The bullcrap media still plods along as if its readership is still captive. As if we have no means of independently verifying the claims it makes.
The Globe and Mail is a Toronto-based newspaper which is also published in five other Canadian cities. Its daily paid circulation is less than 300,000. In a country of 35,000,000. The population of Toronto alone is 2-1/2 million. It claims circulation is up slightly over its Toronto competitors. However, like its competitors, it hands out thousands of free copies in public venues such as subway stations, universities and government buildings.
The reality is that, like the rest of the newspaper business, the Globe and Mail is moribund. And here is yet another example. After the lessons of “9/11” and “Saddam’s Nukular Bombs” the b-s media is quick to jump on any hint of dissent or even suspicion when it comes to the narrative they are expected to spread.
If you believe the story about “dancing israelis” on September 11, 2001 and that Yousef al-Khattab, Adam Ghadan and Abu Talhah al-Amrikee used to be known as Joseph Cohen, Adam Pearlman and Zachary Chesser (respectively) you hate the jews, you want to gas them all and you are a conspiracy theorist. If you believe there are certain unanswered questions about what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, you are mentally ill and a you are a conspiracy theorist. If you don’t believe Bashar al-Assad gassed his own people within sight of the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors on the very day they arrived, you are in league with the terrorists and you are a conspiracy theorist. If you don’t believe Vladimir Putin personally shot down Malysian Airlines flight 17, you are a dirty rotten commie and you are a conspiracy theorist. I could go on.
Let’s go through this one-by-one.
Why many Pakistanis have turned against Peace Prize nominee Malala
Malala Yousafzai is a CIA agent. She might also be working for Pakistani intelligence services and MI6. It’s also entirely possible she’s on the payroll of Zionists and spending her spare time feeding information to Indian spies.
A lot of work for a 16-year-old.
By the way, that’s not me being facetious. Those are actually the kinds of allegations leveled against the young Malala by a motley crew of shrill right-wing characters, united by their suspicion that the young activist is not an agent of change but an agent of the west.
Well, okay. Maybe she’s not working for the C.I.A. However, when Nayirah al-Sabah gave her tearful testimony before the U.S. Congress and spun her tale about how she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers grabbing babies out of incubators at a hospital in Kuwait, throwing those babies on the floor and stealing the incubators, she was a full year younger than Yousafzai. And while al-Sabah is not known to have been working for the CIA (at the time, anyway), it was established shortly thereafter whom she was working for: public relations firm Hill and Knowlton.
YouTube: Nayirah al-Sabah’s 1991 testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmfVs3WaE9Y
YouTube: C.B.C.’s The Fifth Estate: To Sell A War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaR1YBR5g6U
Every culture has its shorthand. In Pakistan, foreign connections can earn you a reference as either “CIA ka aadmi” or “Agencies ka banda” – the CIA’s man or working for “the Agencies” (Pakistan’s intelligence services). It’s typically said in jest. Well, mostly. But it does point to a broader problem: The latent and not-so-latent paranoia that infuses Pakistani society.
Trust no one. Everyone has an agenda. Pakistan is a victim of the “foreign hand.”
And why do you suppose that is? Could it be because the C.I.A.’s interference in governments around the world has become so pervasive and so destructive that anybody with two brain cells to rub together can see who their operatives are now? Notice the X-Files reference there? Nice.
You can find anti-Malala pages on Facebook, you can read anti-Malala screeds online and in various newspapers in Pakistan. There are “truthers” who closely investigate pictures from the day the young woman was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman. They painstakingly go through photographs, comparing her head wound and blood spatter from various angles. They say things like the shooting was a fantastic hoax and Malala staged it to get famous, to get a visa.
It harkens back to the accusations leveled against another activist, Mukhtaran Mai. Apparently she got gang raped as a way to emigrate.
I was wonder when Mustafa would get around to “The Truthers.” You know? The people who are so sick and tired of having being lied to by governments for DECADES that they don’t believe anything (I’m one of them, by the way). Notice how the typist moves on to the classic straw man argument when he brings up how Mkhataran Mai “got gang raped as a way to emigrate?” Would-be debunkers love the straw man.
The national conversation in Pakistan on any given issue is highly polarized whether it’s minority rights, drones, corruption, or even fashion. It’s all treated as a zero sum game: why fret about Malala when “so many Malalas” are being killed in drone strikes in the tribal areas? As though people can’t care about both. Why worry about Malala when Aafia Siddiqui, “the daughter of the nation,” is wasting away in an American prison? As though one has anything to do with the other.
Well, what about it, Mustafa? What about those drone strikes? What about so many thousands of people killed that it would be intolerable, even to the American public? What about the U.S. government even threatening “allied” nations whose human rights authorities compile reports on the total number of civilians killed by drone strikes?
What about weddings and funerals being attacked by drone strikes?
Why is Malala Yousufzai even seen as a threat? She’s not advocating for anything that isn’t already on the books in Pakistan – that girls have a right to education. It’s not a new idea, it’s not a western idea. And while the majority of girls (and women) in Pakistan are illiterate, educated Pakistani women are hardly a novelty.
Given Malala Yousafzai’s remarkable command of the English language – unusual for a teenager from the Swat Valley of Pakistan – it doesn’t appear that she had any trouble at all obtaining an education. In fact, he eloquence and her annunciation puts an African-American (to use the popular parlance) yout’ from any American city to shame.
Which brings me to a rather peculiar quandary. I’ve always been suspicious of “demonstrations” taking place in other countries where the signs are invariably in English. This has often been a hallmark of the Soros “color revolutions” (oops, I did it again; another conspiracy theory!). The number of people in places like Egypt, Iran or the Ukraine who are proficient not only in English but the Roman alphabet is infinitesimal. And those people that are would most certainly be in positions of power (university professors, high government officials, etc). And that group of people would likely be the most satisfied with the status-quo. Your average working class Egyptian, Iranian or Ukrainian has a valid grievance when it comes to government oppression, corruption and the cost of living among other things. But it is doubtful that he or she would be capable of conjugating their complaints in the form of English signs.
When demonstrations are held here in Canada, signs are in English, not Farsi. Because English is the predominant language in this country. And you want your message to be understood by the target of your demonstration and those around you.
When the bullcrap media reports on events in places such as Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iraq, I am always amazed at how many of the “dissidents,” peace activists and members of “governments in exile” have British accents indicative of an education at Eton and Cambridge or Oxford, for example.
Malala Yousafzai gave a beautiful speech at the United Nations. Of that there is no question. And that it is why so many of us heathen “truthers” and “conspiracy theorists” are so suspicious.
The problem, fundamentally, goes back to paranoia and the addiction to the zero sum game. The fact is that there is a very vocal minority (I can’t bring myself to accept it’s a majority), amplified by a slick media machine, thinks the Taliban and their ilk are right on. It’s not so much what Malala Yousafzai says about education, it’s that she doesn’t like the Taliban and has said so. Loudly. Again and again.
i am not qualified to speculate on the Taliban’s poll numbers in Pakistan. But I can tell my readers and his that a majority of Americans (and this number can likely be extrapolated around the world) now accept that the U.S. government was complicit in, if not outright culpable for, the events of September 11, 2001.
And it has nothing to do with “paranoia” and a “slick media machine.” The only thing the slick media machines are doing is trying to convince us that everything is okay, government loves us, always tells the truth and anyone who says otherwise is a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy kook. Now go back to work, pay your taxes, keep breeding soldiers and, for the love of God, please patronize our advertisers and buy our newspapers.
And she can’t simply be against the Taliban because she’s seen them blow up schools, and flog people in public, she must be against them because surely she’s serving a foreign master. How else would she get such immediate medical attention abroad? Why else would people all over the world be concerned for her? How else could she get a visa to live and go to school in the U.K.
Seems to me that Moustafa has answered his own question. Assuming the whole “shot in the head by the Taliban” narrative is one hundred per cent true, just as reported: How did she get such exceptional medical treatment? Is it remotely possible that she was seen as so telegenic, and had such public relations potential, that she would be irresistible to a western intelligence agency and / or public relations firm?
And, Mr. Moustafa, I can assure you that Canadians, Americans, Europeans and Australians know exactly how it feels to live in a country hijacked by a ruling class serving a foreign master. We have been living under such governments for nearly seventy years.
It’s difficult to underscore just how besieged by outsiders these groups feel, especially by the United States. The drone campaign is just one example. There are myriad ways they see Pakistan as a victim of American policies – not all of it fantasy. But they also feel besieged from within by elements they feel are trying to take the Islam out of the Islamic Republic. It’s led to a bunker mentality and any perceived threat to their version of the national narrative deserves a swift and harsh response. Even if that threat is in the shape of a child who just wants to go to school.
Actually, no. It’s not difficult to understand at all. Only the “element” we are dealing with – is called “israel.” Their dual-nationals are at the highest levels of government, finance, education and media. And those that aren’t israeli nations at least follow their orders to the letter.
Blowing up weddings, funerals, schools, hospitals, houses, apartment buildings, mosques, anywhere where people gather. Is that all it is, Moustafa? A “drone campaign?” Seems like mass murder to me. And this “child” of yours is fronting for the two (possibly three, but no Mossad link has been established or even alleged, yet) of the countries most responsible for screwing up her country in the first place.
I have to go back to an apology I have made in previous posts. Let’s assume that everything regarding Yousafzai is as we are told, She is sweet and innocent. She was brutally attacked. She is a legitimate, true-blue activist for peace and children’s rights (particularly girls). The problem we have is that we have been lied to so many times before, that a significant minority – and perhaps even a majority – just aren’t buying it. The first thing that comes to mind when we hear of such stories and such people is: wolf! Wolf! Wolf!
I will give the Nobel prize committee this one bit of credit: the choice of Malala Yousfazi is not nearly as offensive as some of their previous “winners.” Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Hussein Obama or Henry Kissinger is like giving the Nobel Prize for Economics to Lloyd Blankfein or Robert Mugabe.
Naheed Mustafa is a freelance writer and broadcaster who covers Afghanistan and Pakistan
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