Moborate

The 6th Karachi International Book Fair was held in Karachi this week. More than 300 publishers/ booksellers, more than a quarter million visitors over five days. You might have read about the importance of such events, you might have heard about the achievements of the fair and you might have been told about the diversity on offer. But since more than 70 percent of the stalls were trying to make money by making the readers better Muslims, we concentrated on the free goodies on offer. 6th Karachi International Book Fair (Photo: Suhail Yusuf / Dawn.com) Things We Got For Free A DVD of the first-ever documentary about Maulana Maududi ’s life, produced by Al Khidmat , Jamaat Islami ’s charity wing. A CD of the Jamaat’s current ameer Maulana Munawar Hassan ’s speeches. We accepted it under extreme duress. Four pamphlets: 1. Sins of the Tongue (the Urdu version is called Zaban ka Gunah ) Not what you think. It’s all about Islamic punishments for gossiping and backbiting. 2. Music: Quran a...

I had been contemplating writing an update on Geo for over a week but the latest news has forced my hand. According to our very credible informer @Mehmal, former Daily Times editor Najam Sethi has resigned from Dunya TV and signed up with Geo , though the official announcement has yet to be made. According to our various sources, his last show with Dunya will be on January 6 and he will be hosting a show three times a week on Geo thereafter. Najam Sethi: moving from Dunya to Geo Now this news is rather big news, not only in and of itself - after all, Sethi is a big hitter for Dunya to lose and Geo to nab - but also because of what it indicates about the direction of Geo. You may recall our post in November about Geo CEO Mir Ibrahim Rahman 's (MIR's) mysterious trip to the US, wherein we had expressed our assessment that you may soon see a decidedly less antagonistic-to-the-Americans line from the Jang Group (read the earlier post to understand why). In that post we had al...

So, Dr S&M sent us an email this morning asking us to place his statement on our website. At first we weren't quite sure whether it was the real McCoy or someone just putting us on though it did sound like him. But since the same statement is also to be found on his own official website (as well as featured on the pkpolitics website and on the presspakistan email group), and since there has been no denial all day from him or from  ARY , we assume that it is. Most of you have probably read the statement by now but in case you haven't, and to honour his request, we are reproducing it here, typos, banalities and all. It's a bit long-winded and self-promoting but hey, that's Dr S&M for you, what do you expect? Dr S&M in his latest avatar We do have a couple or four observations about it, but will come to them after the statement itself: "December 24, 2010 A Decade of Distinction Dear fellows, colleagues, well-wishers, This year is important to me as a p...

The gang-rape case in Karachi's upmarket Defence area - where two women were driven off the road by men in another car and one of them was abducted and then raped - has already received plenty of media and blog attention, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. In particular, some parts of the media and the Sindh government adviser Sharmila Farooqui have been quite rightly castigated by many for their criminally cavalier attitude in commenting on the serious crime. It seems there is still a long way to go for some to understand that nothing, and we mean nothing , justifies rape: not the 'character' of a woman, not the clothes she wears, not her past, not her 'activities', not anything she says or does, not anything. A lit bit of sensitivity to the trauma of a rape survivor may be too much to ask from some people but what is shocking is that parts of the media - which had voluntarily stopped naming victims many years ago in a positive move - seem to have unlearnt...

The journo bulletin boards are abuzz about confusing goings-on within ARY . According to the reports (among them, this one from JournalismPakistan ), the ARY's longtime Lahore Bureau Chief Nasrullah Malik has either resigned or been sacked, along with at least four other staffers. An email letter circulated among staff by CEO ARY Network Salman Iqbal warns them about Mr Malik calling up staffers in other bureaus to urge them to resign in his support and says Mr Malik's claims that he had resigned over delays in salary payments and other work-related issues are not true. The letter calls upon the staff to pay no heed to the attempts to tarnish ARY's reputation. There are unconfirmed reports also of ARY's Director News Mohsin Raza having also submitted his resignation. Earlier rumours of Dr S&M having similarly turned in his papers seem to have been, unfortunately, untrue. According to unverified sources, Mr Malik was either forced to resign or sacked for alleged...

Kudos to Pakistan Today for increasing the potential GDP of Pakistan by US$10 Billion. Alternatively, shame on the Express Media Group for causing a loss to the national exchequer of over US$10 Billion. Seriously, though, if you look at the differing valuations of the accords signed during the visit to Islamabad of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao in the various papers, you are likely to be scratching your head. Chinese PM Jiabao with PM Gilani at Pak-China Business Summit (Photo: AFP / Dawn) Here is the differing monetary worth of the Pakistan-China accords as papers across Pakistan quoted them: Express Tribune : Up to US$30bn Express : Up to US$30bn Jang : US$30bn The News : US$30bn Daily Times : US$35bn Nawai Waqt : US$35bn The Nation : US$35bn Dawn : US$36bn Pakistan Today : US$40bn I guess when you're playing around with tens of billions of dollars, what's ten here or there. But consider for a moment what even one billion dollars means for Pakistan at this stage. I mean, is ...

So, taking the cue from that previous video I posted and the pointing out by a reader that, in fact, one could make one's own videos on that site , here is my tentative first offering... Basically just fooling around and testing the software, so to speak. It took me a grand total of less than an hour to get this out. Next time, will work more on the script.