YouTube disrupted in Pakistan as former PM Khan streams speech
netblocks.org
netblocks.org
Back in the early 90s we were all about PGP and anonymous remailers and we’ve let the forces of government and big business slowly nullify every mitigation we’ve tried.
As technologists we haven’t used our positions on technical standards boards, etc., to force protocols that would preserve freedom by not providing the capabilities needed for control.
So now I guess we’re just supplicants on the internet we created.
To prevent their citizens from listening to one man giving a speech, Pakistan needed to organise blocking all access from ordinary customers to the entire Youtube platform.
That's the smallest thing which works. And your reaction is you are sad because of "how susceptible it is to control and censorship" ?
What if Khan instead wrote a letter to a newspaper? Government can just tear up the letter, and tell the newspaper not to publish it - no need to shut every newsagent and corner store in the whole country. Or if he wrote a book? Government just orders the book pulped, there's no need to shut libraries and close every bookstore.
The minimum effective action was to completely cut off their country from this invaluable resource, loads of Pakistanis who had no intention of viewing the speech are now aware because their favourite clip of a guy getting kicked in the nuts was blocked, or the pop video they liked, or a defence of their preferred way to make a common snack. "Hey, why doesn't Youtube work?" "Oh the government are censoring Khan".
No, China simply doesn't allow the entire platform. Whether it is a video about how to fix your bicycle, about Hong Kong protests, or a song praising President Xi, you can't see it on Youtube from a Chinese residential connection, everything is blocked.
I thought it was common knowledge that China has been doing exactly that for decades. I mean, I guess it's possible I've fallen for anti-China propaganda, but I really don't think so.
The only hypothetical part on my part is how easy it would be to block a specific video. I know that blocking a single URL, or keyword matching on the title are common features in off the shelf proxy servers. Add some coding from a competent screen scraper, and you should be able to identify every way a specific video is being sent. I wouldn't be surprised if this functionality was already built in to some products.
More explicitly: blocking individual YouTube videos requires control of the routers all traffic flows through AND control over the encryption of that traffic. If they cannot read the encrypted traffic then they do not know when a banned video is being watched. To date they have not exercised that level of control, they have not implemented a way of banning individual videos and it would be difficult for them to implement.
But yes, I was wrong about them openly breaking SSL for decades. Doesn't mean it would be difficult.
From the page you linked:
“The Chinese firewall is made of transparent proxies filtering web traffic. These proxies scan the requested URI, the "Host" Header and the content of the web page (for HTTP requests) or the Server Name Indication (for HTTPS requests) for target keywords.”
This directly implies that they are NOT breaking TLS. Filtering by the SNI would not allow you to block one YouTube video; it’d only allow you to block entire domains.
> I know that blocking a single URL, or keyword matching on the title are common features in off the shelf proxy servers
Not if the site is delivered over TLS.
The Chinese National Intelligence Law theoretically allows the Chinese government to request and use the root certificate from any Chinese certificate authority,[55] such as CNNIC, to make MITM attacks with valid certificates.
Multiple TLS incidents have occurred within the last decade, before the creation of the law.
On 26 January 2013, the GitHub SSL certificate was replaced with a self-signed certificate in China by the GFW.[56]
On 20 October 2014, the iCloud SSL certificate was replaced with a self-signed certificate in China.[57] It is believed that the Chinese government discovered a vulnerability on Apple devices and was exploiting it.[58]
On 20 March 2015, Google detected valid certificates for Google signed by CNNIC in Egypt. In response to this event, and after a deeper investigation, the CNNIC certificate was removed by some browsers.[59] Due to the removal being based on proof and not suspicion, no other Chinese certificate authority has been removed from web browsers, and some have been added since then.[60]
This type of attack can be circumvented by websites implementing Certificate Transparency and OCSP stapling or by using browser extensions.[61]
Their dystopian control is rather successful so far.
A foreign corporation has more control over speech in Pakistan than Pakistan itself.
Now, they/we are all still here, knowing all the ways of private communications, protocols, etc. + all the new, better ways to communicate privately and securely.
The only difference now is, that a few billions of "normal people" joined us online, and they don't know and don't care about all that, so the propaganda just moved from TV to facebook and youtube.
I'd say the 90s hacktivists for the most part took the golden handcuffs and left the rest of humanity out to dry. We need like 1000 more Pavel Durovs,
there's no such thing because it's in the very nature of protocols to enable legibility and automation which always benefits centralization. (see James Scott, Seeing like a State). The internet, book-printing, even 'crypto', whatever you pick that sounds superficially decentralizing is in actuality re-centralizing because it enables more powerful administration and as such higher forms of organization.
Need to USE that power already there.
> So now I guess we’re just supplicants on the internet we created.
Internet was created by DARPA (the military).
It is now used as a weapon to spread disinformation.
Who is "we?" The Pakistani government is unilaterally doing this. Surely you don't mean the Pakistani people?
https://www.wired.com/2008/02/pakistans-accid/
(edited)
The Army and the military forces in general are the people who really control the country.
Pakistan makes a public show of having a parliamentary democracy with elected MPs and such but it's all a farce.
Doesn't particularly matter whether Bhutto, Zardari, Nawaz Sharif, Imran Khan or anyone else.
Of course it doesn't help that the elected MPs have almost exclusively belonged to the same class of robber barons, Imran Khan being one notable exception.
Pakistan actually has a pretty vibrant and critical media, in contrast to (other) military dictatorships. They have a lot of great political satire (that, again, stops short of criticizing the military).
Pretty damning.
• 2008-13 PPP-led coalition government, which transferred power to the
• 2013-18 PML(N) government, which transferred power to the
• 2018-22 PTI (Khan's party) government, which was ousted in its penultimate year by a vote of no-confidence in the National Assembly.
1. PPP-led coalition government ousted in scandal of zardari's corruption. "mister ten percent", etc
2. nawaz sharif government ousted in scandal of nawaz sharif corruption (maybe that choice of microsoft word fonts in the faked documents for luxury UK real estate was not the best idea ever).
3. people finally "elected" khan
4. khan loses power in parliamentary no confidence vote
none of those are exactly what an outsider would consider to be the normal and orderly transfer of power in an electoral system
My own opinion: democracy is hardly a boolean value -- these transfers, faulty and flawed as they may be, did legitimize civilian rule in the public eye.
For your first bullet, the prime minister was kicked out after just over 4 years.
For your second bullet, the prime minister was kicked out after just over 4 years.
For the third bullet, Imran Khan didn't even last 4 years.
Khan has a large populist support base but it's not exactly accurate to say he's wildly popular, a huge amount of people from Lahore and Punjab and the power base of elites supporting Nawaz Sharif and his friends are deeply opposed to him. They've spent lots of money on political opposition.
And then there's all the Sindhi Bhutto and PPP supporters who don't like him either. He has maybe 45-50% support.
Add to this religion, every few years there is some popular majoritarian religious trend, often loaded with settling scores with the minorities for some imagined victimhood, some battle some king who belonged to your religion lost 800 years back, these are 'pride' related emotional issues on which masses vote. No one cares about education, or improving general standard of living.
Add to this caste, regional and linguistic reasons.
Democracy is mostly a sham even without fixing, because masses don't vote for their own good. To think of democracy in the sub continent, people vote to hurt others than to help themselves. A vote is mostly a downvote in many ways.
But I do agree with you, having the pleasure to know some upper class Pakistanis, that the military is the basis of the government.
sounds like Turkia but like 40 years ago
Arresting IK right now would be national harakiri. Surely they’re not going to do that?
Any links to research that shows (a) this was the intent, and (b) shows that it works?
Aren’t there plenty of counterexamples to that thesis (null hypothesis), of more homogeneous nations or island nations where countries haven’t become “first world”. Even the USA is rooted in non-homogeneous immigration.
That’s the “they weren’t being actively malicious end” with the nation this thread is discussing having been the go to example of this being done. Pakistan only exists to be a thorn in Indias side
I'm not sure what you're referring to here. American borders were laid out without any consideration for indigenous peoples (the general policy of colonial and post-colonial states towards such peoples being "exterminate them"), and colonial and post-colonial states fought lots of wars over transferring land between them for reasons that boil down to simply "I want more land."
And the article surely isn’t corroborating your thesis of mix cultures to force a long-term fail.
Quite literally the western powers cut up borders in mid east, sitting in rooms in Paris, London and Moscow, people who did this didn't even speak arabic, had no idea about ethnic, cultural, religious, political and social make up's of the lands they were cutting up to divide among each other.
USA used to be mostly Northern European and christian (protestant), black slaves who were moved there by force or pre European colonization inhabitants were never considered part of the foundations of US. US foundations were anything but non-homogeneous.
Now after WWII, US attempted to replace the racial and religious identity at the heart of "americanship" with some idealistic identity based on american exceptionalism, the american dream and the cult of the american imagery (flag, eagle, colors...). No need to point out that this re-invention of "americanship" is slowly crumbling as we speak. Who knows what will remain of that cohesion in the next 50 years.
The fact that people of Anglo-Saxon descent and people of Scots-Irish descent had an equal hand in the early US government was remarkable in and of itself, let alone the fact that the Catholic population in Maryland had equal rights under the law from day one.
because we're discussing 20th/21st century geopolitics at first place? Of course I am. Pakistan or India didn't exist in the 18th century, in fact these are British constructs.
> The fact that people of Anglo-Saxon descent and people of Scots-Irish descent had an equal hand in the early US government was remarkable in and of itself, let alone the fact that the Catholic population in Maryland had equal rights under the law from day one.
Yes, fighting against the British empire certainly was an efficient motivator. But still black people and indigenous populations were still left out of what you consider a feat.
If we concede no feats have been achieved in human history for not being unblemishingly perfect, sure. Fine. We'll leave the term with religion (and madness). Whatever the next rung of achievement is, the highest one in realm of the possible, America's founding matches it.
You are completely ignoring here the huge role that anti-Catholic prejudice had in US history (and the rest of the Anglosphere as well). Indeed, the vast majority of historic anti-Irish sentiment was really anti-Catholic – "Irish" came to mean "Irish Catholic", and Irish Protestants in the US rebranded themselves as "Scots-Irish" (not only those Irish Protestants who had recent Scottish heritage through the Plantation of Ulster – Irish Protestants who lacked any recent Scottish heritage called themselves that too.)
It's what took place after WW2 and was the battle ground for the cold war.
That's a little bit Pakistan can into existence in the first place.
Singapore, Jamaica, heck, even Canada made it's own constitution. Most of Africa (both sub saharan and north saharan), much of the Middle East. Huge portion of the world map.
2) This 'Colonials set everything pit one group against the other' is also wrong. Obviously, there were favourites and artifacts of that, but for the most part, left to their own devices, it would still be tribal chaos in most places.
The presupposition in that anti-colonial statment is that somehow, before foreign intervention, things worked in some meaningful way. In most places, it did not, and, there were previous colonial/external interventions. i.e. Ottoman Empire ruled over much of the Middle East ruthlessly, previous Islamic Caliphates were all over NE Africa with the slave trade for many centuries etc. etc..
Relatively few places are like 'Thailand' with a fairly coherent history.
Democracies are going to collapse in a lot of places because the people in these places never really wanted democracy or even cared much for it. They were just handed it down because the people the colonizers left in charge were born and bred within the colonizer’s own political systems.
Although I think it's not quite about "democracy." Many people don't want liberal democracy. They might be fine with non-liberal democracy: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/08/shadi-hamid-on-i...
But globalization, that has been enabled by the American military, may be coming to an end. The US armed forces are retooling in a way less geared to policing global merchant shipping. This signals a likely return to more local trade, controlled by regional powers.
We have been lucky to live in the richest, most prosperous era of human history. But the party seems to be winding down, and most of us and our heirs, will be living more modest lives, with reduced travel, diversity of goods, diet, and wealth.
That already happened. 1/2 after WW1, the other 1/2 after WW2.
That was the story of the 20th century.
We're in a new era now.
The Congo is a good example. One year after achieving independence in 1960, its sovereign leader was assassinated and replaced with neocolonial puppets. In the last 60 years, that "independent" country has been brutally exploited by foreign profiteers. A microcosm of the global south during the 20th century.
It's laughable to suggest they could be exploited by 'Colonial Powers' when they can't even get electricity where they need it.
'Outside Force' for exploitation, sure, but it's always been thus.
'Western Influence' - sure, but mostly in the name of 'stability'.
The 'West' can really only benefit from these places when they are stable enough to start to form contracts for export, which most of these places are not. Those that are, and ruled by dictators, fine, as long as it's 'stable' and as a state they play well.
Otherwise, the 'big prize' is when these places are stable enough that they have 'consumers' who can 'consume' iPhones and KFC.
How many iPhones exported to DNC?
How many iPhones can they buy when it's total rampant murder and chaos?
How many can they buy when the are stable, have an industrial base, have banking, laws etc?
Which situation do you think Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney prefer?
the post-Washington Consensus
The end result is that the Russian economy is afloat while the transatlantic power structure is collapsing.
Except when you behave like this, you end up like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi -- lynched while their country is destroyed. "Brownie points" with the unipolar superpower is absolutely meaningful as long as they maintain that position. Which they don't anymore, circa 2020 or so.
They have nukes.
But then the snake they were growing in the backyard with the hope of hurting their neighbours started biting them. First the collapse in Afghanistan and then decade long war on terror followed by economic stagnation coupled with corruption at the military led the mass to basically become completely robbed.
This is the populous that somehow thought India is their arch enemy and their leaders are all on their side because the state religion Islam was used as a tool. Ya I don’t have much sympathy for them.
This is the what aboutism that most politicians toy with when they want to fool the public. But like I said this is a populous that are truly detached and delusional. They brought it on themselves.
Setting up of the mujahideen gave a semi legitimate veneer to its activities and a funnel for money.
However, you do conveniently leave out that it was the US toppling the Shah of Iran that resulted in a religious wave taking over the whole region. And it was the US, again, that armed and trained everyone in Afghanistan to the teeth to help them fight the commies. And it was the US, yet once again, that just bailed as soon as USSR collapsed, leaving a massive power vacuum in the Afghanistan, which led to the Taliban takeover.
Pakistani army merely tried to use that power vacuum to their advantage. And it failed miserably, might I add. The army has gotten used to the boatload of USDs for being an war ally, but all the US hatred now is creating fractions within it.
My point is, every country plays this game, and they all play it dirty. Why assign moral bankruptcy to a minor player while completely overlooking the major player that's stirring all the global shitstorms?
Every country plays games but not in a self destructive manner. If Pakistani leadership had any sense and if their people were not always fooled by thinking that their leaders are leading a jihad and protecting Islam, they would have realized focusing your entire foreign and economic policy based on the geopolitical rivalry over a piece of land that has less than 1% of total GDP is not a good cause.
Just wait till they have a balance of payment problem. Their reserves are drying up too all because of these stupid economic policies. Instead of doing trade deals with your closest neighbour and one of the largest economic powers, they actively sabotage any economic influence. These people are really stupid.
the water from that region is life for more 1-2 billion people in Indian subcontinent, east Asia and china.
Wars this century will be fought over water over in the Himalayas between three nuclear powers no less .
Climate change is not going to just impact the environment, it is going to displace a lot of people , people with guns ands bombs and badly affected by changing environments.
From the time of partition and standstill agreement the water disputes from Kashmir is deeply entwined in the conflict.
Hydrological importance of Himalayas for all three countries and others in the region cannot be overstated .
If we're looking for a founding mistake, it's probably the British (and French) betraying the Hashemite king [1][2][3], thereby permitting Wahhabism to take hold. That and the absence of a Marshall Plan for the post-WWII de-colonised world.
> every country plays this game, and they all play it dirty
The Mujahideen plotted attacks on Soviet military targets in Afghanistan. They're analogous to the Taliban post invasion. To my knowledge, the U.S. wasn't knowingly supporting terrorism in e.g. Moscow the way the ISI has supported militants striking Bombay.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashemites#World_War_I_and_the...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Revolt
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMahon–Hussein_Correspondence
The USA supported the Shah, and that's not 'what caused something else'.
Topping Mossadegh was not exactly a democratic move, but the Shah was, and still would be, better than any alternative.
The US supports worse people in Kuwait and Qatar - and at least from a geo/p perspective, it works.
Afghanistan is 100% the 'fault' of Communists. By the 1960's they were a poor backwards country, but not overrun with insanity. This '100's of years of occupation' is rubbish. The British left a long time ago. Young Communists failed in their democratic efforts but were stopped. They tried to overthrow government and failed, and then invited the Soviets in. American intervention during the 1970's was decisive, yes, but very limited. They didn't 'train' zillions of soldiers. It was a few soldiers and a few stinger missiles.
So after mass political chaos, yes, 'thugs' took over, like anywhere else.
As we can see from US 2003 intervention, which didn't result in an ongoing functioning state, what power on earth is going to change that equation? Afghanistan was a bit more like the other 'stans' around it until the Global Communist Insurrections of the 20th century.
The same thing in Chile. A fairy radical communist took over, was popular at the start, introduced some arguably needed reforms but then went way, way overboard. With only 30% of the vote he tried to overule parliament and the judiciary, crashed the economy and was well on his way to being a dictator. Western forces intervened and supported the 'other side' aka Pinochet, who was 'bad'. But on the whole probably not as bad as the alternative. Given the choice between Allende (Stalin-ish) and Pinochet (Putin-ish) the later was probably preferable, and 50 years later it's working out really well.
Arguably the same can even be said about the Shah vs. Mossadegh.
US supported not exactly the nicest people in both S. Korea and in S. Vietnam. We know how S. Korea worked out, and we know how S. Vietnam worked out: thousands executed, 100's of thousands in concentration camps many of whom died. Ruthless (albeit peaceful) authoritarianism to this day.
And with Egypt. US props up the secular Army, which keeps mostly 'hands off' with politics but is the ultimate power there, and that means Egypt is at least 'coherent' and not fully at war with Israel etc..
This assessment of a 'single country stirring the shitstorms' is glib. The world would be a complete shitstorm - or - have been taken over by absolutely ruthless players, were not for US/West, now include S. Korea and Japan in there. It's not all 'hunky dory' obviously, but in 50 years, Saudi Women will have many more rights and it won't come at the cost of total regional war between Israel/Egypt, Saudi/Iran etc. etc..
A narrow rent-seeking elite in a desperately poor country isn't a model for stability which pre-communist take over Afghanistan was.
Just as you can't hand wave at everything with the "it was the US", you shouldn't hand wave at everything as it was the communists fault.
Many would argue the military should be under supreme control of the state. Do you mean the state was under supreme control of the military (i.e., when Pakistan was under military rule)?
The real reason his PM career was untenable was because (a) he pissed off the Pakistani military by threatening to unilaterally replace the military leader, whose support was the only reason he became PM in the first place, and (b) his party appointed some virtual unknown and definite incompetent (who was a friend of his wife's) as the leader of the Punjab province which has over 50% of the population of Pakistan.
His latter action also angered members of his own party and members of his alliance that saw their own political careers threatened because he took such politically poor actions with half the country's population.
Finally, what would have been astonishing is if Imran Khan (or anyone for that matter), would have completed his term. He would have been the first PM to do so in Pakistan's history.
It really doesn't require a conspiracy theory centered around America to explain something that is the norm in Pakistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Punjab_provincial_by-elec...
Bro, if you want to lie, at least lie at something which can’t be countered by other sources.
Among all the leaders atm, khan is the most popular one. Ever since he was ousted, he has been calling rallies and people are coming out for him. He has pulled biggest crowd in pakistan history. All can be seen on YouTube.
I can’t even read rest of your comment given that I already know that either you are very disconnected from reality or you have some other motive to discredit khan.
This is the same flawed argument that US Republicans use on why Trump couldn't have gotten 46.9% of the 2020 popular vote, but he did, and is thus, unpopular.
If everybody hates him, then censoring him is pointless. I don't know anything about any of these people or parties but what you're saying doesn't pass my sniff test.
He was unpopular. Here's a poll from when the no-confidence vote passed (Bloomberg referencing Gallup Pakistan polling).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-13/majority-...
That being said, the only thing that matters isn't just overall support. The groups supporting also matter. And even though Khan had minority support, he has support among the extreme religious right of Pakistan, who are organized enough to shut down the country and motivated enough that they would do that even if it costs damage and lives.
And this is talking about removing an incumbent. Incumbents almost alway have a political edge. No one wants to throw out an incumbent until things are really bad.
That’s a -14 rating.
Acknowledged in my original comment.
A -14 difference does not make him "extremely unpopular". Merely less than a majority. A 43% rating is higher than Biden has, but no one would say he is "extremely unpopular".
And then there's the fact that it's a -14 difference between his party and everyone else. Given that "everyone else" includes two other major parties, it's pretty much a given that his party has more support than any other party. In comparison:
- In the last Canadian elections, no party got over 34%. In the last 20 years, no party even got 40%.
- In the last UK elections, Boris Johnson got just over 43%. And only once in the last 20 years did someone get more than that.
If IK's party really had 44% of the public's support, they will likely win any election.
You are lying through your teeth.
The plain facts, in no particular order:
1. Imran Khan's party had much larger support in 2013 elections, and that support was suppressed via election rigging. Its impossible to really say wether he would won an outright majority then (probably not), but who knows
2. In 2018, there was massive rigging to ensure that Imran Khan would NOT win an outright parliamentary majority. This was admitted to, PLAIN AS DAY, by one of the crooks who is currently "defence minister" (what a joke). He openly and plainly admitted that he was losing during the count in his constiuency, he picked up the phone and complained to the army chief, and lo and behold - the remaining count miracoulusly went in his favour.
Multiple other examples like this. THE ONLY REASON that the previous opposition were complaining about rigging is because, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY, they were handicapped in rigging in their own favour,in their own localities.
3. Imran Khan was extremely unpopular with the public?
Complete hogwash. BEFORE HE EVEN MENTIONED THE US INVOLVEMENT, he held a number of political rallies, in the last week of his premiership. One such rally resulted in A MILLION PEOPLE coming to Islamabad.
A MILLION NEW CELL PHONE NUMBERS were registered in the Islamabad area by telco's during that weekend
So there goes your entire narrative that you were trying to falsely push.
The best you have is 2013 numbers to make claims about a 2020+ situation. I don’t think I need to say anything else to prove your lies.
What a joke. What reasonable person would point to 2013 numbers to justify their claims about a 2022 election.
It's like watching a loud public domestic argument between people you've never seen before and never will again.
My post was in reply to the outright lies pushed by asdajksah2123.
But in response to this "gem" of yours later in this thread, to whit:
> The most hilarious thing is that a conspiracy theory that Imran Khan created days before he was ousted with absolutely no evidence at all is supposed to be given any value because he lost a no confidence vote.
The evidence is actualy pretty damning. I'm just going to give a basic cliff notes version:
- the US tried to make a back door deal with the Pak military to give them bases in Pak, post-Afghan withdrawal. In addition to the usual fluff pieces in the NYT pushing this agenda, there was recorded testimony to Congress acknowledging this (all in 2021).
- Imran Khan squashed all of this. Since that point, the US had essentially decided to push for a coup in Pakistan. And this coincided nicely with the personal objectives of the other 2 power centers - namely the military high command, and the other 2 main political parties/crime families. Now you had a collusion of interests between scoundrels.
Since then:
- there were numerous meetings between US officials, and various low-level parliamentarians. All of whom are so low-level that no foreign dignatory has any business meeting with them. Much less having weekend getaways with them in Bhawalpur farmhouses (YES - we have the nitty gritty details)
- tens of millions of US$ was moved to Karachi, from the US to Zardari's crime family, and used to BUY the votes of multiple MPs. These are the very same MP's who then defected. Those defections were then used by the military to push those junior coalition partners in Imran Khan's government to jump ship (I explained in an earlier comment how the military deliberately interfered in the 2018 elections to prevent Imran Khan from getting an outright majority then - THIS is why!)
- THAT was the reason why a MILLION people came to Islamabad to protest - BEFORE Imran Khan even mentioned ANYTHING about the US involvement. The bribery was open and rather disgusting.
- the diplomatic cable mentioned by many IS real. It DOES exist. Otherwise - answer this - why would the military lodge an Official Secrets Act case and threaten THE THEN prime minister with arrest if he publically disclosed the contents?
Mr. Addicted: you're pushing a narrative that has been completely exposed within Pakistan as a pack of outright lies. Its all been exposed and reported upon - in front of 220 MILLION people. The only reason you get to pretend otherwise to a non-Pakistani audience is because nearly all of this investigative reporting was/is in Urdu.
And the cherry on top is now this:
now - even WITH massive anti-Imran vote rigging and himself removed in a coup d'etat, his party has wiped the floor with the opposition in various by-elections - in areas considered absolute strongholds of that opposition.
In a free and fair election - its quite possible that Imran Khan could win 80% of the seats. EIGHTY PERCENT!
Stick that in your pipe, and smoke it!
Spread across various platforms, from cable news stations (ARY, Bol TV) which broadcast to multiple continents, to youtube podcasts which get million plus views for 2 to 3 news videos, per day, every day.
And you're pretending that you're unaware of any of this? If you are an Urdu speaker as you claim, there's no point asking what rock have you been hiding under. There's no rock big enough to explain such indifferent self-imposed ignorance.
There is no chance of speaking truth on the official airwaves - the other channels threw their lot in with the coup from day 1 (that includes Geo TV, Hamid Mir, etc). Those channels that attempted to have been forcibly shutdown (eg: ARY, and now Bol)
I'll drop just a few recommendations;
- Imran Riaz Khan (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaszgR2TH3qNw_CxLHAd2SQ)
- Waqar Malik (UK based freelancer, but very dedicated) (https://www.youtube.com/c/WaqarMaliks)
- Haidar Mehdi (ex army officer, now based in Canada, still with links to many current serving high-ranking generals) (https://www.youtube.com/user/shrmehdi)
You will find that people like Imran Riaz Khan (who was imprisoned just a few weeks ago) still have to be careful about what they say (hence repeated allusions to "powerful behind the scenes forces"), but Haider Mehdi and Waqar Malik, by dint of the fact that they are free from kidnapping and torture, have been quite open about calling a spade, a spade.
When it comes to mainstream reporting, then Arshad Sharif and Sami Ibrahim have been quite couragous and steadfast. Both have been targetted by this coup-regime. Sami was actually attacked outside the Bol TV offices (he is the president of the news division). While Arshad has just recently had to go into exile (even though he is from a respected military family, and his brother died while on military duty - combating terrorists).
I would suggest going through some of Haider Mehdi's vlogs from a few months ago to understand how we got here. He has only done a few (Waqar has so many that you wouldn't know where to start)
It just means his base is rabid, not exactly that he's popular.
"Rabid", in the context that you're using it, applies really well to those who keep trying to push a consistent narrative of:
- nothing to see here, move on
- just a few agitated locals, who can't count past 10
- the generals are really good chaps at heart
- don't mind the fact that they are kidnapping politicians & journalists in broad daylight, and subjecting them to CIA-inspired Abu Ghraib style torture
- none of the above in any way confirms that this "deep state" has lost control, and is continuously escalating as it gets continuously desperate
Yes, "rabid" does cover that.
On the other hand, attracting millions to your rallies, winning by-elections in a landslide DESPITE intensive vote-rigging against you, breaking all sorts of viewership records across all platforms (including tagspaces and twitter trends) ...
yes, the term "popular" DOES cover that.
Prime Ministers of Pakistan don't usually manage to serve out their term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_Pak...
Do people really think western powers care that much about Imran Khan's opinion on Russia-Ukraine to pull off a regime change in one of the largest and most unstable countries (that too with nuclear weapons) in the world? It's a tactic for such politicians and countries to make themselves feel more important on the global stage, nothing more.
Pakistan has always been run by its military. Politicians who get out of line quickly get deposed/exiled/assassinated. There is nothing new or surprising with the latest development.
Here is Wikipedia on this topic, which is actually one of the more "US intelligence friendly" sources out there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in... This list is endless and shocking.
Pakistan is a big and important country, so their position is actually important. Furthermore, for any empire, it's vital that it gets other smaller countries in line, even if the small country's position would be irrelevant.
The way I see it is that most countries' leaders will always be both popular and unpopular in a significant portion of the country so it is always possible to frame a revolution/coup/insurgence as either a great thing or a bad thing.
I don't know what happened in this case, and in complicated scenarios like these, there are always many factors and forces at play, but it's certainly not unreasonable to think that foreign powers gave a little push in order to see the outcome they wanted in the region.
To further your point: Pakistan has the 5th largest population in the world, has complicated relationships (including contested borders 20 miles from its capital) with #2 and #1, and has a weak enough economy that a little money can go a long way. I would be shocked if the US weren't applying any force to its politics.
We have a saying that most countries have an army but in Pakistan the army has a country.
Gaddafi was killed and his sons were murdered in front of him because he threatened petro dollar. before that he was given red carpet in france and even camped in sarcozy lawn.
now Russia and China threaten the petro dollar and I am worried what the US is going to do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Libyan_financing_in_th...
Sarkozy got rid of an inconvenient witness... (the former french president has been indicted for a series of financial crimes related to Libya since).
We still provide some significant funding to Pakistan for humanitarian and development (i.e. civilian) efforts. This information is widely available online.
So GP is wrong to be so confident and absolute about their claim that we still fund the Pakistani army, but we do indeed give money to their government, and the Pakistani government is not independent of its army. It’s a messy situation.
Just trying to provide a bit of a more nuanced view before this heavy-handed comment you’re replying to is dismissed outright.
[1] Jan 13 https://www.dawn.com/news/1669107 The vote happened early April
Some pretty big quotes should surround "democratically". Also, the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to enact constitutional Sharia Law, something unfavorable even amongst the Muslim-majority populace. If we're going to cherry-pick Egypt as an example here, would be nice to provide the whole picture of what went down (which this comment certainly isn't).
hmmmmm
Or wait, are you confusing subreddits with threads and admins with subreddit mods? That’s the only way your comment doesn’t read as downright insane.
here is the time article about it https://time.com/6160519/reddit-international-hate-speech-ba...
They refused to ban either subreddit for 2 years but a week after they criticized the war, they were both deleted.
These subreddits were against the russia-ukraine war and were stating that NATO pushed them.
more fun fact. typing "zelensky Pan" stops all auto-complete in google since people are searching for "zelensky pandora" but "Putin pan" brings out all pandora papers about it even though Zelensky is twice as much in pandora papers as Putin.
Even google has censored all negative news about zelensky in it's autocomplete.
Looking at your submission history, I'm shocked that it's taken this long. Dang must be on a holiday.
>These subreddits were against the russia-ukraine war and were stating that NATO pushed them.
So, what you're actually saying is that they were actually not against the Russian war of aggression? Your suggestion that they were simultaneously against the war and also trying to justify it doesn't really add up.
The reality is that Imran Khan had been anti-USA for years before that. If the U.S. was so worried about Pakistan they would maybe have done something in the year prior where he was eating against the US for his political support.
That whar he’s been doing for half a decade. It makes literally no sense at all.
The enemy of India is my friend, etc.
That said, if one is suspicious of American technology being weaponized for foreign policy, then Poland will be the place to watch next year. The Biden administration has every clearly told Poland they want a regime change. The EU is also on board.
If they were a company, it would have folded from bad decision making.
Well, here's something for people who insist all VPN services are a "scam". VPNs play an important role by circumventing censorship in countries with more network level internet censorship.
VPN's privacy claims are a scam. Reselling their own internet connection works, but advertising it that way doesn't.
The customer has no way of having any assurance of a privacy claim, and even past assurances can change at any time, and even if active monitoring or surveillance wasn't being done by the VPN provider, their data center, a third party along the way or the government, the VPN provider would still respond to a court order from the government undermining your privacy. Thats the part people call a scam.
Changing your reported location has nothing to do with that.