Diwali Symbolizes The Triumph Of Good Over Evil And It Is The Festival Of Lights: Altaf Hussain

The Chief of Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) Mr Altaf Hussain has greeted the Hindu community in Pakistan and throughout the world on the occasion of the festival of Diwali. He said that Diwali is one of the most important festivals of the Hindu community and it symbolizes the triumph of good over evil. It is also the occasion of joy, mirth and happiness and celebrated as a festival of lights.
Mr Hussain said that all religions teach about respecting the places of worship and festivals of other religions besides recognizing the dignity of mankind. Those who do not follow these basic precepts of their religion are, in fact, acting contrary to the teachings of their religion.
Mr Hussain asked the Hindu community to offer prayers for peace and promotion of religious tolerance and harmony in the country. He asked them to offer special prayers for elimination of the heartless terrorists who were killing innocent people. 

Earn Quick, Easy Money: Be Careful

“Earn Quick, Easy Money.” The headline has caught the attention of many internet users that fall for the trap of numerous mega online scams operating in the country. In the name of online home-based businesses, a significant number of fraudsters have been fleecing innocent people, Pakistan Today learnt on Thursday. Due to absence and poor implementation of cyber-crime laws, the scam operators have set up well-furnished corporate offices in the heart of big cities, including Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, while a few of them have penetrated in to the relatively small towns or rural suburbs. Interviews with a number of alleged scam operators reveal that they pocket millions of rupees by fleecing innocent people in a couple of months only. 
A conservative estimate suggests that an online franchise operator that registers about 100 members each month bags over a million rupees per month. Their standard modus operandi provides them an opportunity to sail smoothly for four to five months without paying a single penny to their members, who deposit them subscription fee ranging from Rs 5,500 to Rs 18,000. In most cases, people complain that these fraudsters vanish away in six to eight months by fleecing Rs 5 to Rs 10 million and start a new business with a new identity in other cities. 
How it operates? 
Speaking to Pakistan Today, operator of a similar business, Imran, claimed that his company was an authorised franchisee of a Canadian firm that dealt in online advertisement. “We get advertisement posting jobs from the Canadian company and sublet the contract to local individuals against a membership of Rs 5,500 to Rs 18,000, depending on the size and rate of return on the job,” he maintained. 
Responding to a question, he said, “Though, it is an online advertisement posting business but it mainly depends on conventional advertising. We spend nearly Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per month on banners, newspaper and cable advertisements to attract new members.” He disclosed that he had been in this business for over a year and had been registering around 35-40 members every month. 
However, Imran failed to substantiate his claim that his firm was affiliated to some Canadian company as he could not produce any documentation or registration certificate. His company’s website, quickearnonline.com, does not show any registration or affiliation information either. The website does not have any postal address of the company, except for two addresses of the Lahore-based franchisees. 
What is the business? 
The ad-posting business is similar to the controversial multi-level marketing (MLM) model, as most companies operating in the country have parent foreign company, master-franchisees, franchisees, sub-franchisees and ad-posters or individual members. All these franchisees offer attractive packages, usually in US dollars, along with the comfort of working from home. They market it as a home-based business, with returns ranging from Rs 9,000 to Rs 35,000 per month, after having paid a membership fee. In addition, if a franchisee or an individual introduces a new franchisee or member, they offer him the money equivalent to $10 to $100 per member, while a franchise costs around $500 to $800. 
After registering with a franchisee, the ad-poster’s job starts. The so-called franchisee gives a piece of code, usually in the hypertext mark-up language (HTML), to its new members, which they have to paste on classified websites and forums. Usually, this code posts advertisements of their own company or some unknown local products, which clearly indicates that the entire scheme has no relationship with any foreign firm. 
How is it a scam? 
A simple inquiry can find thousands of victims since it employs chain marketing strategies. Several victims of this ad-posting business told Pakistan Today that they invested their hard-earned savings for supplementing their income, but could not even get their investment back. 
They revealed that at the time of registration, these companies offered lucrative packages but after completing the massive task of posting around 50,000 to 80,000 ads on various websites, they were refused prompt payments. One of the victims said, “These companies maintain a corporate environment and have separate account sections. The Accounts’ staff usually point out mistakes in the completed jobs and try to deduct a lion’s share from the promised remuneration. And when someone agrees even on the deducted amount, they ask him for a month or two for processing. They present the excuse that all transactions are processed through the parent company, which is based in some foreign country.” 
They pointed out that several companies, including visiononline.com, homebasedmoney.com and earnonline.com, had vanished during the past few months, without paying to their members. The victims indicated that the scam operators operate on rented premises mostly and leave no clue behind them. 
What do the experts say? 
Speaking to Pakistan Today, Director of Pakistan’s pioneer IT company, BrainTel, Amjad Farooq Alvi said that although the country had laws related to cyber-crimes, their implementation was questionable. Citing the example of the internet service providers and telephone pre-paid calling cards, he said that both businesses had failed in the country because there were no regulations. Several companies disappear after selling calling cards worth millions of rupees but no action has been taken against them yet, he lamented. 
Amjad pointed out that IT had changed the strategies of all businesses, including the advertisement industry. Earlier, advertisement was done through conventional media, including the newspapers, radio and TV, however advertisement is done on the internet now. He said that this turnaround had created various opportunities that did not exist in the past, but at the same time, it required new legislation and improved implementation. 
He concluded that both the advertising and IT industries had to play their role along with the law enforcement agencies to curb this menace and save the industry’s reputation.(Pakistan Today)

HRCP urges govt to ensure Siddique Eido’s release

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called upon the Balochistan government to ensure safe recovery of HRCP activist Siddique Eido, who was abducted in Gwadar by men wearing official uniforms on December 21 last.

In a letter to the Balochistan chief minister, HRCP expressed concern that despite the lapse of 50 days no progress had been made in securing the release of Mr Eido. The Commission said: “At the very least, statements of the four policemen of Pasni Police Station accompanying Mr Eido at the time of his abduction must be recorded and they should be asked to provide as much information as they can about the identity of his abductors.”

HRCP expressed serious concern that Mr Eido may be tortured in custody and that his life was in grave danger. It called upon the government to ensure the safe and immediate recovery of Mr Eido and order that any personnel who had any role in abducting or illegally detaining Mr. Eido be brought to justice.

Battle Over a Book

From Jyoti Malhotra in New Delhi

China banned Alice in Wonderland for several years because the animal kingdom was upgraded to human form, England banned D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover until 1960 for its sexually explicit content (E.M. Forster was among those who defended the book at the trial), but India has now gone one step further and allowed the banning of former foreign minister Jaswant Singh’s book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence in the state of Gujarat.

Turns out that the book is being secretly smuggled into Gujarat from nearby Rajasthan, probably because Gujaratis really want to know what the fuss is about. They’ve watched Jaswant Singh live on television, every muscle and twitch, expressing deep anguish and betrayal at being expelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the political party he loved and served ever since it was formed in 1980 – for writing a book on the partition of India in which Mohammed Ali Jinnah plays the lead role.

Singh seeks to right the balance on the pride of place that Jawaharlal Nehru occupies in the Indian pantheon, right there on top along with all the gods, and Jinnah’s somewhat murky positioning as he stormed out of the Hindustani Undivided Family in 1947.

History, which seems to have such a grip on the irony business, records of course that three days before the partition of the subcontinent in which more than a million people died and nearly eight million lost their homes and hearth, Jinnah went to the Constituent Assembly and delivered his now-famous speech on how Pakistan was going to be a secular state, in which Hindus could go back to their temples and Muslims to their mosques and none of it would impact their lives as Pakistani citizens.

But as Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah’s other noted biographer writes, “What was Jinnah thinking of?” Having played a key role in souring and spilling the milk, in splitting the country along communal lines, Jinnah was now turning the other cheek? This is the question that Jaswant Singh seeks to answer in his book.

“It saddens me that I have been expelled on the grounds of writing a book,” Singh told journalists soon after he was told on the phone that the BJP had thrown him out for his attempt at de-demonising Pakistan’s national hero. The party’s attempt at disciplining one of its senior-most members would have been farcical if it wasn’t so serious. By doing what it did, the BJP sent a message to the country that it wasn’t going to brook dissent and allow any deviation from the party line.

But what is the party line? That Sardar Vallabhai Patel, a senior Congress leader and independent India’s first home minister, is a central BJP icon because of his no-nonsense approach towards the country’s Muslims (in opposition to Nehru’s wishy-washy secular nonsense, claims the BJP). But as Jaswant Singh points out, it would be unfair to paint Patel in such colours, not only because he was often “far off the mark” on several occasions, including the division of India, but also because he was first of all a Congress leader and only then a right-wing one.

So when Singh rhetorically asked his now-former party, through the press, what they thought of the fact that it was their beloved Patel, who after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in January 1948, had banned the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) (another banning, this time wholly necessary), the question echoed around the country but found no takers within the RSS family, the mother lode of the BJP.

Clearly, Jaswant Singh’s writing of Jinnah, the banning of the book and the subsequent unrest within the BJP – another ideologue and close confidante of senior leader L.K. Advani, Sudheendra Kulkarni has quit and journalist-turned-BJP member and former telecom minister Arun Shourie has dubbed the party, ‘Alice in Blunderland’ – marks its gravest crisis in years.

It reflects the party’s lack of introspection over its recent debacles and its refusal to ask why it lost India both in the 2004 and the 2009 elections. The obvious answer to that is the party’s unwillingness to find a moderate leader who can represent all of the country, somewhat along the lines of former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Jaswant Singh, with his refusal to become a primary member of the RSS (believing that his stint in the Indian army was good enough to make him a patriot) and his studied lack of hypocrisy (his enjoys his daily evening drink, a mixture of wine and soda), was one such option, even though his refusal to be a fellow-traveller of the RSS ultimately made him a political lightweight.

On the other, the BJP book ban on Jinnah underlines that the debate around the idea of India still continues, 62 years after partition. Is India, then, the largest democracy in the world with its attendant ideals of free speech and expression, or is it an incoherent state that remains unable to fulfill its own promises despite elections every five years?

Considering that it was the BJP under Vajpayee which repeatedly extended its hand of peace to Pakistan – despite Kargil in 1999, the attack against parliament in 2001, the attack against the Kaluchak army camp in 2002 and Operation Parakram in 2003, when both armies were eyeball-to-eyeball for nine months along the border – Jaswant Singh’s long eye on history has fallen on rough soil.

There’s a third irony in this continuing story: the book is doing brisk business, the controversy ultimately helping it to sell even more widely than the author could have hoped. In a few weeks he will wend his way to Pakistan – to more stories on the front pages of newspapers. (Newsline)