India Bans The Economist

This is a must read. The world's largest democracy has just banned the latest edition of The Economist magazine. I have always said that western media, and especially the American-British media, or what I like to call the Am-Brit media, treats India with kid gloves.

I mean, imagine the world's largest democracy becoming home to 21st century's first genocide: over 2,000 Indians burned alive in a matter of three days for being followers of the wrong religion?

It happened, in 2002, in western Indian state of Gujrat. Did you hear about it? No. Did the world, the United Nations, or the EU take note? Not at all. Why? One reason is that those murdered were Muslims. But also because the culrpit in this case was India, a country that the United States is grooming to replace American and British soldiers in fighting their wars in regions close to India. Indian soldiers are cheap compared to the yanks and Brits. And there are plenty of them so India can absorb massive human losses. And thus India gets away with stuff that no other country would. For example, in 2000, two young boys, less than 10 years old, and their father, an Australian missionary, were burned alive by a mob of Hindu extremists and fundamentalists. Nothing could save the kids and their father, not even the fact that they spent months distributing food for free among poor Indians.  Imagine this happening in China, or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe or Venezuela, or in any other country that Washington and London are not good friends with.  But since this happened in India, no one knows about it. There wasn't even a whimper from Australia when three of its citizens were murdered in the most brutal way possible.

So it is significant when The Economist writes that Pakistan and China are not as bad when it comes to censorship as India is. And it is more significant when the BBC seconds The Economist and accuses India of harassing the BBC and other media outlets operating inside India.

I have been saying for some time now that Pakistan is more liberal and tolerant than India is. For five years or so of Composite Dialogue, we receved groups of private Indian citizens in Pakistan as part of the people-to-people exchange between the two countries. Pakistani delegations that would visit India would freely interact with India media, criticize Pakistani policies where necessary and call for peace.  Surprisingly, we saw no such thing with the Indian delegations in Pakistan. They were all independent Indian activisits and citizens with no affiliation to Indian government, but they would dare not deviate from the official Indian position on any issue, be it Kashmir or concessions for peace. You could see they were all following the same talking points.

This and other points are explained in this excellent report titled, World's Largest Democracy Censors A British Magazine.

The Death Of Zardari Sr. & The Jokes On The President

On Tuesday, 24 May 2011, former senator Hakim Ali Zardari, the father of President Asif Ali Zardari, passed away in Islamabad. Since this is one of those moments where politics should make way for humanity and compassion, I posted a condolence message on my Facebook page, sharing the grief of the President's family.

I wanted to send a message. As a harsh critic of President Zardari, I wanted to show our younger generation that your politics need not be devoid of compassion and humanity. This is important because Pakistani politics are run by families and tribes where differences are lethal. Political parties are normally controlled by a strongman or a group of strong men who pass on their seats to their children. New faces are not allowed to raise their heads and competition is brutally suppressed, sometimes violently. This is why Pakistan has no real democracy but only a large number of fake democrats who claim they are fighting for democracy.

So my message was: Let's temper and civilize our politics.

To my shock, someone posted something to the effect, 'We hope the son joins the father soon.'  In a short time, the space was filled with variations of this comment, written in the style of jokes. I know that normally Pakistanis do not politicize the sad occasion when a politician has lost a close family member. But this time, you could see how frustrated and demoralized Pakistanis have become, especially when you have a man of questionable abilities running the government, having attained power through indirect means [through a political marriage and a secret deal sponsored by two foreign governments and a runaway dictator].

There were some intelligent comments too. Imran Ali Shamsi asked, 'I am realy surprised to see a politician who goes to UK/Dubai for their minor medical problems ... but his father died in PIMS with nobody around him.I cant digest it AQ.'

Good point.

Here is another by a Pakistani mother who is an American married to a Pakistani: 'If there is going to be publication and space for public condolences, I would rather it be for a Mother who just lost her little baby in a drone attack. Imagine her loss. You always expect to lose your parents, but your baby?'

Aside from the jokes, all of these are legitimate comments. I also understand the jokes and sympathize with my countrymen and women who are worried about the mess our nation is in because of a decade of supporting the US occupation of Afghanistan and because of the self-serving policies [if you can call them policies] of our ruling elite.

At the same time, it is important that we rationalize and civilize our politics. Let's learn to say all of what my friends have said above, in the comments to my condolence message. Let's say all of that. But let's also condole in this case.

Having said this, I do have second thoughts when I read a third comment-maker say he is sure President Zardari isn't much bothered about his father and so why should we.

It's Pakistani politics. It drove John Negroponte and Richard Boucher mad. Just ask them.

A Pakistani Sikh, A Globalist Sikh: Sardar Suran Singh, Avatar Singh Sekhon

In response to the excellent brief comment posted by Ms. Imaan Hazir Mazari yesterday on the PakNationalists Mailing List, titled Excuse Me, Is CIA Calling Us Terrorists?, I received this email from a prominent leader of the global Sikh community, Mr. Awatar Singh Sekhon. Those who closely follow the issues of Pakistan and the region would find this letter very interesting:

Piare Bhai Sahib ji

Piare Barkhurdar Ahmed Quraishi ji,

Aslaam O Alaikum!

Let them do it. Please keep on working for the progress, development and dissemination of information to the great citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistam. This is your duty to look after the Awam of Pakistan and their betterment.


You, the Pakistan, has to find its place in the World Arena of Politics. To do this, you need sincere and committed citizens of Pakistan.

I wish you the very best. May the Khudawand Bakhshinda shower His blessing on you all.

Warmest regards.

Your brother,

Awatar Singh Sekhon (Machaki)
Editor in Chief
International Journal of Sikh Affairs ISSN 1481-5435

In response to my dear elder brother Sekhon Saheb, I would like to share with him this TV interview in Urdu with a Pakistani Sikh community leader who joined thousands of Pakistanis in the anti-CIA and anti-Drones sit-in in Peshawar last week that succeeded in blocking NATO supply route for three days.  In this video, this Pakistani Sikh quotes a saying of Prophet Mohammad PBUH to reaffirm commitment to defend the homeland against future attacks and violations by CIA and US military based in Afghanistan.

Video: In Four Minutes, The Story Of Kashmir Genocide

Forget the decades-old history of the Indian invasion and occupation of Kashmir, and the UN resolutions asking New Delhi to vacate the region. Here, in less than four minutes, you can cover this decades-old tragedy.

Why Pak Media Ignored Anti-CIA Sit-In?

While there are many hardworking journalists in the Pakistani media, this media is yet to develop a sense of perception, which means looking into the future beyond the immediate headlines of the day.

When PPP and PMLN were running for elections in March 2008, Pakistani media refused to ask these two parties any tough questions about their long record of failed politics. The media gave these two parties an easy time. Journalists were focused on only one thing: the exit of Musharraf. While that was a worthy story, the media failed in its duty to check the record of those whom it was promoting as alternatives.

The same thing happens in the case of PTI's sit-in in Peshawar. For the first time since 2002, ordinary Pakistanis come out of their homes and block NATO supply line. This was a major story. But our media generally ignored it. Why? Because PTI boycotted the 2008 elections and the party is not in the parliament and wields no power. Many of our media men and women depend on maintaining good relations with some politicians either because of bias or for indirect benefit or gain. So everyone in the media is focused on what the politicians in parliament are saying. No one is interested in PTI or the drones because, well, PTI can't offer journalists favors because it is not in power.

That's why most of the Pakistani media ignored the sit-in in Peshawar on the first day, on 23 April.

But everyone in our media sat up and noticed when elected politician and those parties that are considered to be well established, participated in the second day of the sit-in. The parties did this because of the tremendous response that PTI generated among ordinary Pakisanis, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie.

This is realistic and unfortunate aspect of our media. But I hope our media will drw some lessons from its coverage of the sit-in.

We Support Imran's Anti-CIA Sit-In

I am not a member of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or Pakistan Justice Movement. But I endorse Imran Khan's courageous stand on rogue CIA operations inside Pakistan that have resulted in the displacement and murder of millions of Pakistanis.

And I particularly salute the courage of all PTI young men and women who are descending on Peshawar for the sit-in against CIA drone attacks and the complicit Pakistani government.

We should also remember all those who are not membes or supporters of PTI but answered Imran Khan's call for this sit-in out of compassion for the women and children who have been killed by the hundreds by these CIA drones.

One of the great ideas someone came up with on my Facebook page was to post the following paragraph on our pages. Those who are members of the pages of the US embassy in Islamabad and consulates in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Hyderabad should post this on those pages:

"This weekend, we join together in prayer for the hundreds of Pakistani innocent men, women and children killed by illegal CIA operations in Pakistan. We hold United States responsible for creating conditions for insurgencies in Balochistan, FATA & displacement millions of Pakistanis. We support PTI's sit-in in Peshawar against CIA drones."

 

This Businessman Corrected Bush On Fascism

Nasser al-Kharafi, 67, a Kuwaiti businessman, died in Cairo Sunday night and was buried earlier today, Tuesday, in his native Kuwait. He was the third richest Arab.  Forbes magazine placed him among the wealthiest businessmen in the Arab world. He was ranked 77 on the world’s list of billionaires in 2011 with an estimated wealth of $10.4 billion.

His father started out a small trader in Kuwait who ran a business that included Iraq, Iraq, Gulf region and India. Today, the Kharafi group has businesses and factories across the Middle East, with seven billion US dollars invested in Egypt alone. Jordan's King Abdullah II once said to him, 'Your investments in Jordan equal the US aid we receive.'

There are two reasons I mention him here. One is that I know some members of his family, close and distant relatives. And second is his person, the man behind all this wealth.

I have closely known three of his relatives. Surprisingly, all of them have shared the same personality traits as the deceased. He has been described as humble, honest, opinionated and principled.

When told that Forbes was predicting he would soon rival Bill Gates in his wealth, Nasser al Kharafi smiled and said 'This is the last thing on my mind.' And he was not being humble. He died in Egypt, away from his home in Kuwait, because he noticed some of the people in his business delegation visiting factories and offices in the region were too exhausted to coninue the trip. So he stayed overnight in Cairo for their sake.

While a shrewd and successful businessman, he was also a generous giver. In the tradition of the Arab Islamic culture, he wouldn't divulge his largesse, but he has been known to have spent generously on the poor in the region, and was very proud that his companies provided job opportunities to 100,000 people across the Middle East. He was against stashing his wealth in western banks.

Although he was a Muslim from the Sunni sect and understood the politics behind Iran's support for the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, yet he publicly supported the militia on the sole criterion that the militia raised arms against Israel when no one dared to. He wrote eloquently in Arab media defending his position of supporting Hezbollah despite the many political differences between Arab governments and the government of Iran.

His last opinion piece in Arabic, titled, 'Life Of Pride Or Death With Honor' , published last month, contained an open letter to the leader of Lebanese Shia militia Hassan Nasrallah. It reflected his thinking. Here is a translated excerpt:

"How can we not support you when you are confronting the arrogance of the Israeli military machine. Thanks to your strong will and the heroism of the resistance fighters, the weakness and hollowness of Israeli military has been exposed (...) Your excellency Hassan Nasrallah, I know that you do not differentiate between Sunnis and Shias. The yardstick of Allah is piety, good deeds and the jihad in the name of Allah. There are those in our Ummah who are trying to divide Muslims to weaken the Ummah and weaken their hearts in the service of the Zionist enemy. What they don't understand is that our enemy does not differentiate between us. The enemy is attacking Sunni Muslims in proud Gaza day and night, killing its women and children, just as the enemy attacks the Shia Muslims in the dear south Lebanon, and is threatening war against Muslim Iran. But our people don't know this, whether they are nationalists or Islamists. That's what hurts us."

He was known for his bold opinions. In 2006, he asked the American president George W. Bush to clarify the concept of fascism when the US president claimed that, "Islamic fascism is the root cause of the crisis in the region."

In an open letter he wrote to President Bush, al Kharafi said, "We, along with other people in the whole world, are standing united with you in your rejection of fascism. But the grim pictures of the Lebanese victims who died due to the Israeli aggression on Lebanon are showing us the opposite. We, therefore, believe that there is a misunderstanding on who should be accused of fascism."

As any opinionated man, he had many critics in the region. But his hallmark was his smile and his firm and warm handshake. He reminded many of the legendary Arab traits of being resolute, honest but at the same time forgiving to those who attack his person, and capable of winning over enemies by his forthcoming handshake and smile.

People can agree or disagree with Nasser al Kharafi's political opinions. But what can't be denied is that this was a man that embodied what a businessman should be. He would often ask about the number of new job opportunities his new business ventures would create and this question would be at the top, right there with other commercial considerations.

Such a behavior would have never endeared him to the world's famous business journals, but that's the kind of businessman he was.

That's why I mention him here today. May his soul rest in peace.

P.S.  The International Islamic Charity Organization, based in Kuwait City, issued a statement late yesterday condoling al Kharafi's demise. In the statement we learn for the first time that Nasser al Kharafi donated generously for the victims of Pakistan's floods last year. He made a personal donation, another on behalf of Kharafi Group, and exorted other members of the Kharafi family to do the same. At the time of making these donations he ensured that no word of it is made public.

Lenin In Pakistan

Lenin in Pakistan? And Castro too. And Che Guevara.

Believe it or not, right in the heart of Pakistan. These pictures were taken last week at the 8th congress of the Communist Party of Pakistan [yes, we have one, too], headquartered in Hyderabad, Sindh.

The CCP's heydays were the 1970s, when communists and the Soviets were firmly lodged in next-door Afghanistan. The leaders of the CCP at the time entertained thoughts of a communist takeover in Pakistan. But the party never commanded large following in the country, though its rank and file boasted members from across the nation. These days, the CCP conducts peaceful politics and it's base is limited. But its presence is a sign of the colorful and lively political culture in Pakistan where different shades of opinion peacefully coexist, despite the bad repuation Pakistan has cultivated as a hub of religious violence after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

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.

President Zardari vs. Jang Group: All Hail The Pakistani Commander-in-Chief

Imagine this: despite one of the world’s top five standing armies and nuclear arsenals, an important strategic location, 170 million in human resource, and great economic potential, and yet Pakistan’s elected democratic rulers are fighting a pitched battle with a media organization. Just a media organization.

This is what President Asif Ali Zardari, the commander-in-chief, is doing in his protracted, proxy battle with the Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest media conglomerate.

How pathetic that a President of such a big country feels threatened by a media group run by a few journalists. Media management is an art that has eluded Pakistan’s political and military rulers. They just don’t get it. So Mr. Zardari’s aides hound the media group in multiple ways: blocking federal government advertisements, ordering the state-run media to produce counter-programs to the popular political talk shows on Jang’s television network, and try to scuttle Jang’s exclusive rights to broadcast sporting events.

The latest move by President Zardari’s government is to shut down Geo Super’s broadcast rights in Pakistan, leaving this subsidiary of Jang’s Geo Network with the expensive option of beaming its programming from a location outside Pakistan.

None of the successive Pakistani governments, including the five governments of President Zardari’s US-backed PPPP, paid any attention to developing a healthy sports culture in the country. The entire Pakistani political and media cultures are structured to provide maximum coverage to boring, divisive and destructive politics. There are no government-maintained sports facilities for the general public anywhere across the length and breadth of this 170-million-plus nation. Those that exist are few, privately-owned, and exclusive.

In fact, you won’t believe it if I tell you that a tennis court next to a commercial market in the F-6 sector of Islamabad is probably the only public tennis facility of its kind anywhere not just in the federal Pakistani capital but also in any one of the five provincial/state capitals.

In other words, if any businessman were to launch a 24/7 sports channel in Pakistan, it would be a losing proposition. You can’t make money from sports in a country that has no sports on the ground. A few dying national sports teams in squash, football, hockey, cricket and others don’t count.

So Jang’s sports channel was a money drain. And now that’s gone too.

It probably won’t make a dent in the media’s group’s earnings, and the only victims might by the staff. As for the public, they are left with two options:

One, to watch the recycled faces of Pakistani politicians as they grace dozens of talk shows every night regaling the nation with their absurdities and bad manners, barring of course a distinguished few.

And two, to watch self-styled religious channels where very few truly respectable individuals exist, with proper religious education from renowned Islamic schools. The rest offer multicolored turbans and opinions. I have talked to respectable Egyptian and Saudi men of religion and they are embarrassed by what we in Pakistan have to contribute to religion.

No wonder ours is a fatalistic nation, where doom and gloom abounds and most people have nothing to do after a day’s work except watching political TV.

My advice to Jang Group is simple: hit back. Don’t take the closure of your sports channel lying down.

Jang, with its influential talk shows and newspapers, has a unique ability to influence Pakistani public opinion. What it should do is to DOWNGRADE all politicians affiliated with the ruling coalition and its partners. All of them.

Yes. Downgrade them. How? Simple.

It should stop making them heroes by rotating them on its different talk shows every night, giving them free publicity and valuable airtime. It should do what one of its hosts, Saleem Safi, has admirably done: minimize the appearance of politicians on his show unless relevant to the story of the day and substitute them with other more intelligent Pakistanis.

Only a fraction of the 1,000 or so elected Pakistani politicians bore us every night on TV. There are many Pakistanis who can talk politics with more sense and creativity than many of these elected nincompoops. [Remember this: in Pakistan, the lowest you are in the cultural and intellectual development ladder, the bigger your chances of being elected and becoming Pakistan’s newest ‘democratic warrior’.]

So good for you, Mr. President. Don’t let us interrupt you. Please continue your battle against the media group. We have already wasted the first decade of the 21st century. We have nine to go and we’ll manage that with this kind of ruling elite.

India Invaded Pakistan In 1971: Know The Facts, And The Enemy

Click to enlarge

Time for some facts on India's 1971 invasion of Pakistan.

First of all, there was no 'Indo-Pakistan war of 1971'.

That's a misleading description.

India INVADED Pakistan in 1971. Use the right words because there is a big difference.

Pakistani history books, official and private, need to be corrected.

There was a full-fledged, one-sided invasion across an international boundary. And it was an unprovoked invasion, preplanned. A foreign country exploited a chaotic election in Pakistan to launch a snap attack without warnings.

Remember: there was no Lashkar-e-Tayyeba in 1971, nor was there an armed freedom struggle in occupied Kashmir. There was no excuse of ‘terrorism’. India invaded Pakistan to hurt and kill as much Pakistanis as possible simply because India saw a good opportunity and seized it.

To this day, India deliberately uses the term ‘India-Pakistan war of 1971’ to avoid admitting what it actually was: an unprovoked invasion of another country. Unfortunately, Pakistanis at all levels continue to use the Indian description for that invasion.

The Indian role in 1971 war is the dirtiest Indian secret. It’s been effectively hidden from the world. The Indians never discuss how they invaded Pakistan in that year. And Pakistanis discuss everything except the foreign invasion across international borders. The reason this invasion remains unknown is because of our inability in Pakistan to show the world what really happened.

This did not start out as a Pakistan-India war. It was a Pakistani election gone bad and political parties resorted to violence to make a point. Elections go bad everywhere and sometimes they get violent. It happened in Pakistan in 1971. India saw an opportunity in internal Pakistani chaos and invaded Pakistan across the international border without any provocation from the Pakistani side.

India exploited the fact that the Pakistani military was not on alert and that we did not have enough soldiers at that time in East Pakistan. Why weren’t there enough Pakistani soldiers to defend the territory against a foreign invasion? East Pakistan was geographically disconnected from the rest of the country. But more importantly Islamabad never thought that India would launch such a brazen attack on Pakistan without any reason, especially when Pakistan was a member in several US-led defense pacts. Pakistani planners miscalculated in believing they could rely on an ally such as the United States for help. [Indian government documents released this month show that Washington not only ditched Pakistan but also secretly told New Delhi it would support India in case China entered the war to help Pakistan.]

India’s blatant war of aggression was not a chance happening. It was meticulously planned. Two years before the ‘war’, India started secretly recruiting local peasants in areas of East Pakistan adjoining India. In two years, these recruits became foot soldiers for a terrorist militia known as Mukti Bahini that sprung into action as soon as the Indian army began the invasion. Indian soldiers and their terror militia went on a rampage, murdering Pakistanis on linguistic basis [Urdu, Bengali] to feed chaos and pitch Pakistanis against one another. This provided a cover for wanton killings by Indian soldiers because all killings ended up being blamed on Pakistan.

Wrong Pakistani political and military decisions helped the Indian invaders. Here is an excellent brief written by Mr. Mushtaq Sethi that helps in understanding the Indian proxy militia:

“Mukti Bahini were not just another insurgent force: on the contrary, their original core consisted of defectors from the former East Bengal Regiments of the Pakistani Army, who reached the Indian soil and also those Hindus who had fled East Pakistan and crossed over to India and had returned after having received complete training in the art of guerrilla warfare. They were soon reinforced by a considerable number of volunteers, mainly students, then during April and May, Pakistan had purged Bengalis from the armed forces. Many others defected, while those who remained were not trusted. Result was that the combat effectiveness of Pakistani units suffered considerably.  Once in India, together with other volunteers from East Pakistan, they were trained and organized into six new East Bengal Regiments in June 1971. By November 1971, the Mukti Bahini was reinforced by the addition of three artillery batteries as well as a small flying service (operating two Aérospatiale SA.316B Alouette III helicopters, one DeHavilland Canada DHC-3 Otter and a single Douglas DC-3 Dakota transport). They were counting up to 85,000 and their order of battle during the war in December was as follows:
K Force/Brigade, consisting of 10th and 11th East Bengal Regiment and No.3 Field Battery- S Force/Brigade, consisting of 2nd and 4th East Bengal Regiment, and No.1 Field Battery- Z Force/Brigade, consisting of 1st, 3rd, and 8th East Bengal Regiment, and No.2 field Battery.”

The Indian terror militia was dismantled as soon as the war ended with the surrender of the outnumbered Pakistani units. India crowned its invasion with orchestrating a secession, declaring the occupied Pakistani lands an independent country.

If Pakistan does not and cannot trust India, it is because of India’s treacherous unprovoked invasion in 1971. India set many examples later that prove it won’t miss an opportunity to hurt Pakistan when possible. The Indian ruling elite, especially the minority Hindi-speaking bigots in northern India, have wanted to destroy Pakistan since our independence in 1947. They have some strange notion that Pakistani territories somehow belong to them according to their religious history. Some of them cannot forget ten centuries of our rule in the region and have a deep fear and loathing of anything Pakistani. If there is a war in Afghanistan, India would be the first to exploit it to send saboteurs into Pakistan from the Afghan soil. If the European Union decides to allow importing Pakistani textiles, Indian diplomats would spring into action to object. Indian writers, analysts and commentators in the US and anywhere else in the world are the first to launch anti-Pakistan diatribes whenever there is a chance to do it.

It’s a deep seated hate for Pakistan in the north Indian Hindi-speaking belt. And this hatred was at the heart of India’s decision to invade Pakistan in 1971.

Yes, we committed mistakes in our internal politics in 1971 that helped the Indian enemy in its designs. But we have learned those lessons. What is important now is that every Pakistani man and woman understand that our homeland faced a treacherous invasion and a blatant aggression across international borders in that year. Whatever our own mistakes domestically, that cannot justify a blatant war of aggression by a foreign country exploiting our internal situation.

Know the history. And know your enemy.

An English Racist In Pakistan

Imagine a Pakistani young man migrating to Britain, making it big on British television, getting the British passport out of turn as a goodwill gesture by the government, and then using his newfound fame and money to bash the English: accuse them of massacres against the Scotts and the Irish, and calling them names such as 'degenerates'.

That's exactly what George Fulton did in Pakistan. He landed here sometime around 2002. He's married to a Pakistani girl who I suppose is British-Pakistani. George, who is tall, fat and goofy, is not exactly TV material but his story impressed a young TV producer.
Geo was a rising new TV network in Pakistan at the time [it tops the charts these days]. Some creative producer there spotted the tall, fat and goofy George and hired him for a new show, George Ka Pakistan, or George's Pakistan, the story of a young Englishman who wants to make Pakistan his new permanent home.

You have to understand how big a deal this show was at the time. Until 2002, Pakistanis had only seen one television channel their whole lives: the state-run PTV.  Geo was new and stunning. And then this show where an Englishman travels across the country getting to know Pakistanis and talking to them about moving to their country.

Of course, Pakistanis liked the fact that this 'bloke' was not only moving to their country but was also married to a Pakistani girl.

Flush with fame and money, he and his wife were hired by another television network to host its morning show. The two were highly paid and were invited to parties and mingled with the high and mighty of Pakistan. So much so that Mr. Shaukat Aziz, the prime minister during President Musharraf's government, granted George Pakistani citizenship, ignoring procedure.

Until last year, Mr. and Mrs. Fulton were basking in the glory.  But ever since Mr. Fulton lost his daytime job at the morning show, he's become bitter. With no high-paying job offers coming his way, he turned against the country.

There's nothing wrong in criticism, but outright racism? Please.

Mr. Fulton believes Pakistanis are responsible for the massacres that accompanied Pakistan's War for Independence in 1947. What he's saying is that Pakistanis killed Indians by the thousands in that war, which is a historical fallacy believed only by a few Indianized Englishmen.

Not just that, Mr. Fulton has taken it upon himself to ask Pakistanis to revolt against the Pakistani military and the country's spy services because, in his view, they are no good.

Good God.

We in Pakistan face daily dosages of CIA-produced propaganda material duly published by the likes of New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Der Spiegel. It's a concerted campaign that's been going on for the past five years or more. And here comes Mr. Fulton to offer his two cents, or pennies.

This is why I just couldn't stop laughing as I read Mr. Ghalib Sultan's excellent op-ed on Mr. Fulton [Click here to read it, or follow this link http://www.paknationalists.com/2011/03/03/an-englishman%e2%80%99s-anti-pakistan-rant/ ].

Why Hosni Mubarak Is Still Better Than Pakistani Rulers

Hosni Mubarak in his speech a few minutes ago has proven he and his regime, including his new Vice President, do not understand and respect their people.

But there is one thing he said that resonated with me because I've seen it in his government for the past three decades.

I'd like to point out this one thing because it is very relevant to Pakistan's political and military leaderships.

Mubarak said at one point in his speech, 'I will not allow myself to be subject to foreign interference'.  At another place, he added, 'I will live and die in Egypt.'

Great words and they certainly don't justify his three-decade long tight grip on power, the corruption and now the refusal of the regime to understand its people.

But I watched President Mubarak say these words and thought about Pakistani leaders who, since the 1990s and until now in 2011, have become shameful instruments of foreign meddling in Pakistan. Mubarak is supposed to be a bigger foreign stooge and yet he never allowed foreign meddling in his country, and he won't now even in his defeat.

Even in his defeat Mubarak declared he will not subject himself to foreign diktat. And that he will die and be buried in Egypt and won't escape for safety and in some haven in Jeddah, Dubai, London and New York.

For Pakistan's ruling elite, these cities have become alternate capitals of Pakistan.

Mubarak refused to entertain offers to move to Germany or Saudi Arabia or Dubai. Sure, things can change in the future, but I read in the Arabic-language media that if worse came to worse, Mubarak thinks he could hand over power and move to his house in the resort city of Sharm el Sheikh, but never leave and die outside Egypt.

This is significant and let me explain why.

Even when Egypt under Mubarak was very pro-American and pro-Israel, it kept its national pride. Egypt was taking American aid but refused to accept American meddling. Mubarak knew Washington needed his country in order to protect Israel. So he delivered on that count but never permitted the Americans to meddle in Egyptian politics. When President George W. Bush rolled out his democracy agenda in the Middle East after 9/11, Mubarak was instrumental in failing it [along with the Saudis]. He just won't have it. Mubarak refused to allow the Americans to establish direct contact with Egyptian politicians or engineer any kind of internal change.

Egypt made peace with Israel but only because Egyptian nationalists were disappointed at what they saw as stabs in the back by Arabs and Muslims [For example, rich Arabs refused to bail oput Egyptian economy enough despite Egypt fighting Israel in four wars on behalf of all Arabs. Egypt was also shocked to see Pakistan in 1956 supporting the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, and other Muslim nations like Turkey and Iran not supporting Egypt in wars with Israel.]  All of this shaped the psyche of the Egyptian ruling elite and intelligentsia and helped push Egypt toward peace with Israel under American guarantees.

But Mubarak didn't allow his people to become American or Israeli puppets, and limited all forms of political interference.

I can recount many occasions when there were frictions between Cairo and Washington over one thing or the other and the mainstream US media was unleashed - as usual - to ridicule, harass or intimidate Mubarak and Egypt. But Mubarak won't have any of it. The Egyptians have always been very protective of their national pride.

Compare that to Pakistan. Every regime, from Benazir Bhutto to Nawaz Sharif to Pervez Musharraf to Asif Zardari, has handed over Pakistani citizens to foreign governments without an iota of national pride.

Some of them moved to Jeddah, Dubai, London and New York. Most of them have their wealth and properties abroad. Mr. Musharraf added something new to this shameful history when he launched Pakistan's first political party on foreign soil, in London and Dubai. And now most Pakistani politicians consider it kosher to conduct important political meetings outside Pakistan. Mr. Zardari has introduced another first: high-level meetings with foreign governments that relevant Pakistani government departments, like the Foreign Office, know nothing about. We have ambassadors and national security advisers who are appointed to protect the interests of foreign governments.

The regime's corruption and ruthlessness are the reasons why Egyptians want change. But Egypt progressed a lot under Mubarak's regime, unlike the Syrians or the Iraqis. 

For all of his ties to the Americans and Israelis, Egypt under Mubarak remained staunchly proud. As a Pakistani, I certainly don't want to see a Mubarak in Pakistan. However, we do need a Pakistani ruling class with the same sense of pride and history, one that won't turn its country into an experimentation zone for foreign powers. 

Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian regime made peace with Israel but never allowed any foreign power to come and abuse Egyptians or bomb them through CIA drones. This honor exclusively belongs to Pakistan's ruling elite.

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.

Why Conquer India, Again?

Some young Pakistanis marking the International Kashmir Solidarity Day today got carried away. I noticed some of them circulated emails and wrote posts saying they don't want to stop at Kashmir but want to seize the rest of what is known today as India, was known during Muslim rule as Hindustan, and as Bharat when the Indians ruled themselves.

I didn't want to spoil the joy of anyone, especially this year when all signs indicate that Pakistan and Pakistanis are marking the Kashmir Solidarity Day with a vigor not seen in at least a decade. [You must read the analysis in that link. It's a must read for those following relations between Pakistan and India.]

So when a very good friend posted a remark about conquering India on my Facebook page, this is how I answered, hoping to make some of the young Turks understand that what Pakistani medieval warriors like Shahab al-Din Ghauri and Qutb al-Din Aybak did was great, but that seizing India nowadays may not be such a great idea. Here is how I said it:

"Of all the lands conquered by Muslims, the Indian conquest was the most useless. Everywhere else, the new land and people added to the richness of the Muslim empire and civilization. Except Bharat. That was a black hole where Muslims went in ... and never came out. Muslim rule in Bharat was detached from the rest of the Islamic world. No interaction, no contacts, no nothing. Muslim Bharat was another world, never reacting to critical points in history in Palestine, Arabia, Turkey and Andalusia. The only thing we benefited from havng our ancesotrs conquer Bharat is to learn the ritualistic Mehndi wedding functions, invent Qawwali, the art of practicing religion by singing, and create two religious schools called Barelvi and Deobandi that no one else in the entire Islamic world knows about, understands or has any interest in.

Defeat Bharat. Fine. Delhi is a city created and established by Muslims before the Brits occupied it and handed it over to native Indians, so take that too. Fine. But the rest of India? I think I will pass."

Interesting, isn't it? Light, but full of real history.

Tough Times For America's Friends In Pakistan

Interior Minister Rehman Malik tried to brazenly mislead members of the Senate of Pakistan on the American hired-gun Raymond Davis. Addressing the senators on Wednesday, 2 Feb., Mr. Malik told the house that the murderer working for the US Embassy in Islamabad 'holds a diplomatic passport.'

Mr.Malik tried to confuse 'diplomatic immunity' with 'diplomatic passport'. While the accused American was issued a diplomatic passport by the US government, the Pakistani government refused to recgonize him as such and only granted him a business visa.

Now the Zardari government and its key figures are trying to hoodwink the Pakistani nation by confusing diplomatic immunity, which the murderer doesn't have, with a diplomatic passport that he carries without a Pakistani diplomatic visa.

The most ridiculous statement that Mr. Malik made in the Senate was this: "We have to live in this world and we have certain treaties with other countries.'

Basically the Zardari government is in big trouble. Mr. Malik is on record telling former US ambassador Anne Patterson that his government looks to Washington for support and protection. Mr. Zardari has told US officials he doesn't mind if CIA increases drone attacks and kills innocent Pakistani civilians in the process because 'collateral damage worries you Americans, not me.'

So this Pakistani government considers serving US interests its highest aim in life and the reason for its existence. Pakistani citizens shot in their backs by a military-trained officer who claims to be a diplomat and who concocted a story about armed robbery, all of this doesn't matter to Mr. Malik and his government.  What is more important in his view is for him to serve a foreign government with loyalty.

But the bad news for Mr. Malik is that this time Pakistanis have had it with US meddling in Pakistan and have had it with a rented Pakistani ruling elite serving foreign interests.

Independent Pakistani political activists and civil society members intend to keep the pressure on this government. The families and loved ones of the three murdered Pakistanis have also resisted all pressures by Mr. Malik's men to bribe them with offers of a US Green Card and stacks of hundred-dollar US bills in exchange for pardoning the murderer.

But the real issue here is to stop the practice of allowing US covert agents into Pakistan that Mr. Malik's government is deeply involved in at the expense of Pakistani interests.

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.

Did Nawaz Snub US Envoy Over Murder Case?

US ambassador Cameron Munter telephoned former premier Nawaz Sharif last night to discuss the case of a US citizen with apparent military training whose actions resulted in the murder of three Pakistani civilians in Lahore.

Mr. Munter asked for the man, who most probably is a covert US intelligence or special-ops officer, to be released from Pakistani police custody and be handed over to the embassy in Islamabad. Mr. Sharif, however, said the American, who is not a diplomat despite US embassy claims, will be tried according to Pakistani laws.

Mr. Sharif's terse half-line response to the US envoy is the only quote of Mr. Sharif that the media reported. We don't know what else Mr. Sharif discussed with the foreign envoy, if at all. The statement shows the former premier has made up his mind on the case.

But it's not that easy for Mr. Sharif. He is also very concerned about this case. One sign of this is the urgent meeting he called of his party seniors at his residence yesterday evening to discuss the American murderer's case.

In the closed-door meeting, Mr. Sharif heard many of his lieutenants warn against pardoning the killer in contravention of Pakistani laws. When a former premier, opposition leader and the leader of the provincial government calls for an urgent meeting to discuss a murder a case, it means the PMLN is in trouble.

Mr. Sharif is in a fix. He knows Pakistanis are closely watching this case and won't let him off the hook if he decides to issue a pardon. At the same time, he is also indebted to the Americans who saved his life in 2000 after a military coup.

Federal interior minister Rehman Malik has denied he is exerting pressure om police authorities in Punjab to release the American. Mr. Sharif's provincial law minister Rana Sanaullah told reporters yesterday no pressure from the federal Pakistani government and the US government would be heeded. But he didn't say if he was indeed facing pressures.

This is a test for Mr. Nawaz Sharif. The entire Pakistani political and military elite is guilty of selling Pakistani citizens for cheap. Mr. Sharif handed over Pakistani citizens to the US during his previous stints in power. So did late premier Benazir Bhutto. So did former army chief Pervez Musharraf.

Even today we hardly see any one of them, in the ruling parties, say a word about hundreds of Pakistani civilians killed by CIA drones in border areas.
Let's hope our ruling elite will let the law take its course in this case, though many Pakistanis remain skeptical.

A US Magazine Reports On Shutting Down A Pakistani Website For Criticizing CIA

A screen shot of the Google cache of a Pakistanian website, which has since been taken down

WHIR Web Hosting Industry News reports on how publishing a critical story on CIA led to shutting down PakNationalists.com during the first week of the new year. The story confirms how CIA and some government-types are disturbed at how we have been reporting illegal CIA activities in Pakistan over the last three years. The site was restored after the disputed article was removed. As a proof of discrimination, major US-based websites continue to display the same information while PakNationalists was singled out for retribution. Legal action is underway in the US jurisdiction where this discriminatory action occured.

Tunisia & Pakistan: Ben-Ali, Zardari & Kayani

I remember the time when President Zain Al Abidine Ben Ali seized power in Tunisia in 1987. I was 15, a young political junkie attending an Arabic school. A Lebanese friend came to me and said his countrymen and women in the south, where Lebanese Shia villages abound, flocked to the Tunisian embassy in Beirut because they were impressed by the name of the new Tunisian president which resembles the name of one of the key historical Shia Muslim figures.

Of course, religious myths had not place in the mind of the new Tunisian strongman. Tunisia is a Muslim country but staunchly non-religious at government level, with an educated population, and known more for its artists and musicians, books and world-class touristic resorts than anything else.

Since its independence in 1956, it was ruled by El Habib Bou Rgeiba, a Tunisian nationalist who turned his country into one of the most modernist Arab nations. In his early years, Iraq's Saddam Hussain was impressed by Bou Rgeiba's reforms and implemented some of them, turning Iraq into a powerhouse for education and learning before the war with Iran destroyed everything.

President Ben-Ali took charge from an ailing Bou Rgeiba in 1987 and ruled ever since.

While culture, theaters, education, sports and arts were encouraged, political dissent was not tolerated.  China, for example, has allowed the young Chinese many avenues to release their energy through the Internet and social networking, online and offline, with supervision when necessary. No such room in Tunisia. The ability to adapt to change while protecting national interest is essential.  President Ben-Ali was protecting Tunisian stability but failed to adapt to a new economy and society. People can live with a strong government as long as they are busy in making and spending money, which is the core of a healthy economy. Overlooking this dynamic was a mistake that President Ben Ali has paid for yesterday, when he had to escape the country after weeks of demonstrations against corruption and inflation.

An army officer and a former head of Tunisian military intelligence and later in charge of external intelligence, President Ben-Ali was forced out by his own military because of the way he handled protesters, killing around 90 protesters and injuring close to one thousand. The protesters were only against the rise in essential food items and general corruption of the ruling elite.

The military sealed Tunisia's airspace and effectively secured all borders. Some relatives of Sarah Trabolsi, the second wife of the president, were arrested by the military as they tried to board a plane out of the country.

The military did not approve of President Ben-Ali's high-handedness and eased the president out. The people have welcomed the military intervention, and emergency rule is in effect now in the country. The new temporary president Mohamad El Ghanouchi has called on "all sons and daughters of Tunis ... to show national spirit and unity and help our nation pass this difficult stage."

LESSONS FOR PAKISTAN

It is just a guess but two people must be watching the Tunisian news closely: President Asif Ali Zardari and Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

President Ben-Ali's departure is bad news for our president. It shows that such departures are possible after all and no amount of 'revenge democracy' ['democracy is the best revenge' is one of Mr. Zardari's best catchphrases] can prevent such an ending. 

The Pakistani ruling elite is not just incompetent. It is ineffective, conducts uncivilized politics, and has almost no vision for the country's past, present or future. What is worse is that the Pakistani ruling elite will not allow any mechanism for new Pakistani faces or talents to emerge. This stagnation is what led to President Ben-Ali's escape.

You can add one more charge in the Pakistani case that does not exist in the Tunisian example: Pakistani politics have splintered along linguistic lines, dividing Pakistanis and enticing them to internal warfare. The country's constitution does not allow our parties to do this but there is no one to stop them.

As for Gen. Kayani, his and his colleagues' worry is simple. They do not want to find themselves in a situation where the military intervenes again in a traditional way and clean the mess, like the Tunisians have done. Pakistan needs to create viable state institutions to run the country. The military realizes the importance of this to avoid a meltdown.  But such a meltdown is almost knocking at Pakistan's door. In the face of massive failures of the Pakistani political elite, the military knows it will have to step in eventually.

It is not hard to figure this out. But the million-dollar question is: What to do after an intervention. Traditional-style coups, where the army chief steps in and takes charge, like Pervez Musharraf had done, can no longer work. Whoever is in charge after a meltdown, tough decisions will have to be made to restyle the political system by removing crippling bottlenecks in the constitution and laws and in a manner that would stop political parties from becoming personal and family fiefdoms and allow for a healthy and civilize political growth and practice.

Like Tunisia, Pakistan will have to find indigenous solutions. Lectures and recipes from Washington and London won't help. The Tunisians have clear red lines in this regard. But not in Pakistan, which is a contributing factor to constant instability.

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.

How To Save America From The Abyss

After the near-assassination of US politician Gabrielle Giffords, I made an important discovery. I discovered that she was almost killed, and possibly crippled for life, in the same state - Arizona - that produced the American terrorist Timothy McVeigh. It also produced a hate preacher called John Hagee, the one who made the famous statement, 'All Muslims are programmed to kill.'  As a child, Hagee was probably addicted to the science fiction movie E.T.

Arizona is also the same state that produced an American president that wasn't: John McCain. Senator McCain almost made it in the 2008 presidential elections. But see what kind of people Arizona has been producing: Mr. McCain is a warmonger. As President Obama visited India in November, Mr. McCain issued a series of statements welcoming the prospects of United States ganging up with India against China, and also against Pakistan.

Just imagine this: a politician who thinks he is presidential material is rooting for a future massive war in Asia because that suits his ego.

I have always maintained that ordinary Americans are some of the nicest people you'd find anywhere. But it is the American political elite that wants to mislead these good people into a war with the rest of the planet.

This is the theme of my analytical piece that I wrote for Project For Pakistan In 21st Century, an independent think-tank based in Islamabad. The paper is titled, How To Save America From The Abyss. I hope it makes a good read.

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.

Processions, Religious And Political, To Be Shifted To City Outskirts

Ban gatherings and processions within cities and designate special areas for them outside major population areas.

I wrote this comment in reply to a discussion started on Internet group PressPakistan.

This is a healthy and overdue debate. And it is not limited to Muharram processions but includes other religious events, including Eid Milad al Nabi and other events.

Remember: this is not a religious issue but an issue of public order. Some of our fellow citizens and brothers and sisters will try to give this a religious color. This must not be permitted. Apart from Pakistan, no other Arab or Muslim country allows the kind of public order disturbances in the name of political and religious processions and rallies the way we do in Pakistan.

Laws need to be amended to prohibit any political or religious activity in public places where it could create inconvenience to the larger population.

Special areas should be designated on the outskirts of major cities and towns where political parties and religious groups can hold their events round the year without causing a public order problem for the government and the rest of the citizens.

These special-designated areas can be secured, organized and equipped to handle large crowds in an orderly way. Special facilities can be provided to help local and international media cover events right from the location.

Exceptions to the rule should be limited to events inside cities that are conducted inside halls and buildings with proper and ample parking arrangements. And with guarantees the gathering will not spill to the streets.

Most of our political and religious groups won't accept this. But a strong federal government can and should enforce this measure for larger public good.

This measure can help eliminate some of the factors that destabilize the domestic environment in the country.

A group of eminent, non-partisan Pakistanis have authored a detailed report in this regard which will be presented to the incumbent government sometime in early 2011. It is part of a larger effort to propose changes to our laws to strengthen the State and make it more effective.

Ignore Guardian's Claim Of 'Fake' India WikiLeaks

The Guardian newspaper is claiming this report is 'fake'. Here is why you should disregard Guardian's claim for being biased:

WikiLeaks is not saying this. UK's Guardian newspaper is. It's one of 4 or 5 newspapers that have been selectively releasing the Wiki cables. About 1,200 have been released so far out of 251,000 or so. Guardian and others have manipulated the leaks to release material that supports US policy on Pakistan, specifically on Pakistani nukes and Pakistani policy on Afghanistan, India and Kashmir.

This selective approach was not limited to Pakistan. It extended to countries such as Russia and China, in addition to Pakistan, countries with whom US foreign policy is at odds.

WikiLeaks handed over the entire stash of cables to these 4 or 5 newspapers. What these papers did is to hold off everything and target these few countries in a surprising overlap with US objectives.

So the good work of WikiLeaks has been hijacked by these newspapers, including the Guardian.

Now there is this story in the Pakistani media and The Guardian is horrified that there is someone else practicing manipulation besides them.

Substantial parts of the story in Pakistani media is correct. It's only that The Guardian and the other newspapers are misleading the world public opinion by a selective focus on the things they want from WikiLeaks cables.

WikiLeaks did a good job of exposing US bully diplomacy, and here comes NYT, Guardian and 2 or 3 other 'partner' newspapers of WikiLeaks to selectively release the material to suit US policy objectives.