SPECIAL REPORT | Wednesday | 12 January 2010
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—An American hosting company has restored PakNationalists.com after a temporary settlement over a story critical of illegal CIA operations in Pakistan.
This is probably the first case where a Pakistani website hosted in the US was pulled down because of criticizing CIA. It confirms frequent reporting by the Pakistani website on CIA’s interference in the mainstream media for propaganda purposes.
The US-based hosting company demanded the said article be removed from the website based on a complaint by an unidentified party.
The story in question discussed the escape of CIA Islamabad station chief Jonathan Banks from Pakistan last month to avoid a murder trial.
In a formal complaint today to the American company, PakNationalists.com has raised the specter of a lawsuit in a US court accusing the American hosting company of discrimination. The same story continues to appear on US-hosted websites. Moreover, Terms of Agreement do not preclude posts critical of CIA-related policy matters.
The discrimination shows deliberate targeting of PakNationalists.com, a Pakistani news website critical of US government and CIA policies in Pakistan and the region. The site is run by volunteers in Islamabad but uses the services of a US hosting company.
"Please note that the very same material," says the letter by PakNationalists.com to the American firm, 'is hosted in the United States by Google's blogger.com, where this post is published, titled: The Great Escape Of Jonathan Banks. No one has asked to remove this content [...] Also, Wikipedia has a full dedicated page titled, Jonathan Banks (CIA officer). This page is hosted by a US hosting company. No one has asked to remove it."
A spokesman for PakNationalists.com issued the following statement: "By this measure, we should ask Pakistani authorities to ban every website or newspaper that reproduces CIA 'findings' that usually mix facts with policy propaganda. Maybe we should suggest that other countries do the same whenever western media sources disseminate material released by CIA or the US intelligence community.”
“They’ve been vilifying Pakistan for the past three years but can’t tolerate criticism against themselves. So much for US VP Joseph Biden’s lecture this evening in Islamabad,” the spokesman added, referring to the visit of the US vice president to the country.
Since 2007, Pakistan has been the target of a mass demonization campaign, largely limited to the mainstream American and British media. The minutes of this campaign overlap with the usual US policy sound-bites on Pakistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your comments are welcome. Please do observe common courtesy rules. This blog is linked to PakNationalists.com and follows the same comment guidelines. The purpose of this blog is to promote the views of PakNationalists on Pakistan's domestic and foreign policy interests.