Ed Vulliamy, who filed the first eyewitness dispatches about Serb-run prison camps in Bosnia, writes in The Observer that journalists should testify at war crimes trials. “I believe there are times in history—as any good Swiss banker will tell you—[when] neutrality is not neutral but complicit in the crime,” Vulliamy argues. “We are entering a new world that seeks not only to report the legacy of tyrants and mass murderers, but to call them to account. Why should journalists of all people—whose information will be of such value—perch loftily above the due process of law?” I tend to side with Vulliamy, but shades of grey are involved, so no journalist should be compelled to testify, or feel compelled to do so.

Why can’t Thomas Friedman say “I was wrong”? His column on Sunday argues, rightly, that President Bush’s war on terrorism fails to embrace non-military strategies that would help ensure America’s security. “I blame him for squandering all the positive feeling in America after 9/11, particularly among young Americans who wanted to be drafted for a great project that would strengthen America in some lasting way—a Manhattan Project for energy independence,” Friedman writes.

What’s strange about Friedman’s advice is that after 9/11 few journalists banged the bombing drum as strongly as he did. Why did President Bush not begin a peaceful Manhattan Project to complement the military campaign? In part, because influential voices like Friedman’s were doing little other than shouting about the military option. Belatedly, Friedman notes that turning America into a fortress state does not make us safe: “A war on terrorism that is fought only by sending soldiers to Afghanistan or by tightening our borders will ultimately be unsatisfying.”

Can the United Nations do anything right? The surprising answer, in light of the U.N.‘s failures in Bosnia, Somalia, and Rwanda during the 1990s, may be “yes.” East Timor’s new government takes over from the U.N. on Monday, and as The Washington Post notes, East Timor’s leaders “are saying something that few other beneficiaries of U.N. governance ever have: The international effort to reincarnate their country has been a success.”

Two years ago Sierra Leone was a symbol of everything that was wrong in Africa. It was suffering through a civil war that was notable, in its brutality, for the prevalance of men, women and children whose arms were chopped off by doped-up rebels wearing tutus and wigs. U.N. peacekeepers were nearly wiped out by the rebels—this was front-page news for a while—but held on, barely.

It was buried in most papers, if reported at all, but Sierra Leone just had an election in which the rebels, whose death grip on the country seemed invincible, were trounced at the ballot box. This is startling enough to merit page-one treatment. What does it say about Africa, and our notions of Africa, when a country as hopeless as Sierra Leone begins to climb out of the abyss, especially as Sudan and Angola begin stepping away from their civil wars, too?

The terrorists who killed 11 Frenchman in Karachi, using a car bomb outside the Sheraton Hotel, selected a target that could lead to their undoing. The Frenchmen were engineers overseeing construction of a submarine for the Pakistani Navy; the bus that became their tomb was marked with the navy’s initials. In the wake of the attack, the French government has withdrawn its submarine personnel. That’s a blow to Pakistan’s military establishment, on top of the humiliation of failing to protect its guests.

In essence, the terrorists attacked an institution—the military—that, once roused, can play a key role in closing them down. Before the attack, General Pervez Musharraf hadn’t done much to crack down on terrorism. Most suspects arrested in recent months have been released; outlawed groups merely changed their names. Crucially, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the ISI, which is far more powerful than the police, was not terribly interested in going to war against fundamentalists it supported before 9/11. The government’s attitude seemed to be, Don’t bother us and we won’t bother you.

The government has been bothered. Its war on terrorism might now involve action rather than words.

It’s got 16 basketball courts, a Cybex fitness center, a chess club, a motorcycle club, aerobics classes, recovery meetings for alcoholics, financial planning seminars, a coffeepot that dispenses 5,000 cups an hour, and 403 toilets. That’s right, it’s a church. A new wave of full-service churches is described in today’s New York Times, in a story that is buried, relatively speaking, in the House & Home section.  “The church was deliberately designed like a mall,” the Times explains. “The sanctuary is the anchor tenant.”

From April 13 to May 4 I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. The hotel is as ugly as a bunker, with unpainted cement as an exterior, and it feels like a bunker, too, because there’s no shortage of security around its perimeter. Private guards, police, paramilitary. Business was getting back to usual while I was there, after the kidnapping and murder, in January, of Daniel Pearl. I checked out on Sunday and returned to New York. This morning a large bomb exploded outside the Sheraton, killing 15, including a dozen French citizens in a bus. My photographer, who stayed behind, had fortunately repaired to his bathroom moments before the blast; not only were the windows blown out of his room on the seventh floor, so was the door. A mutilated world indeed.

Are placebos more powerful than drugs? Today’s Washington Post looks into the medication of America:

“After thousands of studies, hundreds of millions of prescriptions and tens of billions of dollars in sales, two things are certain about pills that treat depression: antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft work. And so do sugar pills. A new analysis has found that in the majority of trials conducted by drug companies in recent decades, sugar pills have done as well as—or better than—antidepressants…The new research may shed light on findings such as those from a trial last month that compared the herbal remedy St. John’s wort against Zoloft. St. John’s wort fully cured 24 percent of the depressed people who received it, and Zoloft cured 25 percent—but the placebo fully cured 32 percent.”

Two years ago, The New York Times Magazine examined, in fascinating detail, the ways and means of the placebo effect.

On the flight back to New York from Karachi, I continued reading Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” and I continue to be awed by it. Franzen can write and think, treating you to style wrapped around ideas. Reading his book is akin to watching Dirk Nowitzki play basketball—a big man who can dribble and shoot. An example—

And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn’t that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you’re less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn’t it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you’ve experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you’re seeing them more clearly. And it comes to you that this is what it means to love life, this is all anybody who talks seriously about God is ever talking about.

As for Nowitzki, he’s on the cover of this week’s Sports Illustrated.

For a dose of sensory overload, Karachi style, a visit to the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi is highly recommended. I stopped by it the other night and felt pity for the photographer who was with me; there was no way a picture could absorb and express its beauty and chaos. (I also realized that words couldn’t do it justice, either.) The Sufi tomb, on a hilltop overlooking the Arabian Sea, consists of a green and white dome with flags fluttering in the breeze and waves of incense leavening the air. Barefoot pilgrims ascend a long and steep staircase: beggars, peasants, bricklayers, drivers, addicts, office workers, etc. Some sing, some pray. Surrounding the shrine is a marketplace that counts, among its attractions, fortune tellers and traditional musicians whose listeners pass, from hand to hand, the joints they have made from tobacco and hashish. The joints are unnecessary; the shrine is hallucinogenic.

I am travelling with my digital camera, a Leica, but I tend to leave it in my hotel room on most outings; I’m not in Karachi to take pictures, and the presence of a camera can get in the way of things. But I shouldn’t have neglected it last night, when I finished an interview in the center of town and had an hour before meeting someone else. I drove to the McDonald’s in Clifton, a trendy neighborhood by the Arabian Sea; my primary interest wasn’t a McChicken, though I consumed one, but the scene, which did not disappoint. You walk into the restaurant and to your left is a bench, upon which sits a smiling, life-size model of Ronald McDonald, painted in brilliant shades of red and yellow, with his right arm extended along the back; you cannot sit on the bench without appearing to be embraced by RM. Snuggled next to him, and giggling, though I couldn’t tell for sure, was a woman wearing a hijab, which is a black gown and veil that revealed only her eyes, which were full of mirth.

What do you do if the crowd at your rally is hoisting placards that bear the likeness of a political leader other than yourself? If you are General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, you ignore the pictures of Altaf Hussain, an exiled politician, and wave at the crowd as though it belongs to you. You start your speech even though riot policemen are whacking the unruly with wood batons. And you continue speaking even though a considerable number of rally-goers are heading for the exits long before the completion of your address.

In other words, I had an enjoyable time at Musharraf’s rally in Karachi, even though the temperature was in the hundreds and due to security concerns you couldn’t purchase refreshments (glass or plastic bottles might have been thrown at the podium). It was the general’s last outing before a referendum on Tuesday that will extend his rule by five years; the outcome is certain because opposition gatherings have been banned and the opposition has told its supporters to boycott the show. The referendum may not be democratic, but at least it’s entertaining. I will miss the stories in local papers about the government impounding buses to transport its supporters to the general’s rallies.

Things you see on the streets of Karachi: a motorcycle with five people on board (a father driving, a child in his lap, a child behind him, wife behind the child, riding side-saddle, holding a baby); donkey pulling a cart laden with 30-foot steel girders; motorized rickshaw with six or seven schoolkids crammed onto a seat that fits, typically, two adults; a camel; colorfully decrepit buses with passengers on the roof, spilling out the open doors, hanging on for dear life during their daily commute; blind beggars led by young boys; hawkers selling newspapers, roses, bracelets, coconut slices; traffic cops in white uniforms; para-military troops, known as Rangers, on patrol in pickups, with machine-guns;  late-model Hondas and Toyotas, the vehicles of choice for Karachi’s middle class. You feel the heat, hear the noise, inhale the dust. Exhilarating, exhausting.

Last night I attended a fashion show, and a few nights earlier I attended a fashion show. That’s two more fashion shows than I’ve attended in America, or anywhere. The shows took place by an outdoor pool at a luxury hotel in the center of Karachi, and they seemed the real thing (Fashion TV, which I’ve not been able to ignore, is my guide on this). The shows, featuring Pakistani-designed garments, included strobe lights, throbbing music, scowling models (why don’t models smile?) and clothing that revealed enough flesh to give Mullah Omar a heart attack, though not as much as you’d see on a New York catwalk. I hadn’t been invited but happened to pass by and became curious—fashion shows in Pakistan? Because I am Caucasian I was waved inside by security guards who were otherwise making sure that Pakistani guests possessed invitations; reverse racism has its benefits, at least for its beneficiaries.

The News is a leading Pakistani daily, in English, and today it had a scoop—an exclusive interview with President General (that’s his title) Pervez Musharraf. The story, under a headline that stretched across seven columns, included the following passage: “In a 90-minute wide-ranging talk in which he received volley of tough questions on all ticklish issues with a smiling face, the president said if the forces opposing him start ‘get him’ activities in the parliament that would be ‘most unfortunate’ but if they strengthen reforms and restructuring and turning around the economy he would provide strength to them. Looking ahead a prosperous, viable, dynamic, politically and democratically stable Pakistan, he brushed aside the notion that Pakistan was a lost nation. ‘We are not at all a lost nation.’”

You are caught in a traffic jam in Karachi and a beggar raps on your window. He displays a withered limb or (take your pick) a twitching stump, a bleeding abscess, an arm bent like a question mark, hands with no fingers, a goutish tumor, a cleft lip, a scorched face. The look in his yellowed eyes says, “You are not going to ignore this, are you?” The window is rolled up, the air-conditioning is on, the doors are locked and neither the traffic nor the beggar moves. After an interval, he raps again. In the evenings, as the diseased and afflicted limp out of the darkness, evoking a macabre scene from “Night of the Living Dead,” the situation fluctuates between grotesque and absurd, repulsive and fascinating. Your car is an existential bubble on wheels; you don’t want this, nobody would want this, but it is worthwhile. The rapping on the window—how should America respond?

The following titles are in the display window at London Books, a store in The Point, Karachi’s trendiest shopping mall:

“War of the Ring” by J.R.R. Tolkien
“The Trial of Henry Kissinger” by Christopher Hitchens
“Buddha” by Karen Armstrong
“The Summons” by John Grisham
“Dreamcatcher” by Stephen King
“Mao” by Jonathan Spence
“Jack” by Jack Welch
“The Infinite Plan” by Isabel Allende
“Self Matters” by Phillip C. McGraw
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling (Urdu version)

I purchased “A Wet Afternoon” by Saadat Hasan Manto, one of the greatest Urdu writers. It’s an English translation of his best short stories.

Just had my first encounter with brain masala. Not a joke. Quite popular in Karachi, and not at all bad; soft in texture and gentle in taste, much like tofu, though high in cholesterol, I’m told.

Most technological breakthroughs are not breakthroughs in all ways; there’s often a drawback of one sort or another. As has been noted widely, PDAs are great but they don’t have the permanence of datebooks. A few years ago I leafed through my grandfather’s datebook from the 1950s; it was fascinating, in a time-travelling way. I don’t imagine the data in my Pilot (not to mention the Pilot itself) will be around in fifty years (or ten).

But there’s no drawback, for a journalist on a road trip, to a digital recorder. I recently purchased an Olympus DM-1, for which Mac software is available (essential for my iBook), and my current trip to Pakistan is its first test. I’m in love with it. My backpack is not filling up with a dozen or two dozen tapes that are a pain to carry around; more than 20 hours of interviews fit on a 128 MG chip, and the DM-1 is half as large as the tape recorder it replaced. Just as important, no longer do I worry about losing my precious tapes through theft or negligence or bad luck; I download everything at the end of the day, so I’ve got a backup on my laptop, and for extra peace of mind I can email crucial interviews to a server that stores them until I return to New York to write my story.

It’s bliss. Thank you, John von Neumann.

I walked into a drugstore in Islamabad yesterday and noticed, in a proud stack by the cash register, a dozen cans of Slim-Fast. A few yards away, on the street, was a montage of Pakistani misery—street kids, homeless men, hunger. This might be an economic indicator in the era of globalization, though I’m not sure what it indicates. When a country as destitute as Pakistan begins importing a weight-loss drink, does it mean income distribution and the lifestyles of the rich and poor are dangerously out of whack? Or does the arrival of strawberry-flavored Slim-Fast mean Pakistan is inching up the ladder of prosperity? Or both?