Muneeb Ali, a good friend of mine and fellow computer science researcher in the Netherlands, has been covering the situation in Pakistan. For those of you that listen to your white iPod headphones all day and never interact with another human being, the Pakistan situation is a very serious one. The president of Pakistan, General (errrr, now "Not-General") Musharraf, suspended all freedoms and effectively imposed martial law after a vote was held for his re-election. His primary competitor was exiled back to Saudi Arabia, and democratic leaders have been jailed or exiled. With an ally of the United States going to such extremes to ensure that one man remains the leader, it is amazing that few people here even know what's going on. We're too concerned about the writer's strike (seriously? get back to work! you're costing jobs of people that support you but are not on strike).
What Muneeb has done is to rally his friends abroad and in Pakistan to blog about the situation in Pakistan. Muneeb went to college at LUMS, Lahore University of Management Sciences, and former students are posting their thoughts online. The LUMS Blog has provided insight into the situation in Pakistan. I've never been to Pakistan and one day I would love to go; however, the information in the blog published on a regular basis lets me know what friends like Muneeb (and their friends) are going through. It is hard for someone here, in the United States, that has never been to Pakistan, to imagine what life is like there. Through the eyes of Muneeb and his peers, we all get a glimpse into what life is like for people my age in Pakistan.