Seeing Red (Updated)

The entire country seems to be seized with the issue of whether dual nationality holders should be allowed to hold public office in Pakistan. The Supreme Court is currently hearing a case against four Peoples Party parliamentarians including the President's media adviser Farahnaz Ispahani, whose National Assembly membership has been temporarily suspended by the court on prima facie evidence that she is also an American citizen. The Punjab Assembly has tried to weasel its way out of the same criteria being applied to its members by saying it has no record of which of its members are dual nationality holders. I'm not here to discuss the merits and contradictions of this issue, so if you can please leave that outrage for another time...

What I'm really here to share, however, is an explosive little story that a little tweety bird with impeccable credentials has divulged to us (what, you think only Najam Sethi has mysterious chirryas?).

If you recall, a certain Interior Minister, is among those accused of holding dual British nationality. That he had taken British citizenship while in self-exile from the mid-90s till he returned in 2007 is not even denied by him. He recently made a statement in the Supreme Court (through his lawyer) that he had renounced his UK citizenship in April 2008, upon assuming office in Pakistan and had presented some documents attesting to his claim upon his recent return from a working visit to the UK. (Incidentally, the Supreme Court rejected the documents as insufficient proof of his renunciation.)

 Not quite green (or blue)

Guess what our tweety bird has told us? The colour of the passport the Interior Minister used to travel to the UK - just a few days ago - was distinctly not green or blue (the Pakistani official passport). Those who laid eyes on it say they saw a very British red. Unfortunately, we are not at liberty to reveal our source but what we will confirm clearly is that our tweety bird - which is more than 100 percent sure of its facts - is definitely not of the 'intelligence' variety.

It's one thing to be dheet and a liar. But this just sounds to us like the ultimate in pragmatic stupidity as well.


: : : UPDATE : : :

After this post was put up, a number of people wrote in on Twitter and in the comments to say that the Pakistani diplomatic passport is also red (or maroon) and that while senators and other government officials are issued a blue offical passport, all cabinet members (as the Interior Minister is) are issued a diplomatic passport. The implication was that perhaps our tweety bird had mistaken the colour of the diplomatic passport for the British passport. Senator Rehman Malik himself aslo tweeted that it had been "mischievously reported" that he had used a British passport whereas he had used only his "red diplomatic passport."

The doubt is understandable since in my write-up I had only referred to the colour of the passport, even though our source had not based the information on simply that. Nevertheless we have re-checked with our source to make doubly sure and the tweety bird confirms that it was in fact a British passport, not a Pakistani diplomatic passport. We thus stand by our story.

Absurdity, Thy Name Is...

Must Pakistan - or perhaps one should say specifically its government, its political leaders, its judiciary, its military and its bureaucrats - continue to make an ass of itself? Must it circumvent any attempt to make the world forget that we can be the most absurd cretins in the world?

Graphic by Nick Bilton (Source: New York Times)

Barely had the memory of the Lahore High Court-imposed Facebook ban faded from the collective global 'News of the Weird' consciousness that we were struck with the Twitter ban, which the Ministry of Information Technology people told us was because of "blasphemous and inflammatory content" on the site.


(Update: I had almost finished writing this post when news came in that the Twitter ban had been lifted but am posting this in any case in the off-chance that someone within the corridors of policy-making might read and prevent a recurrence of such ineptitude.) 

According to this Express Tribune story:

"Pakistan’s government had asked Twitter to stop a discussion on Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), which was considered derogatory, [PTA Chairman Dr Mohammad] Yaseen said, adding that “Twitter refused our request.”"

Now, you would have to be totally unaware of what Twitter is and how it works to think the above statement makes any sense whatsoever. Imagine, if you will, the government asking a cell phone company to stop people SMS-ing each other anything derogatory about the Prophet. The only way it would be possible for the cell phone company to enforce such a 'request' would be to either read each and every single SMS from the billions that go out from within its network or to simply ban any SMSes that used the word 'Prophet' or 'Muhammad' or 'Mohammad' or 'Mohd' or any other possible variation (and there would still be ways to circumvent it), which would of course block all Islamic SMSes as well. Any cell phone company would obviously 'refuse' the government's request, simply because it would not be possible to implement.

Of course I am not even touching upon the concept of 'free speech' (and which particularly protects 'speech' that one disagrees with or finds offensive) which is integral to rational societies and which would be another reason for Twitter to refuse to censor something even if it could. But this is a concept which is obviously is too lofty an argument for the cretins in officialdom to understand.

In any case, I am more than sure that there is not a single person within the so-called 'Ministry of Information Technology' who is on Twitter or even has a passing knowledge of it.

In all likelihood, given the storm of outrage and mocking it has unleashed, the ban will not last very long. But let's look at what this ban has actually achieved:

1. It has given free global publicity to offensive material that most people - including us - were not even aware of. 

2. It has shown that those in Pakistan who are supposed to manage information technology actually have no clue what they are in charge of. They are obviously also clueless about the ease with which such bans can be circumvented (it took us and others a total of five minutes to get around it.)

3. It has made Pakistan a target of mocking all around the world yet again as a country that cannot be rational, trust its citizens or tolerate any opinions that don't fit in with its own. 

4. It has made an issue out of a non-issue (most people were unaware of the material as pointed out above) and in that given oxygen to precisely those obscurantist elements who use these things to fan the flames of bigotry and intolerance, both within Pakistan and abroad. Note that there had been NO protests before the Ministry of Information Technology drew attention to this 'issue' but that with its ineptitude it has ensured that it is now on the radar for all rent-a-crowd mullahs and will embolden those racists who enjoy provoking all Muslims. 

5. It has shown that any flimsy excuse can be used to censor opinions, particularly political opinions, that the government of the day is uncomfortable with. Because at the end of the day, it's not alleged blasphemers and pornographers who suffer from Pakistani bans, but common people expressing their personal views, on Twitter, Facebook or on blogs, outside the more easily controlled corporate media.

Let me draw another analogy for our esteemed policy makers. If, on the street, someone were to go around particularly eavesdropping on conversations among random groups of people to check if anyone were using foul language so that he could berate them, or more closely, telling everyone to shut up because he had heard some people using foul language, we would consider such a person a lunatic. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the people at the Ministry of Information Technology have proved themselves to be, overzealous lunatics. It's about time bureaucrats realize that we cannot police the entire world and, more importantly, that there is no need to.

Of Governance Scandals And Clean Hands

We are sometimes accused by partisan supporters of opposition political parties of being soft on or for not being more vehement about denouncing the alleged corruption or misgovernance of the currently ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). While I could point to dozens of examples to dispute these claims, I would like to explain, once again, a couple of things.

Firstly, we do not brook real corrupt practises, arrogance or misgovernance; our only problem is when either claims are made without substantial proof or when such allegations are made arbitrarily only against the PPP and without context, as if everyone else - from the military to the judiciary to other political parties - is innocent of any blame and everything was hunky dory aside from the times that the PPP has been in power. This is not to say that the PPP should not be hauled up for its sins, only to provide a more balanced perspective.

But even more importantly than this is the fact that in the context of a mainstream media that overwhelmingly targets the ruling party (usually because that is in the nature of the media and sometimes because of less salubrious vested reasons), it makes little sense for us to repeat the same charges. The mainstream media has far, far more resources and outreach than we do and, to be sure, it is perfectly justified in its criticisms when it investigates and exposes real corruption and misgovernance. Our role, as we see it on the other hand, is not to reinforce what the dominant narrative is, but to provide, hopefully, some perspective, sometimes corrections and an alternative narrative where required.

Punjab Laptop Scheme: note the personal publicity

In any case, with that bit of explanation out of the way (and there is a connection which I will come to later), let me get down to what this post really is about. Those who follow us on Twitter will know that we already expressed our opposition to the Punjab Goverment's laptop distribution scheme. Our main contention against the scheme was two-fold:

1. That this was a wasteful publicity stunt that, like the disastrous Sasti Roti scheme before it, would drain the public exchequer without addressing real issues and would divert resources that could be better utilized in more productive schemes with more long-term benefit. 

2. That if providing access to computers to students is the goal, giving away laptops to individual students is possibly one of the worst solutions possible. Laptops, by their very nature, are more fragile, less upgradable and more prone to breakage and theft.

Keep in mind that our critique did not revolve around the issues of corruption or maladministration of the scheme, only its conceptualisation.

However, yesterday, Dunya TV's Khari Baat Lucman Ke Saath programme carried a devastating expose of how this scheme has really been run. It is a shocking expose of a scandal that most mainstream media has chosen to ignore so far, probably because it is too busy with stories about Memogate and exposing the federal government's malfeasance in the NRO case. I managed to catch the programme on repeat today and really think everyone who was upset at our opposition to the scheme should take a look at. (Hasan Nisar doesn't really add much to the programme but I am including the whole programme here so that you can appreciate the solid work and research that went into it. Kudos to the young reporter Huzaifa Rehman Qureshi who did most of it and to Mubasher Lucman for carrying it.)

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Part 4:



So basically, not only was there apparently huge financial bungling in the procurements of laptops and in the publicity of the scheme, many of those who benefited from the scheme were either PMLN supporters, mediocre students or affluent people who did not deserve to be subsidized by the state.

This laptop scheme was announced in November last year. It has taken the mainstream media six months to raise serious issues about it (even though there were various murmurings against it online for some time). Most of the time, we have been treated only with PR-type statements justifying it, such as this one  in The Daily Times claiming total transparency in the scheme with no counter narrative or actual investigation of the claims. At the same time, the Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, is given ample (and often uncritical) coverage in the media vowing to ensure "good governance" and proclaiming that he will "hang the looters of the national wealth (i.e. PPP leaders) publicly."

Coming back to what I began with, can you imagine had such a scandal involved the PPP, that the media would have waited even a moment to pounce on it? Had the PPP been bestowing largesse to its jiyalas, to failed students and making money off it too, would Geo, to cite just one example, have waited six months to run exposes on it? Isn't it about time one questioned why certain people get a much easier ride from the media's vigilant watchdogs than others?

Open Letter to PTA

Now that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has unfortunately allegedly indefinitely deferred its proposed ban on scurrilous words and phrases such as 'fingerfood', 'harder', 'deeper', 'Randhwa' [widower] and 'Carrom board', I believe it is time to step back, take a deep breath and re-evaluate, without all the deafening media hysteria, the fine, fine work being carried out by the telecom regulator. And yes, appreciate its commitment to promoting the country's progress in spheres that, in all honesty, is not its responsibility but which it takes on purely as a matter of conscientious citizenship. It is time for those of us whose voices were drowned out by the cacophony of knee-jerk anarchic reactionary-ism to step forward and bring a semblance of thoughtfulness back to public discourse.

In this regard, I have taken the liberty of writing an open letter of appreciation to PTA, which I hope those amongst you who were equally troubled by the wild and libelous accusations against the regulator, will endorse...


Chairman
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority
Islamabad.

Dear Sir,

Let me place on record our deep and abiding appreciation of your much misunderstood initiative to purge our cell phones of words and phrases that rightfully should not ever be heard by unsuspecting ears, much less read by eyes that can burn holes inside innocent brains.

1. Your drive to return public discourse to civilized norms by removing the temptations of referring to gutter vocabulary like 'Athlete's Foot', 'Bewakoof', 'Breast', 'Cocktail', 'Creamy', 'Deposit', 'Dome', 'Evl', 'Femme', 'Four Twenty', 'Glazed Donut', 'Harder', 'Hole', 'Hostage', 'Idiot', 'Joint', 'K Mart', 'Kill', 'Looser', 'Lotion', 'Low Life', 'Mary Jane', 'Murder', 'Nimbu Sharbat', 'Oui', 'Phrase', 'Pussy Cat', 'Roach', 'Robber', 'Slant', 'Slime', 'Sniper', 'Spit', 'Stringer', 'Suicide', 'Tampon', 'Taxi', 'Trojan' and 'Trots' is very commendable. These words and phrases truly should remain where they belong, i.e. in the gutter.

2. But even more deserving of appreciation was your attempt to stand as a bulwark against the creeping Westernization of our culture by prohibiting references to NFL American 'football' players ('Rae Carruth', 'He Hate Me'; is Shahid Afridi not good enough for these degenerates?), American cable channels ('Showtime'; Hum TV zindabad!), American concepts of revenue generation ('Primetime'), West African nations ('Niger'; what have they ever done for us?), Anglo-American serial murderers ('Jack the Ripper', 'Dahmer'; the ignoring of our indigenous Javed Iqbals is shameful) and imported racist terms ('Nigga', 'Yellow Man', 'Polack'; when he have our own homegrown terms like 'choorrha', 'matarwa' and 'phheena', what is the need to look elsewhere?). In fact, you have also prophetically pointed out terms which we actually have no idea about ('Ingin', 'Giehn') but which we are sure are part of the same dirty conspiracy to subvert indigenous Pakistani culture.

3. As a special exception, we are also grateful that you have recognized the vulgarity introduced by 'Chunni'. Ms. Saigol, who presents herself as a doyenne of eastern culture, should immediately desist from using this diminutive form of her name, which in any case, does not befit the high prices she charges for her jewellery.

4. We are also extremely appreciative of your attempts to wipe out the scourge of cruelty against animals, who are, after all, God's beautiful creatures but cannot express themselves in the same ways that humans can. Thus we are happy that references to 'Flogging the Dolphin', 'Spanking the Monkey' and 'Axing the Weasel' have been made verboten. However, may we in all humility suggest that 'Choking the Snake', 'Corralling the Tadpoles', 'Draining the Monster', 'Flogging the Dog', Galloping the Antelope', 'Grappling the Gorilla', 'Hacking the Hog', 'Loping the Mule', 'Milking the Moose', 'Perling the Oyster', 'Petting the Lizard', 'Playing with the Spitting Llama', 'Pounding the Bald-headed Moose', 'Pumping the Python', 'Ramming the Ham', 'Roping the Pony', 'Shooting Flies', 'Slapping the Hamster', 'Snapping the Monkey', 'Stroking the One-Eyed Burping Gecko', 'Smacking the Bacon', 'Taunting the One-Eyed Weasel', 'Choking the Chicken' and 'Brushing the Beaver' are also worthy of your attention. Such inhumane treatment of poor, dumb animals should also be declared off-limits in your next iteration.

5. Your efforts to expand the horizons of sometimes parochial Pakistanis have been met with little understanding and typical obstinacy but we would like you to know that we are all for the inclusion of other Asian languages in your lists even if they may not be understood by the majority of Pakistanis. Terms such as 'Mayyaada', 'Deli Mali Guti', 'Kute Liche Ho Chublo', 'Meli Mali Guta', 'Monney Podey', 'Peasah Nah Mahr', 'Aayush', 'Lun Chung', 'Kamche', 'Chafu Gaan', 'Pim Pim' 'Havesh', 'Ranayadha', 'Gui Jo Tung', 'Pelay Ka Dala Ona Mandam', 'Lavander', 'Chinaal' and 'Mangachinamun' may not make much sense to most. But that's only until they, intrigued, make the effort to learn new languages. We understand your contribution to advancing the cause of education in this country.

6. We would also like to commend your team for attempting to ban perversions such as 'unfuckable' and 'No Sex'. As we all know, there is no such thing as the former and the latter is simply a conspiracy to deny the future might of Pakistani multitudes.

7. Few have understood or appreciated your single-handed, and may we add brilliant, ploy to change the worldwide image of Pakistan as a country constantly associated with terrorism, militancy, lack of governance and tinpot military dictatorships. But we, Chairman sahib, understand it well and give you a standing ovation for this. If any proof is needed for doubters, you should tell them to watch the following clip:



Tell them, sir, to point out another instance where the mention of Pakistan brought a smile on the lips of Americans. Tell them to point out when was the last time they heard something about Pakistan in the foreign media and did not hear the adjectives 'double-dealing', 'disastrous', 'corruption-ridden' or 'crumbling' also mentioned. Bravo, sir, bravo! It takes real brilliance for such ingeniousness and insight into media handling.

P.S.: You should however write to Rachel Maddow and correct her disinformation. People should know that it is not 'Monkey Crotch' that is banned but 'Crotch Monkey' and that there's a difference. She should also be told that 'Butt' by itself is not forbidden (we are not so naive!), only 22 variations of when it is combined with other words.

8. We could go on but finally, sir, we wish to give you plaudits for raising the morale of the civil servants who work under you. Months of bureaucratic work must have seemed like one big festive party to your staff which no doubt transformed a government job from a daily grind into something to look forward to every day. We have mental imagery of your staff spending raucous days surfing porn sites to gather the search 'tags' that contributed to your lists, long sessions of camaraderie wherein staff recollected and explained obscure swear-words from their own adolescence to include in the non-English compilations, mirth and giggling previously unheard of in dour government offices and possibly copious amounts of consumption as well. A happy government office is a sign of a happy country. This is an atmosphere that should be encouraged and continued and we are happy to note that PTA has pointed out that the process will not stop here and pledged to continue updating the lists. However, just as a note of caution, you should possibly do regular tests on the quality of dope being supplied to the PTA offices. You would not want any unforeseen medical emergencies to come in the way of the good and important work you are doing.

We hope the recent misinformed hullabaloo over your endeavours is resolved soon and that you can continue raising the stature of Pakistan.

With the best of regards,

Sincerely,

Team Cafe Pyala

Crap All Round

The Jang Group has become so obsessed with quickly seeing the back of the government and is probably salivating so much over the prospects of threatened long marches that sometimes it gets muddled up in its excitement...

This is the heading from yesterday's daily Jang about Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani trying to reassure people - dreading a government-Supreme Court showdown in court today (October 13) - that nothing bad would happen. The headline reads: "13 March Ko Kuchh Nahin Hoga..." [Nothing will happen on March 13...].

(Thanks to Maaz Abdullah for sending this to us.)

Just so you're assured that YRG didn't actually flub the month himself, this is how Dawn reported it.

I guess the Jang Group was too focused on the Geo-spearheaded 'Get Zardari' campaign to get their months correct. A sample of this campaign is reproduced below, this one invoking Muslim history to shame Zardari about the concept of justice (it ran on the front page of the Jang Group publications yesterday, thanks to Muhammad Shahid Khan for sending it to us). Other 'public service messages' on Geo question the constitutional immunity granted to the president, as if that immunity is something Zardari drafted himself.

Living with Justice and the Jang Group

As you may have heard, the governmental spokesperson Fauzia Wahab has announced that the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) will from now on boycott Geo and Jang (what's the soft corner for The News all about?) because of their "partisanship." Fair enough, as long as that boycott means simply that PPP leaders will not appear on Geo's programmes or give interviews to Jang (it's their prerogrative) and does not mean stopping government advertising to them. Government advertising is state-controlled advertising and should have nothing to do with a particular party's stances.

But here's my problem with the government... Ms Wahab also goes on to state that:

"the Jang group was a defaulter of Rs8 billion and evader of taxes amounting to Rs1.68 billion."

So why don't you arrest its owners and put them on trial? What's with brandishing this as a smear tactic? If it's true (and it better be for you to say it Ms. Wahab), what stops you from taking action against the group? Or are tax laws only for the less powerful? Also, while you're at it, you may want to get those 25 ministers and countless rich parliamentarians (on an average worth over 8 crores each) who pay either no or incredibly little taxes to cough up their dues too.

Is Pakistan Run By A Moronocracy?

Please go over to this entry on the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) website and read about what the Government of Pakistan secretly has in store for netizens in the country. APC has managed to get its hands on a confidential document submitted by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) to the Lahore High Court (LHC), detailing how it plans to monitor and censor the internet in the future. The document was submitted after the Facebook ban, and before the current bout of moronic behaviour banning seven websites including search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing from the Bahawalpur bench of the LHC (PTA said subsequently it would only "monitor" some of the sites including email provider Hotmail).

According to the document (the following has not been edited to correct any of the usual illiteracy of bureaucracy, all mistakes are in the original):

"On the recommendation of the [inter-ministerial] committee [whose existence is not public knowledge], Federal Government shall issue directive to PTA for blocking of website(s) either at IP level or URL [within 24 hours] which contain the following:

a. All information pertaining to any objectionable content

b.Undermine Islam or ridicule, disparage or attack any religion, ethnic group, region or any group's reverend practices.

c. Brings contempt to the country or its people so as to undermine integrity and solidarity of the state / country.

d. Violates any provision of the constitution of Pakistan or law of the land.

e. Promotes or supports sedition, terrorism, anarchy or violence in the country;

f. Brings contempt of the Defense Forces, Police, Air Force or any other institution of Government of Pakistan or to divulge any secret information relating to Defense and other services.

g.Contains propaganda in favor of any foreign state having bearing on any points of disputes or against any friendly foreign state;

h.Hurts national sentiments"

So basically, here's a draft for another one of those stupid laws / plans that can mean just about anything and probably will. Some other specific points about the above-mentioned clauses:

a - takes care of all search engines
b - interestingly, would it mean banning the websites of Jang and Nawai Waqt et al that have columnists spouting hatred against Ahmadis, Christians and Jews?
c - this would ban even the New York Times e.g.
d - banishes most bloggers or anyone questioning anything
e - as if such sites were allowed in the first place, ask the Baloch nationalists
f - I have no idea why the Air Force is singled out in this (are they not part of the Defence forces?) but basically anyone criticizing corruption even in the Seed Corportion of Pakistan also stands to be blocked. Geo would be blocked for running stories about the Pakistan Steel Mill. And that story on Express Tribune about policemen taking bribes - you're out too ET.
g - so you cannot say, e.g. that India may have a legitimate point when it protests Pakistanis like Ajmal Kasab coming over and killing 200 people in Bombay or that it was American CIA and Saudi money that fueled our jihadis
h - if anything was left, here's the catchall phrase that encompasses it.


You can try all you want but you ain't going to find a more absurdist bunch of nincompoops running a state on the face of this earth.

How Big is YOUR Cabinet?

Someone just sent me a link to the CIA's publications website, listing the cabinet members of various governments. And what it contains on Pakistan is the list of ministers at the federal level. Here is the link to the Pakistan portion of the website.

As you can see, it's a long, long list. It got me thinking, yet again, about the absurdity of this "poor" country. And yes, I do mean country, not government. It's been pretty much the same situation under previous governments, including the PML(Q) one overseen by President Musharraf. But as far as this particular list is concerned, it is important to note the following facts:

1) These are only the FULL ministers, no ministers of state listed here. Apparently, that's another 30 or so bright young things.

2) By my count, there are now 47 ministries (!!!) at the federal level alone, not including the office of the Prime Minister.

3) In addition to these 47 ministries, we have a Prime Minister (obviously), a "Senior Minister" (less obviously) and a number of others with the rank and perks of a full minister, including, among others, the Governor of the State Bank, the Attorney General, the National Security Adviser, the Ambassador to the US, the Ambassador to the UN etc. etc. etc.

4) There are only 2 women full ministers in 47 ministries.

5) The following apparently irrelevant ministries have no one to head them (which simply means there's still scope for a cabinet increase):

- Culture

- Information Technology and Telecommunications

- Inter-Provincial Coordination

- Law and Justice

- Narcotics Control

- Women's Development

So I did a bit of research, just for comparison's sake. And this is what I came up with, just to put things in perspective. Not counting the President / Vice President (considered a part of the cabinet in the US) and the Prime Minister for any of the following countries, have a look at the statistics (sorry, can't seem to get the formatting right for a table):

Country / GDP / POPULATION

CABINET SIZE

USA /US$13.84 TRILLION/ 304 million

15 ministries (by law)

Japan /US$ 4.5 TRILLION/ 127 million

No more than 16 ministers (by law)

China /US$ 3.9 TRILLION/ 1,330 million

Approx. 50 members of the 'State Council'

India /US$ 2.97 TRILLION/ 1,148 million

52 ministries (but only 32 full ministers)

UK /US$ 2.3 TRILLION/ 61 million

22 full ministers

Pakistan/ US$ 167 BILLION/ 173 million

47 ministries (at least 47 full ministers)

Any thoughts?