Nothing seems to go well in Pakistan!

There are a few countries in the world that are in need of an extreme makeover.  Zimbabwe, North Korea are in the top rung. Not far behind them is Pakistan.  And, lately, everything seems to be going in the wrong direction for this country.

I mean, look at the recent issues alone, even without going too much back in time.  The catastrophic floods even failed to generate significant global interest in this human tragedy.  Even as the government was ineffectively managing that crisis (their version of "heckuva job, Brownie," right?) the cricket team decided that they needed to shine the Commonwealth's attention on the Pakistan--not because they played well, but with a few players engaging in match-fixing schemes. One can imagine the magnitude of this scandal when even the Los Angeles Times reports on this. In America.  On the game of cricket!

The Times notes:

At the core of the scandal are allegations that two cricketers colluded with a middleman to manipulate the course of a match against England last week in London.

Since then, Pakistani television channels daily have been airing video of the middleman, identified as London-based businessman Mazhar Majeed, flipping through wads of cash as he meets with British tabloid reporters posing as members of an Asian gambling cartel.

The tabloid, News of the World, said Majeed accepted $232,000 from the undercover reporters to ensure that Pakistani cricketers bowled "no balls," the equivalent of an illegal pitch in baseball, at specified times during the match. The manipulation, known as spot-fixing, occurs because gamblers sometimes bet not only on the outcome of a match but on individual occurrences or actions during the contest.

Say it ain't so, Joe Asif!

Meanwhile, the terrorists--of which many flavors operate in Pakistan--decide that this is no time to pause. So what if 20 million are messed up thanks to the floods is their thinking, I suppose.  Further, with the weak government's attention being forced on the crisis, and with people unhappy with the government's performance, perhaps the terrorist elements are all the more pumped up. Thus, Pakistan continues to rock with explosions; the latest was in Lahore, whose soil has been bloodied quite a bit with such tragedies in recent months.  The latest one:

At least 25 people have been killed and 170 injured after three bombs exploded during a procession by Shia Muslims in the Pakistani city of Lahore. ...

Officials say the first explosion came shortly before nightfall on Wednesday, at the end of a procession by some 35,000 Shia to mark the death in the Seventh Century of the first Shia imam, Ali bin Abi Talib.

Footage of the moment shown on Geo television showed a small explosion amid a crowd of people near the Karbala Gamay Shah imambargah, followed by a large plume of smoke.
Minutes later, as hundreds of people fled, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an area where food was being prepared for the marchers to break the Ramadan fast, a senior police officer, Zulfiqar Hameed, told the Associated Press news agency.
A second suicide bomber then detonated his explosive belt at an intersection near the end of the procession, Mr Hameed added.

That's right--in the middle of the month-long Ramadan fasting ... how awful!