November 2011′s B-side
Filed under: Blog on Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 by Wasim | No Comments
November 2011’s B-side has its main focus on the emergence of a third force in Pakistani politics in Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) as well as continuing commentary on the evil of US drone attacks in Pakistan. The B-side begins with an analysis of the rise of Imran Khan’s PTI by Rahimullah Yusufzai, who remains one of Pakistan’s most respected jourmalists. The second article also passes comment on Imran Khan’s PTI and is written by Sana Buchha who represents the new breed of Pakistani journalists.
The B-side concludes with a heart rending article by Pratap Chatterjee about a young Pakistani boy who visited Islamabad to campaign against US drone attacks and was compensated accordingly by the US not in dollars but in the form of a drone attack that killed him, need I say more? November 2011′s B-side contents include:
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The Emergence of Imran Khan by RAHIMULLAH YUSUFZAI
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His Name is Khan, Imran Khan by SANA BUCHA
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The CIA’s Unaccountable Drone War Claims Another Casualty by PRATAP CHATTERJEE
The first article is written by Rahimullah Yuzufzai on the emergence of Imran Khan.
The Emergence of Imran Khan by Rahimullah Yusufzai
The article is published in The News and can be read here.
WASIM VIEW- Rahimullah Yusufzai’s article charts the rise of Imran Khan and is a must read for all objective Pakistanis who wish to understand the rise of the PTI. Yusufzai is fair in praising Imran Khan in the article and like me has concluded that he is a man on a mission when he writes ‘whatever one may say about Imran Khan’s politics, not many can question his never-say-die attitude. He refuses to give up even at the worst of times and inspires hope’.
Yusufzai was right to note the mammoth crowd that attended the Lahore rally, the largest gathering since Benazir Bhutto’s return in 1986 and was right too in concluding that the youth of Pakistan had made their decision to back the PTI in their droves. Later in the article, Yusufzai questions the worth of musicians like Shehzad Roy in singing at the rally and later on is right to drawing attention to the challenges before the PTI in staying true to its tall ideals and at the same time select electable candidates to win influence in Pakistan if it is to be a third force to be reckoned with.
The second article also focuses on Imran Khan’s PTI and is written by Geo Anchor and journalist, Sana Bucha.
His Name is Khan, Imran Khan by Sana Bucha
The article is published in The News and can be read here
WASIM VIEW- Sana Bucha’s article on Imran Khan’s rise has upset me and is the very antithesis of good and honest journalism and in stark contrast to the earlier article by Rahimullah Yusufzai. Buchha is bullish at the outset of her article and boasts (to her cost as I will prove) of her journalistic responsibility to present both sides of a story, sadly for her she has failed in that endeavour as her article is full of unnecessary bile and bias.
The quality of Bucha’s article and journalism can be gauged from the following sentence ‘Aside from entertainment, what did we, the public, get out of the PTI’s recent show of strength?’. The music at the PTI Lahore rally may not have been the best idea as alluded to by Rahimullah Yusufzai in his excellent article earlier, however Bucha is flogging the wrong horse and seems is deaf, dumb and blind to the real story of the Lahore rally which was the emergence of the PTI as a political force.
Later in her article, Bucha butchers the art of honest journalism by engaging in blatant lies in criticizing Imran Khan for his support of peace talks with the Taliban and ridiculing him by writing ‘Imran Khan wants to talk peace with extremists who have forcibly occupied a large area of Pakistani land to dictate their agenda. Khan also seeks to bring terrorists into the mainstream – if it was up to him, those who have killed more than 40,000 innocent people may be welcomed in parliament!’
Bucha’s deceit is that she has lied in the extract above for she and the entire Pakistani media are well aware of the recent APC which decided to give peace a chance and authorized the government to engage in the same peace talks Buchha criticizes only Imran Khan for. Another example of Bucha’s bias against Imran Khan are her comments on his uncontroversial support for utilizing Pakistan’s vast reserves of Thar coal which Bucha informs us lie underground (is that so!) and that ‘their extraction halted as the Chinese have fled amid security fears. Law and order, however, is the least of Imran’s worries’. Bucha is clearly unaware of recent Russian interest as reported in her own newspaper and shared below:
Moreover Bucha must be living on another planet in Pakistan if she is not aware of Dr Samar Mubarakmand’s 50MW coal gasification project that has been completed already. Concluding, Sana Bucha’s diatribe (its not an article) is also a must read for Pakistanis for it proves that the all anchors are not journalists in Pakistan and that lies can be peddled from the likes of Bucha in print and on the idiot box that she is suited to.
The final article is written by Pratap Chatterjee and is a tough one to read for it details the death by drone of Tariq Aziz who was a 16 year old Pakistani civilian.
The CIA’s Unaccountable Drone War Claims Another Casualty by Pratap Chatterjee
The article is published in The Guardian and can be read here.
WASIM VIEW- The heart-rending article by Pratap Chatterjee on the drone attack that killed Tariq Aziz made my blood boil and angers me as Tariq Aziz had visited Islamabad to campaign against drone strikes and was punished for this deed by death by drone.
Chatterjee’s article raises many vital legal questions for the US administration and in particular the CIA. Chatterjee is right to question the CIA’s right to kill and names Stephen Preston who is the general counsel at the CIA headquarters as the chief executioner of the hundreds of drone strikes that have killed innocent Pakistani civilians as reported in my posts here.
I echo the sentiments of Chatterjee in his insightful artice and support the legal questions he has put to the CIA. Indeed he is right to question the logic of Tariq Aziz attending a seminar in Islamabad in the full view of a media circus if he was the terror mastermind for which he was slain. Thus I cannot but conclude and echo Chatterjee’s final words on Tariq Aziz’s death, that of ‘unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed an imminent threat (as the White House’s legal advice stipulates a targeted killing must in order for an attack to be carried out), or that he was a key planner in a war against the US or Pakistan, the killing of this 16 year old was murder, and any jury should convict the CIA accordingly’.













