Ejaz Asi - Information Designer from Karachi, Pakistan

Lately the likes of Minister of Information, Durrani (bay-eemani) and Shaikh Rasheed have been condemning local media channels and have been going on and on about how great media west really has. They have been actually giving examples of CNN and other news channels in America who think of national security and interest first and give news accordingly.

Well, what do you expect from retards who have seen nothing but the Raja Bazar of Rawalpindi or GHQ of Pakistan? To see or illustrate the great free western media which is known as Corporate Media’s responsibilities and reporting news that matter, let’s read on Ten important things Americans were not told about.

The fact that most Americans oppose the war in Iraq, and want the president impeached, is testimony to the native intelligence and common sense of the citizens of this nation.

It sure isn’t thanks to the quality of the news Americans’re getting here in America!

1. Most Americans would like to see this president and vice president impeached and removed from office. Newsweek magazine published a scientific poll last October showing that 51 percent of us favor impeachment (including 29 percent of Republicans!), but the corporate media, which normally haven’t met a poll they won’t publish, didn’t publicize this one. And now, when the numbers supporting impeachment are surely even higher, you can’t even pay a polling outfit to ask the question. No wonder most people who favor impeachment still think they’re odd ducks.

2. There is a bill, filed in the House of Representatives on April 24 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), calling for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. Since it was filed, it has gained six co-sponsors, including a member of the House Democratic leadership, Rep. Janice Shakowsky (D-IL). Most major media have ignored this important story completely. Most Americans also don’t know that the Vermont State Senate voted overwhelmingly this spring to call on Congress to impeach the president.

3. The president has been declared a felon in federal court. Yet even after Federal District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled last August that President Bush and the National Security Agency were committing serial Class A felonies and were violating both the First and Fourth Amendments by spying on Americans’ communications without first obtaining warrants, Bush continued ordering the NSA to continue the patently illegal program for at least half a year. In reports on the spying program, the corporate media never mention that it has been declared a felonious activity by the federal court.

4. Fifteen Democratic state party organizations have passed impeachment resolutions calling on Democrats in Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president and vice president. The most recent of these, the Democratic Party of Oklahoma, passed its resolution at the party’s annual convention on May 19. Other Democratic Party conventions, in states from Nevada and California to Massachusetts and North Carolina, have passed similar resolutions. Most have been ignored by the corporate media even in their own states.

5. Bush’s so-called “coalition of the willing” is not so willing and is not really much of a coalition either. When’s the last time you’ve heard how many countries are on board with the US in the war and occupation of Iraq? The reality? Britain, the only significant contributor of combat troops besides the U.S., is pulling out, as Italy and Spain did earlier, and many other countries, like Denmark, Lithuania and others, plan to be out of Iraq by August or at the latest December. One indication of the seriousness of situation: the Pentagon no longer lists the countries that are members of the “coalition.” The only mainstream report I’ve seen laying out this collapse in international support for Bush’s war was in USA Today last February.

6. The Homeland Security Department last year awarded Halliburton $385 million in a no-bid contract to construct prison camps designed to hold tens of thousands of unspecified prisoners in the event of domestic unrest. Meanwhile, President Bush has signed a bill altering the insurrection act so that he can declare martial rule and order active duty troops to take charge anywhere in the domestic US in the event of “public disorder.” No one in the corporate media has reported on these developments or asked the White House to explain what it’s all about.

7. There is evidence that Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, was a patron of the Washington Madam whose client book of high-class call-girls is causing many in Washington political circles—mostly Republicans it appears, who apparently need to pay for their sex—to sweat. So far no mention of the Cheney angle in the corporate media, though they’ve been having fun with the broader story of a political sex scandal. No mention either of how a brave West Point cadet a few weeks ago refused to shake Cheney’s hand on stage when the vice president was handing out this year’s diplomas at the Army’s premiere officer academy.

8. Among the “worst of the worst” of the “evildoers” captured and held as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo were children, some of them preteens and kids who were under 15 when captured and brought to the island of Cuba–so many in fact that the military had to set up a special facility, called Camp Iguana, just for adolescent and pre-pubescent “fighters.” The corporate media have barely reported on this atrocity (the New York Times ran only one article mentioning child captives, in June 2005). The only wider coverage of this outrage came recently when the government tried to prosecute one such alleged child “terrorist”–Omar Khadr–only to have the military judge in charge toss his case out because the government had misclassified him. Khadr, we learned, was captured in 2001 in Afghanistan at the ripe age of 15, making him one of the older child captives brought to and interrogated at Guantanamo. Under international law, the U.S. was supposed to treat this and other child soldiers as victims, not as war criminals. Khadr, a Canadian by birth, instead has spent five years doing hard time in US captivity.

9. Well-researched reports on the rampant theft of both the 2000 and 2004 elections, and on Republican plans for theft of the 2008 election, such as Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again, have gone unmentioned in the corporate media. Books on the subject, like Miller’s and like Greg Palast’s best selling Armed Madhouse, have never been reviewed.

10. And of course, there’s my own book. The Case for Impeachment, despite its having sold over 20,000 copies in hardcover, and despite its having now come out in a mass-market paperback edition, in both cases printed by a mainstream publisher, St. Martin’s Press, has not received a single review in the corporate media. In this, my co-author Barbara Olshansky and I are not alone. None of the books on the impeachable crimes of this administration, including one by Nixon-era impeachment panelist and former congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, and one by Judiciary Chair Rep. John Conyers, has been reviewed by a mainstream media outlet.

What we’re talking about here is nothing less than a media blackout of important stories and news.

Thanks to the internet and to the grapevine, and thanks to their basic native intelligence, most Americans seem to understand that we’re being lied to and cheated. What the media blackout of important news does manage to do, however, is keep us all thinking that we are in a minority in opposing things like illegal wars, a trampled Constitution, and stolen elections.

In fact, however, we’re actually the majority. Once we realize this, maybe we will have a movement, instead of a just nation of isolated cynics and complainers.
______________________________

DAVE LINDORFF, a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist, is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of “The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now out in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Time to go home, hon. And home shall we go to.
My first draft and bit random thoughts on “State of IT Managers and Leadership in Pakistan”. The language and tone may be little too harsh for your taste. Don’t try to knock my pants down on that, please.
I had an opportunity to talk to some of my friends’ contacts in IT management and business field. It was a disappointed casual meeting, of course but I at least got to believe more firmly that the IT managers in my country need some serious brain-washing. Some of these “kids” (I know I am pretty younger to them but boy, do I love this word) may even go to foreign good universities and return with their same mind-set, some of them have chances to work with large corporations but their rotten-minds can never let them breathe fresh air and respect their workers. IT workers are not clerks, manual labor or hell, even bank managers or of the sort. These managers whine and rant about the “betrayals” and “inefficiency” of their employees and so on and could never have balls to admit their own lack of management or leadership. It comes natural, gentlemen and some ladies. There’s nothing you could do about it now.
Oh, these guys read shit-load of books and attend seminars and so on. Most of the current generation of IT Managers in Pakistan know Jack Welch, admire Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and adore what GE did in the business to earn the respect of thousands of its workers and investors. Peter Drucker who coined the term, “Knowledge Workers” say that

knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5, and that smart businesses will “strip away everything that gets in their knowledge workers’ way.” Those that succeed will attract the best performers, securing “the single biggest factor for competitive advantage in the next 25 years.”

Yes, it’s true and yet it’s often neglected. Even the graduates of FAST, KU, and other good universities are treated like they are some shit-holes or something. The worse thing is that these brilliant minds often fail to understand and realize the mal-treatment until they are given better opportunities than their current employers. The fresh-kids are just so full of energy, passion and happiness that they could do anything you’d like them to do IF you know how to lead them through their good work and earn profits along the way as well.
But the truth is far from such reality. Some of the IT firms in Pakistan are more profitable than the Government agencies hope. More money doesn’t, however, mean more happiness. It’s because of this very fact, most of IT managers start hating what they do soon in their lives. Poor fellas, eh?
Paul Graham say

“How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know that, you don’t know when to stop searching. And if, like most people, you underestimate it, you’ll tend to stop searching too early. You’ll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents, or the desire to make money, or prestige– or sheer inertia.”

Fun and Work Together?
Much of the problems for the IT Managers stem from their lack of respect and admitting the fact that Fun and work can both go together in an IT environment. Blame Freud or whatever, it’s very true that it’s got to do with our childhood. The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn’t fun for most of them. So, yeah, in a way, these IT Managers who got out of these schools and colleges remained like that for quite sometime. Even the best of colleges and Universities inland and overseas couldn’t get this out of their minds. So, all you see in the firms today would be restricted Web access, no-chatting applications or games allowed whatsoever and so on. Some of those who don’t explicitly disallow the fun-part of the work, would rebuke and show their eager contempt in case something happens wrong blaming everything to those fun-part moments of that worker. The kid in them never grows out of the contempt and rebuke they once had once they tried to imagine that work and fun could go together.

We are Unique!
Most of the IT managers live their lives with the hallucinating fact that what their companies are doing is Unique and they’re the pioneers of what they are doing. And they imagine that every knowledge-worker would also not only believe them but be impressed and start moving his dog-tail in response. Hard luck, pal. No one is doing what we’re doing. - This is a bummer of a lie because there are only two logical conclusions. First, no one else is doing this because there is no market for it. Second, the entrepreneur is so clueless that he can’t even use Google to figure out he has competition. As a rule of thumb, if you have a good idea, five companies are going the same thing. If you have a great idea, fifteen companies are doing the same thing.”

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Wanted to write on the cartoons and other caricatures of Hazrat Muhammad made by Danish journalists/illustrators and followed by other enlightened states of Europe when I spotted something on Hedayah’s blog. Can’t disagree a bit. It speaks my heart. As for my words, there’s no such thing as “Free Speech” just like there’s no such thing as Free Coffee. Western world need to swallow this bitter candy and get over with their delusions. I followed most of BBC and other sites’ news and am just apalled at how innocently dumb-faced the western-media could become. May be it’s time they need to learn back what they studied in their socio-cultural classes or such. This whole thing is just as plain stupid as someone’d tell you on your face that Journalism is an unbiased profession. Here’s an example: A child in some dark room working on a carpet tirelessly and he’s underpaid in Pakistan. The heartfelt journalist’d label it as “Child Labor”. And now, take a look at the bright red carpet with camera, light and yes, a bit of action too being displayed by parading topless Kate Moss who’s only 12 or 13 in her admirer Giorgio Armani. The joyful (and ogling) journalist’d mostly recall that shot as “Mind-Blowing”, trend-setter (from then on, the petite, frecklish and under-age topless models were in rage but of course not so popular as Kate Moss, of course) and classy. Oh, for the un-initiated, the young lass, Kate Moss was already drinking, smoking and skipping classes at the age of 13. Laetitia Casta was another story. No women-rights or child-rights would be heard when the men moaned at the sights of these young kids in their bikinis. But the british media would definitely take a look at the “Lack of Respect for Children Rights” in Islamic schools of UK who taught religion to the young minds questioning whether or not the young minds should have the luxury of deciding themselves if they want to study religion at all.
Give me a break. If the west has no morality, say it on face just like Bush had the nerves to say that he “wanted” to attack on Iraq whether or not it possessed WMDs. Just don’t get this “Free-Speech” bullshit in between. Anyways, here’s hedayah’s post.

I believe every one of us is keeping a watchful eye on the recent updates in the news media resulting from the Danish + other EU newspapers foolish cartoons/remarks about our beloved Prophet Mohammad (SWS). Not only they publicised them repeatedly, over these past few months clearly playing with people’s feelings, but also even till today have refused to apologise, all in the name of free speech. A Free Speech that has been a sign-posted, selfish, world media attention seeking, disgraceful insult on all the Muslims of the World, if anything else. This is not acceptable by the greater wider community!

Today, this extremist free speech on such absolute terms held so dearly by European media has been widely felt as a direct attack on the Muslims freedom of practising their faith, further flaming ISLAMOPHOBIA among the masses, has not only left many Muslims feeling offended but also a lot of culturally sensitive, respectful non-Muslims felt outraged on such a clear abuse of the power of a cherished freedom of speech. Everybody knows that with freedom of speech comes responsibility.

Some Muslims have reacted, most likely out of built-up fear of rejection and in anger, used inappropriate methods e.g. flashing distasteful placards during peaceful protest marches. I would, however, ask our fellow Muslims to refrain from such acts in the future and try adapting themselves with good manners in every situation, no matter how under stressed and under pressure they would feel, because exceptional show of mercy and dealing with situations in the best of manner possible was indeed, the way of our beloved Prophet Mohammad (SWS).

If not today, when will be that time for all the Muslims of the World to take up some responsibilities, get united and try as much as possible to participate in anything positive, to eradicate any misconception of Islam being embedded in the minds of our fellow human beings by today’s media? Remember, Muslims are not in minority when it comes to the Worlds Population! Let’s do something positive, try making a difference for the good of the World!

Indeed, sooner or later to ALLAH we will all return. May Allah have mercy on us, today and in the Hereafter. Ameen.

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