From Mike Wallace To Judith Miller

One of the greats of television journalism is dead. He passed away Saturday night at a caring home in the United States. 

At 93, Mike Wallace leaves behind a tremendous legacy. There is little question that American ingenuity takes the credit for the rise of TV journalism in the world. Mr. Wallace belonged to a generation of American TV professionals who set the standards for what we recognize globally today as news television. 

That generation of American journalists set the bar very high. 

That's the reason why the US media became so influential in the world. It certainly didn't happen because America had a formidable military power. 

What is unfortunate is that influential parts of US media failed to maintain the standards set by Mr. Wallace's generation, of rigorous questioning of authority. And of maintaining a credible distance between journalism and authority. Certainly the media's relationship with government must not be confrontational. But it should not be prone to government manipulation at critical times, such as when the state decides to launch a war of choice characterized by deceit. 

That's what happened with Judith Miller who misled The New York Times, the American people and the world on Iraq and the links between terrorists and WMD.  But she was not alone. NYT editors helped her and the paper become a PR arm for the government. It took one of those editors eight years to come clean on this. 

It gets worse. In recent years, some American editors willingly provided accreditation to intelligence agents disguised as journalists. It happened in the case of Roxana Saberi, caught red handed in Tehran spying for Central Intelligence Agency. She was released under a deal whose terms remain secret but appear to include a commitment on her part never to speak to US media about what she was doing in Iran. She was not a journalist and yet an editor of an American newspaper issued her a press card as cover for spying for CIA in another country. 

After 2002, a new type of journalism invaded US media and we in Pakistan experienced it firsthand. All of a sudden there was a rush of 'news reports' and opinion pieces all seemingly coming from diverse outlets quoting unnamed sources but reading from the same talking points: Pakistan is evil, nukes are up for grab, and this is a place worse than Iraq and hence needs to be fixed. 

None of this has anything to do with Mr. Wallace's legacy. 

And yet his passing provides us an opportunity to remember what endeared America to the world. It is the pure American ingenuity personified by Mr. Wallace's creed. That's the real face of America that the world should see. Not the militaristic, deceitful and the warmongering one personified by Ms. Miller, Ms. Saberi and those who backed them. Recently, this Miller-Saberi side of America has turned hateful, with the near assassination of Gabrielle Gifford and the brutal murder of an Iraqi mother in an American suburb. 

It's been a long way from Mike Wallace to Judith Miller. But it is Wallace that represents what's good about America. Let's stick to that. 

Urgent, From Admiral Mike Mullen

click photo to enlarge

Sean Hoare, British journalist who exposed phone-hacking scandal in UK is found dead. He exposed complicity of British police.

Did they kill him?

Where is homicide detective Admiral Mike Mullen [part-time US Chairman Joint Chiefs] to give us his expert opinion?

Remember he single-handed exposed ISI and Pakistani military's involvement in the murder of another journalist, Saleem Shahzad.

But this time, there are no CIA-leaked report in US papers accusing British police of killing Hoare?

Where is Mrs. Clinton?

Surely the US government cares about Hoare as they did about poor Saleem Shahzad?


  

Let's Crush A Baby!

An Indian 'baba', or healer, literally stands on the bodies of little babies claiming that this heals health problems. India also has the highest rate of forced marriages of underage girls, and systematic discrimination against citizens based on caste; women from the lowest caste are routinely raped. Male members of the lower caste are often victims of physical abuse, including death in many cases. These things happen only in India, the world's largest democracy. The mainstream Indian media and the hordes of American and British journalists based in India don't see these glaring little scandals because of an official policy carefully crafted to project India as the next superpower that is being groomed to serve western interests in Asia. But occasionally stories like these do come out, thanks to conscientious Indian citizens working for the rights of those ignored by the Indian government.

I am posting this video not because it makes for good anti-India bashing and because I am from Pakistan and that’s how things go. Not at all. We in Pakistan have many embarrassing problems unique to us. But none that go as far as crushing babies or burying female newborns alive, which is another issue with the highest global incident rate in India.

The reason I am posting this video here is very political. Instead of buying expensive weapons to fight China and maintain 700,000 soldiers in the tiny patch of Kashmir to crush a people’s demand for freedom, the Indian government should share its immense wealth with its poor and end poverty and illiteracy that breeds the horrendous practices of ‘baby crushing’ and female infanticide. Multimillion-dollar adverts on CNN and glossy Indian movies can't hide this reality, but a good sense can.

And imagine how reduced Indian expenditure on weapons and more on ending poverty will affect stability in Asia: Pakistan won't have to keep up with India's arms race, China will be at ease, and everyone will go back to focusing on things that matter.

India doesn't need a stockpile of weapons because no one is going to invade India. But this man in this video certainly needs a good government to teach him a lesson.

America's Aid To Pakistan Is Not 'Massive' Nor 'Lavish'

You have to love the language the US media uses when discussing American aid to Pakistan.

There is no new aid. But the latest coverage pertains to a report released by the American inspector general's office on the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill.

The inspector general has released a report criticizing US aid's limited impact on improving civilian services in Pakistan.

This civilian aid was approved in 2009, $7.5 billion over five years, beginning in early 2010.

The new report questions the aid's impact, which is negligible. That's not news to us.

But there are bigger myths that surround this aid package to Pakistan in the US media. It's a classic case of US government spinning to itself and its people and then believing its own spin.

I was reading a Fox News report on this aid that described it as 'massive' and quoted unnamed commentators who opposed 'lavishing' US aid on Pakistan.

Massive and lavish? Hardly.

This aid package is not massive and not lavish. Pakistan has been undersold to US interests by two US puppets, Pervez Musharraf and Asif Zardari. If Pakistani nationalists were in power, US officials and media would have heard more frequently about more than US$ 64 billion that Pakistan has lost directly and indirectly because of America's war in Afghanistan.

Washington has knowingly hurt Pakistan's geo-strategic environment and interests in ways far worse than how it abandoned Pakistan after the Soviet defeat in 1991, leaving Pakistan to deal with thousands of militants that CIA gathered to fight the Soviets.

US officials are still hung on 1991 when analyzing Pakistani estrangement but are unaware of the new estrangement that has emerged because of the American mess since 2002.

Compared to a loss of $64 billion in eight years, the Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid package is peanuts. It is not massive nor lavish. It is nothing compared to what US is spending in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Israel. All of them prove that Washington has been paying lip service to its Pakistani ally while doing things that harm the interests of this supposed ally.

The list of things America has done to harm Pakistani interests is long. Many US officials know about this list but pretend it doesn't exist because the pro-US government in Islamabad never raises it, leaving the Pakistani public opinion to worry about it.

The result is that the US discourse on aid to Pakistan is couched in myths and will not help further US interests on the long run.

And despite all the noise to the contrary, US doesn't appear much worried about this. The Obama administration has resorted to gimmicks in how it uses the 2009 aid package. The flow of funds from the package is slow. Each cash installement released is geared toward creating positive headlines than having any real positive impact on the ground. Since 2009 Washington has been making aid announcements to meet various Pakistani needs as if these announcements indicated new aid. But in all of these announcements US officials forgot to mention this was not new aid but a reallocation of Kerry-Lugar-Berman funds.

In short, the US government has been recycling old aid pledges repeatedly to make them look new, and then embellish the story to make aid to Pakistan appear 'massive' and 'lavish'.

This is what the Obama administration did during last year's epic floods in Pakistan. The much touted US helicopters arrived only when pro-US politicians begged Mr. Holbrooke and Mrs. Clinton to cover up for their incompetence in view of the excellent performance of Pakistani NGOs and the Pakistani military.

This shows the level of US disinterest in genuinely helping its Pakistani ally. No wonder this is a troubled relationship. A pro-US government in Islamabad worsens this relationship by not addressing these issues because it needs US help to counter the Pakistani military and can't afford to talk tough to its protectors in DC.

So my advice to US commentators, especially those who toe the official line: Please spare us the spin.

Who Are Pakistan's Westernized Extremists?

I may not have liked his politics but I know that Governor Salman Taseer was not a blasphemer and that clergymen misled our religious-minded people into believing Mr. Taseer was a blasphemer which probably resulted in a 26-year-old man committing a heinous crime that even Muslim law does not condone.

I accused two vocal minorities in Pakistan of killing Taseer. One is the fringe religious extremists. And the other fringe, the westernized extremists.

People are free to be westernized or religious. I have no problem with either. My problem is with extremists from both groups. The westernized extremists venture out to ridicule religion, and the religious extremists take an easy and tolerant religion like Islam and deform it into something unheard of in Muslim history.

I discussed this in detail in my column, Taseer's Real Killers: Two Extremist Pakistani Minorities, which was published by The News International.

In that column, I compared the passionate debate in Pakistan over the anti-blasphemy law to the American national debate between liberals and religious conservatives on abortion a few years ago. And I condemned how some American and British commentators and government officials tried to link an internal Pakistani debate to the war in Afghanistan, two completely different things. [Some American and British commentators tried to justify the failed war in Afghanistan by suggesting that that war is about Muslim-secular divide.]

Some Pakistani liberals emailed me protesting the use of the term westernized extremists. They said westernized Pakistanis are not violent as some religious extremists are like the man who assassinated Mr. Taseer.

My answer is: liberals and religious Pakistanis are not violent. Only the extremists among them are. It is true that a westernized extremist may not carry a weapon, but when he tries to eliminate a substantial and legitimate segment of religious Pakistanis, he or she is setting off a chain reaction that is bound to turn violent at some stage because religion is involved. Respect must be shown in this debate.

The following is how I briefly profiled a westernized Pakistani extremist:

We know who religious extremists are, those who go to extremes not sanctioned by our Prophet PBUH.

Now we should also know the westernized extremists, these are people who ridicule their compatriots who are religious, make fun of religion, don’t understand that to be liberal doesn’t mean that you oppose religion or oppose the right of another Pakistani to be religious. A westernized extremist is someone who can’t differentiate between opposing extremism and opposing religion, who thinks to be a liberal is to go to war with anyone who has a religious mind and heart. A westernized extremist is someone like Sherry who is right in wanting to amend or repeal the blasphemy law but she is NOT RIGHT in saying death should not be a legal pubishment for blasphemy. She not right because this penalty is part of the Islamic legal jurisprudence and part of Pakistani laws even without the blasphemy law, and so she doesn’t have the right to single-handedly decide if it’s right or wrong.

It ok if you want to be westernized or religious, just don’t go to extremes and divide Pakistanis along religious vs. secular, etc. We have more urgent problems in this country than these ‘imported debates’. They are imported because some western writers start this debate and some of our own buy it and think that’s all what we should be debating.

PakNationalists Site Restored After CIA-Related Glitch

SPECIAL REPORT | Wednesday | 12 January 2010

WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

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.

CIA Complaint Results In Shutting Down A Pakistani Website

PakNationalists.com says it has been formally warned to remove an article on CIA’s secret war inside Pakistan from its website that mentions the name of CIA’s former top spy in Islamabad. The American Internet company that hosts the website on its servers in the United States has complied and told the Pakistani website that the decision is ‘not up for debate.” The irony is that CIA leaves out American and British newspapers and websites that ran the story and targets a Pakistani site critical of US policies.

SPECIAL REPORT | Monday | 10 January 2011

WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—One of Pakistan’s premier online news websites, PakNationalists.com was pulled off the Internet in the first week of 2011 after the US-based hosting company said the site must remove an article mentioning the name of Mr. Jonathan Banks, CIA’s former Islamabad station chief who escaped from Pakistan last month to avoid a murder trial linked to CIA’s secret war inside the country.

The US-based hosting company, GoDaddy.com, said in a written statement sent to the management of PakNationalists.com in Islamabad that the Pakistani website must remove an article titled, ‘CIA Station Chief In Islamabad Sued For Murder And Terrorism.’ [Click here to see an old snapshot of the article from Google cache.  Or click here to read the article on another website]

In its strongly worded statement, the American company warned, “We ask that you either remove the content […] or move your” website to another Internet hosting provider.

On 3 January, the American company gave the Pakistani website 48 hours to comply, and pulled the site down on 5 January.

“Please be aware that this decision [to remove the content] is final, and is not up for debate,” said an email by the Abuse Department at GoDaddy.com

WHY ONLY TARGET A PAKISTANI SITE?

The strange aspect of the story is that hundreds of newspapers and websites covered this story worldwide, including in the United States. But only a Pakistani website, PakNationalists/AhmedQuraishi.com, is being targeted.

UK’s the Guardian newspaper, whose online version is accessible in the United States, published the story on Dec. 17 along with the full name and designation of Mr. Banks.

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, runs a dedicated page titled Jonathan Banks (CIA officer) but no one has shut down Wikipedia.

UK’s Channel 4 reported CIA station chief’s name but its broadcast and website are accessible from the US.

Another US-based website, running an editorial titled, The Great Escape Of Jonathan Banks, has not been asked to shut down or remove the top spy’s name.

It is obvious that PakNationalists.com is the target.

WHY US?

“We inquired as to who could have made this complaint,” said Gulpari Nazish Mehsud, a young Pakistani who sees herself as a ‘Pakistani nationalist’ and helps manage the website as a volunteer. “The US company won’t give us a name, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess who is making the complaint.”

CIA and the US government have requested the mainstream US media not to print Mr. Banks’ name, although it is all over the world media.

Pakistani nationalism has been on the rise in Pakistan since 2007, when Pakistanis complained that the US and its British ally and their media indulged in the worst demonization campaign against Pakistan as a pressure tactic to squeeze strategic concessions out of the nuclear-armed nation. 

The PakNationalists group began in 2007 with four persons. Today, it boasts close to 5,000 members from different parts of Pakistan. “Mostly young and educated Pakistanis, and intensely nationalistic,” said Mehsud.  

PakNationalists.com is probably one of the earliest online news sites that monitored in detail the many aspects of the US double game against Pakistan in Afghanistan.

“We’ve been under pressure before,” said Ahmed Quraishi, one of the founders of PakNationalists.com as an online forum for Pakistani nationalists. “In 2007, a US diplomat in Islamabad fed a senior Washington Post columnist this information that we’re somehow ISI,” he said, adding “Anyone in Pakistan who defends this country’s legitimate rights is somehow ISI. Maybe that’s why they are harassing us now.”

PakNationalists.com is down until further notice.

Indians Welcome In Pakistan, Pakistanis Beaten And Killed In India

Not a single Indian visitor to Pakistan, whether a private citizen, government officer or an Indian artist, was ever harassed by Pakistanis in any way in the entire history of Pak-Indian relations. The legendary Pakistani hospitality always embraced and touched visiting Indians as is the case with other foreigners visiting Pakistan.

In comparison, Pakistanis are regularly harassed and intimidated and in some cases even physically attacked while visiting India.

The biggest example is how 60 Pakistanis were burned alive aboard the so-called Samjhota (Friendship) Express train when they believed calls for peace and headed to India in February 2007. Today, the Indian government has admitted Hindu terrorists, including two serving Indian military officers, were behind the gruesome murder. The Indian government, backed by American and British media, insisted immediately after the attacks that they were the work of Pakistan's ISI and Kashmiri freedom groups.

There are more recent examples. Here are two of them to prove this point:

- Bigg Boss planning to send back Pakistani Artists : Pakistani participants in an Indian TV show face life threats by Hindu terrorists. The Indian government and people are unable to protect them.

- Pakistani artist beaten up in Mumbai: A well known Pakistani comedian Shakeel Siddiqui has been tortured by some extremists in Mumbai and ordered to urgently depart from India.

There is a mindset in India, in powerful circles in government, the military and the Hindu terror groups, that can't live with a smaller western neighbor that poses no existential threat to India.

This record of anti-Pakistanism in India contradicts the ridiculous statements of US officials and think-tank types who lecture Pakistan that India is not a threat.

Sorry, India, You Can't Be A Superpower With A Brain Of A Mouse

India is a big country with the brain of a mouse. Take this headline from India’s largest newspaper, Times of India: Obama Mission: Billions To Pakistan, Billions To India.

I love the headline. It’s not wrong but a little exaggerated. US President Obama is offering $2 billion’s worth of military hardware purchases to Pakistan, subsidized by US government.

For Pakistan, it’s a cautious welcome. Nothing will come to us immediately. The purchases are divided over the next five years. It will be a slow process, involving government red tape, politics and the usual arm-twisting that Washington is so good at. It’s also a lollypop that the US government has dangled before the Pakistani military to calm some of the anger over a US helicopter killing three Pakistani soldiers three weeks ago.

The Indian government knows all this. It also knows that recent US sale of F-16s to Pakistan came with a harsh condition: the planes will be accompanied by US ‘minders’ as part of support staff who will live on the base and ensure Pakistan does not ‘misuse’ the planes, as in against India.

Still, two weeks before Obama lands in India on an official visit, Indian media managers leaked this fabulously-titled but well-researched report, grumbling that billions of Indian dollars will be going to US pockets while Pakistan will be getting billions’ worth of weapons for free. Of course, even if Pakistan buys up all the $2 billion’s worth of US weapons immediately and not over five years, it will still not match India’s massive weapons shopping spree worth $30 billion, to be spent by 2012, meaning within the next two years.

This tells you one thing: the Indian government is really not worried about the puny $2 billion offer to Pakistan tipping the scales. We can’t match India’s $30 billion.

If that is clear, then what is it that India is worried about? Why whine about two billions to Pakistan over five years when India is spending fifteen times that figure in less than two years?

It’s just India’s small-minded pursuit of anything that would undermine Pakistan. There is no way Pakistan would ever invade or destroy India, nor are most Pakistanis interested in this proposition. It’s always the bigger countries that destroy smaller ones. Yet India doesn’t really miss a second seizing any opportunity to hurt Pakistan. Remember 1971 when peaceful Pakistanis were busy in post-elections noise? India launched an unprovoked invasion of Pakistan and, as the invasion unfolded, we discovered the Indians had actually planned it for two years and created and recruited a proxy army inside our country to help them once the invasion started.

The mindset behind the Times of India story is the same mindset that invaded us in 1971, the same mindset that refuses to resolve Kashmir and pave the way for peace, the same mindset that exploits Afghan mess to set up training camps to export terrorists to Pakistan, the same mindset that plants terrorism in Balochistan, and the same mindset that bans Pakistani TV channels across India.

And to confirm the height of this Indian small-mindedness, it is the same mindset that bans Pakistani visitors from posting comments on Indian news websites, no matter how respectful that comment is, if the comment questions official Indian positions on any question. [Let me also add that Pakistani guest columnists are banned in mainstream Indian newspapers for the same reason. Compare that to Pakistani generosity as our newspapers permit guest Indian columnists to write freely even if they criticize official Pakistani policies, and no Pakistani news website bans Indians surfers from posting comments.]

Our American friends can’t see this Indian small-mindedness, of course. That’s why we hear US officials insisting India is not a threat to Pakistan, the latest such gratuitous advice came just this week during the Pak-US strategic dialogue currently underway in Washington.

For Pakistan and India to live in peace, even resolving Kashmir won’t help if India doesn’t get itself a new mindset, big and confident, in contrast to the existing insecure, small-minded way of looking at its smaller neighbors.

NOTE: Not a single Indian visitor to Pakistan, whether a private citizen, government officer or an Indian artist, was ever harassed by Pakistanis in any way in the entire history of Pak-Indian relations. The legendary Pakistani hospitality always embraced and touched visiting Indians as is the case with other foreigners visiting Pakistan.

In comparison, Pakistanis are regularly harassed and intimidated and in some cases even physically attacked while visiting India.

The biggest example is how 60 Pakistanis were burned alive aboard the so-called Samjhota (Friendship) Express train when they believed calls for peace and headed to India in February 2007. Today, the Indian government has admitted Hindu terrorists, including two serving Indian military officers, were behind the gruesome murder. The Indian government, backed by American and British media, insisted immediately after the attacks that they were the work of Pakistan's ISI and Kashmiri freedom groups.

There are more recent examples. Here are two of them to prove this point:

- Bigg Boss planning to send back Pakistani Artists : Pakistani participants in an Indian TV show face life threats by Hindu terrorists. The Indian government and people are unable to protect them.

- Pakistani artist beaten up in Mumbai: A well known Pakistani comedian Shakeel Siddiqui has been tortured by some extremists in Mumbai and ordered to urgently depart from India.

There is a mindset in India, in powerful circles in government, the military and the Hindu terror groups, that can't live with a smaller western neighbor that poses no existential threat to India.

This record of anti-Pakistanism in India contradicts the ridiculous statements of US officials and think-tank types who lecture Pakistan that India is not a threat.