Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Mind's circuit diagram to be revealed by mammoth map
Our brain is the most complex object in the known universe – so we'll need to map it in formidable detail to track down memory, thought and identity
A STRANGE contraption, a cross between a deli meat slicer and a reel-to-reel film projector, sits in a windowless room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It whirs along unsupervised for days at a time, only visited occasionally by Narayanan Kasthuri, a mop-haired postdoc at Harvard University, who examines the strip of film spewing out.
It may seem unlikely, but what's going on here may revolutionise neuroscience. Spaced every centimetre along the film are tiny dots, each of which is a slice of mouse brain, one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of aluminium foil. This particular roll of film contains 6000 slices, representing a speck of brain the size of a grain of salt.
The slices of brain will be turned into digital images by an automated electron microscope. A computer will read those images, trace the outlines of nerve cells, and stack the pictures into a 3D reconstruction.
In the jargon, they are building the mouse "connectome", named in line with the term "genome" for the sequence of all of an organism's genes, "proteome" for all its proteins, and so on.
It's an epic undertaking. The full mouse connectome would produce hundreds of times more data than can be found on all of Google's computers, says Jeffrey Lichtman, the neuroanatomist leading the Harvard team. And yet it's just the beginning. Their efforts could be seen as a dry run for a project that is at least four orders of magnitude greater: mapping the human connectome.
With 100 billion neurons, each with up to 10,000 connections, or synapses, the human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. To map the entire thing would arguably be the most ambitious project we have attempted and, for now, lies way out of reach. Yet thanks to the constant acceleration of our computing and biotechnological capabilities, the first steps towards the roughest of drafts are now being taken.
In line with the scale of the challenges, the pay-offs could be huge. Even the most rudimentary blueprint of the brain could reveal how genes and experience shape our wiring, which in turn determines our individual differences. It would advance our understanding of conditions such as autism, schizophrenia and addiction - all of which are increasingly viewed as "connectopathies". It could even shed light on such mysteries as intelligence and consciousness. "Now is the time we're going to answer stuff that we've been waiting half a century to deal with," says Robert Marc, a vision scientist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
It is only in the past few decades that scanning techniques have allowed scientists to peer inside living brains. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides detailed anatomical images, and an enhanced version called functional MRI measures fluctuations in blood supply to different parts of the brain as people carry out specific mental tasks. On the assumption that blood supply reflects how hard neurons are working, this effectively lets neuroscientists watch the brain in action.
These techniques have led to a wealth of new insights, but they reveal nothing about neural connections. Brain tissue in these images looks more like the filling of a cream cake than the trillions of criss-crossing neural wires that are really there.
To date, those wires have been mapped in just one animal: a millimetre-long, dirt-dwelling worm called Caenorhabditis elegans, which turned out to have 302 neurons and 9000 synapses. Incredibly, this work started in the 1970s, with little of today's equipment. The worm was cut into several thousand slices before being imaged under an electron microscope.
In those days, the delicate slices of brain were floated on a bead of water and manipulated using a toothpick with a human eyelash glued to the end. Touching the slices with the eyelash destroyed them, so the team had to gingerly brush the surrounding water to nudge them into place - and for good measure, the slices were almost invisible on the water. Understandably, it took 14 years to assemble the wiring diagram, published in a landmark 446-page paper dubbed "The mind of a worm" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 314, p 1).
Technology has moved on since the days when an eyelash was part of the laboratory toolkit, and the Harvard team is not alone in coming up with a film-projector-like brain imager. The equipment is improving all the time. A year ago it would have taken 90 years to convert a cubic millimetre of mouse brain into 50,000 images. With their current design it would take just nine years, and further improvements are in the pipeline. Even so, mapping an entire mammal brain is too remote a goal for now. Instead, the focus is on questions that can be answered by mapping discrete areas of the brain.
Kasthuri, for example, plans to produce a connectome for the mouse cerebellum, a cauliflower-shaped structure at the base of the brain that has fine control over movements. Vision scientist Robert Marc is concentrating on the retina, the patch of nerve-rich tissue at the back of each eyeball that is seen as an extension of the brain, in a bid to understand common causes of blindness such as glaucoma and retinitis pigmentosa. In work his team is preparing to publish, they have mapped connections in a quarter-millimetre-diameter patch of rabbit retina, containing 600 neurons.
Sebastian Seung, a computational neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who works with Lichtman, is charting part of a zebra finch's brain to try to read the bird's song from its connectome. It may sound like an eccentric goal, but it would be an important proof of concept: that we could one day read a brain's memories.
Projects such as these have attracted the attention of "transhumanists", people who want to harness technology to live forever. They see connectomics as the first step to downloading their brains into computers. The Brain Preservation Foundation has offered a scaled-down version of the X Prize: up to $106,000 for the first lab to develop a way to preserve a whole mammal brain at the moment of death, so that its connectome could be read.
Whether because of the modest nature of the reward - the original X Prize for private space flight was a more attention-grabbing $10 million - or the transhumanists' oddball reputation, most neuroscientists seem indifferent to the prize. "It doesn't motivate me at all," says Kasthuri. "I'm much more interested in using connectomics to understand biology."
The cell-by-cell approach has its critics, though. Charles Gilbert, a neurobiologist also at Rockefeller University in New York, points out that synapses constantly change. He has found that in a mouse cortex, they turn over at the rate of 7 per cent per week. "You may take a snapshot of the connections," he says. "That doesn't necessarily mean that those are the connections that exist all the time."
Another drawback is that a typical speck of brain being mapped will have thousands of neurons coming in from distant areas, which are lopped off at the edge of the sample with no clue to their origin. "Most of the information that a piece of brain processes comes from far away and is shipped off far away," says Anthony Movshon, a neurophysiologist at New York University.
That's why other groups have taken a step back to look at the bigger picture. Instead of trying to map every single nerve cell, they are mapping just the long-distance connections. It's as if they are drawing a map of a country's highways, rather than every local road.
The brain is organised so that the outermost cortex contains the main bodies of the nerve cells and their short branches connecting to nearby cells. Underneath the cortex lie the cells' long projections, or axons, which connect distant areas. Axons are swaddled in a fatty coating called myelin, which improves electrical conduction. As the myelin is pale, the underlying part of the brain is known as the "white matter", in contrast with the "grey matter" of the cortex.
One technique for mapping axons is over 100 years old: injecting dye into cells in one spot in the brain, and watching as it spreads to distant areas. Partha Mitra of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York is using an automated version of this technique to inject dye at 500 locations in a mouse brain and trace its course. He says he is likely to produce a draft of the mouse brain later this year and hopes to map the brains of human cadavers in the same way. "We are trying to do the pragmatically defined project that will take us to the whole brain," he says.
But there are newer ways to trace long-distance connections that do not entail injecting harmful dyes or slicing brains into prosciutto. These mean that, finally, we can start to look at living brains.
One method takes advantage of the fact that water molecules can diffuse more freely along axons lengthwise than they can pass through the fatty myelin coating. In 2007, it was reported that a new technique called diffusion MRI could show how the trillions of water molecules in the brain are jostling against one another (see "Mind readers"). Their direction of movement indicates the paths of hundreds of axon bundles in a living brain (PLoS One, vol 2, p e597).
While still in its infancy, diffusion MRI is already leading to important advances. For example, Heidi Johansen-Berg and Timothy Behrens of the University of Oxford are using it to study the effects of stroke, in which a blood clot or bleeding in the brain causes local nerve tissue to die from lack of oxygen. They have found that the death of the area affected by the stroke can have knock-on effects on other areas connected by axon bundles (Neuroimage, vol 54, p 161). Seeing those changes is important, since techniques are being developed to strengthen brain connections by applying electric currents or magnetic fields to the skull.
At Harvard, Van Wedeen, one of the original developers of diffusion MRI, has used the technique to reconstruct how the human brain rewires itself over time. His team's results, published in November, show that between toddlerhood and adolescence, the brain becomes more centrally organised around a few major hubs, which might allow signals to criss-cross the brain more rapidly (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 107, p 19067).
Rewiring problems may well underlie the tendency of mental illness to arise during adolescence and early adulthood. Diffusion MRI studies have already identified specific axon bundles that are altered in schizophrenia, alcoholism and other conditions. The hope is that miswired brains could be identified and treated years before the symptoms emerge.
The insights are extending beyond medicine. Recent studies show that the strength of specific axon bundles seems to correlate with skills such as arithmetic and rapid word recall. It may also shed light on how experience shapes minds, and how memories form. "My memories, many things that make me an individual, may be encoded in my connectome," says Seung. "The hypothesis is that I am my connectome."
In 2009, Johansen-Berg and Behrens showed that diffusion MRI could detect the effects of just six weeks of juggling practice, for example. Learning the new skill thickened the connections in several axon bundles involved in hand-eye coordination (Nature Neuroscience, vol 12, p 1370).
Another new scanning technique has developed from functional MRI, which was originally designed to see which parts of the brain crank up their workload when people carry out specific mental tasks. It was later found that even when people lie resting in the scanner, the activity of individual brain areas seems to gently fluctuate over a 10 to 30-second cycle. Crucially, many areas known to have strong connections have cycles that are in sync with each other, either in or out of phase. Discovering which areas match up in this way, using a technique known as functional connectivity MRI, is another source of information about the brain's long-distance connections.
It is thanks to developments such as these that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun what it calls the "human connectome project". In September, it announced grants to two consortia of labs, worth $30 million over the next five years, to roughly map the brains of 1200 people using diffusion MRI, functional connectivity MRI and other techniques. Some will also undergo genetic and psychological tests to measure working memory, arithmetic skills and other mental abilities.
Given the project's name and the amount of cash involved, it is tempting to see it as the successor, in scale and importance, to the human genome project. An NIH press release refers to it as "a grand and critical challenge: to map the wiring diagram of the entire, living human brain".
Some of the researchers involved are more realistic. "At the end of five years it won't be complete," says Behrens, a member of one of the consortia. "I think we will have the macrocircuits pretty good in 20 years."
Perhaps the most relevant lesson from the human genome project is how fast technology can advance. It took 10 years and $3 billion to complete the first draft of the human genome. Now there are firms claiming they will soon be able to read someone's genome in less than a day for $100.
Connectome researchers are convinced this field will generate as yet unimagined rewards. "You will see new hypotheses about how the nervous system works," says Kasthuri. "No one has ever seen data like this before."
Mind readers
Magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) Showing detailed anatomical images, it is like an X-ray for soft tissues
Functional MRI (fMRI) Displays changes in blood supply - assumed to correlate with local nerve activity - to different brain areas during mental tasks such as arithmetic or reading
Diffusion MRI (also called diffusion imaging, tractography)Reveals the brain's long-distance connections; works by tracking water molecules, which can diffuse along the length of axons more freely than escaping out through their fatty coating
Functional connectivity MRI (resting-state MRI) Also shedding light on long-distance connections, it measures spontaneous fluctuations in activity in different brain areas, which reveals the degree to which they communicate
REMOND DAVIS SHOOTING CASE
TOPIC- REMOND DAVIS SHOOTING CASE
GUESTS- SHEIKH RASHEED AHMED, WASEEM AKHTER. SAHIBZADA FAZAL KAREEM
SHEIKH RASHEED AHMED OF AML said that speaking very good Urdu and have a perfect aim of shooting shows that Remond Davis belongs to some secrete agency and was on special mission. He said that both federal and provincial governments have same point of view on Remond Davis case. He said that both governments are trying to find out some ways to release Remond Davis. He said that the whole nation has been involved in Remond Davis case. He said that Remond Davis has traveled many cities of Pakistan using different identities in the past. He said that people of Pakistan are very sensitive on Remond Davis issue and any thing can happen any time. He said that Peoples Party and PML (N) can never be daring to talk openly against American aggressiveness. He said that government has been trapped on Remond Davis case. He said that politicians of Pakistan are tainted and frightened. He said that both Peoples Party and PML (N) are insurance policy for each other to stay in the government. He said that round table conference is an effort to trap other political parties in to Remond Davis case. He said that Zardari intentionally let PML (N) to form government in the Punjab. He said that Zardari did so to keep Nawaz Sharif busy in the Punjab so he could not bother him. He said that Remond Davis case will decide that we are a nation or crowd. He said that foreign delegations only come to Pakistan to talk about terrorism or nuclear programme of Pakistan. He lamented that Pakistani people are migrating to other countries to live. He said that in the world advertisement is done to sell things where as in Pakistan we are advertising to stop people to use electricity, water and gas. He threatened that if problems of the people of Pakistan are not resolved he will be out on the streets in protest from 11th of March. He said that Pakistan embassy has issued visas to Americans under immense pressure with out proper paper work. He said that people of Pakistan need to come on the streets in protest for the sake of their own well being and their future generations.
WASEEM AKHTER OF MQM said that Remond Davis case should be resolved according to the law of the land. He said that justice should be served in Remond Davis case to the families of the victims. He warned that if justice is not served it could lead to the revolution in Pakistan. He said that Remond Davis case is in the court to decide and it will be too early for his party to come on the streets in protest. He said that Pakistani politicians have personal interests with America. He said that it is the best opportunity for people of Pakistan to say no to American aid and hegemony.
SAHIBZADA FAZAL KAREEM OF ST said that Remond Davis act of killing two young men is planed and intentional. He said that if justice is not served in Remond Davis case his party will come on the streets to protest.
کیا ہم واقعی آزاد ہیں؟
Adil Najam
Strangely, the more we get to know about the case of Raymond Davis (linked with a US firm http://hyperion-protective.com/index.html), the less we seem to know. Even more strangely, the fact that the entire incident happened in broad daylight and in front of dozens of witnesses seems is itself confusing the facts rather than adding clarity. Moreover, it seems that no one seems to want to get much clarity either; although different parties may want different parts of the story to ‘disappear.’ The incident was rather eerie and disturbing to begin with; and it continues to become more so.
Here is what one does know. Raymond Davis, a staff member of the US Consulate in Lahore shot two Pakistani men dead on Thursday in a crowded part of Lahore (Mozang Chowk), according to him in self-defense. A US Consulate vehicle that rushed in to ‘rescue’ Mr. David then ran over a third person, who also died. A murder case was then registered against Raymond Davis, who was handed into police custody. A case has also been registered against the driver of the US Consulate vehicle that ran over a third person, but the driver has not yet been apprehended. After a fair deal of scrambling by both US and Pakistani officials on what to do or say, the positions of both have now started becoming clear and they have taken the stance that is usually taken in such cases: the US is asking that Raymond Davis, as a diplomatic functionary, should be handed back to them; Pakistan seems to be responding that the matter is sub judice and should take its course.
Beyond that, there are more questions than answers. For most part, these questions fall into three categories: (1) Questions about who is Raymond Davis? (2) Questions about exactly what happened at Mozang, Lahore? (3) Questions about what should happen now ?
On the first question, earliest reports suggested that Raymond Davis was a “technical adviser” and a “consular” official. More recently, US Embassy officials have described him as a “functionary” of the Embassy assigned to the US Consulate in Lahore and carrying a US Diplomatic passport. Reportedly he was hired at the US Consulate in Lahore as a security contractor from a Florida-based firm Hyperion Protective Consultants. All of this has material relevance to whether he would enjoy diplomatic immunity or not, but even more because of the apprehensions of many Pakistanis that he could be linked to the CIA or to the infamous firm Blackwater (later renamed XE Services).
And that leads squarely to the second question: what exactly was happening at Mozang? Very much in line with the immediate knee-jerk reaction of many Pakistanis, an early commentary by Jeff Stein in The Washington Post seemed to suggest rather fancifully that the shootout could have been a “Spy rendezvous gone bad?” That would be a conspiracy theory, but not an entirely implausible one. Mozang is not a part of town that you would expect too many foreigners, let alone a US official, visiting; and certainly not in what was reportedly a rented private vehicle. And while Pakistan today is clearly an unsafe place, the question of just why an Embassy official was carrying a firearm be wished away. On the other hand, however, Mr. Davis claims that he shot in self defense as the two men on the motorcycle were trying to rob him at gun point. Anyone who knows Pakistan knows all too well that this, too, is entirely possible. TV footage and reports coming immediately after the incident showed one of the young men lying dead with a revolver and wearing an ammunition belt. And certainly, the question of why at least one of the two young men on the motorcycle was carrying a loaded firearm cannot be wished away just because he had “dushmani.” Indeed, serious questions need to be asked about just who the two young men on the motorcycle were, just as they need to be asked about who Raymond Davis is. There just seem to be too many unnecessary weapons in too much proximity in this story. All of the many explanations that are floating around are very disturbing, but also very plausible. Which is exactly why this story is even more dangerous if left unresolved.
Finally, the third question – which is now getting the most attention – about what should happen now. Much is being made – maybe too much – about the Vienna Convention and its implications for diplomatic immunity. Familiar diplomatic games about the minutia of vocabulary are being played and will in most likelihood result in all too familiar results. That is exactly what one would expect in any such situation anywhere. But this is not ‘any‘ situation’; and this is not ‘anywhere‘. This is about US-Pakistan relations: there is just about nothing that the US can say or do which Pakistanis are likely to believe, and there is just about nothing that Pakistan can say or do which Americans are likely to trust. Which is why getting stuck in the intricacies of the Vienna Convention of 1963 is the exact wrong place to get stuck. This is a time for public diplomacy: certainly from the US and maybe even from Pakistan. It is not in America’s interest to be seen to be standing in the way of justice and due process. And it is not in Pakistan’s interest to be seen to conducting a flawed process of justice. There are too many people on the extreme in both countries who will not and cannot to change their opinion and apprehensions about the other. But there are even more people in both countries who could all too easily be swayed to the extremes on distrust if this delicate case is not handled with clarity and transparency by both countries. Doing so will probably bring with it more than just a little diplomatic embarrassment. Not doing so can only bring worse in the tinderbox that is US-Pakistan relations.
By way of background, the foundation for this principle was laid down in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961, which is considered the most important international agreement on diplomatic immunity. The relevant part of Article 31 of this Convention sets out the immunity of a diplomatic agent from the criminal jurisdiction of the country in which the diplomatic agent is working. A diplomatic agent has been defined in Article 1 of the convention as the head of the mission or a member of the diplomatic staff of the mission which includes administrative, technical and service staff of the mission.
Lahore shootout: Spy rendezvous gone bad?
By Jeff SteinA senior former U.S. diplomatic security agent suggested Thursday that the American involved in a fatal shootout in Lahore, Pakistan, was the victim of a spy meeting gone awry, not the target of a robbery or car-jacking attempt.
“It looks like an informant meet gone bad more than a car-jacking attempt,” said Fred Burton, a former deputy chief of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service’s counter-terrorism division.
Early reports were sketchy. Many said the American, identified in the Pakistani press variously as Raymond David, or just “Davis,” had shot two armed men on a motorcycle “in self defense” as they approached his car in a robbery attempt. As the American sped away, another Pakistani on a motorcycle was killed, according to the reports.
[SATURDAY UDATE: Embassy officials have identified the man as Raymond A. Davis. A senior U.S. official quoted by The Post saidDavis was a "permanent diplomat" who was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad as a security officer, a role the official described as "a guy who is in the protection of people."]
A Lahore police official earlier told The Post that “another U.S. vehicle was traveling with the sedan and that the American then fled the scene in that car. As it sped away, it hit a motorcyclist, killing him.”
Pakistan’s GEO TV broadcast a photo of a broad-faced, 40-something man in a plaid shirt sitting in the back of a police car, who it identified as the American involved in the shootout.
According to Burton, who worked on several major terrorism cases in the 1980s and 1990s, the incident showed that David “had outstanding situational awareness to recognize the attack unfolding and shoot the other men.”
“It shows a high degree of firearms discipline and training,” Burton added. “Either the consulate employee’s route was compromised by terrorist or criminal surveillance, or it’s feasible he was set up in some sort of double-agent operation, if this wasn’t a criminal motive.”
David was quickly apprehended and surrendered a Beretta pistol and three cell phones, according to local reports quoting police. He remains in custody.
No immediate explanation was given for David’s presence in Lahore’s Qartaba Chowk area, a mixed commercial and residential where two major roads meet.
“Even if U.S. officials are cleared of wrongdoing,” The Post correspondents reported, “the incident could be explosive in a nation where anti-American sentiment is strong. Some Pakistani news channels covering the episode raised the possibility that the Americans involved were employees of Blackwater, an American security contractor, now known as Xe Services, that is widely viewed in Pakistan as a sort of mercenary agency.”
| کیا ہم واقعی آزاد ہیں؟…نقش خیال…عرفان صدیقی | |
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| لاہور کے عین قلب میں ریمنڈ ڈیوس نامی امریکی کی طرف سے تین پاکستانیوں کا قتل ، اس پاکستان کی ایک تصویر ہے جس کی نقش گری نائن الیون کے فوراً بعد ہوئی، جس میں ایک سیاہ رو ڈکٹیٹر نے رنگ بھرا اور جو آج لوح پاکستان پر یہاں سے وہاں تک پھیلی ہوئی ہے۔یہ شرمناک حقیقت اب تک کوئی راز نہیں رہی کہ پچھلے کئی برس سے پاکستان عالمی اوباشوں کی آماجگاہ بن چکا ہے۔ سفید فام گرگے طرح طرح کے ناموں سے جانے کیا کیا کچھ کر رہے ہیں۔ریمنڈ ڈیوس کون ہے؟ اس کا اصل نام کیا ہے؟وہ کس مشن پر یہاں آیا ہوا ہے؟ نو بار اس کی یہاں آمد ورفت کے مقاصد کیا ہیں؟ اردو اور پشتو میں اس کی مہارت کس طرف اشارا کرتی ہے ؟امریکی سی آئی اے سے اس کا کیا ناتا ہے؟ سی۔ آئی ۔اے سے اس کا تعلق کیا ہے؟ بلیک واٹرز کا وہ کیا لگتا ہے؟ ان سب باتوں کو ایک آدھ دن کے لئے اٹھا رکھتے ہیں۔ دیکھنا یہ ہے کہ اسلامی جمہوریہ پاکستان نامی ریاست میں کتنا کس بل ہے؟ قانون کے اندر کتنی توانائی ہے؟ پاکستان کے حکمرانوں میں کتنی سکت ہے ؟ انصاف کی کارفرمائی کا کیا عالم ہے؟ اور سب سے بڑھ کر یہ اتنی مقبول حکومت ایک امریکی گورے کے ساتھ وہ سلوک روا رکھ سکتی ہے جس کا نشانہ ہر روز سینکڑوں ہزاروں پاکستانیوں کو بناتی ہے ؟ بنیادی سوال یہ ہے کہ کیا پاکستان روایتی معنی ومفہوم کے مطابق ایک ایسی ریاست رہ گیا ہے جسے آزاد وخود مختار کہاجا سکے ؟ جس کی حاکمیت اعلیٰ محفوظ ہو؟ جس کے فیصلے اس کے اپنے اختیار میں ہوں؟ جو اپنے اہداف و مقاصد اپنی منزلوں اور اپنے راستوں کا تعین خود کر سکے؟جس کی پالیسیاں اس کی اپنی ٹیکسال میں ،ڈھل رہی ہوں؟ جو قومی خودی کا کوئی اثاثہ رکھتا ہو؟ جس کی تجوری میں قومی غیرت و حمیت کی کوئی پونجی محفوظ ہو؟ جو نہیں مانتے تھے انہوں نے کھلی آنکھوں سے دیکھ لیا ہے اور جو اب بھی نہیں مان رہے وہ کل تسلیم کر لیں گے کہ امریکی کروسیڈ نے کسی اور کا کچھ بگاڑا یا نہیں؟ہمیں بے بال و پر کر گیا۔ تب ملک کی باگ ڈور ایک ڈکٹیٹر کے ہاتھ میں تھی۔ ایسا ڈکٹیٹر جس کے ساتھ صدر کلنٹن نے ہاتھ ملانے اور تصویر بنوانے سے انکار کر دیا تھا ۔ ایک راندہ درگاہ شخص جسے اپنا آپ منوانے اور اپنا تحکم قائم کرنے کے لئے کسی عالمی بیساکھی کی ضرورت تھی۔ وہ ہنسی خوشی کسی بھی پرشکوہ شاہی بگھی کا گھوڑا بننے اور پے در پے چابک کھانے کے لئے تیار تھا ۔ جب ایک امریکی اہلکار نے اسے فون کر کے سات مطالبات کی فہرست سنائی تو اس کے دل میں لڈو پھوٹنے لگے۔ یہ اس کے لئے اپنا آپ منوانے اور امریکی کروسیڈ کے ذریعے ایک عالمی مسلم کش مہم کا حصہ بننے کا سنہری موقع تھا۔ فون بند کرنے سے قبل اس نے ساتوں مطالبات تسلیم کر لئے۔ خود امریکی دانتوں تلے انگلی داب کر رہ گئے کہ انہیں یقین ہی نہیں آ رہا تھا ۔ مشرف، قومی مفادات ، آزادی ، خود مختاری اور حاکمیت اعلیٰ کے احساس سے دستکش ہو کر امریکی کروسیڈ کی تھاپ پر رقص کرتا رہا۔ امریکی اسے پچکارتے رہے، اس کی پیٹھ پر ہاتھ پھیرتے اور اسکے بالوں میں کنگھی کرتے رہے۔ ڈکٹیٹر کی آرائش و زیبائش کے ان کم نصیب دنوں میں پاکستان یتیم بچے کی طرف رلتا رہا۔ اس کے ہوائی اڈے ،اسکی بندرگاہیں، اس کی تنصیبات ، اس کی فضائیں، اس کی انٹیلی جینس پر اس کی حساس معلومات، سب کچھ امریکیوں کے سامنے لذت آفریں دستر خوان کی طرح پھیلا دیا گیا ۔ فوج بے بس تھی کہ یہ سب کچھ خود فوج کا سربراہ کر رہا تھا۔ پارلیمینٹ تھی ہی نہیں۔ جب بن گئی تو کنیز کی طرح گردن جھکا کر ڈکٹیٹر کے حضور دست بستہ کھڑی ہو گئی۔ آج بڑے بڑے دعوے کرنے والی سیاسی جماعتیں اپنے اپنے حصہ دسترخوانی اور تسکین شکم کی قیمت پر مشرف کی مجرمانہ وطن فروشی میں پوری طرح شریک تھیں۔ یہی وہ نامسعود گھڑی تھی جب امریکیوں نے اپنے تئیں پاکستان کو اپنی جاگیر کا درجہ دے دیا۔ مشرف نے اپنی سرپرستی اور اپنے اقتدار کی ضمانت پر امریکیوں کو پاکستان کے طول و عرض میں کھل کھیلنے کی کھلی چھٹی دے دی۔ ایک آزاد ریاست کے طور پر ہمارا کوئی بھرم رہا نہ وقار۔یہاں تک کہ نہایت حساس معاملات بھی پردہ داری اور رازداری کے غلاف میں نہ رہے۔ ڈرون حملے پاکستانیت پر کھلے حملے تھے جن کی اجازت دے دی گئی۔ کتنی ہی لیپا پوتی کر لی جائے یہ انتہا کی حیا باختہ حقیقت درودیوار پر کندہ ہو کر رہ گئی ہے کہ امریکی ڈرونز ،ہمارے ہوائی اڈوں سے ایندھن لیتے ، ہمارے ہوائی اڈوں سے پرواز کرتے، ہمارے ائر ٹریفک کنٹرول سے راہنمائی حاصل کرتے،ہماری بستیوں پہ میزائل گراتے اور ہمارے لوگوں کو خاک و خون میں نہلا کر پھر سے ہمارے ہی کسی آشیانے میں جابیٹھتے ہیں۔ اب تک ہزاروں پاکستانی اس سفاکی کی بھینٹ چڑھ چکے ہیں۔ ان کے کوئی نام ہیں، نہ پتے نہ شناخت، جنگلوں میں آوارہ پھرتی بھیڑ بکریاں تھیں جو بھسم ہو گئیں۔ فروری2008ء کے انتخابات کے نتیجے میں برسر اقتدار آنے والا جمہوری نظام ،امریکی غلامی میں جکڑے اسی مکروہ بندوبست کی کوکھ سے طلوع ہوا جس کے سر پر اب بھی پرویز مشرف بیٹھا ہوا تھا۔ مقام افسوس ہے کہ اس ضمن میں پارلیمینٹ کی قراردادیں بھی ردی کی ٹوکری میں پھینک دی گئیں۔ کوئی شعوری کوشش کی ہی نہیں گئی کہ اگر نام نہاد ”وار آن ٹیرر“ سے تعاون ناگزیر ہے تو بھی اپنے قومی مفادات اور آزادی و خود مختاری کی واضح حدود کا تعین کر لیا جائے اور امریکیوں پہ بھی واضح کر دیا جائے کہ اب یہاں فرد واحد کی نہیں، عوامی جذبہ و احساس کے پاسبان نمائندوں کی حکومت ہے لیکن جو کچھ ہوا، اس کے برعکس تھا۔آنے والوں نے جانے والے سے بھی زیادہ وفا شعاری اور اطاعت گزاری کا مظاہرہ کرتے ہوئے پاکستان کے تمام معاملات میں امریکہ کو ایک ”سٹیک ہولڈر“ کا درجہ دے دیا جائے جس کے لئے کوئی موضوع بھی شجر ممنوعہ نہیں رہا ہے ۔ 1980کی دہائی میں بھی کم وبیش ایک عشرے تک افغانستان میں ایک بڑا معرکہ لڑا جاتا رہا۔ پاکستان اس معرکے کا بنیادی کردار تھا۔ امریکہ اپنے تمام تر وسائل کے ساتھ اس معرکے میں شریک تھا لیکن ضیاء الحق نے کبھی امریکیوں کو ایک حد سے آگے نہ آنے دیا۔ ایک امریکی سفیر نے بالا بالا پشاور کا سفر اختیار کیا تو جنرل ضیاء کے حکم پر اسے رستے میں روک لیا گیا۔ جنرل نے خود فون کر کے کہا۔ “ ایکسی لینسی ، اپنی حد میں رہنا خود آپ کے مفاد میں ہوگا۔ “ کچھ غیر ملکی کہوٹہ کوجانے والی سڑک پہ جا نکلے تو انہیں ایسا سبق سکھایا گیا کہ ان کے لئے ایک ڈراؤنا خواب بن کر رہ گیا۔ ریمنڈ ڈیوس نے کھلے بندوں قتل کی واردات کی ہے لیکن ہمارا قانون اندھا نہیں۔ وہ گورے، کالے اور سانولے کی تمیز رکھتا ہے۔ لگتا ہے کہ اس کی تمام تر ہمدردیاں مقتول کے بجائے قاتل کے ساتھ ہوں گی۔ پاکستان کے دارالحکومت ،اسلام آباد میں امریکیوں نے کم و بیش تین وارداتوں میں قانون کے پرخچے اڑائے۔ پاکستانیوں کو زدو کوب کیا ۔ کوئی مقدمہ تک درج نہیں ہوا۔ چترال سے ایک امریکی جاسوس، آلات اور ہتھیاروں سمیت پکڑا گیا۔ اسے بصد احترام امریکہ روانہ کر دیا گیا ۔ ریمنڈڈیوس کے حوالے سے بھی اسلام آباد متحرک ہو چکا ہے۔ ساری کوششوں کا محور گورے ملزم کو بچانا ہے۔ ایک کہانی ہے کہ بگرام میں دبلی پتلی نحیف و نزار سی لڑکی نے امریکی کمانڈو سے بھاری رائفل چھین کر گولی چلادی۔ اس گولی سے کوئی مرا نہ زخمی ہوا۔ لیکن بگرام میں ہونے والی مبینہ واردات کا مقدمہ امریکہ میں چلا اور وہ لڑکی نیویارک کی ایک اذیت گاہ میں پڑی آخری سانسیں لے رہی ہے۔ امریکی جاسوس نے کھلے بندوں دن دہاڑے شہریوں کو قتل کیا لیکن وہ بچ جائے گا اس لئے کہ سات سمندر پار سے آئے گورے کا نام ریمنڈ ڈیوس ہے اور پاکستان کی بیٹی کے شناختی کارڈ پر عافیہ صدیقی لکھا | |
Love To Humanity
Aaj kamran khan ke saath - 8th february 2011
Aaj ki khabar - 8th february 2011
Bolta pakistan - 8th february 2011
Way Of Justice
Broad Mind......Oria Maqbool
Return To Back Him.....Abdul Qader Hasan
Who Wash ........Abdullah Tariq
”ریمنڈ کو جلد رہا نہ کرنے کے سنگین نتائج بھگتنا ہوں گے“ امریکی سفیر کا صدر زرداری کو سخت پیغام
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