By Raza Ruman
(Pak Destiny) After Dawn Leaks, then Nawaz’s controversial interview related to the Mumbai attack, and now finally calling politicians “mother sellers” seems to be a last adverse thing Cyril Almeida like journalists can do to the journalism of this country.
From the pen of Almeida wrote in May 27 Dawn he said:” This business of herding Nawaz out of the political arena. Sure, they’ll probably succeed. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. For every PM, there’s 20 waiting in the wings. Willing to sell their mothers if necessary.”
One cannot believe this is Dawn. There must be seriously wrong with this newspaper appeared to be sold out to the Sharif family. Almeida tried to imply apparently at the behest of Nawaz that except him (Nawaz) others are ready to sell their mothers to become prime minister.
Almeida endorsed the words of the US ambassador here in 1990s that “Give dollars to Pakistanis and they are ready to sell their mothers.”
Perhaps the Press Council of Pakistan and other journalist bodies and politicians are sleeping over this severe nature of allegations on politicians.
Read his article and you come to know the agenda of the Sharifs through their puppets every where… here Almeida’s article
By Cyril Almeida
Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2018
Seriously, what the hell are they thinking?
Take any part of it. This business of herding Nawaz out of the political arena. Sure, they’ll probably succeed. It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. For every PM, there’s 20 waiting in the wings. Willing to sell their mothers if necessary.
And this time they’ve been positively spoiled for choice: Imran, Shahbaz, a no-name Sanjrani — so many different ways to go, so many desperate to be patted on the head and don the robes they’ve been taught to crave.
But ouster comes at a cost and it needs to deliver something. Whoever dreamt up this scheme, this particular way, this slow, anguished exit for Nawaz ought to be stood out in the sun until his boots melt.
There’s a shuddering dysfunction at the heart of everything political at the moment.
Controlled democracy was working just fine and the possibility of a breakthrough with India wasn’t exactly high. In any case, there’s always the, ah, fallback option if it looks like there’s a danger of peace breaking out between India and Pakistan.
But someone wasn’t able to leave good enough alone. And look at the mess it’s created.
This is not normal. We’re all slightly loopy and a little crazy even at the best of times, but there’s a shuddering dysfunction at the heart of everything political at the moment.
The only thing normal is Imran peacocking around like he’s already PM when everyone around him is still trying to piece together a winning electoral mosaic. It’s almost endearing, reassuring. Good on Imran.
But the rest is an ugly mess. Dismantling political parties is never pretty, but it’s a whole different kind of messy when the chap this is all about is running around lobbing grenades.
By now Nawaz should have been in jail. And if that wasn’t the plan, it may have to quickly become the plan. Because in this wackiest of times another wacky, improbable thing seems to be happening:
Instead of Nawaz’s verbal flame-throwing causing him to quickly self-immolate, he seems to be setting fire to hard-to-reach corners of the state. And once that erupts, it’s all bets off again.
Because if Nawaz’s perceived sins and intentions were justification enough for his slow ouster, what kind of response will his slash-and-burn approach bring? There is more menace and danger lurking than the shrill parade of clowns seems to be aware of.
God save us all.
And this muzzling business. Clamping down on speech, disappearing dissent, dragging a 21st-century electronic media back to the days of a mono state channel, behaving with the print dinosaur like it’s the 1980s again — you can see what they’re trying to do.
And you can see why it’ll fail.
Fail not in the sense of knocking out some individuals or toppling a mighty media house or two or three. And if you’re an unlucky so-and-so who’s thought to try and practise dissent, they’ll probably get a bunch of you.
But it will fail from a systemic perspective, which is the only perspective that ought to matter to those trying to fix the system a certain way.
Take this business with the book. Who cares what the book says or why it’s written. That’s not really the point. It’s an old joke among the very few readers of books in the country that if you look hard enough in the fewer still book stores left, you can usually find whatever you’re looking for.
Subversive, irreligious, scandalous — most of it is available, as long as it falls in the mainstream and is relatively well known. Not because there’s a policy of tolerance and looking-the-other-way, but because no one in a position of enforcement and policy reads books.
Theoretically, they could set up an in-house unit to read books and raid bookstores. But we can already guess that would be too much trouble and a doomed project. It’s just not in our or the system’s DNA.
But the book matters because the book was inevitable. If not this book, this author or even a book at all, someone else, some other angle or some other medium. ’Cause no one really asked for this suffocating blanket and the country is too big and diverse to be patrolled and controlled minutely by the state that does exist.
Again, if they really set their minds to it, they could develop a system for thought and people control. There are models in the region that can be emulated and friends who may be eager to help. But there’s a problem apparent: to what end?
Until it’s obvious why it’s being done — in service of totalitarianism, monarchy or outright dictatorship perhaps — it’s hard to do effectively. A vaguely defined harder nationalism or meandering, uncertain turn to the religious hard right doesn’t cut it.
So who cares what the book says or why it has been written. It’s more important as a reminder that these are old debates and unresolved issues. Muzzling the media and hacking down the more reckless and audacious among the populace won’t make the debates go away.
This is a big, messy, argumentative and, yes, diverse place. It that’s seen as a problem by the some — and the some in power — there’s the knowledge of the many that changing it will require vast coercion and great violence. Another Zia, almost certainly.
And another Zia would immediately cast it as a war for the country itself.
So, really, what the hell are they thinking?
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @cyalm
Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2018
Baat tau theek karta hei ! Go and disprove it if you have guts and some substance!
What is wrong in his observation, it should be not restricted to politians only but appropriate is to all in power.
He is 200% right
Traitors
Simple refuge !!
Amir Khusro Tanoli dear it’s shocking to realise that how we destroying our Winslet by adopting slavery. World and it’s dynamics have changed but external powers still want us to follow 3 decades old stuff like noora…..interesting
absultely rite
Pitty on you who commenting in his favour. Now I realized how mentally poor you are that nawaz is the only man that can be the pm. What will be the future after his demise…..bulshits
Good point discerned and highlighted. It is the height of partisanship.
He is telling about himself.. 🇵🇰 Must ban all dawn media group.. This shameless group is becoming shame and demaging to Pakistan..
If he is right.. Then Shabaz is ready to sell Nawaz mother.. And BTW most of the journalists ready to sell anything for money 💵.
Selling of mothers.Right begin from DAWN
200 % true
look whose talking. Intellectual prostitutes in media tops the list who sell their mothers. It reminds me of john swinton editor new york times when he said “There is no such thing as “INDEPENDENT/FREE PRESS.
“There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions,
and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in
print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the
paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries
for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to
write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another
job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my
paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth;
to lie outright;
to pervert;
to vilify;
to fawn at the feet of mammon, and
to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an
independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind
the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we
dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the
property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
Should the man deserved such an attention , absolutely not. He is acting like Salaman Rushdie or Taslima Nasreen of Pakistani political Jurnalisim.