The video above was recently uploaded by Aik Naya Pakistan (ANPak)on their YouTube Channel. Their YouTube Channel is www.youtube.com/AikNayaPakistan.
                                               

By Eric Pfannier for The New York Times

Many countries censor the Internet, but few spell out their intentions as explicitly as Pakistan.

In an effort to tighten its control over the Internet, the government recently published a public tender for the “development, deployment and operation of a national-level URL filtering and blocking system.”

Technology companies, academic institutions and other interested parties have until March 16 to submit proposals for the $10 million project, but anger about it has been growing both inside and outside Pakistan.

Censorship of the Web is nothing new in Pakistan, which, like other countries in the region, says it wants to uphold public morality, protect national security or prevent blasphemy. The government has blocked access to pornographic sites, as well as, from time to time, mainstream services like Facebook and YouTube.

Until now, however, Pakistan has done so in a makeshift way, demanding that Internet service providers cut off access to specific sites upon request. With Internet use growing rapidly, the censors are struggling to keep up, so the government wants to build an automatic blocking and filtering system, like the so-called Great Firewall of China.

While China and other governments that sanitize the Internet generally do so with little public disclosure, Pakistan is being surprisingly forthcoming about its censorship needs. It published its request for proposals on the Web site of the Information and Communications Technology Ministry’s Research and Development Fund and even took out newspaper advertisements to publicize the project.

“The system would have a central database of undesirable URL’s that would be loaded on the distributed hardware boxes at each POP and updated on daily basis,” the request for proposals says, referring to uniform resource locators, the unique addresses for specific Web pages, and points of presence, or access points.

“The database would be regularly updated through subscription to an international reputed company maintaining and updating such databases,” according to the request, which was published last month.

The tender details a number of technical specifications, including the fact that the technology “should be able to handle a block list of up to 50 million URL’s (concurrent unidirectional filtering capacity) with processing delay of not more than 1 milliseconds.”

Following the Arab Spring, which demonstrated the power of the Internet to help spread political and social change, Pakistan’s move to clamp down has set off a storm of protest among free-speech groups in the country and beyond.

Opponents of censorship say they are doubly appalled because they associated this kind of heavy-handed approach more with the previous regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf than with the current government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

“The authorities here are big fans of China and how it filters the Internet,” said Sana Saleem, chief executive of Bolo Bhi, a group that campaigns against restrictions on the Internet. “They overlook the fact that China is an autocratic regime and we are a democracy.”

“What makes this kind of censorship so insidious is that they always use national security, pornography or blasphemy as an explanation for blocking other kinds of speech,” Ms. Saleem said, adding that her site had been blocked for several months in 2010 when it made reference to a ban on Facebook. Access to the social networking service had been restricted because of a page featuring a competition to draw the prophet Mohammed — something that is considered blasphemous by Muslims.

The Technology Ministry’s Research and Development Fund says in its tender that the Internet filtering and blocking system will be “indigenously developed,” but campaigners like Ms. Saleem say they think it is likely the agency will try to adapt Western technology for the purpose.

To try to prevent this from happening, Ms. Saleem wrote to the chief executives of eight international companies that make Net filtering technology, asking them to make a public commitment not to apply for the Pakistani grant.

On Friday, one of them, Websense, which is based in San Diego, responded, declaring in a statement on its Web site that it would not seek the contract.

“Broad government censorship of citizen access to the Internet is morally wrong,” Websense said. “We further believe that any company whose products are currently being used for government-imposed censorship should remove their technology so that it is not used in this way by oppressive governments.”

Websense had previously withdrawn the use of its technology from Yemen after facing accusations from the OpenNet Initiative, a U.S.-Canadian academic group, and other organizations that it had been used by the government of that country to stifle political expression on the Internet.

Governments around the world buy filtering and blocking technology to root out illegal content like child pornography. Some private companies employ it to restrict access to social networks and other distractions on company computers.

But the use of Western technology to rein in political speech in countries with repressive regimes has come under increasing scrutiny since the Arab Spring. The OpenNet Initiative said in a report last year that at least nine governments in the Middle East or North Africa had used such products, with the Western companies maintaining lists of sites to be blocked, including sites featuring skeptical views of Islam and even dating services.

Even before implementing its new system, Pakistan has been an active censor. The country was 151st, out of 179, on a ranking of media freedom by the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders in 2011.

“Reporters Without Borders urges you to abandon this project, which would reinforce the arsenal of measures for communications surveillance and Internet censorship that have already been put in place by your government,” the group wrote in a letter Friday to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani.

To free-speech advocates in Pakistan, the government’s seeming insouciance about censorship is a particular cause for alarm.

“This is a case study,” said Ms. Saleem of Bolo Bhi, which is based in Karachi and whose name means “speak up.” “No government has ever done this so publicly.”

Filed under: Arab, blasphemy laws, China, Freedoms, Islam, Pakistan, Pakistanis Tagged: Arab Spring, blasphemy, Censoring in Pakistan, Censors, Censorship, China, Facebook, Great Firewall of China, Internet, Middle East, national-level URL filtering and blocking system, North Korea, Pakistan, Pakistan Censors, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, Reporters Without Borders, URL, URL Blocking, Web Pages, World Wide Web, WWW

Whether you are an app developer building cool apps or games for the mobile platform or a tech blogger who likes to review such apps, what you definitely want is a screencasting tool that will help you easily record movies of your mobile app.

Now there are tons of screencasting apps available for your Windows or Mac desktop but if you wish to capture the screen of your iPad or iPhone, the scene is very disappointing. A search for “screen recorder” or “screencasting” shows zero results in the iTunes app store.

That said, there are ways, or rather workarounds, by which you can capture the screen activity of your iPad or iPhone and convert that into a movie.  Let’s take a look:

Option 1. Create a Screencast Video using Screenshot Images

This is the quick solution. You can capture multiple screenshot images of an app (here’s how) and then stitch them together in one video either using Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie on your Mac. This is how I created the following video screencast of an iPad.

If you would like to make your screencasting appear more natural, put all these different screenshot images in a PowerPoint slideshow, run it in Full-screen mode and then use Camtasia or any other screencasting software to record that slideshow. The advantage here is that the cursor will also be captured so people will find it easier to follow your video tours or game walkthroughs.

Option 2: Use Display Recorder to Capture your iPhone /iPad Screen

If you have jailbroken your iPad (or iPhone), you can use the Display Recorder utility to record the onscreen activity of your iOS device and save the video as an AVI or MP4 file. The app can also upload your recorded screencast to YouTube directly.

I haven’t tried this Cydia app myself but here’s a move of an iPad screen recorded using Display Recorder. The app doesn’t record system sounds though but you can run another app in parallel for that purpose.

Option 3: Create Screencasts using a Dedicated Video Capture Card

You can easily connect your iPhone or iPad to an external monitor – be it a TV screen or a computer monitor or a projector – using either the HDMI Adapter or the VGA Adapter.

Now instead of connecting the iOS device output directly to an external screen, you can connect it to a capture card and it will then automatically record your iPhone /iPad screen.

AverTV HD and Blackmagic Design are some of the available graphic capture cards that can be used in this kind of setup. The following video by Kelly Rush will walk you through the entire process of recording screencasts on tablets – Android, iPads or anything else – with the help of a capture card.

Also, if you do not wish to open to chassis of your computer to install an internal graphics card, there are other options like Epiphan and UltraStudio 3D. These are external capture devices though you would require a much higher budget for them.

Option 4: Record Screencasts using Whiteboard Apps

If you wish to create simple whiteboard style screencasts where your audio and all you activity on a whiteboard is recorded as a movie, you have some good options including Screenchomp, Explain Everything, ShowMe, Replay Note, Doodlecast Pro and Educreations.

ScreenChomp, Educreations and ShowMe are free apps for the iPad that will help you record Khan Academly style videos. You can create freehand drawings, write text, annotate pictures, and all your activity (including voice) will be recorded in one video.

Explain Everything goes one step further. It has a built-in web browser and anything you do inside that browser is also captured in the video so you be more creative here. You can also import PDF files, PowerPoint slides and other documents into Explain Everything through Dropbox, add voice narrations or annotations and publish them into a movie.

Option 5: Use a Digital Camera to Record App Demos

The trouble with all the above workarounds is that none of them would record your hand gestures.

To get around the problem, the developers of the Denso App recorded their interaction video with the iPad using the iPhone camera (see details). They placed the iPad on a white sheet of paper (picture), added enough lights to get rid of all the shadows and they also placed paper on the lamps to diffuse the harsh light.

It’s an easy setup and end result is much like the various iPad /iPhone demos that you see on Apple website. The following video from the DoodleCast team explains a similar setup that also uses an iPhone camera to record iPad videos – the key here is good lighting.

Option 6: Record Screencasts of your iPad or iPhone using AirPlay

I saved the best option for the last. If you have an Mac, just download the Reflection app and it will wirelessly mirror your iPhone or iPad screen  on your Mac desktop live. You don’t have to install any additional software on your iOS device, no cables are involved and there’s no jailbreaking required either.

Once the iPad or iPhone screen is beamed on your Mac desktop, you can use any of existing screencasting utilities – like Camtasia Studio, ScreenFlow  or Jing which is free – to automatically capture a video while you work on the iPhone or iPad. That’s easy and very convenient.

It’s time for a demo so here’s a screencast video of an iPad that I recorded using the Reflection app on Mac. This is what you have been waiting for!

Also see: How To Record your Comptuer Video Games

This story, How to Record Screencasts on your iPad or iPhone, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/03/2012 under IPad, IPhone, Screencasting, Software.

The first is the report of gruesome violence in the north west today, following two other major attacks in Peshawar this past week:

PESHAWAR: At least 55 people were killed Friday in violence in Pakistan’s troubled northwestern tribal region of Kyhber, which borders Afghanistan, local officials said.

Twenty-two people were killed in a suicide attack targeting a mosque after Friday prayers in the Tirah valley, while at least 10 soldiers and 23 militants died in an earlier clash around 10 kilometres away (six miles).

Fifteen militants were also killed when Pakistan fighter jets blitzed various suspected militant hideouts in the Orakzai Agency.

The second is the report on Ahmedis not being allowed to enter a mosque because local residents would rather have them not do so:

RAWALPINDI: Complying with the demands of the locals, the police on Friday barred Ahmadis from entering their worship centre in Satellite Town, Rawalpindi.

Leading the locals, businessman Sharjeel Mir told The Express Tribune that three days back on a consensus, it was decided to prevent any sort of worship in the centre.

Mir said that at a meeting called by the locals which was attended by DCO Saqib Zafar, Superintendent of Police Matloob Hussain, ulemas and other officials, it was decided that the worship centre will now be used only as a residence and if their demands are not met, then they will launch a protest.

The third is the report on the PTA’s efforts to ban the internet, owing to, amongst other things, national security:

The government published a public tender last month for the “development, deployment and operation of a national-level URL filtering and blocking System.” Technology companies, academic institutions and other interested parties have until March 16 to submit proposals for the $10 million project — but anger about it has been growing both inside and outside Pakistan.

Censorship of the Web is nothing new in Pakistan, which, like other countries in the region, says it wants to uphold public morality, protect national security or prevent blasphemy. The government has blocked access to pornographic sites as well as, from time to time, mainstream services like Facebook and YouTube, Google’s video site.

Reading these reports in conjunction leads to the following propositions:

1. Sometimes suicide bombers have an easier time entering mosques than Ahmedis trying to pray.

2. Our national security is not just threatened by brutal militant groups but also by Facebook.

3. Facebook and porn are blasphemous but  forbidding people to pray in their mosques is not.

By Khalid Mazhar Qureshi

A parent came to me, quite annoyed, saying “how can I stop my kids using facebook?” continuing “I have tried all but my kids just don’t stop using it. Everything is being affected: their education and real social life. They stay away from me into a world with which I am not fully aware”. This was indeed a tough question and I couldn’t answer it but it made me think about it. Is digital social media inherently that bad? Or is there any flaw in our approach?

A social experiment was performed in 2009 by DARPA dubbed as— A Network Challenge, in which they spread ten big red balloons all over the US. The task was to spot those balloons in teams in 15-days at a prize of $ 40,000. The task was virtually impossible to accomplish for a single person or less connected group.  To their surprise the prize was taken away in 5 days by a team. This proves the power of social network.

If the same teams were living 20 yrs back would they be able to find balloons in a span of 15 days in third largest country? Unfathomably difficult! Digital Social media is a revolution of collaboration and information sharing—it empowers ordinary people. Let’s forget what happened in Egypt and Libya, consider the case of fourth graders in USA, who were very inspired about environment after reading “The Lorax” written by Dr. Seuss. When they heard that Hollywood is making a movie on the same story they went to the movie website excitement. Only after learning that the site is missing environmental themes, the fourth graders challenged the Universal Studio and set off their social network by filing a petition on Change.org to include environmental themes. They gathered 57,000 signatures and, in this way, fourth graders got their way against the Hollywood giant.

Despite having formidable strength, this media is severely looked down upon by parents and teachers alike. In many schools social networking sites are forbidden territories and discussing about them during school hours is a taboo. It is a big criticism on educationists that they were slow to adapt News Papers when they were first introduced then they were slow to embrace internet and now this fast and vast expanding internet social networking.

Already fistful of approximately one billion users, the digital media is still relentless and growing exponentially. It’s deemed as a main engine for global village. Social media is acting like a crucible where people of different race and cultural backgrounds are amalgamating and being unified as one digi-nation. Rapid social communication updates people about the latest information whether it is related to shopping, current affairs and education. They know more alternatives and exact price of a certain item. This helps users become smarter in their real life. So by not allowing children to use it openly, are we doing justice? Are we not furthering the gap between real life and the life under teachers and parents? And in this way, are we not making children more rebellious?

In October, 2010, Phoebe Prince, a high school student hung herself because of cyber bullying. In another accident, a Rutgers University freshman committed suicide because his friends dubbed his sex video and streamed it online. There may be several hidden cases around the world which will keep popping up in future. In social media bullying is a common phenomena and the statistics is quite shocking. A Consumer Reports survey conducted in the US in early 2011 reveals that
“One million children were harassed, threatened, or subjected to other forms of cyber bullying on Facebook in the past year”

In a paper entitled, “Poke Me: How Social Networks Can Both Help and Harm Our Kids,” Larry D. Rosen, PhD, professor of psychology at California State University, found that Teens who use Facebook more often show more narcissistic tendencies while young adults who have a strong Facebook presence show more signs of other psychological disorders, including antisocial behaviors, schizophrenia, mania, depression and aggressive tendencies. Facebook can be distracting and can negatively impact learning. Studies found that middle school, high school and college students who checked Facebook frequently achieved lower grades and had lowest retention of what they read.

The issues of morality also arise with the use of digital social media as Noam Chomsky once said in an interview, ““[I] think internet social network erodes normal human relations. It makes them more superficial, shallow, and evanescent.”  According to Steven Strogatz, PhD, a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University, “The distinction between genuine friends and acquaintances is becoming blurred. Users are spending time maintaining relationships with people they don’t really care about.” In a recent study out of USC, brain scans showed that volunteers needed at least four to six seconds to process stories of virtue or social pain in others. “It takes a certain amount of time to fully experience complex social emotions,” says the lead author, cognitive neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. Heavy reliance on the rapid intake of certain information—especially in younger, developing minds—could have consequences on our morality. It could also be “a whole new source of unhappiness,” says Strogatz.

But the thing is social media is well into our lives. Current generation love social networking and want to use it and will use it no matter how smartly we try to stop them; they will always find a way to use it. It has become an irreversible process. If we analyze anti-social media research it is standing on one reason —“frequent use”, isn’t that “frequent use” of everything is bad. As old adage goes: ‘excess of everything is bad’, too much watching of TV induces sleep deprivation, too much study does not take you anywhere, too much drinking of water may harm your kidneys and etc. However, my caveat is that we should not accept any new popular thing on reflex action but this media has passed its time of caution. The only way to deal with it is to change our side and accept it. Think about it if parents, relatives and teachers are added in the social network profile of their children/students then it will minimize the chance of being used in a negative and obsessive way. Change of side argument is historically proven for positive results.

Our real world is very rough and cruel but we still send our children outside homes for study or for all sorts of thing. Some fall prey to malicious stuff and some not, those who don’t is because their parents and teachers inculcated values in them. We now need to inculcate our values in their digital lives, they need simple and honest advices like the one President Obama gave to 9^th graders, “I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook because in the YouTube age, whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life. And when you’re young, you make mistakes and you do some stupid stuff. ”

Every person on Earth spends an average of 26 minutes on YouTube per month.

Do you know that “500 years of YouTube video” are watched on Facebook every single day?

Google has released new statistics around YouTube usage across the world and the world’s favorite video website continues to set new records. Here are some highlights:

• In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views* (video playbacks).
• 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This number was only “48 hours” a couple of months ago.
• Over 4 billion YouTube videos are viewed a day up from 3 billion so the new channel based layout seem to be doing well for YouTube.
• Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube.

The one figure that has however stayed constant for YouTube in the past few months is the number of unique visitors. YouTube, according to the press page, gets around 800 million uniques every month so they still another 50 million to beat Facebook.

[*] Facebook gets around a trillion pageviews every month according to Google’s own data.

The YouTube statistics page also says that 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute. Surprisingly, there’s still no mention of Google Plus on that page.

This story, Facebook Users Watch 500 years of YouTube Video Every Day!, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 01/03/2012 under YouTube, Internet.

In Economics there is simple demand and supply rule that applies in most situations. When there is a demand, there will be supply. Increased demand will increase cost and supply will rise up to meet it. When the supply increases more than demand, then demand will reduce which will drive the price down. The rule is quite simple to understand and can be applied to most real-life situations as well with some alteration.

But what if there is plenty of demand and supply but quality is missing? What if the one with the need have no idea of the quality, the one supplying also has no idea of quality and any other middleperson involved is also devoid of idea about quality? This is a situation regarding Law & Order in Pakistan. The nation is not lawless, the constitution is there and Pakistan Penal Code covers almost everything. Moreover, there seems to be an endless supply of lawyers in the country. One only has to login on Youtube and see Lawyers Movement videos that shook the country a few years back. There is a definite demand of lawyers in the country or else not so many would be there in the first place and more graduating every year.

Does that mean Law Education is not a viable career option?

If you try to answer this question from Economics point of view then yes, it may not be a viable career option. Too much supply of lawyers will bring down the price (earnings from legal fees) but at the same time, Pakistan being Pakistan, a lot can go wrong and demand for lawyers to get their clients out of tight spots will always be there. Sometimes it seems like the situation is lawless so that lawyers could survive and earn a living. But don’t try to answer this question from Economics or Business point of view. Infact, before answering it ask a different question from you yourself.

Can you be a good lawyer? If yes, then it is best for you to not choose law. Simple reason is that there are too many ‘good’ lawyers that have so far failed to do any good. When that happens, they turn to teaching and what good they will impart is anyone’s guess.

If your answer is no then ask yourself another question. Can you be an excellent lawyer? If your answer is yes, you might be on to something. Unlike Business studies, Law Education is a professional education. Lawyers are doctors of society and it is their responsibility to keep society clean, healthy and devoid of any cancerous growth. You need to be absolutely sure about your love for Law before choosing to become a lawyer as it is a demanding field and in a relatively lawless society like Pakistan, survival is an added risk.

If you decide to study law, it is not always the book you need to memorize or case to argue. It is also about foresight, gut instincts and common sense. When you read judgments given by highly competent judges on both sensitive as well as routine cases, you will come across incredible wisdom that may even surprise the smartest of people. Pakistan has produced a good crop of judges and lawyers in the past and their cases are used as references and study guides in Law Schools in UK. Our own schools, on the other hand, ignore their great services and try to force memorize books to students instead. What they fail to teach is that law is not just law but a whole philosophy. Each case sets a precedence that is used as a guide to solve future cases of similar nature. Moreover these cases are not just referred in your own country but by legal institutions in other countries as well. Each case has the potential for great impact on individual’s life as well as society’s future.

What we need are quality lawyers that understand what law truly is and how much impact they can make on the society. Most of our lawyers are still unable to explain how a country like UK can function without a constitution while Pakistan even with a constitution is without proper justice system. Our lawyers are still unable to decide what is supreme, the constitution or the parliament? Some are even not sure if reopening of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s murder trial case was a good idea. More than that, so many of the lawyers also support lawlessness. You only need to see Salman Taseer’s murderer’s pictures where lawyers are jubilantly throwing rose petals at him. It clearly shows something is not right in the system and mediocrity has brought it to standstill.

In such scenario there is a high demand for quality to not just bring awareness to both professionals and masses but also create a positive impact on the system. The more qualified lawyers will join the ranks, the better will be law and order situation of the country and the less confusing will be our lawyers in both understanding the law themselves and explaining it to others.

It is high time for students to get educated in law, not just from any place but from institutions that can impart real education, through well qualified faculty and bring order to the confusing state of affairs in this country.

Filed under: Education Tagged: Law Education in Pakistan, Pakistani Education

Below is an article by a Syrian journalist who has put light on the lives people of Syria are living in fear. Bashar al Asad like his father is a tyrant and he seems to be the modern version of Nazi leadership. People should raise their voices all over the world and support the freedom and justice loving people in any manner they can.

Confessions of an ‘agent’ in Syria–>DAWN News Article

by Maryam Hasan (Pen name)

Source : http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/28/confessions-of-an-agent-in-syria.html

Whether it’s a call on my phone or at the door, I feel scared to death. I mentally prepare myself for the worst, assuming that “they” are here to take me.

But then, when I find a friend at the door or a homeless compatriot asking for food, I realise that it is not my day yet, it is someone else’s.

Despite being unusually lucky, my nightmares don’t end. I rather prepare myself to deal with a situation when Bashar’s sleuths would come to pick me up for writing about the misery of Syrian taxpayers and democracy-lovers.

Regardless of our terrible conditions, we do greet each other daily with ‘sabah al-khair’ or good morning but with little hope for the same.

When I hear stories of torture and disfigured bodies of the missing Syrians and journalists alike, my only prayer to Allah remains, “I am ready for it but ease it on me and my people please.”

We write with pen names and log on the Internet using proxies, thinking we are safe. The reality is otherwise. My missing journalist friends and bloggers had no time to say bye to their loved ones inside the very home they were abducted from. Al-mokhabarat or intelligence agents, just plucked them away, mostly in the dark of the night.

They may discover me sooner or later but I make it a point to erase all my cell phone logs of call and text messages, clear my browser history and empty my laptop’s trash bin. Thinking that I might have forgotten something, sometimes I repeat the act many times a night.

Of late, my personal fear of being kidnapped by government sleuths has been overshadowed by a big, bloodier development. Every day, I see uploaded YouTube videos of the best of Soviet and Russian arsenal knocking down bustling neighborhoods first in Dara’a, then Hama and now Homs.

While I still fear the footsteps of sleuths on my door, I am not being searched as minutely as before.

Instead of looking out for activists and undercover journalists, Bashar’s military is wiping out entire cities from world maps, over suspicions of treason against the Alawite regime.

What started as massacre has duly transformed into genocide. My editors abroad insist on sending my stories with real names, concrete evidence and versions from both sides. I have been in double jeopardy since the first eight months of the uprising when the world only knew about Tahrir square kind of protests.

I, sometimes, wonder if the top-notch media watchdog bodies really know what a faceless and nameless journalist in Syria goes through, at the hands of sleuths as well as the very editors known as gatekeepers.

When making a phone call can risk not only yours and your families’ lives but also the person answering the phone, calling a government source is simply suicidal. Even the most naïve journalist here knows that cellular and landline phone companies are not only owned by the regime’s front-men but also bugged and monitored.

Simultaneously, Syria is a busy place for journalists where one cannot choose which story angle to focus on any given day i.e. massacres in Homs, protests in Damascus and Idlib,  Russian FM’s visit to Bashar, or statements from Washington echoing only fake promises.

But in the end the choice won’t be mine! The media company decides which one suits its agenda and its geopolitical context. Mostly, the easy bet is to bank on the wire service, ignoring the at-risk on-ground journalist who for them is a mere ‘stringer’!

I felt proud of my profession when I first saw stories by foreign journalists covering Syria from their high risk abodes and makeshift media centers. Though the world would not have believed a Syrian journalist like me for the Bab Amar massacre or siege of Homs but I hope they won’t ignore the outsiders’ testimony.

The natural but tragic death of Anthony Shadid, a Lebanon-born journalist for The New York Times, weighed very heavy on Syrian people’s hearts and the battered country’s image. Syria was referred to as home of death.

Besides dozens if not hundreds of slain Syrian journalists, the uprising has claimed two French media-men, and the one and only Marie Colvin died in more familiar way. Their heartrending deaths came in solidarity with local fellow professionals whose names and faces may be known when the tyrant falls and conscience rules in Syria.

Unluckily, I have many pen names for it is hard to write with a real one.  Death of Marie Colvin was personally embarrassing to me. Should I still use pen names when my star colleagues are writing with their warm blood?

I am a single woman with no liabilities except a widowed mother and siblings. One simple story with my real name appearing on an Arabic language blog or English-language website has greater probability of leading sleuths to my home.

Now even my family rarely knows which pen name I use and where in the world, my work publishes. Not that I don’t trust my family but the regime’s four decades of fear can easily cause a Freudian slip.

A year ago, I proudly showed off my byline in international dailies but now we are writing for our lives and not for pride.

I rarely get internet access good enough to open my emails and send my stories in time. I must admit that overall depressing conditions too result in my missing deadlines. Ironically, stories featuring Syrians’ bloodbath are never stale and the desk accepts them more often.

When I work on my laptop, my siblings and mother spy on me to see what I am doing or writing. My eldest sister advised me last September, “I can’t stop a journalist from writing but she should not forget the fate her younger brothers may face if they (mokhabarat) find out.”

One of my university fellows was picked up for writing a blog about a missing seven-year-old in Dara’a. Her brother went to a police station to lodge a report but never returned home. Three weeks later, their mother was asked to receive her son’s body from the same police office. She not only got the body of her 20-year-old son but also discovered the disfigured corpse of her blogger daughter.

Earlier, I hoped to change the world’s opinion with my writings but now, I am only recording testimonies of massacres and detailing current history.

Long after they have taken me to die in their dark cells, my stories will serve as credible evidence to try Bashar and his advisors for crimes against humanity.

Like journalism, we are learning survival techniques on our own, the hard way. Whenever a couple of us sit together away from our parents and the listening walls, we talk about the best ways in dealing with the worst.

I usually tell my colleagues, “Why do you think they would wait for us to admit or defend ourselves. Our charge-sheets are already there with no room for defense or discussion . . . Agents we are! . . . Agents of change!”

Maryam Hasan is a young journalist, whose family struggled against Hafiz Al-Assad’s tyrannical rule and policies. She is using a pen-name due to security reasons.

Youtube Partnership Program won’t be coming to Pakistan soon because of many reasons which YouTube will never tell you. Some of the reasons that I know are:


1) Our copyright laws are very flawed. For in depth look search “Pakistan copyright law” on a search engine.
2) YouTube has to sort many legal issues (if there are any).

At least there are other ways you can earn money online in Pakistan, which are. You can make a website, but it has to be a decent one, that means you have to have a good amount of content in it and it should have a proper domain like, www.youtube.com not a sub domain. Another great way which most people prefer is blogging. You can make free blogs on websites like blogger.com (which is also the most popular) and many others.

For now we can only hope that YouTube could expand its partnership program to Pakistan, but till then, I suggest you should try out blogging.

by Abdul Majeed Abid

Regarding the basis of hate towards the US, Professor Hamid Kizilbash’s paper in 1988 stated that Pakistanis give three kinds of reasons for negative feelings about America. One involves U.S. policies toward Pakistan such as failure to come to Pakistan’s aid during the Bangladesh crisis, using Pakistan for its own interests, and opposition to Pakistan’s peaceful nuclear program. A second deals with American global policy, including support of Israel, opposition to Iran’s present government, and use of force against small Third World nations. The third includes American involvement in Pakistan—for example, support of the military regime, obstructing a settlement of the Afghan issue, and responsibility for the decline in the value of the local currency.

Columnist Fasi Zaka in one of his columns suggested that the kind of anti-Americanism found these days (among the middle-classes of the country) is extremely ill-informed. He wrote that a lot of young Pakistanis are basing their understanding of international politics by watching low-budget straight-to-video ‘documentaries’ on YouTube!

The unfortunate fact is that most of Anti-America bashing is done for all the wrong reasons. United States of America is no beacon of International justice nor are they the mega-scheming empire that we so love to depict in our lengthy and flowery diatribes. U.S.A is neither the “great Satan” nor is the “defender of democracy”, it is somewhere in between these two extremes.   The most accurate basis of U.S-bashing would be to criticize the impunity with which that country holds the rest of the world accountable based on its standards or the brazen use of force by the United States across the globe(and NOT only against the Muslims-contrary to popular belief) over the last 70 years.  Ironically, more people in the United States itself and in Europe protested against the Iraq war than in any of the Muslim “Ummah”. While we are at it, it should also not be forgotten what the “Muslim Imperialism” did in its own days. If Mohammad bin Qasim can come all the way from Hijaz to Sindh just because of a letter written by a woman, Moosa bin Naseer can send an army to help Count Julian across the Mediterranean, G.I Joe also has the equal right to retaliate when a bunch of dimwits attack its homeland via flying planes. America is not controlling the world like we think it is. Add this to the fact that more than 90% Pakistani people have never been to the U.S and have never met an American in real life.

Another ugly issue surrounding the prevalent anti-Americanism is the hypocrisy of it. Most people attending the “Go Amrika Go” rallies would love to get a U.S Visa and spend their rest of lives in the same country whose flag they burn on monthly basis for fun. People like this can be seen queuing up outside American fast-food chains, they like to wear American brands(new or second hand), they watch American films, follow the trends set by Americans, use American-built devices like a Personal Computer or an iPhone and the list goes on and on. It would be unfair not to say that one characteristic that unites us Pakistanis is this hypocrisy that we fail to see.

U.S is not the wealthiest country in the world, rather it the country with the most loans. The unemployment rates in United States are rising on weekly basis, people are getting their homes taken away from them, if “Amrika” is so powerful, Why can’t it help its OWN people? We have been made to think via convoluted conspiracy theories that Amrika has some kind of Vendetta against Muslims. No doubt, a lot of Muslim countries have been at the receiving end of Amrika’s wrath including Iraq, Afghanistan and lately Libya. But does that mean what was happening at Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya was Justified.? The genocide being committed by Saddam and Qaddafi was “western propaganda” only? Al-Qaeda was a bunch of average  bearded guys who played for the same football team? As a society, we do not want to tolerate any dissenting voice and I am already expecting remarks branding me “another American agent” or  “Amriki apologist” and all my protestations will be useless when that happens.At the end, I would just like to re-quote Mr. Tufail Ahmad, “It[Anti-American sentiment] hegemonizes minds and prevents people from seeing facts as they exist”

Yasir Pirzada

I have enjoyed reading Yasir Pirzada‘s column whenever I got a chance because “you” comes in the middle of the week which means a roller coaster ride for me. Being a working mom of four kids, working days pass by without giving me moment of respite. I would like share his ‘Branded Pakistan’ with you …. I could not stop laughing at his narration of some of the ads.

On a serious note, Mr Yasir! in a  country of 170 million people only Faisal Qureshi and a few others, who can be counted on fingers make creative and interesting ads. Rest of the ads are either copied, bought or look like poor female modelling photoshoots! If nobody knows how creative advertising can be then who will build, market and brand Pakistan. Ah…Our beautiful and beloved Pakistan!

Branded Pakistan

by Yasir Pirzada

Let me share a ‘serious’ joke at the very outset. When a guy meets a woman and tells her ‘I am a great lover’, that is called marketing. When somebody else tells the woman about that man ‘trust me, he is a great lover’, that is called public relations. When the guy himself repeatedly tells the woman ‘I am a great lover, I am a great lover…’ that would be called advertising. But when the woman herself says ‘I understand you are a great lover’, that would be called branding!

Branding is a serious business and so is advertising. But unfortunately, the concept of advertising in Pakistan, like many other concepts, is not the same as it is in other countries. We make simple advertisements for the simple reason that we can’t make them creative. And branding, for sure, is not our cup of tea. Obviously, I am not talking about a few multinational companies who are very particular about branding. My concern is those types of ads, which, in the first place, are run on cable TV; and secondly, those non-stop repetitive programmes which are actually paid advertisements. However, if I were to choose between these two, I would go for cable TV Commercials (TVCs), at least they are humorous.

The best thing about cable TVCs is that they are cheap (means monetarily) plus they are hilarious. One of my favourite these days is TVC of a ‘Rent a Car’ company. It is simply unbeatable. The ad opens with a glimpse of vehicles decorated with flowers claiming it to be the largest network of rented cars in Pakistan. Then suddenly a family is shown coming out of a rickshaw; as soon as they step out of the rickshaw, the driver grabs the man for some unknown reason and then the lady (presumably man’s wife) interferes and tells the rickshaw driver to be ashamed of himself for being abusive to his ‘father-in-law’ (at least that’s what I have understood). Then a heavy weight model (seeing is believing) with straight hair, chips in and says ‘phone malayein (not milayein) aur gari mangayein!’ Then glimpses of the proprietor as well as his brothers and kids are shown who are smiling while looking at the camera (don’t know why) and then it is told that the proprietor is also the president of some kind of association. After that the scene changes and another family, this time a pretty decent couple, is shown with three kids. Wife is clad in a saree, who, after seeing a chauffer driven car, expresses her satisfaction to the husband and jumps into the car hurriedly. Then again, our heavy weight model comes in and says ‘safar key matabuq (not mutabiq) paisey manasub!’ Now I can’t narrate the remaining advertisement because I want you to watch it yourself and enjoy. This ad is only aired on TV in Lahore but because of its immense popularity now you can also search it on YouTube and many have even shared it on Facebook! Hats off to its director!

As far as long and repetitive paid programmes are concerned, I think these have proved to be beneficial only for the retired or flop film stars. An actor like Jackie Sheroff can be seen nowadays in one of such advts, marketing ‘joint pain medicines’. Similarly, Bhagia Shree, heroine of super doper hit ‘Meiney Pyar Kia’ is selling hair oil these days. The most annoying thing about these ads is their monotonous tone. I don’t know exactly how successful this marketing strategy is but I am sure these ads certainly attract people and that’s why these have been on air for such a long time.

Apart from these two categories of ads, there are certain ads which I simply hate to watch. One of them is a ‘cleaning toilet challenge’… and what a challenge that is! One of our TV stars is shown in the ad throwing a challenge to a group of housewives as to who can clean the toilet in a better way! Certainly our hero wins the ‘challenge’ and he proudly announces it at the end.

And lastly, I wish someone would come up with an advertisement that portrays a positive image of our country. We need it badly for our country. An ad that would brand our country in a way like a multinational brand its product successfully. If a multinational can do it for its ordinary products, why can’t it be done for a vibrant country like Pakistan! So let’s start building a ‘Branded Pakistan’.

The writer is a columnist, TV anchor and playwright and can be contacted at yasirpirzada1@gmail.com

“

By Damayanti Datta for India Today

On February 7, three Karnataka ministers were captured on television poring over a phone screen, watching a woman in a petticoat gyrating wildly. They lost their jobs for watching pornography in the sacred precincts of the Legislative Assembly. The incident is a high-profile sample of a definitive reality: porn is pervasive through the Internet across India, easily and freely available, not just to leery politicians but to children and adults in millions of ordinary homes.

It is a sign of the times that the most famous international porn star has Indian roots and was on Indian television. Sunny Leone, 30, appeared on the reality show Big Boss 5 and has now launched a clothes-on Bollywood career. Her fake breasts, that won the 2010 fame Award for Favourite Breasts in Los Angeles, have brought her the honour of being named among the 50 Most Desirable Women by the nation’s biggest daily this month.

The organised $12 billion (Rs.60,000 crore) American adult entertainment industry, to which Leone belongs, has bred explicit images beyond the limits of imagination. And they are free. Fuelled by the Internet and facilitated by high-speed data service, pornography, born in dozens of studio lofts around the world, has entered teenagers’ mobile phones with the force and sweep of a dangerous flood. It threatens to swamp conventional notions of morality, raise tensions in bedrooms, lure children into a world they do not understand, and initiate a culture that threatens the mores of family life as we know it.

The writing is on the wall. Google Trends show the search volume index for the word ‘porn’ has doubled in India between 2010 and 2012. With instant Net connectivity and flexible payment options, online porn is increasingly affordable, accessible and acceptable. Seven Indian cities are among the top 10 in the world on porn search, reports Google Trends, 2011. One out of five mobile users in India wants adult content on his 3G-enabled phone, according to an 2011 IMRB Survey. Over 47 per cent students discuss porn every day, says a public school survey by Max Hospital in Delhi. Porn tops the list of cyber crimes in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau.

Rape, penetration, oral, anal, lesbian, gay or group porn are yesterday’s news. There is now a hectic crossover of porn subcultures on the World Wide Web. Consider MILF (or Mothers I Like to F***) porn. “Check out the most notorious hot, mature moms going crazy and getting f****d by young studs,” invites one of the 40,600,000 MILF websites. “A hot and sexy bride is getting raped brutally,” says a ‘ravished bride’ porn site. There is ‘pregnant porn’ (“Are you ready to see these moms-to-be in action?). There is ‘incest porn’ that welcomes you to sites with “xxx videos full of mother and son, dad and daughter”. Child porn blends with ‘teen porn’, promising “fascinating porn actions starring our young models”.

New jargon and innovative formats, borrowed from foreign cultures, are trendy on the web. For the uninitiated, chikan (“to grope” in Japanese) porn is all about public molestation in trains. ‘Bukkake’ parties involve repeated ejaculation on a woman by several men. Shemale and futanari porn mean “live action” with transsexuals. Anime and manga refer to Japanese formats of sexually-explicit comics and animation. A new focus is the service sector, with “shy massage girls” seducing clients, doctors and “hot babes in nurse uniforms” getting wild. In ‘corporate porn’ “busty secretaries” go down on their knees to pleasure their boss.

Sunny Leone (or Karen Malhotra) takes credit for the ‘pornification’ of India. “My presence on Bigg Boss has empowered a lot of people to be open about their sexuality,” she tells India Today. One of the richest adult actresses in the industry, with her SunLust Pictures in Los Angeles reporting a top line of over $1 million (Rs.5 crore), she is now getting ready to debut in filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s Jism 2, playing a professional body double. The most-searched Google celebrity-powered by India, Bangladesh and Pakistan-she has 1,47,326 Twitter followers.

Leone’s success indicates the greater acceptability of porn in daily life. Internet is the new tool, exploding every embarrassing sexual adventure of public personalities and making every lurid detail an item of private consumption. Coming after the midwife Bhanwri Devi’s sex cds with Rajasthan politician Mahipal Maderna in November 2011, public reaction to the Karnataka fiasco has ranged from indignation to amusement, but not shock: if political parties engaged in a morality-in-politics war, social activist Anna Hazare demanded the ministers be sent to jail and media professional Pritish Nandy summed up Bollywood’s reaction by calling them the “3 idiots”.

“A porn star doesn’t automatically mean prostitute,” says Leone, now seeking respectability. She talks about her parents’ initial shock turning into respect, how they taught her to be a “good person”, years of hard work, restrained personal life, professionalism and lack of regrets. Like the girl-next-door, she tweets how she is learning Hindi, cooking sabzi and massaging hair oil. Her endeavour will not be too difficult. Young adults, who grew up with cable TV, DVD players and the Internet, have been exposed to much more adult material than their parents. As filmmaker Pooja Bhatt points out, “Young people don’t respond negatively to Sunny because they have already logged on to her website.”

She is not wrong. Even school students discuss porn. Dr Samir Parikh, chief psychiatrist, Max Healthcare, calls it “risky indulgences”. In a survey on 1,000 children from top public schools in Delhi in 2010, he found 47 per cent boys and 29 per cent girls visiting porn sites and talking about it in school. “I understand sexual inquisitiveness and peer pressure around sexuality, but pornography on the Internet is fake, unreal, often violent and downright perverted,” he says. “Moreover, a new technology in young hands could lead to irresponsible behaviour and ruin their lives.” He obviously has in mind the stream of MMS scandals that have hit campuses across the country since 2004, when two Class XI students of a school in Delhi created a sensation. In many of these cases, either one partner was not aware of being filmed or did not anticipate the videos would get circulated-as in May 2011 when JNU student Janardan Kumar, 22, made a video of the girl he was intimate with and used it to blackmail her after being rejected.

Campus porn is a thriving subterranean culture. Try talking to students in various campuses of Delhi: “Have you ever heard of MMS videos of students being circulated on the campus?”

Diksha Singh, 20: “Every couple of months there is a fresh case. It’s so common, I don’t even blink.”

Raghav Verma, 19: “All the time. It’s shocking to see a classmate’s intimate details on video camera.”

Mehak Suri, 18: “My ex-boyfriend tried that with me, and when it didn’t work he sent me threatening emails and messages.”

Amaira Kapoor, 20: “You will be surprised to know how many cases go unreported and unaccounted for.”

Sakshi Wakhlu, 21: “A year ago, one girl got high, went with a group of boys and had sex with them. The men came back and talked.”

The arrival of smartphones is changing the country’s porn landscape further. India has the lowest penetration of smartphones, 10 per cent, among the youth globally. But with email, social networking, chatting, messaging and gaming, it is a device every youth craves for. And now there are even porn applications. Imagine a ‘pocket’ girlfriend or boyfriend, who can strip, talk dirty, make sexual noises. “These are some of the ‘apps’ that can be downloaded on smartphones,” says Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with Bangalore-based think-tank Centre for Internet and Society. “App download data shows the popularity of sex-themed apps on smartphones, apart from the adults-only stores,” he says. Age restrictions for applications? Mostly a pop-up asking if one is over 17. With over 50 per cent of all Internet users in the country accessing the web via mobile phones already, as estimated by TRAI, smartphones are the future of anytime-anywhere porn.

The threshold of what can be called ‘pornography’ is shifting. Mainstream and hardcore entertainment are coming closer. The Dirty Picture, biopic of south siren Silk Smitha, raked in Rs.50 crore in its very first week in December 2011, with its noisy orgasms, titillating cleavage and fiery dialogues. It’s also hard to draw the line between porn and art in raunchy item numbers, from Sheila ki Jawani to Munni Badnam Hui. “What heroines do in films today is what vamps did yesterday,” says filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt. Some item numbers are more obscene than nudity, he feels. “People tell me, how can someone who made Saaransh, Arth and Zakhm, make films like Jism and Murder” he adds. “I say, get off the high horse.”

Kolkata certainly is getting off the high horse. A city with the least taste for pornography, going by India Today Sex Surveys, is also one of the top seekers of porn online, reports Google Trends. Leone’s CDs are bestsellers here. Teenage boys creep up and ask, “Sunny Leone ka CD chahiye?” (Want Sunny Leone’s CDs?), at Chandni Chowk market in central Kolkata, the city’s piracy hub. Step inside the dingy alleys between shops selling electronic goods, and piles of pirated blue film come out of hiding-Rs.120 for just a CD and Rs.250 for one with Leone on the cover. Ask too many questions and they show you the door. The police are their friends, although motorcycles stand ready for sudden crackdowns. “Sunny’s CD is selling like hot cakes, 200 a day,” says one. Leone is not pleased. “If you are stealing my movies in Kolkata, that is flipping horrible,” she has tweeted. But who cares? A 33-year-old customer puts away her CD in his plastic bag with quiet satisfaction. “I will have to watch when the wife is not looking,” he grins.

If a married man watches porn,is it considered cheating??

My husband secretly watches porn. Why are men like this? He knows I hate porn.

My husband watches porn alone. He refuses to watch it with me.

My husband watches porn very often. Should I be worried?

I feel insulted whenever my boyfriend watches porn.

There are 2,690,000 such postings on Google, from wives and girlfriends globally, on a range of sites on the web-health, marriage, empowerment, agony.

Watching porn alone is a rising trend among men, thanks to the Internet. Check out India Today Sex Surveys: in 2009, with video as the most popular porn format, just 10 per cent men out of 2,661 watched porn alone. This year, with smarter access and gadgets, it zoomed to 44 per cent. “It is usually a sign of cybersex addiction,” says Dr Vijay Nagaswami, Chennai-based expert on sexual psychotherapy. “Compulsive pornwatchers often become dysfunctional. They stay up late for online porn to get active on instant messengers, webcams, demand more private time, neglect family, work and normal sexual activity.”

Even five years back, it was difficult to get locals to dub foreign porn films in Gujarati. But now, mobile shop owners in Ahmedabad do brisk business in porn, supplying primarily to youngsters. They download content on hard discs and then transfer those to the memory cards of eager youngsters-Rs.100 to Rs.200 for a 30-minute film. “It’s good business. Sometimes I get more than six customers, all boys,” says Rajesh Patel, a porn-provider.

It’s good business in Chennai, too. In a small shop opposite the high court in Burma Bazaar, the hub of pirated movies in Chennai, Ramu is doing his puja. He throws flowers at the gods, and looks at his customer. “English, Tamil also.” His voice goes an octave lower, “Triple.” Who cares for storylines? Many of these films are shot in the city or taken off the Net. Ramu sells at least 100 discs a day, mostly to distributors. The CDs are mostly of Indian couples having sex, sometimes verging on rape. “This business can’t be hit by recession,” Ramu says. “People will always buy porn.”

The buzz is, although the Karnataka ministers claimed they were watching clips of a real-life gang-rape at a rave party, they were either watching Indonesian hardcore ‘abik’ porn or model Poonam Pandey’s YouTube video, Bathroom Secrets. But what do most Indians watch? Google Trends indicates that the average Indian pornwatcher opts for more tame keywords, ‘sex’ and ‘how to kiss’, the most. New research by computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam from Boston University, US, on a billion porn and erotic web searches across the world, shows that the five most popular porn sites for men are webcam or video sites featuring anonymous graphic sex, with a monthly traffic of 7-16 million visitors. For women, the most popular is the “erotic” site fanfiction.net, which gets over 1.5 million visitors a month and has more than two million stories, 50 per cent being “romance”.

How big is pornography in India? Of the 500 top Indian websites this month ranked by the leading global web information company Alexa, at least 24 are porn sites. Nearly a dozen porn sites are more popular than some leading news sites and that of the Bombay Stock Exchange. Leone, one of the top five global porn stars, says 80 per cent of her web traffic and 60 per cent of her “high six figures” revenue come from India. The content, she says, is “everything and above”. “I can sell anything you want as long as you have a credit card.”

The only other major-league porn actor of Indian origin in the US, Priya Anjali Rai, also says she has a lot of fans in India, but not many paying customers. Adopted from New Delhi by American parents and brought up in Arizona, Rai keeps her Indian name for her work: “That’s what makes me different from everybody else.” Both Leone and Rai insist they only do “vanilla” porn, “boy-girl stuff”. The US, specifically the Los Angeles area, has the biggest porn industry in the world, followed by London and Budapest, estimated between $4 billion (Rs.20,000 crore) and $15 billion (Rs.75,000 crore) annually. Top porn stars easily earn a quarter of a million dollars annually.

Those who think production and distribution of pornography in India are not allowed, think again. “A lot of amateur videos are being produced,” says Namita Malhotra, author of Porn: Law, Video and Technology. “They have been there for long. But now from print they have gone digital. Amateur videos are a new phenomenon,” says a lawyer associated with Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore. “It’s unorganised,” says a Bangalore-based photographer involved with the porn industry. There are a few big houses who run multi-crore businesses. The small players use small video cameras so that they can be seen on mobile phones. “Ever since the mms scandal, we make false scandal videos, called kaand,” the photographer says. “It’s normal sex. Not like those foreign videos where they use horses and 10 men at the same time.” Do they go online? Sometimes they are sold, but always with the permission of the model, “No force,” he insists. “The money is good, so that we don’t tell anyone.” His best moment? When a model asked him to shoot her in different ways, to try to create a scandal and get noticed.

Has the battle against porn been lost? Anti-porn feminists in the US have admitted defeat. India is not quite there. Despite the hyper-sexualised climate, ministers do get thrown out over porn. To cyber law expert and senior associate of SNG & Partners Rahul Sud, India is on the right track. “Personal consumption of porn has never been an offence,” he points out. “Child pornography, publishing and transmitting are.” Press Council of India Chairperson Justice Markandey Katju has rolled out the red carpet for Leone, but not before comparing her to history’s “fallen women”, Amrapali or Mary Magdalene.

Does Leone care? She is busy stretching, bending and sweating. Not in a girl-boy-girl orgy online but on a Bikram Yoga mat in Hollywood. “OMG, I’m so tired,” she tweets. She has the same vital statistics as Marilyn Monroe, 36-24-34, and she is determined to look her best for those semi-nude scenes in Jism 2. “We Indians are proud of you!,” tweets one of her admirers. “Thank you,” she tweets back. She has every reason to be grateful.

- With Indira Kannan, Nishat Bari, Kiran Tare, Gunjeet Sra, Shravya Jain, Avantika Sharma, Lakshmi Kumaraswami, Uday Mahurkar and Tithi Sarkar contributing.

Pakistanis for Peace Editor’s Note- The porn phenomena is not isolated to just India in the subcontinent. Across the border, Pakistan was recently ranked as first in the world in terms of pornographic Google searches. This is a result of two conservative societies where sex is a taboo. One can only hope that these ancient and slow changing cultures can adapt to the new realities regarding sex.

Filed under: Bangladesh, Democracy, Desi, Freedoms, India, Mumbai, Pakistan Tagged: Banaglore, Bangladesh, Big Boss, Bollywood, California Porn Industry, Chandni Chowk, Chennai, Delhi, Google Trends, India, Jism 2, Karen Malhotra, Los Angeles, Mahesh Bhatt, Mahipal Maderna, MILF, Mumbai, Pakistan, Porn, Porn Industry, Pornification, Sex, SunLust Pictures, Sunny Leone

Product2Brand’s social media training courses will give you hands-on, practical tuition for making the most of your blog and social networking such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You will learn the pitfalls of using Social Media and things not to do as well as best practice for spreading your message and engaging your clients within a cohesive social media strategy. The Social Media training is led by marketing and internet marketing professionals with real-world experience of implementing Social Media campaigns for business.

Package1: Four hour taster set up sessions
Price per person at Product2Brand
Price per person at client’s premises *(Clients use their own pc – min No 5)

On completion of this taster session delegates will have:
A basic overview of social mediaSet up a Twitter account and have a basic overviewSet up LinkedIn account and have a basic overviewSet up Facebook account and have a basic overview

———————————————————————————
Package2: One day social media basics session
Price per person at Product2Brand
Price per person at clients’ premises *(Clients use their own pc – min No delegates 5)

On completion of this basic social media session delegates will:
Understand how to engage clients using Social Media
Know how to spread their messages effectively using Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook and YouTube
Be able to monitor Social Media campaigns

Introduction to Social Media
What is social media?
Overview of the latest developments and trends

Blogging
What is a blog and why blog?
Overview of blogging
Making your blog socially compatible
YouTube – how to embed YouTube video
Social Media platforms – how to make the best use of them

Twitter
Profiling a Twitter account
Retweets, hashtags and lists
Managing and enhancing Twitter with apps & tools

LinkedIn
Your profile
How to build connections
Using groups to drive traffic and access your markets
Getting recommendations

Facebook
How to use Facebook to aid your business?
Developing a Facebook profile
Setting up a group vs. setting up a page
Facebook apps to share content

Monitoring your Social Media Performance
Where are the people you want to reach?
What are people saying about you?
Analytics and stats tools

Course Pre-requisites
Prior to attending this training course you should have:
A good understanding of the web
Remote access to e-mail – you will be setting up new accounts during the course.
Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook accounts already set up

Package3: Two days – Social media strategy and advanced setup session
Price per person per day at Product2Brand
Price per person per day at clients’ premises* (Clients use their own pc – min No delegates 5)

On completion delegates will:
Understand how to develop their own social media strategy
Understand how to develop a social media map
Be able to set up accounts in Ning and other selected social media
Be able to use some more useful tools such as Ping, Hoot and Social Oomph

Day one – Understanding what social media strategy is and how to link it to your marketing and business strategy
Review your existing marketing strategy
Consider your marketing strategy in the context of the web2, digital marketing, SEO, PPC and social media landscape
Niche marketing via Social Media networks
Exploring Groups and Meta Groups
Develop your social media marketing objectives and strategy
Build a social media map relevant to you your strategy

Day two – Creating your own social network
Integrated web services
Social Networks and Business
Social media analytics and measurement
Services provided by Yahoo, Google and OpenID
Set up LinkedIn groups, Facebook ads, Twitter lists and other tools, Ning groups and other social media
Use of Ping, Hoot, Social Oomph and other Twitter tools

Course Pre-requisites
Prior to attending this Social Media Training course delegates should have:
A good understanding of the web
Remote access to e-mail – you will be setting up new accounts during the course.
Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook accounts already set up

Contact us on our Website or on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter

Let’s be honest, a big block of text simply isn’t as interesting as a cool video. As someone in her mid-twenties, I know that my generation is YouTube crazy and video game insane, but this fascination with video is only going to get more intense as the years continue. As a former High School English teacher, I think I know this better than anyone. Do you think my students read the books I gave them? Or do you think they watched the movie? Their test scores would say the latter.

People are getting tired of the traditional article, so many blog editors are doing everything they can to keep the way they relay information exciting. Many have decided that video blogging is the way to go, and although the idea is somewhat new, all the evidence supports its success. For those who are unfamiliar, video blogging is a blog that uses videos as its primary mode of content delivery. The content is generally similar to the content you would find in an article on a blog, but it’s shown through a video.

Videos work great for a few reasons:

Top 5 Benefits to Video Blogging

1. Increase Traffic – Videos are typically more appealing to readers, so more people will want to continually visit your site. You will be able to gain credibility with readers much easier than if you had a piece of text looking identical to every other piece of text on the web. Videos will also improve your marketing efforts because search engines will often features videos at the top of a results page. Although as video blogging becomes more and more popular this may change, it’s currently a great way to increase traffic.
2. Opportunities – You have more opportunities to get your point across to readers if you’re using video. First, videos can help you explain a dry or complicated topic without losing the readers’ attention. Second, videos can show someone how to do something much easier than if they were reading it in an article. This solves the “it’s hard to explain” problem for bloggers.
3. Easy to Create – Many bloggers get nervous about video blogging because they think it is difficult to create. However, creating a video blog is actually quite simple. All you need is a digital video camera or a webcam to start recording. Although the most professional video blogs use software and video editing, most use a basic camera to start. Visit For Bloggers By Bloggers to learn how to upload your video onto your blog.
4. Websites – You can video blog through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and of course YouTube, so you are not bound to a specific website. This same ideas works for sharing your content. Social networks generally only allow you to link back to your piece of content, but a video can be uploaded virtually anywhere—a Facebook fan page, YouTube, StumbleUpon, etc.
5. Saves Time – Video blogging saves everyone time. You can almost always fit more information into a video than you can into an article, so it’s faster for the reader and the writer. This also goes back to the idea that videos are more appealing to readers. After all, why wouldn’t someone want to save time?

Video blogging would certainly be a big change for most of the blogs on the web, so I advise you to start slow. Create one or two videos per week and see what your readers think before going to an all-video blog. Most blog editors end up creating an entirely new video blog that is separate from their traditional blog. Although it’s a little bit of extra work, I think you will find that it will pay off in the end.

Amanda DiSilvestro is a writer on topics ranging from social media to small business loans. She writes for an online resource that gives advice on topics including 401k limits to small businesses and entrepreneurs for a b2b lead generation company, Resource Nation.

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