in the Karakoram can be directly seen from the highway in this section. Finally, the highway meets the Pakistan-China border at Khunjerab Pass.
I don't believe Pakistan will collapse, but its crisis will intensify over the next year or two.
- The flood disaster is going to greatly deepen Pakistani dependence on American aid
- The price the Americans charge will be more offensive action against problem areas, paticularly North Waziristan
- The price the PA will pay will be the end of the phoney peace and the opening of the jihadi front in Punjab, especially southern Punjab. Karachi is likely to pay heavily as well.
Last edited by Johann on 27 Aug 2010 20:53, edited 1 time in total.
^^ Thanks Arun. You have essentially nailed the lie
1) The distance of destruction is longer than the highway
2) There is no evidence that every centimeter is gone.
Already yindoos are being blamed for being too stingy. i hear that some parts of Punjab are flooded since the indian dams are full. i wonder if flooding will be allowed in the indian side or the water will be released. Expect a gradual rise in anti yindoo hysteria from their press in the future.
hopefully the price of rice, wheat, fish, milk and meat will rise 300% on inflation, shortages and profiteering over the next yr. the scrawny foot soliders and little hell spawn need to slim down a lot.
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta -- along with his senior producer Danielle Dellorto -- completed the 30+ hour journey to southern Pakistan yesterday afternoon, where he's reporting on the the flooding for CNN. He'll also anchor his weekend morning program from there live. Here's a shot he took from the air:
CalvinH wrote:
Only a resounding defeat can crash this image. The higher one rises the harder is the fall.
No. The system is immune to defeat. Failures in 1965, 1971 and Kargil did not take the sheen off the army.
Shiv I have to disagree. The whole structure is based on H&D (creating and preserving) and a comprehensive blow to it can collapse the whole structure. But it has to be comprehensive and should be close to the nerve center of Pakistan which is Punjab, the place which is the biggest supporter and promoter of TSPA.
1965 and Kargil were not comprehensive victories for India and we didnt occupied Lahore in 1971. For 1971 though paki army was able to twist the defeat as bengali treacheary its still the biggest point against the TSPA supremacy and organizaiton in all debates. It is and will remain a big question mark on TSPA effectiveness and we all know TSPA is desperate to do equal equal. Kargil is a good example.
Crush of Refugees Inflames Karachi
Local government says it can accommodate one million, but with some 30,000 in camps, ethnic tensions are rising
By TOM WRIGHT
KARACHI, Pakistan—Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Pakistan's devastating floods are seeking shelter in this city of 18 million, exacerbating ethnic strife that has already escalated this year and threatens to destabilize the government of President Asif Ali Zardari.
Most of the refugees are ethnic Sindhis from areas outside Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed in the flooding that began more than three weeks ago.
The United Nations says 800,000 people are stranded by the flooding, which has severed major roads in Sindh and nearby Baluchistan province. Some 1,500 people have been killed and six million made homeless by the deluge, which started in the north but swept south along the Indus River and continues to threaten to submerge towns and villages in Sindh and Baluchistan.
Sindh's provincial government has set up camps on the outskirts of Karachi, where 30,000 people are trying to keep their families together under tarpaulins in the searing heat.
The local administration says it is expecting and can cope with up to one million of the refugees. But many others who have made it to Karachi say they are being turned away from shelters on the outskirts and are pouring in to the city, deepening ethnic rivalries with Karachi's majority ethnic community that have simmered for years.
Police and paramilitary forces opened fire Monday on hundreds of mainly Sindhi refugees who, aided by a Sindh nationalist party, had begun squatting in 200 unoccupied, private apartments in a northern suburb of the city. Three people were killed, including a young boy, and 16 injured when the police fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowd to disperse them after some refugees began throwing stones, eyewitnesses and local government officials said.
On Wednesday, police raided the house of a Sindh nationalist politician, Safdar Sarki, who organized the refugees' settling in the apartments without permission from the builder, one of the largest in Karachi. Mr. Sarki, in an interview, said he had sent the refugees there.
For Karachi's dominant group, the Urdu-speaking Muhajirs, the influx of Sindhi refugees poses a threat to the established order.
"If they come in hundreds of thousands, how will they survive?" says Khawaja Izhar ul Hassan, a member of the provincial assembly from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, or MQM, which is largely a Muhajir political party and forms part of Sindh province's ruling coalition government.
The refugee crisis is adding a new dimension to a running struggle for control of Karachi between the MQM and ethnic Pashtuns, a group with origins in northwest Pakistan. The number of Pashtuns in Karachi has swollen in the past few years as many have fled fighting between the Pakistan Taliban and the military in their homelands bordering Afghanistan.
Almost 1,000 people have died in Karachi since the start of the year, many in violence largely between Muhajir and Pashtun armed groups. Mr. Zardari's administration has been unable to stem the violence.
The MQM has cast its opposition to the wave of Pashtun migration as a necessary push-back against the Taliban's growing influence in Karachi. As evidence, officials point to a number of arrests in the city, including the detention in February of the Taliban's operations chief, Abdul Ghani Baradar.
The wave of Sindhi flood migrants may be harder to counter. Sindhis are Karachi's indigenous ethnic group. The Muhajirs, Muslims of various ethnicities from India, arrived in the city after the 1947 partition of the subcontinent.
Sindh nationalist parties battled the MQM in the late 1980s over control of land in Karachi but in recent years have largely stayed out of the violence. While the MQM has joined in coalition with Mr. Zardari's Pakistan People's Party—in both the Sindh provincial and national governments—Sindh nationalist politicians largely boycotted elections and pushed for greater rights for the Sindhi community.
Ethnic Sindhis number about four million people, smaller than the Muhajir community. But Sindhis dominate in rural areas of the province. Mr. Zardari is an ethnic Sindhi and the PPP draws large votes from farming communities that have been affected by the floods.
The provincial government has set up 30 camps around Karachi. In the largest, in the northern suburb of Gulshan-e-Maymar, some 10,000 refugees are sheltering, 10 to a room on average, in unused government-owned apartments. Outside, local volunteers have started primary school classes for 450 children. The government has set up a water filtration plant and hooked up the apartments to a generator.
At another camp, in Bin Qasim Town to the east of the city, thousands of refugees lie under makeshift tents in the searing heat. They receive water from large trucks and two meals a day. On the outskirts of the camp, newly arrived refugees carrying children with distended bellies shelter beneath plastic bags strung together over branches.
Deen Mohammad, a 30-year-old farmer from Jacobabad, a town in northern Sindh, lost his house and goats when the Indus River burst its banks. His sister is still missing, he says.
"Nothing is left behind," said Mr. Mohammad, who made his way to Karachi with his wife and four children on a train service provided by the government. "There's no livelihood there. We'd prefer to stay here."
Others have found refuge where they can. Mr. Sarki, president of Jeay Sindh Tehrik, a Sindh nationalist party, sent his cadres to the train station to direct refugees to the unoccupied apartments in a Sindh area of the city.
They were meant to be there temporarily, he said. But the police action has shown the city government, which has been dominated by MQM for 25 years, is worried about an influx of Sindhis changing the balance of power in Karachi, Mr. Sarki said. "If one million Sindhis came here, the demography would be changed," he said. "These people are trying to get rid of Sindhis and dominate Karachi to show that Karachi belongs to them. It's totally immoral."
At the site of the killings, bullet marks pocked the walls and blood was smeared over the ground. A former makeshift medical clinic lay destroyed, with hundreds of pills trampled into the ground. Even after the violence, a few refugees continued to live in the flats.
"Where can we go?" asked Mai Dini, a middle-age refugee from Jacobabad, as others piled their meager belongings on colorfully decorated trucks.
In a nearby hospital, Sohrab Sarki, a laborer from a bakery in Jacobabad, recovered from a bullet that passed through his left side but missed his major organs. He said the incident was an attack on Sindhis. "They don't want others to come," he said.
Mr. Hassan, the MQM politician, says the police should have acted with more restraint. The MQM, he said, welcomes refugees on a temporary basis and if they are settled in official government camps or relatives' houses.
The Sindh nationalist parties aren't contributing to the relief efforts and are using the refugees to further their political agenda, Mr. Hassan said. "They are looking for places to capture. We will not allow them to use private property in the name of refugees."
—Shahid Shah contributed to this article.
Singha wrote:hopefully the price of rice, wheat, fish, milk and meat will rise 300% on inflation, shortages and profiteering over the next yr. the scrawny foot soliders and little hell spawn need to slim down a lot.
That should happen with full knowledge op Poaks that millions of tons of food is stored right across Wagha in Kuffarland and all Poak can do is smell the Khushboo of cooking in the air. Hungry,starving Poaks smelling the Desi Ghee "karra" being made in Amritsar will be truly an entertaining spectacle. But does not Pakislam claim one meal a day is enough to carry on cursing, blaming Kuffar for living ?
in stalingrad, once the red army had the germans in a circle, they setup huge field kitchens near the front and let the delicious smells waft across to taunt them. the germans could not fire as they had to conserve ammo, while russian 75mm guns were firing dozens of shells at small bans of german infantry.
The Taliban were working with, or indeed WERE the “timber mafia” in the Malakand region where they were allowed to stay in control from 2007 to 2009. During that time more than 70 per cent of forests were cut down, contribuing to the present disaster.
But everywhere, local politicians, police and military are either powerless to stop the loggers and big landowners, or are in their pay – or both. Bribery, corruption, and complicity with terror go hand-in-hand to undermine any environmental protection.
The loss of forests transforms even a normal monsoon from a benefit to a curse. Forests absorbs water, and help refill aquifers. Without trees, flash floods run off into rivers, with no benefit for next year’s crops and without replenishing wells and springs. Fertile top soil is washed away.
Does not look Lahore is affected at all. Nor are the major cities of Pakjab like Guranwala, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, I'bad, Sialkot or Faisalabad. There will continue to be abundant supply of food in Lahore and its vicinity for the fatcats of Model Town and other 'elite' areas. So the Pakroaches do not have to tredge to Wagah to smell the karrah, they can do it in the Food Street in Lahore itself. But I don't think they will.
surinder wrote:Does not look Lahore is affected at all. Nor are the major cities of Pakjab like Guranwala, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, I'bad, Sialkot or Faisalabad. There will continue to be abundant supply of food in Lahore and its vicinity for the fatcats of Model Town and other 'elite' areas. So the Pakroaches do not have to tredge to Wagah to smell the karrah, they can do it in the Food Street in Lahore itself. But I don't think they will.
Even better. Because pacquis can only smell the Indian curry. They will get pestishaheedized if they try to cross over and loot. Mango pacqui awaam will have no such worries when it comes to curries being cooked in the homes of RAPE.
surinder I agree the flood has affected NWFP and Sindh much more than 'core' punjab areas. but all pakis are well armed and willing to fight.
a 'force' of 50 mil starving and violent people can be a powerful source of social and economic instability...they have nothing more to lose and everything to gain. and amidst this desperation the city fatcats, landed gentry and business elites have a lot of wealth worth looting.
surinder wrote:Does not look Lahore is affected at all. Nor are the major cities of Pakjab like Guranwala, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, I'bad, Sialkot or Faisalabad. There will continue to be abundant supply of food in Lahore and its vicinity for the fatcats of Model Town and other 'elite' areas. So the Pakroaches do not have to tredge to Wagah to smell the karrah, they can do it in the Food Street in Lahore itself. But I don't think they will.
Elites will always eat the Paranthas and rest of the food plus young ones will be stolen by rough Pathan, verily they cant sustain and stop 100 plus million Poakcroaches trying to break the door, crawling all over. It will resemble Saragarhi saga except the fight will be for food.
I say, let GOi install paid "doorbeens" at the border where we can watch the spectacle for 2 minute for 25 paisa.
Pakistanis have been left without their daily fix of Indian soap operas and Bollywood movies after cable operators across the country stopped beaming Indian entertainment channels on the orders of a media regulatory body.
Leading Indian entertainment channels of Star and Sony networks have disappeared from cable networks across the country while several international news channels like BBC and CNN are no longer being beamed in some parts of Pakistan for the past few days.
Muneeza Begum, a domestic help who likes to unwind after a long day by watching Indian entertainment channels, said, "My children have been complaining for the past three days as they cannot watch their favourite dramas."
Nanha mujahids getting corrupted by Indian naach gaana
Pakistan Cable Operators Association official Muhammad Sadiq said cable networks were receiving numerous calls from subscribers about the removal of popular channels from their networks.
"Many of the callers are furious and are not ready to listen to our explanation," he said.
So finally the money that was marked for F solah & nookes will be diverted to buy wheat from unkil that is a big dhokha to the gharatmand kaum who is ready to eat grass to fly solah F solahs over lal quila
A very interesting "comment" was posted in response to Prof Mead's article posted earlier (2 pages back) ...
prof mead,
these guys have really played bad with the alpine ecosystem there. we are pouring over satellite data from, CARTOSAT-2B, it has a one meter resolution, we are seeing huge storage facilities built up into the rock face? wonder what is in it there! Glaciers seems to be cut in also? Either these guys were plain stupid or they had too much faith in Chinese engineering. Himalayan ranges are pretty young , one need to be quiet careful.
Comment by sanjithmenon – August 27, 2010 @ 1:48 am
Can some tech guru, use Google Earth, and see we can come up with some images of the same ?
Have the Cockroaches built "dongless" storage sites on or around Glaciated areas ?
Were the Floods caused by blasting/cutting glaciers -- Some of the Crevasses on Mt Everest are 3000 feet deep -- ie 3000+ feet of Ice
"The next two to three days are very critical and we will have to strictly monitor the situation in the towns near the mouth of Indus river, which will have exceptionally high levels," Sindh province irrigation minister Jam Saifullah Dharejo told AFP.
I have heard some American thinkers express, quietly and privately, the view that maybe we should do what many Pakistanis already fear we are doing: fully and frankly turn to India as a substitute for Pakistan as our regional partner in central Asia including Afghanistan. India, say these thinkers, is more sincerely attached to the chief US goal of preventing this part of the world serving as a terrorist base and Pakistan is in any case a hopeless basket case.[/b] Many Afghans hate and distrust the Pakistanis — widely blamed for supporting the Taliban and generally suspected of interfering and seeking to dominate. Working around Pakistan by engaging with India, China and Russia (and, hopefully, ultimately Iran) in the region is a better long term strategic choice.
I don’t think we are ready to work around and even work against Pakistan, partly again because it is easier to imagine a diplomatic shift like this than to develop a set of workable policies that could bring it about in a reasonably effective and beneficial way, and partly because the danger of an isolated Pakistan going rogue should not be ignored.
Pakistan may not have a lot of ability to make our world a better place, but it has a significant party pooping power that we need to respect. Nuclear program, terror links, geopolitically sensitive location: it’s a bad mix, but it’s real.
....
Realistically, Americans cannot care more about Pakistan than Pakistanis do. If Pakistanis are hellbent on seeing the country go downhill, we can’t stop the slide. If the military elite is committed to a doomed strategy against India that progressively impoverishes the country and distorts its development, we can argue the case with them, but we cannot force them to change their minds — and we cannot spare them the consequences of the inevitable failure.
Emotionally, many Pakistanis will be enraged by this line of thinking, pointing out (with some justice) that past and current US policy in the region has greatly complicated Pakistan’s life.
This may be true, but the responsibility for Pakistan’s future still lies in Pakistan’s court. If Pakistan comes up with a serious and realistic strategy for national recovery and development, the United States can and should help. If it doesn’t, nothing the United States can do will stop the rot — and Pakistan’s diplomatic position and geopolitical interests cannot be indefinitely insulated from the consequences of domestic declineAmen brother! I am with you... .
But the United States must avoid getting trapped in a dysfunctional and enabling relationship with Pakistan’s elites. If a strategically myopic military and a rent-addicted economic elite are truly determined to lock the country into its current destructive and unsustainable course, the US will have to consider alternative ways to safeguard its regional interests.Does Obama have enough brians to realize this or is he too dumb to realize this?
Demand for Indian vegetables, particularly of tomatoes and potatoes, have surged in Pakistan suffering from devastating floods, leading to higher exports of such items to the neighbouring country.
"Over 30 trucks (carrying 16 tonnes each) of tomatoes and potatoes are going to Pakistan through Wagah border everyday," vice president of Amritsar Exporters Chambers of Commerce Rajdeep Uppal said.
He said 29 trucks of tomatoes and five laden with potatoes crossed the border today itself.
Rampant floods in Pakistan and the holy festival of Ramzan have increased the demand for Indian vegetables there in the past one month, said Uppal who himself heads an export company in Amritsar.
Meanwhile, 10-12 trucks of tomatoes are going to Pakistan daily from Delhi, president of Vegetables Traders Association of Azadpur market (largest market of fruits and vegetables in Asia) Surendra Kohli said .
A Delhi-based vegetables exporter Raju Karnal said he had sent over 100 trucks of tomatoes to Pakistan through the Wagah border over the past fortnight.
He said the volume of exports of Indian vegetables to Pakistan has soared recently, despite high duties imposed by that country.
Uppal said that two years ago the Pakistani government imposed 48% duty on potato, 28 per cent on onion and six per cent on tomato which virtually halted the vegetable trade between the two countries. Prior to that, there were no duties on these items in Pakistan, he added.
But, damage to tomatoes and potatoes due to floods in Sind and Punjab areas (where they are produced mostly in that country) and increase in demand due to Ramzan resurrected the trade, Uppal said.
Despite high duties, prices of Indian potato and tomato have increased in Pakistan, encouraging traders to rush the produce there, Uppal said, adding that the trend would continue for another 2-3 months.
He said 20kg of Indian tomato sells for around 700-800 Pakistani rupees (about Rs300-400), up from 300-400 Pakistani rupees earlier.
Over 1,100 trucks carrying potatoes, tomatoes and soyabeans have crossed into Pakistan via Attari-Wagah route.
Exporters have demanded that the Pakistan government remove the duties on vegetables to boost bilateral trade in vegetables.
Definitely not 20%. Maybe 20% of Sindh, but thats not who is doing the begging, rent seeking.
Also PakJab has essentially gotten away scott free.
Looks like they have let Sindh get clobbered so they can get free money. Amazing that all the breeches happened there.
You can see the fresh breeches developing on the East bank lower down. Feel sad for the Sindhi's. What did they do to deserve this from Pakjab.
If you look near Jacobabad, It sure looks like the Indus wants to permanently run further North and West of Sukkur.
If I was the person in charge I would not fight the river.
In an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday, Afghanistan's National Security Adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta said that the central issue in the war against terrorists is their ability to take refuge in Pakistan and enjoy support as well as training from Pakistani military and intelligence agencies.
Spanta said the United States needs to redirect its drone war to target Afghan Taliban commanders living in Pakistan.
He also called for sanctions against Pakistan and the denial of visas to Pakistani generals and others involved in supporting terrorist activities. {blasphemy}
Writing in Monday's edition of the Washington Post, Spanta called on Washington to re-evaluate its friendship with Pakistan and termed US support of the country as a "strategic mistake."
“While we are losing dozens of men and women to terrorist attacks every day, the terrorists' main mentor continues to receive billions of dollars in aid and assistance. How is this fundamental contradiction justified?” the prominent Afghan official wrote.
The remarks come amid reports that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai feels deeply frustrated with the US administration's Pakistan policy.
"He accuses Pakistan of interfering in Afghanistan, but then the West calls Pakistan an important strategic partner. He thinks Pakistan is training forces to send to Afghanistan to kill our soldiers," an unnamed Afghan official said. "It really irritates him."
The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ordered the interior ministry to justify the continued detention of Indian fishermen, who had completed their sentence, in different prisons in Sindh province. The apex court was informed Thursday that 132 Pakistani fishermen were in Indian custody and 582 Indian fishermen were in Pakistani prisons as claimed by India in January, Dawn News reported on Friday.
going thru the KKH from Islamabad, there are lots of places where the rivers/water bodies go along the side the KKH. In some places the road is above the rivers as it criss crosses.
Indus river exits and joins the KKH only for about 200 kms(see the Red arrows in the image)
Hunza Valley is in Gilgit Baltistan area of bakistan. Adilabad is the main town affected along with atabaad, sarat villages by the landslides since january 2010.
Sost is the last check point before it enters xinjaing province via khunjerab pass.
Going thru the internet reports it is claimed that many areas of KKH are damaged. No proper arae demarcations.
I could find names like Besham and Dasu affected(see image) where the road passes along the river Indus.
KKH from koghan onwards is said to be OK may be till gilgit/hunza valley.
Look at Altaf Bhai, asking for patriotic generals to impose martial la. Is that any talk? Four times in 63 year history of Pakistan we have tasted martial la. Faujis have ruled us openly for 32 years and from the behind for 26 years, accept for 5 years Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto interrectum.
Whats interrectum? Its not a dictionary word for sure... unless its inter-rectum and a Paki way of doing things best left unmentioned ?
violence in gilgit baltistan areas for the last couple of days. Gilgit city area is 10 sq kms and frequent sectarian clashes are normal here. CM warns of clamping curfew in Gilgit
The storm over China’s denial of a visa to an Indian general serving in Jammu & Kashmir may be only a “diversionary sideshow” compared to another far more serious development — the “effective control” by the Chinese army of large swathes of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), strategic analysts told DNA.
“A large tract of territory in PoK is now under the effective control of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” a Singapore-based analyst who returned recently from Afghanistan said on the condition of anonymity
The highest number of reported deaths by far has been from Khyber-Pakhtunwa, with the number of deaths reducing as you move downstream, although I'm guessing the economic damage increases in inverse proportion.
Southern Punjab has also been hit by the floods, especially Muzaffargarh, Multan, Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan districts.
Reporters have picked up a lot of sentiments from displaced people essentially promising a necktie party for any politicians who show up; the air is rife with rumours that the water management and engineering bureaucracy concentrated on protecting the lands of wealthy land owners.