IF the government was going to withdraw its notifications and just follow the Chief Justices recommendations, why did it bother to create a crisis in the first place? The whole crisis lasted five days, and no one has spared a thought for the Presidents legal advisers, who made sure that the crisis was ended, though their earlier advice had created it. They should be the ones the President should be punishing, though they have introduced him to a new concept, of which we should be seeing quite a lot in the future: the Cancelling Notification. This is the concept that a Presidential Notification is neither a line in the sand, nor a red line, nor is in any way final, certainly not something by which the issuer (that is, His Excellency) stands or falls. Oh no, it can be withdrawn Even when it is about something as momentous as the Supreme Court. Time was, when you got a notification from the President (containing the magic words, 'the President is pleased to appoint...), you had the job. Now, youre not so sure, because there could be a cancelling notification which says the job must go to someone else, probably someone from the constituency. Time was, a similar notification could come from the Governor, or rather some flunkey bandying about his name. But, as has been shown time and again, most recently on the Presidents most recent trip to Governors House (billed stirringly if inaccurately as his 'tour of the Punjab), the Governor (apart from being a pair of dark glasses) is the Presidents personal representative and appointee, and should prove to be just as fickle. The Governor has declared himself a true Lahori, and thus his determination to celebrate Basant. Now that is something which the Lahore High Court had stamped on, because of an unaccountable objection to little children having their throats cut. True Lahoris, like the dark glasses governing Punjab on behalf of the President, have no such objections, and rather look forward to the reduction in population which will result. Only in Lahore has kiteflying become a sport fatal to spectators. If it was potentially fatal to the fliers, we would probably see objections coming forth from true Lahoris. True Lahoris mostly are Amritsari Kashmiris anyhow, so perhaps they are best acquainted with the concept of killing for pleasure. Already, the young of Lahore are starting to fall victim to this craze, and with the Kiteflying Associations extension of Basant, the festivities are likely to go on claiming victims for some days. This is evidence, if any more was needed, that Basant is a Hindu festival. Hindu festivals need blood, and human blood at that. Look at the Kali festival, for instance. All the scholarly interjections about the goddess Saraswati are meaningless in front of the throat cut of one little child. All the yellow clothes in the world weigh nothing when measured against the red of blood, human blood. And already, the goddess is claiming her victims... But I forgot. Basant earns valuable foreign exchange, which makes it quite all right for as many children to die as necessary. We dont educate them, we have made no arrangement for their health at any stage, and there will be no jobs when they grow up, especially since we havent educated them. So why not use them to earn foreign exchange. And why do Indians come to Lahore for Basant? Not because they want to see how Lahoris celebrate it, but because they want to see how Lahoris have made a bloodsport out of kiteflying. No wonder you have Americans, especially those belonging to Blackwater, anxious to come to Pakistan. They want to come to a country where enlightened moderation is in vogue, as shown in cut throats and electrocuted corpses of children. Live children can only be extremists, so if we have corpses to exhibit, we prove both our enlightenment and our moderation. And we earn foreign exchange. Not to mention that the Blackwater people can relax, knowing that we are doing their work for them. The vast number of the judges of the Lahore High Court that have been sworn in, and that too as recommended by the Chief Justice, have not made it clear yet that they intend to be part of an enlightened and moderate judiciary that will let us be true Lahoris, which means celebrating Basant, and earning foreign exchange, not just by being Amritsari Kashmiris. But the notification and its withdrawal didnt distract the Supreme Court from the cases against the President, whose Swiss cases led to the sacking of NABs law officers for not pursuing the Swiss cases. That must be linked with the capture of the Taliban leader in Karachi. You can see everyone lining up for the American promise of eternal life which Lahores police chief has got, who has even withdrawn the warden who was the substitute for the Qadri Chowk traffic lights, which were smashed by the blast in summer which persuaded the police to festoon Queens Road with barriers, APCs and guards with rifles. This, along with the American promise, guaranteed him eternal life. NABs new law officers will be carefully chosen to mess up the cases against the President. Neither the outgoing prosecutor general, nor his successor, will be able to as much to lift national spirits as the national cricket team, which is proving better than expected at the newest form of the game.