By S Farwa Zahra:

After much media attention, US secretary Hilary Clinton and Pakistan’s foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar finally had a “dialogue” in London over Pak-US relations. From news reports, it seems that Ms. Clinton really had a lot to say, but what was our foreign minister doing the whole time? What is striking about all news reports surrounding this meeting is the fact that while there are a number of statements from Clinton and other US officials, we don’t hear Khar speaking. There is not even a single quote from her. It only took me a few clicks over different news reports to find out what could have turned a bilateral “dialogue” into a US monologue. The sources for all these stories were western news agencies like Reuters and AFP.

I could give these reports some benefit of doubt, assuming that Clinton probably had more substance to her statements, if only she had said anything new this time. We have been hearing about the importance of this relationship for a long time now. Then, this overemphasis on US representatives shows the power dynamics of such news reports. How it’s working in this very case is through the politics of absence. Khar is almost nowhere outside the pictures flashing across Pakistani newspapers. The only instance of her “presence” is through the statements of US officials about her.

According to British writer Roger Silverstone, a major reason that Al Jazeera is looked with dismay by western media is because of the Arab channel’s potential to reverse the very power dynamics. What makes Al Jazeera daunting is its capacity to shift the West from center to the margin by giving an Arab-perspective to the news.

The notion of transnational media as a tool to mobilize cosmopolitan civics seems more of a myth. With advanced technology, it has the power to build bridges between world’s nation states. However, what it is building are walls separating these states. In doing so, the supremacy of ethnocentric international news agencies have a critical role to play. Else, we would not have witnessed increasing conflicts in the world today.

RAIPUR: A seven-year-old Indian girl was murdered in a tribal sacrifice and her liver offered to the gods to improve crop growth, police in the central state of Chhattisgarh said on Sunday. The body of Lalita Tati was found in October one week after her family reported her missing. “A seven-year-old girl was sacrificed by [...]

By Saeed Shah for The Guardian

Pakistan’s embattled president, Asif Ali Zardari, has been hospitalised in Dubai with a heart condition, triggering speculation that it could be used as an excuse for him to step down amid growing pressure from the military.

A government adviser said Zardari had suffered a “minor heart attack”, but this was at odds with the official spokesman for the president, who said the president had gone for routine tests for a pre-existing heart condition.

Rumours of a coup or a resignation forced by the military consumed the media and the internet, fuelled by a report in Foreign Policy magazine that said Zardari was “incoherent” on Monday night during a telephone conversation with Barack Obama.

Zardari’s son and political heir-apparent, Bilawal, met prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani in Islamabad, adding to media hysteria about imminent change. Bilawal is chairman of the ruling Pakistan Peoples party.

The speculation hit a receptive, febrile political atmosphere, rocked by a diplomatic scandal and the recent jolt to relations with the US over the deaths of Pakistani soldiers at a border checkpost.

Pakistan has been ruled for half its existence by the military, and the armed forces have pulled the strings the rest of the time, meaning that the threat of coups are ever present .

Zardari’s aides said he would not resign. The president is deeply unpopular with Pakistan’s military establishment, which is widely believed to be behind repeated attempts to oust him.

“He had a minor heart attack on Tuesday. He flew to Dubai where he had an angioplasty. He’s in good health now. He will come back tomorrow. There’s no question of any resignation,” Mustafa Khokhar, the government’s adviser on human rights told the AFP news agency.

However, Farhatullah Babar, the president’s spokesman, dismissed media speculation, saying “Zardari is in a Dubai hospital for medical tests and checkup as planned”.

The president is under pressure from the “memogate” scandal in Pakistan, where he is accused of being behind a written offer delivered to the US military leadership in the days after the raid on Osasma bin Laden in May this year.

The anonymous memo offered to rein in the Pakistani military, in return for US support. Pakistan’s former US ambassador and close Zardari aide, Husain Haqqani, has already been forced to resign over the issue and faces possible treason charges.

Ali Dayan Hasan, of Human Rights Watch, the international campaigning group, warned against any military intervention. “Constitutional rule of law must be followed and civilian supremacy must be maintained,” he said. “Governance must be through genuine periodic elections.”

Filed under: Afghanistan, Democracy, Freedoms, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pakistanis, President Obama, United States, US Army Tagged: Asif Ali Zardari, Bilawal Zardari, Husain Haqqani, Memogate, Pakistan, Pakistanis, President Barack Obama