The bottomless pit of propaganda

Ignore the media lies: we need to think straight, call a spade a spade and demand accountability across the board.

Saleem Shehzad, an investigative journalist writing about the links between al Qaeda and our ‘sacred cows’ finds himself brutally beaten to death. All circumstantial evidence and the method of the crime point to ‘we know who.’

What happens next?

The propaganda machinery via the bikau mainstream media goes into overdrive, branding each and every person questioning the obvious as ‘unpatriotic’ and an ‘enemy agent.’

Why?

Because, these two words sell.

Because, that is what this country has been brainwashed to believe for the past six decades.

Because, the army is the self appointed custodian of our nation, the proud defenders of our frontiers and, by law, it is an offence to malign them or question them.

Barely a week passes after Shehzad’s murder and news comes out that his mobile phone records have been erased - erased from the servers of a private mobile phone company.

Erased by whom? Enemy agents or the enemy within? That’s for you to decide.

Fast forward another week - we think we have reached the lowest point in our country’s history and believe the only way from here is up.

How badly mistaken we are!

A teenager gets killed in cold blood in broad daylight in front of the camera - in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s biggest city, and this time, no points for guessing who the killers are - men in Uniform, sworn to protect the lives and properties of citizens.

Oh, hold on, I hear a voice from somewhere saying that it’s not the army, it’s the rangers.

May I ask if these Rangers are Indian or have they been trained by the regular Pakistan Army and are commanded by serving army officers?

And, considering the horrible Kharotabad blunder only days ago, it seems the rangers are following in line with their trainers. No lessons learnt.

People have started blaming Interior Minister Rehman Malik for it saying the Rangers are under the direct command of the provincial government. Yeah right! Just as the regular Army is under the direct command of the federal government!

But the story does not end here. Not only is the boy shot at point-blank range, he is left to bleed to death. TV footage shows the boots walking around the poor chap while he pleads for mercy.

A recent survey showed that a vast majority of the people in our country consider themselves Muslims first, some choose to give priority to their Pakistani identity, while only a handful consider themselves Humans first.

How true a reflection of this survey was this incident?

We are not humans, let alone Pakistanis or Muslims.

Our humanity died the day scores of people watched those two youngsters in Sialkot get beaten to death without even one of them raising a voice, let alone raising a hand in protest. We are worse than animals, shamefully.

Sorry to say that we are a bunch of confused people, caught between conspiracy theories and our manipulators, and the worst thing is that we remain in a state of denial.

We blame everything we possibly can on foreign powers which are supposedly hell bent on destroying this citadel of Islam, at the same time clearly and conveniently forgetting that it is us who are to blame and the ‘forces within.’

When incidents like this happen where no outsider is there to blame, we become even more confused.

If we were to fix ourselves today, no one in this world would dare mess with us. We need to get out of this seemingly bottomless pit quick and fast.

For this we need to think straight, call a spade a spade and demand accountability across the board.

No more Holy Cows; we have had enough of them already.