Music Teacher Molests A Girl In A Florida Indian Temple For Four Years, But That's Not News Because He Is Not A Pakistani!

You Heard About Indian Air Force Officer Deported By Israel For Molesting A Kid? Neither Did I

A music teacher masturbated and forced his female student to have sex with him. This happened inside the South Florida Hindu Temple for four years. The student is 14 now and testified in court on Tuesday. Semen splatter has been found by the police inside the Hindu temple.

When the girl's family tried to go public with this, the Indian community forced them to keep the scandal under wraps, shunning the girl and her family.

If this was a case involving a Pakistani, even if there was a hint of Pakistani involvement, like maybe the Indian music teacher traveled to Karachi en route to the Himalayas, this news would have been on CNN, Fox and BBC. But since it involves an Indian, the US media will give it a pass.

This is not an issue of religion. Deviants are found in all religions. It's an issue of how the Am-Brit media selectively treats stories that impact government's foreign policy priorities.

For example, in keeping with the official Washington policy of elevating India as a future power, the Am-Brit media won't cover the story of an Australian preacher burned alive with his two young boys by an Indian religious mob. But when the professors of London School of Economics decide to become Inspector Gadgets and release a ridiculous 'I-hate-you' report against ISI and the Pakistani military, it is accorded maximum space by the Am-Brit news media because it simply suits current Am-Brit policies.

[See the original story here: Music Teacher Found Guilty Of Sexually Molesting Girl In Hindu Temple ]

So you can get away with a lot these days if you're an Indian offender facing the Am-Brit media [a.k.a. the "international media"]. 

Take for example the case of the Indian Air Force officer deported by Israel last year for molesting a 6-year-old. I consider myself a news junkie and I have plenty of junkies like me in our PakNationalists team who scour the news as a hobby and yet I never heard of this story until today. 

While the Am-Brit media pushed this news under the rug, the Indian Express covered the story and linked it to the reports of Indian peacekeepers in Africa found involved in child prostitution:

But the story that takes the cake for how the Am-Brit news media is totally motivated and often passes biases for analysis and news is the following story.

"This is the first time that an official from the IAF has been charged with attempting to abuse a child during a foreign posting. In the past, soldiers from the Indian Army posted at a peacekeeping mission in Congo have been investigated and found guilty for child abuse by the United Nations. A UN report revealed last year indicted Indian Peacekeepers posted in Congo for child abuse and paying minor Congolese girls in North Kivu for sex in 2007 and earlier this year."

When 69 Pakistanis were burned alive aboard the so-called Peace Train as it traveled through India, BBC's Jill McGivering, like most Am-Brit corresponds, pinned the blame on Pakistan and Kashmiri freedom groups.

Read these two fascinating paragraphs written by Ms. McGivering:
Even in her analysis, BBC's Ms. McGivering was convinced that the perpetrators were Pakistanis and that the high number of dead Pakistanis was probably a blunder on the part of the attackers who aimed at 'a different target' like maybe Hindu Indians.

"The prime suspects might be groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, the main Islamic militant groups who have been blamed for many high-profile bombings. Recent attacks on Delhi, Mumbai and Varanasi, for example, seemed designed to damage India's image abroad and stoke anti-Pakistan feeling inside India. But the fact that so many of the dead on the train were Pakistani Muslims may indicate that the devices were intended for a different target, or exploded prematurely."

Of course, in 2008, three serving Indian military intelligence officers were arrested and charged with planning and executing the terrorist act. A Hindu terror group was also indicted as having helped the three Indian officers.

But did the BBC or Ms. McGivering apologize for their wrong information and wrong analysis?

No.

Did the BBC and the rest of the Am-Brit media highlight the nexus between Indian intelligence and Hindu terror groups?

No.

A Pakistani Elder's Statement - Pakistan Destined To Defeat India - Riles Indians

The Nation newspaper of Pakistan reported that its editor in chief Mr. Majeed Nizami, who also heads the Foundation for Pakistan's Ideology, accused India in a story published recently that it "is bent upon destroying Pakistan." 

Mr. Nizami then went on to make a dire warning cloaked in satire. "If India," he said, "did not refrain from committing aggression against us, then Pakistan is destined to defeat India because our horses in the form of atomic bombs and missiles are far better than Indian ‘donkeys’."

Mr. Nizami was apparently making a refernce in jest to several incidents recently where Indian missile tests flopped, nuclear security was breached, and a story where foreign experts charged that the famed Indian nuclear tests of 1998 were not as successful as portrayed by New Delhi.

This statement riled some Indians so much that it unleashed a flurry of emails from Indians to Pakistani newspapers and news Web sites accusing Mr. Nizami of promoting hatred against India.

The Indians were so angry they apparently picked up every Pakistani newspaper columnist and sent them emails. I received one of them in my capacity as a columnist for The News. 

I had not read the original statement by Mr. Nizamy but judging by Indian reactions I thought Mr. Nizami might have really gone hard this time on the Indians.

But I was disappointed. My first reaction after reading him was that his statement is peanuts compared to the anti-Pakistan drivel that virtually fills the Indian airwaves and newsprint. There isn't anyone in Pakistan who can match the Indian hatemongering against Pakistan.

Mr. Nizami's statement was reasonable and conditional on Indian actions. I can list over 20 references quoting Indian public figures, political leaders, and religious leaders who've made statements that encourage extreme hatred toward Pakistan and Pakistanis. I can't recall a single incident in Pakistan where a Pakistani Hindu was attacked or killed because of his or her religion. In India, 2100 Indians were killed because they were Muslims. And this happened in the 21st century, not in the 1920s.

Serving Indian military officers joined Hindu terrorists to burn 50 Pakistanis alive in 2006. India not only has the world's biggest concentration of poverty and health issues, it also has the biggest concentration of religious nutcases, disgusting religious practices, and outright hatemongering against followers of other religions, especially Christians and Muslims.

For every case of an old Saudi man marrying a 15-year-old girl, there are at least a hundred similar cases in India, not to mention the unique tradition of burying newborn girls alive as a custom across many Indian villages and towns. And this happens today, not a century ago.

All of this doesn't come to the surface very often because the American and British media is biased in favor of India for political and strategic reasons. Otherwise, India's ugly face is worse than anything we've seen anywhere else.

Pakistani Openness And Indian Censorship

I relish the moment an Indian comes to this blog and complains about the 'height of intolerance' when his or her official Indian propaganda is deleted.

Intolerance? No, just reciprocity really.

Almost all the major Indian news websites, the same ones that claim secular democracy, regularly block the accounts of any Pakistani visitor who registers and writes something that punctuates the official Indian propaganda on Kashmir or bilateral relations.

The only Pakistani comments that are accepted by Indian news websites are those that either praise India or at least criticize Pakistan. Anything else, even if it was a measured comment peppered with praise for India, is deleted and its author is blocked.

And I am not talking about unknown Indian blogs. I am talking about mainstream Indian newspapers and television stations. All of them follow the same policy of blocking any Pakistani comment maker. They also never publish op-eds by any Pakistani commentator unless the author is either praising India or clearly opposing Pakistan's policies.

Moreover, all Indian media outlets follow a quiet policy of sticking to the Indian official position on Kashmir and on rape cases by Indian soldiers not to mention the mass graves found recently. I, of course, dare not say 'mass gaves' and 'Saddam's Iraq' in one sentence on any Indian news website.

In contrast, the Pakistani media not only publishes Indian authors who openly criticize Pakistan, but discussion on Kashmir in Pakistani media always gives space to the Indian viewpoint as well.

Indian claims about openness are just that. Claims. But of course the Am-Brit media won't see that, especially when Wall Street Journal, for an example in yellow journalism, never hesitated in publishing lies planted by US government in the runup to the invasion.

So I tell all the young administrators and Web editors editing the various forums run under PakNationalists to keep our Indian visitors on a short leash and make frequent use of the delete buttion. Because we're not here to foster debate with them. We're here to tell our story. Period.

Two Pakistani Officials Fired For Promoting Indian Propaganda

You will not believe this. But this happened in Pakistan. And two junior government officials might lose their jobs over this. But with a pro-US government in power in Islamabad, and former employees of Voice of America allowed to steer the nation’s media policy, it shouldn’t be surprising to see a Pakistani mouthpiece promoting Indian spin.

India's Central Reserve Police Force, used by India's government to suppress the Kashmiri struggle for freedom, killed a 16-year-old Kashmiri boy the other day.

Nothing new in that. Indians have done worse, like mass graves and genocide. What was unusual here is that Makhdoom Babar Sultan woke up one morning this week in his home in Islamabad to read a clarification in a major Pakistani newspaper issued by the chief of the Indian CRPF assuring readers that Indian occupation police in Kashmir had nothing to do with murdering the 16-year-old, who was last seen throwing stones at Indian soldiers.

Mr. Babar scrathced his head.  He was shocked to see who hen he tried to see who wrote the story. It was APP, or the Associated Press of Pakistan, the official news agency.

'Wait a second', he said to himself, 'What is APP doing promoting the viewpoint of Indian occupation forces in Kashmir?'

Pakistanis already know that their government in Islamabad was basically tailored by the Americans and the Brits. No secret in that. The Am-Brits expect this government to push their agenda, which these days includes urgently patching up with India so that the Pakistani people and their military can be convinced to allow Indian soldiers into Afghanistan to help the Americans with their failed occupation there.

But peddling Indian propaganda? That’s going too far.

Unlike the rest of us, Makhdoom Babar is lucky to own a newspaper. So he rushed to his office in the morning to write a story on this, titled ‘APP Starts Promoting Indian Govt’s Kashmir Propaganda’.

Two APP journalists have been suspended and a probe is underway that might lead to some more job losses.

Earlier, two journalists from the state-run PTV were suspended for visiting the US embassy without permission.

When I contacted Makhdoom Babar to get his perspective, he replied with this E-mail note:

“Well, the Associated Press of Pakistan, the APP is the official news agency of the government of Pakistan. the aims and objectives behind running this State news agency is to project the Pakistan government's view point across the globe and throughout the country as well. The Tax Payers' money is spent on the functioning of this agency because it is supposed to promote and project national interests. Especially when it comes to the very sensitive issues like Occupation of Jammu and Kashmir by Indian Forces, the role of APP becomes very important and sensitive as well. it is supposed to confront the media propaganda of the Indian government that New Delhi continues to carry on with to cover up the gross Human Rights violations in the Occupied Kashmir by its brutal Forces. Now if APP releases a news item that actually contributes to the promotion of Indian view point over the Kashmir related matters, particularly the HR violations related matters, it is really alarming for every Pakistani and for me, as an Editor, it becomes even more worrying. That is why we published this as a major news so that such things should be taken care of in future and are not repeated. We have not been officially made known about any action taken by the APP over this issue however unofficial channels say that APP has suspended 2 of its workers over the matter and the Managing Director of APP is reported to have ordered a probe to dig out as to how it did happen. We appreciate the action taken by the the head of APP as a responsible head of an institution but at the same time we expect that no one should be made a scapegoat and only those should be warned or punished who were actually responsible for this blooper, deliberately or un-deliberately. It was very important for the head of the APP to have taken an action over the matter so that everyone stands warned and alarmed regarding such matters.”

At least two senior members of the incumbent Pakistani government are former VOA employees who served in Washington, D.C.  Both are directly involved in how Pakistan's official media outlets operate. Informally, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington is also considered to have a say in the government’s media strategy, according government officials.

Where Is Pakistan's National Honor?

Surrendered by Musharraf and almost abandoned by Zardari and Nawaz and a long list of US apologists in a nation seething with anger, isn’t it time for Pakistan’s rulers to take a stand? US, Britain and India top the list of countries where Pakistani citizens are abused as a state policy. Imagine 60 Indians or Americans or Brits burned alive on Pakistani soil? It happened to us but our failed rulers have hushed it because they can’t stand up for national honor. War on terror or not, the policy of humiliating Pakistanis must come to an end.

Read the full column here.

America's Sleazeball Haqqani

In the thick of the debate over Kerry-Lugar bill in Pakistan, Ambassador Husain Haqqani came under unprecedented attack. In fact, he is the only Pakistani ambassador to US who was ruthlessly criticized in the federal parliament for two days, with open demands that he be recalled from Washington. There are two reasons he survived. One is Mr. Zardari, and the second is the terrorist attack on the GHQ building in Rawalpindi. Pakistan's isolated President sees Mr. Haqqani as his man in Washington, entrusted with ensuring that Washington keeps its part of the 'deal' that brought his government to power. Interestingly, the Americans see Haqqani as their man, entrusted with ensuring that Zardari and Pakistan's military keep their parts of the 'deal'. When Mr. Haqqani sensed the noose tightening around his neck, he tried to play smart, using the Foreign Policy magazine to leak out a message to whom it may concern in Islamabad [and Rawalpindi]. The Nation published this message in a story titled If Fired, Haqqani Threatens To Reveal 'Reams' of Pakistani Secrets on Oct. 14. Mr. Haqqani didn't anticipate that someone will catch his subtle message. So he slapped a defamation suit. But he certainly wasn't expecting this response from The Nation. Here it is in case you missed it.

Anti-Americanism Rises In Pakistan Over U.S. Motives

By Saeed Shah

McClatchy Newspapers

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For weeks now, the Pakistani media have portrayed America, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of lights, all part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, according to some, is putting American lives at risk.


Pakistanis are reacting to what many here see as an "imperial" American presence, echoing Iraq and Afghanistan, with Washington dictating to the Pakistani military and the government. Polls show that Pakistanis regard the U.S., formally a close ally and the country's biggest donor, as a hostile power.


U.S. officials have either denied the allegations or moved to blunt the criticism, but suspicions remain and relations between the two countries are getting more strained.


The lively Pakistani media has been filled with stories of under-cover American agents operating in the country, tales of a huge contingent of U.S. Marines planned to be stationed at the embassy, and reports of Blackwater private security personnel running amuck. Armed Americans have supposedly harassed and terrified residents and police officers in Islamabad and Peshawar, according to local press reports.


Much of the hysteria was based on a near $1 billion plan, revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials, to massively increase the size of the American embassy in Islamabad, which brought home to Pakistanis that the United States plans an extensive and long-term presence in the country.


The American mission in Islamabad was forced to put on three briefings for Pakistani journalists in August trying to dampen the highly charged stories, which could undermine US-Pakistani relations just as Washington is preparing to finalize a tripling of civilian aid to Islamabad, to $1.5 billion a year. Over this last weekend, an embassy spokesman had to deny suddenly renewed stories that the U.S. was behind the mysterious death of former military dictator General Zia ul Haq back in 1988.


Pakistan is a key priority for the United States because of its nuclear weapons and its potential usefulness in taking on al Qaida within its borders and ending the safe haven for the Afghan Taliban.


"I think this recent brouhaha over the embassy expansion has been difficult to beat back," said Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador, in an interview Thursday. "I can't really understand what's behind this because what we're doing is actually quite straightforward. We've tried to explain it carefully to the press, but it just seems to be taken over by conspiracy theories."


Briefing Pakistani journalists last month, Patterson told them that there were only nine Marines stationed to guard the embassy in Islamabad and that, even after the expansion, their number would be no more than 15 to 20. Press reports had put the figure at 350 to 1,000 Marines. She also stated categorically "Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan". But the stories refused to go away.


Patterson said she wrote last week to the owner of Pakistan's biggest media group, Jang, to protest about the content of two talk shows on its Geo TV channel, hosted by star anchors Hamid Mir and Kamran Khan, and a newspaper column of influential analyst Shireen Mazari in The News, a daily, complaining that they were "wildly incorrect" and had compromised the security of Americans.


There are 250 American citizens posted at the Islamabad mission on longer-term contracts, plus another 200 on shorter assignments, the embassy said. The present embassy compound can accommodate only a fraction of them. According to independent estimates, there are some 200 private houses for U.S. officials, on regular streets located throughout upscale districts of Islamabad.


Pakistani press and bloggers also targeted Craig Davis, an American aid worker, insisting that he's an undercover secret agent. Davis, a contractor to the USAID development arm of the government, is based in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, and now appears to be at risk. Last year, another American USAID contractor in Peshawar, Stephen Vance, was gunned down just outside his home.


"In one or two cases these commentators have identified very specific embassy employees as CIA or Blackwater, and that very much puts the employee at danger. In at least one case we're going to have to evacuate the employee," said Patterson, without identifying the individual involved. "What particularly scared us about him is that Stephen Vance, who was the other AID Chief of Party in Peshawar, was of course assassinated a few months ago. So there is a track record here that's sort of alarming."


In recent days, shows on two popular private television channels, Geo and Dunya, which broadcast in the local Urdu language, put up pictures of homes in Islamabad which they claimed were occupied by CIA, FBI, or employees of the controversial Blackwater company of private security contractors, now called Xe Services. Some of the houses were identified with their full address. It is believed that several of the homes weren't occupied by Americans but others were. According to the U.S embassy, bloggers are now calling on people to "kill" the occupants of these houses.


A survey last month for international broadcaster al Jazeera by Gallup Pakistan found that 59 percent of Pakistanis felt the greatest threat to the country was the United States. A separate survey in August by the Pew Research Center, an independent pollster based in Washington, recorded that 64 percent of the Pakistani public regards the U.S. "as an enemy" and only 9 percent believe it to be a partner.


"The Ugly American of the sixties is back in Pakistan and this time with a vengeance," said Mazari, the defense analyst whose newspaper column was the subject of the American complaint. "It's an alliance (U.S.-Pakistan) that's been forced on the country by its corrupt leadership. It's delivering chaos. We should distance ourselves. You can't just hand over the country."


While the anti-US sentiment appears genuine, it is uncertain whether the current storm, and the particular stories that it thrived on, was orchestrated by a pressure group or even an arm of the state. In the past, Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, part of the military, has very effectively used the press to push its agenda.


The U.S. provided over $11billion in aid to Pakistan since 2001. Yet in recent days, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has complained that too much of the promised new enhanced U.S. aid package would be eaten up in American administrative costs, while President Asif Zardari demanded that multi-billion dollar civilian and military aid money, currently stuck in Congress, be speeded up.


The Pakistani government has repeatedly stated that joining the U.S. "war on terror" has cost the nation an estimated $34 billion and ministers frequently lambast the U.S. for trespassing on Pakistani territory with use of spy planes to target suspected militants — an emotive tacit for the Pakistani population.


Ambassador Patterson said that "the (Pakistani) government could be more helpful" in combating the anti-American controversies, which took on a new fever pitch since the beginning of August.


The weak Islamabad government appears unable to come to the defense of its ally and even tried to score some popularity points by joining the U.S.-baiting.


A widely believed conspiracy contends that America is deliberately destabilizing Pakistan, to bring down a "strong Muslim country", and ultimately seize its nuclear weapons. Pakistanis, especially its military establishment, also are distrustful of U.S. motives in Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a strategy for regional domination. Further Pakistanis are appalled that the regime of Hamid Karzai in Kabul is close to archenemy India.


"Part of the reason why we can't fight terrorism is because the terrorists have adopted what I'd call anti-U.S. imperialist discourse, which makes them more popular," said Ayesha Siddiqa, an analyst and author of Military Inc.


Many also blame the U.S. for "imposing" a president on the country, Zardari, who is deeply disliked and who last year succeeded an unpopular U.S.-backed military dictator. So democrats resent American interference in Pakistani politics, while conservatives distrust American aims in Afghanistan.


"You used to find this anti-Americanism among supporters of religious groups and Right-wing groups," said Ahmed Quraishi, a newspaper columnist and the leading anti-American blogger. "But over the past two to three years, young, educated Pakistanis, people you'd normally expect to be pro-American modernists, and middle class people, are increasingly inclined to anti-Americanism. That's the new phenomenon."


Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent in Pakistan.

Lone Survivor From India's Failed Moon Mission

Indian astronaut lands back safely. [SEE PICTURE]

Just kidding.

That's the last survivor from last week's failed Indian moon mission Chandrayaan I.

Ok. Kidding again.

Before anyone calls me a jealous Pakistani, let me say that it is an impressive feat for a developing nation and one that has the world's largest concentration of poverty to launch space expeditions. It proves that the Anglo-Saxons don't have a monopoly over talent and hard work. It is instructive that India's last colonizers, the Brits, are yet to send any craft to space. Britain's last meaningful contact with space was when many Brits thronged to movie houses to watch the space thriller Armageddon a decade ago.

So it takes courage, determination and vision to plan space missions. And the Indians did it last October when they placed their space craft in moon's orbit.

As talented, hardworking people, their neighbors to the west, the Pakistanis, too are working on a space program. In fact, it is one of the best-kept secrets in a country that is not very good at keeping them.

But unlike India, Pakistan has no delusions of grandeur and it is not preparing for future interstellar domination warfare. Pakistan's concerns are modest: communications, business and research.

That's in fact where the Indians started too before vanity took over along with the desire of a small group of hawks in New Delhi to become the next superpower. To be fair, most Indians are smart people and have better things to do than play superpower games. The idea of India playing this game was actually pumped into Indian mind by some hawkish Americans, Brits, Aussies and Israelis during the warrior reign of Bush-Cheney. That's when some knuckleheads in Washington convinced some Indians that an India-Israel-America axis could actually change the world for good [with the Brits, Canadians and Aussies thrown in to give this whole thing an 'international' look].

The 'recruitment' of India was a joint Am-Brit idea, a combination of a desire to sell weapons, irritate China, and secure India as a future source of cheap soldiers to fight the Am-Brit dirty wars from the Red Sea to China to the shores of Sydney.

The failed moon mission, Chandrayaan I, is a good example of where India went wrong. The $82 million mission was assigned the task of mapping moon's surface so that Indian scientists could prepare for sending a manned mission to the moon by 2013.

The craft lasted in space less than a year before Indian scientists lost all contact. Mission aborted and expensive equipment lost.  To understand that vanity was a large undeclared part of this space mission, just see the reactions of Indian officials after the embarrassing news.

Most Indian officials initially said it's not a big deal, the craft was supposed to map moon's surface and that's already been done. Another official said some 80,000 images have already been sent by the craft to earth. A third official said the ship would have been of no use beyond this point even if it continued to fly for the whole two years.

And then the entire Indian media went silent on the story. No discussion, no write-ups, and no questions. To me it seemed eerily similar to the free Indian media's attitude on the Kashmir dispute: Uniformity across the Indian media and a strict adherence to the official Indian policy line, as if by government order, compared to the noisy and vibrant discussions in the Pakistani media often to the extent of ridiculing official Pakistani position on Kashmir.

It was obvious someone ordered the Indian media not to discuss the failed Indian moon mission 'in national interest.'

The question that no one in India asked is this: Why map the moon surface? How would sending an Indian to the moon five years from now solve anything? And how about solving India's mammoth developmental problems here, on earth, where most of the billion or so Indians continue to live?

The Indians, in their quest for projecting the superpower image that the Bush-Cheney people fed them before leaving for the dustbin of history refuse even to acknowledge they have a huge poverty problem that pales in comparison to the problems of any other nation on the planet.

Here is an example of Indian denial:

Last year, Kumar Malhotra of BBC wrote that in 2006 UNICEF has registered the death of 2.5 million children under five in two countries: India and China.

India's share of these deaths was a staggering 2.1 million.  And China has more population than India.

This is the highest figure of child deaths anywhere in the world, and they happen because of lack of services and healthcare because India is busy becoming a superpower, beating China in military hardware and sending bungled space missions.

This year, the UNDP India poverty report for 2009 began with this sobering assessment: "India has a high incidence of poverty despite being hailed as an engine of growth and instrument of globalization."

Mr. Malhotra complains that 'When you talk to officials and experts in India, they say poverty in is in decline.'

India is ready to spend $82 million on vanity space missions and billions more on weapons [it recently purchased old refurbished Russian aircraft carriers], but won't spend that money on the single largest concentration of poor people on earth, in Indian villages and cities.

The Indians hide these facts from the international audience.  And the reality comes out in the open only when an adventurist British film director decides to portray Indian poverty in Slumdog Millionnaire.  The film initially upset many Indians who thought someone created a hole in the Incredible India story.

Here is what India's government needs to understand:  You can't buy your way to superpower status.  What nation in history achieved this status by buying refurbished aircraft carriers when a majority of your people is stinkin' poor?

A Democracy Of Thieves

… and fraudsters, rapists and murderers. This is the truth about Pakistan’s democracy that Washington and London lobbied to impose on the country’s otherwise creative and hardworking people. The government in power, led by Mrs. Bhutto’s widower Asif Zardari, is made up of your choicest convicts whose names read like an entry book in a maximum security prison.

The opposition, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, is even funnier. I’m not sure if we Pakistanis are supposed to laugh or cry. In the past six months, Mr. Sharif’s party has produced ministers and members of parliament with the following list of achievements:

attempted rape and murder
attempted smuggling of diamonds
attempted cheating in an academic examination
and a sexist slander against a lady member of parliament

And now we have a lady member of parliament from Mr. Sharif’s party appearing in a security camera showing impressive self confidence as she buys jewelry and clothes worth US $1,000 using a credit card she stole from another woman at a health club.

I believe that the accused lady politician, Shomaila Rana, can’t be blamed. Pakistan’s superrich feudal elite, which has a monopoly over politics and runs political parties as family businesses, has produced a ruling class that looks down at the country’s middle and lower class Pakistanis. Mr. Sharif, widely seen as Mr. Zardari’s future replacement, often gives the look of a vengeful man whose compass is stuck in 1999, the year he lost power to a military intervention.

So, next election we’ll be replacing government thieves with opposition thieves.

I leave you with these two fine short commentaries.

The first one is this hilarious commentary by Riaz Jafri, a retired colonel of the Pakistan Army who resides in Rawalpindi:

“One has to admire the nerves, the cool confidence and the calm composure of the lady MPA while presenting the allegedly ‘stolen’ credit card and affixing her signatures on the bill on making the purchases. Not an eye blinked nor a finger quivered during the entire episode, which would have made even a three-war hardened soldier like me sweat profusely. If the honourable MPA can be that deft, skilled and expert with a card not belonging to her, then what havoc could not be expected of her playing with the millions of the state funds and other lucrative deals entrusted to her by the nation? Hers is the 5th case bringing ignominy to the party. When an elderly white bearded Haji MPA can cheat in an examination, when an honourable minister can not only allegedly bypass the customs channels but also manhandle the custom staff on duty, when an honorable minister can misbehave with a lady MPA on the floor of the assembly and when an honorable minister is accused of raping a woman under threat of murdering her, can the image of the politicians and the political parties remain untarnished and clean? One would not be wrong in assuming that probably these are only a few out of the thousands of cases that have surfaced. A proverbial tip of the iceberg! How many more must have gone unnoticed and consequently unpunished. If such are our leaders, do we need foes?”

The second brief one is by Joshua Kurlantzick, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who wrote this insightful paragraph while reviewing a book on Pakistan:

“[T]he country remains in the grip of venal, feudal, wealthy politician-landlords like the opposition leader Nawaz Sharif and the current president, Asif Ali Zardari, for whom democracy means one vote one time, after which the victors go on to dominate indefinitely. Worse, greed and graft have led Islamabad’s ruling class to ignore large portions of the population, who remain illiterate, and their incompetent governance has opened the door to” chaos.

Oooh! Another Pakistan Scare Story

This is another example of the scare campaign that the American and the British [Am-Brit] media is busy waging against Pakistan.

Hizb al-Tahrir is a small British Muslim group. It is not only based in the UK but some of its members were granted political asylum by successive British governments. There have been reports that the British secret service MI6 has actually penetrated the group and succeeded in planting or recruiting agents to be used in their countries of origin.

The Hizb has always been peaceful and its members were never found involved in violence. But it is their position that all governments in Arab and Muslim nations need to be removed in order to establish a Muslim empire.

Nothing wrong with that. They're free to believe in this and promote it peacefully. We have Israelis who believe in reviving the Kingdom of Israel from the Niles to the Euphrates. And we have Americans who believe America must wage wars in order to preserve its supremacy and end competition. And we have Indians who believe God is a monkey or a cow. So big deal if we have the Hizb.

The Hizb has never specifically focused on Pakistan because the group is equally present in almost all the major Arab and Muslim nations.

But here we have the Sunday Times specifically creating a scare over Pakistan. Why? Because it fits into the Am-Brit campaign of lying to the world about Pakistan and creating an image where Britian and the US could argue that the world allow these two to invade another nation for the sake of world peace.

Pakistani politicians visit Washington and London frequently but are scared to raise this anti-Pakistan campaign in the Am-Brit media.

Maybe this is because most of these politicians have their properties and assets in London. This Am-Brit campaign has tremendously damaged Pakistan’s image worldwide through lies and inaccuracies.

There is enough evidence that the Am-Brit media is indulging in targeted campaigns that serve the objectives of their governments and their militaries, like the gang-up on Iran.

Pakistan should demand that this anti-Pakistanism stop.

It’s also interesting to note who is behind this anti-Pakistanism. The Sunday Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Mr. Murdoch’s other media group, FoxNews, has been dedicated to the cause of the new empire builders in Washington and their poodles in London.