For the past two weeks, the Pakistani media has been busy exposing the 'bias' and 'hypocrisy' of the Indian media. Our anchors, columnists, analysts and journalists are drawing our attention towards the baseless allegations being hurled at Pakistan from across the border without any investigation at all.

The critique of this lack of substantiation is indeed a valid one. It has created an atmosphere of anger and hate in India, perfect pre-requisites for war. Our media is also right in pointing out the growing disparity in 'shining India', the great injustices being committed against minorities and the dozens of insurgencies that have rocked our neighbour. That the Hindu right-wing will benefit from the Mumbai carnage in the upcoming elections is also a fact that has been given a lot of attention in the Pakistani press.

However, this is the actual limit of the 'honest' critique by our media. While we condemn the one-sided reporting by the Indians, are we not falling prey to the same?

In order to understand this bias in the media, we should look at the art of omission that the modern media has mastered and how this act completely changes the perspective, especially in a time of crisis. People like Professor Noam Chomsky from MIT have been very critical of the way the US media handled the 9/11 incident. In order to create war hysteria in the country, the media played on the existing anger and directed it towards a country without demanding much evidence from the administration. The US media was right in pointing out that these barbaric acts were committed by those who became a threat to civilisation. That terrorists groups did exist in the Muslim world and there was an increasing radicalisation among the Muslim youth. The dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world were also severely criticised, and rightly so. However, this was the limit of the 'truth' that the US media could afford.

As Chomsky points out, the US media failed to educate the American people about the reasons for this monstrous attack. For example, no one in the mainstream media was able to highlight the US policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict where it completely favours Israeli aggression. It did not expose the results of sanctions on Muslims countries like Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan and the periodic bombings of these countries. Nor could it demonstrate the support the US gave to tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world including Saddam Hussain himself. Mort importantly, the media was never able to demonstrate the support given to these terrorist organisations during the Reagan era and establish that 9/11 was nothing more than a blowback of a short-sighted imperialist policy. Being patriotic meant being pro-war. Dissent was silenced.

Coming back to Pakistan, we can witness a similar line being taken in "reaction to the Indian threats". It is easy to criticise the US media and its citizens, but are we any better? The sort of jingoistic nationalism portrayed by our media has been extremely disturbing because one had great respect for the independence of the Pakistani media. It will be worthwhile to have a look at some of the things being said on various channels.

As already stated, the Pakistani media is highlighting the plight of minorities in India. One anchor stated that all of the viewers should bow in front of Allah and thank Him for creating Pakistan; otherwise we would have been oppressed (obviously there is no oppression in Pakistan!). Our anchors are also trying to prove how RAW has been interfering in Afghanistan against our interests (since we have never interfered in that unfortunate country!) and it is involved in insurgencies in Balochistan and even in the recent Karachi riots (of course, it is only the responsibility of the Indian media to substantiate its claims). This tit-for-tat rubbish would have made us all laugh, only if the future of millions was not at stake!

Another outcome of this crisis has been the revival of the image of the army and ISI in the eyes of the public. Suddenly, we are being told by all television networks about the importance of the ISI as our first line of defence and warned of the 'Jewish-Hindu conspiracy' to destroy this 'national asset'. General (r) Hameed Gul is seen on TV all the time lecturing us about the 'professionalism' of the agency and his willingness to lead our defence against the US and India (much like he did during the Afghan jihad, though as a crony of the US).

Suddenly all criticism of the army, bureaucracy and the monstrous intelligence agencies has vanished as we need to "unite as one nation under one flag". Anyone showing dissent is a RAW agent.There is a frightening similarity to the US media's response after 9/11.

Why is there no one questioning this narrow interpretation of nationalism? Was it the RAW that disrupted the democratic process in Pakistan? Was it the Indian army that deprived Bengalis of their rights and later launched a brutal operation that is termed genocide by the Bengalis? Did the Indian generals hang the most popular prime minister of Pakistan? Was the Indian government alone responsible for patronising ethnic groups like the MQM? Is India responsible for the deprivation felt by the Balochs, Sindhis and the Pukhtoons? Are they the ones launching military operations against Pakistani citizens? Are the Indian agencies involved in rigging elections in Pakistan and depriving our people of their democratic rights? Who was involved in handing over Pakistani citizens to the US for paltry rewards? Who has monopolised our economy and is depriving ordinary workers the right to decent life?

In acting the way it is, our media is lending its uncritical support to all the state and non-state actors which have only put our existence under threat. "We must stand united as one" is the typical reply you get these days as a response to any criticism of these actors. However, if we hold this form of nationalism to be true, then why do we critique the US, Israeli and the Indian media? Plus, what does this line of defence actually imply? It can be rephrased in these words "at a time of a national security threat, it is okay for the media to twist facts, make unsubstantiated claims, slander the enemy and conceal facts in order to spread patriotism".

The job of the media is not to spread the elite's version of patriotism. Its job is to educate the masses through objective facts and objectivity cannot change with one's own association with a geographical location.

In a time of crisis, one would expect genuinely critical analyses, if only because the stakes are too high. Think about it. This current crisis can even lead to a war in which millions of lives will be affected. The media of both India and Pakistan, however, is busy spreading 'patriotism' and concealing facts from its viewers. The more troubling part is that no one seems to have an ethical problem with all this bigotry. A scary thought, indeed!

We are waiting for someone in the media to categorically state that the war-mongers in both these countries are a threat to ordinary people. We cannot equate Indian nationalism with Hindutva or Pakistani nationalism with its intelligence agencies. We need people in the media who can put a stop to this bashing of the other country and look at the crisis in its entirety by criticising their own establishments, who can show that our nationalism is about the betterment of our people, and not simply a hateful reaction to the other country.

Dr Luther King Jr.'s words directed at the US media for their shameful silence on US atrocities in Vietnam may prove useful for the Indian and Pakistani media. He said, "In a time of a great moral crisis, silence in the name of patriotism is betrayal."

The war on terror, fuzzily defined from the beginning to suit the neo-cons in the US, has trailblazed human rights violations on a vast scale. The controversial arena of extraordinary rendition has so far excited the biggest worry .

Extraordinary rendition is the practice that out-sources torture of terror suspects to countries, where human rights standards are lax, in order to extract information material to the perpetration of terrorist acts. The practice involves kidnapping, capturing terror suspects from different locations of the world, and transporting them on unnamed flights to other human-rights-free countries. In this way the US government leaves no direct fingerprints on suspects and shuffles off human rights violations allegation to its client states, most notably countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The policy of extraordinary rendition, expanded and fine-tuned under George Bush, actually began under President Clinton -- a not so well-known fact which the film under review brings to light. While 14 cases of documented extraordinary rendition occurred under Clinton administration, Peter Bergen found 53 cases of documented extraordinary rendition under George Bush since 2001 (though Scot Hurton of New York Bar association puts the number of those extraordinarily rendered since 2001 at 150). Complicit in these gross human rights violations are also the European countries that have provided landing facilities to flights carrying such terror suspects -- called torture flights. Notable among these countries is Great Britain where the furore has led to the formation of a parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition in the House of Commons.

Rendition, a new film by Gavin Hood, who won accolades as director of Oscar-winning Tsotsi, telescopes the practice of extraordinary rendition and issues of gross human rights miscarriages inbuilt in the practice. The film spotlights the story of Anwar El-Ibrahimi played by Omar Metwally, an Egypt-born and US-educated and domiciled chemical engineer. Anwar is kidnapped by an intelligence operative as soon as he lands in US after attending a conference in South Africa. We learn that he is somehow linked to terror suspects wanted in connection with a suicide bomb blast in an unnamed North African country which killed a CIA operative. Anwar's slightest connection with the suspects, extending not beyond a call, sets off a chain of violations of fundamental human rights which have come to form the centrepiece of war on terror. On the way to his torture cell to an unnamed country, Anwar's flight record is also erased, making him a nameless, faceless and paperless human being, without rights and human dignity. Into this underground cell, Anwar is investigated by chief interrogator Abasi, played by Iqbal Naor. The investigation is supervised by a freshly recruited CIA operative Douglas Freeman, played by Jake Gyllenhaall -- a sort of standard practice now in distant investigations.

Under Douglas's fresh eyes, Anwar is water-boarded and electrosinged -- two new gift words to the dictionary of torture by war on terror. In a linked narrative, Anwar's pregnant wife Isabella, played by Reese Witherspoon, sets off on a not-to-be deterred quest to trace her husband. She seeks the help of her ex-boyfriend, Alan Smith, played by Peter Sarsgaard, who works for Senator Hawkins, played by Alan Arkin. Disturbing clues begin to emerge of the intelligence involvement in the disappearance of her husband which the political establishment feels powerless to control. Not deterred by the complicity of politicians in these violations, Isabella finally accost the head of the CIA-counter terrorism Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) to be told that her husband's disappearance is, perhaps, the price worth paying for saving hundred of Western lives.

Still more, in the third track of the narrative, the complex linkages of fundamentalism and executive branch of the government in the Middle East are exposed through the affair the interrogator Abasi's daughter Fatima is having with her fundamentalist boyfriend, Khalid.

Rendition, although superficial in its treatment of a complex subject and more in the line of Hollywood political thrillers, does raise the much hushed subject of extraordinary rendition . Two other recent films in the same genre: Extraordinary Rendition, made on a shoe-string budget, and Road to Guantanamo can constitute an indicting trilogy on the state of human rights in the notoriously flexible war on terror.

For the Pakistani audience, the film acquires added resonance when seen against the backdrop of extraordinarily rendered Dr. Afiya Siddiqui. Though Barak Obama, the president elect of the US, has hinted at the possibility of closing down Guantanamo, the practice of extraordinary rendition has not been fingered for immediate action. This practice must be done away with as soon as possible along with its swamp -- the notion of illegal enemy combatant -- which breeds and justifies it.

Music is integral to human expression and it has existed all through human history irrespective of it being granted approval by canonical authority. Though for most of the time, or probably throughout human history, efforts had been made to harness and sanitise this creative expression. All artistic outpouring was seen as subversive , musicians and poets considered dangerous elements was reaffirmed by Plato as he laid down strictures to control their free expression in his treatise on an ideal polity, the Republic

Though the arts at a lower level assist and assert the established order it may not be farfetched to stress that they only justify their pre eminent existence if seen as means of stating the unsaid. The arts make a poor maid if restricted and reduced to only regurgitating, albeit in pleasant terms, the truth already known, but makes a resplendent queen if seen as an assault at discovering the truth by tearing through those very veils of prevalent truth. This takes many forms depending on the conditions under which it is being created. In a more open environment it can quibble the very enigma of existence, while in a repressive order it can question the controls and the regimentation imposed to create a more uniform societal vision.

But the way and manner of doing it is not always direct. Poets have not ended up by writing tirades about the tyrants, nor have musicians composed to rock the steady boat of the establishment. It has been done through the subversive power of the arts where it is very difficult, well neigh impossible, to control the reverberation and impact of the designated connotation that a poem or a musical piece may unleash.

Shara o aaeen per madaar sahi

Aisey qaatil ka kya karey koi

In our musical tradition the inheritance has been wholly oral and personal, the raags living momentarily, coming to life only to die at once. The tradition of the raag meant to be a solitary pursuit must be one among the many reasons why it has always been difficult to academise, and the predicament that the understanding of the raag has always been perceived and admitted to be an essentially spiritual pursuit has made it impossible to be administered as well. The art had nothing to do with transmission, knowledge and performance; it has to do with transformation. Since all of the art was directed to becoming the part of the shagird's very pith and germ than a part of knowledge and skill alone, it was gently kept out of the mainstream social life. The hidden menace of setting the practitioner free, not caring one way or the other for the values of the social order that he belonged to concentrated on the freedom of the mind. All other methods of gaining freedom were meaningless and enslaved more.

The music has grammar so subtly joined to language and tala system, its lyric substance of the bandish so personal that it gave the singer excessive space for expressing individual linguistic flavour in the variation of emphasis and silence. The clash between the high spiritual aspirations of the form and its mundane expectations in contemporary existence has impinged upon this essentially personal pursuit in the struggled to find its place in the shifting demands of today's world. The integral quality of subversion inherent in the sur through its disruptive enchantment leading to spiritual enlightenment has been the constant factor to have survived these changes.

The system of patronage in the past was primarily meant to control and limit the subversive power of the word, note, movement and stroke. But in the new democratic dispensation that prevailed in the twentieth century it was considered an obligation by the state to ensure freedom of this expression. In the Soviet Union huge funding through institutional accretion was allocated to harness the talent of the poets, musicians and dancers. In India with independence music went public in an altogether new manner. The government's encouragement of music through awards and scholarships, as part of foreign policy and several other values were apportioned out of to a hitherto private art. The support to music was part of nationalism rather than for musical reasons. So while awards and other recognition have been part of independent India, the understanding of our music as a vital part of national consciousness has not been assimilated enough.

In history the arts have been a kind of an undergrowth, surviving and flourishing in the wastelands, in forlorn places, in the dark nooks and corners defying any regimented institutionalisation. They have existed as what should have been said but remained unsaid, as the flag bearer of the Unknown. They were too unpredictable and anarchic to be placed under some systematised process which was sanctioned by the prevalent order. It only became part of the academia in the twentieth century and many have questioned this move as well. Hence arose the dictum that painters, musicians and poets are born and not made. While the society defined itself on the basis of wealth and order the poet and the musician revelled in dispossession and defiance not to be part of the laid down hierarchies. And if becoming a victim to this, which often happened, lost the sharpness of creative edge. Tansen had started to lose it and had to pay a visit to his guru Swami Haridas to be given a refresher course on what he was losing. He was admonished that the moment he sang for the patron and not for himself he mortgaged the truthfulness of his musical expression.

It seemed as if everyone who had studied at NCA after the 1970s was present at the opening of Talat Dabir's solo exhibition on Dec 4 at Nairang Art Gallery, Lahore. The place was packed with people -- architects, designers, artists and media folk. A rare sight at art events these days.

Besides attracting a huge audience, the exhibition was special also because it brought to light various issues related to the practice of sculpture in our part of the world. Talat has been teaching the subject at NCA besides working as a sculptor for the past several years. Hence, her exhibition, comprising a total of 64 works from different phases, presents a clear and complete picture, not only in terms of her personal preferences, but a general view of the genre. The show consists of works in round and relief, executed in metal, and terracotta covered in glazes of various kinds and shades.

Talat's work reveals her fascination with the human body. Hence the male and female figures are created and composed with other forms in her art. Although different works suggest separate ways of treating the human anatomy, but apart from a few pieces, all works are primarily built and conceived around this motif. Men and women, in various scales, positions and postures are fabricated as single objects, part of a group or surrounded with vegetation or other elements of landscape.

Human representation also holds a critically important place in the art of Talat Dabir, because here the human figure functions merely as a motif, instead of being elevated into a subject. In fact, the repetitive usage of human substance seems to have become a norm with which she fashions an image that wouldn't mean much otherwise -- both for the maker or the viewer.

In a majority of her works on display, one discovers a strong influence of Henry Moore, especially in the single figures cast in metal with silver- and copper-like surfaces or in terracotta figures.

Moore's influence is found not only in Talat's work but also in the works of many sculptors in Pakistan as well as other countries. So, one hardly finds a sculptor, from the generation of Talat and even older, who is not inspired from the celebrated British artist.

Moore's imminent presence is significant in our setting because, given the apparent lack or discontinuity of tradition of sculpture in our society he (Moore) offers an ideal solution for our artists' aesthetic needs as well as cultural constraints. If, on the one hand, his scheme of "stylising" the human body suggests a suitable clue to our artistic quests, on the other hand it helps to combat the question of human representation in a society that still holds some bars on statues or a three-dimensional rendering of realistic, naked human beings. It is, therefore, not surprising that we do not have the equals of Colin David and Jamil Naqsh among our sculptors, even though some of them have attained similar professional levels, because it is hardly conceivable that a major sculptor of Pakistan (a rarity in any case!) should be solely concentrating on the nude female as his/her subject.

It seems that Talat knows the risk of blindly following Moore; hence, in her recent works one finds a shift from that one source of inspiration. Her reliefs, in particular, denote the formal elements picked from miniature paintings, architectural heritage and folk art/craft. In addition, the set of three large figures in red clay connect her work to the custom of making utensils and other items for daily use by the potters.

The show at Nairang displays her relief pieces that represent her current state of art/mind. Interestingly, in the pursuit of forming her personal voice, Talat has been inspired by another person, Dabir Ahmed, her ceramicist husband, with whom she shares her studio. Traces of Dabir's influence can be detected in the way the surfaces of her reliefs and latest sculptures have been treated. Gaudy glazes are applied here -- something that adds a commercial look to her works. More so because the inclusion of such kind of colours does not justify or complement the imagery.

But it is not the chromatic component of her works that brings them closer to commercial art. The scheme of fabricating her forms and joining diverse elements is hardly convincing for an artist with so many years of practice.

Surveying her work in retrospective, one realises that Talat's approach to her subject matter is somewhat naive. Once devoid of Moore's influence and free from Dabir's impression, her work relies on a method of rearranging certain elements in different manners. Birds, clouds, domes, waves, windows, balconies and other architectural parts are reshuffled across her works till the viewer is almost exhausted, even if the sculptor is still satisfied with this scheme of things.

This frame of mind is not surprising because most of our artists, despite their experience or diversity of mediums, work in this fashion. Normally, they acquire certain elements (which can vary from traditional to contemporary or formal to conceptual) and rehash their visual vocabulary to produce, rather reproduce, it; which is often described and understood as their style.

This phenomenon is also found in the art of Mashkoor Raza, Nahid Raza, (late) M. Kazim and Talat Dabir. However, three reliefs -- all titled Hajoom -- on display indicate that the artist is capable of re-routing her artistic bend. In these small works, female figures are composed (in countless numbers) of a landscape that echoes the pictorial space of miniature painting. Simplified structures and stylised weavings, along with tiny shrouded figurines, unfold something new that is happening in the art of Talat Dabir. Only when the artist discerns this change and acknowledges its importance may one hope that the art of sculpture in our surroundings will be liberated from the long and lingering shadows of Henry Moore and many mores!

Dear all,

It is mid December, and a restrained sort of pre-Christmas atmosphere prevails in this part of the world. This time of year was usually marked by frantic consumerism and a mad shopping frenzy, but this year things have changed. The global economic crisis and the recession have hit the way people in Britain are living and spending.

A sense of insecurity prevails here. People know they could lose their jobs, as nearly every day one hears of large numbers of job cuts. So people are, obviously, spending less while retailers are doing more to try and get them to start spending again.Sales are on already and nearly every day you hear of various stores offering discounts like "20 percent off everything in the store today."

The financial insecurity is not nice, but in a way I am glad we are having to change our habits. The past two decades saw a rather disgusting rise in consumerism and an accompanying lack of morality and social responsibility in people. People convinced themselves that their worth was somehow measured by their material acquisitions which would buy them happiness. They were encouraged to spend beyond their means by easily available credit schemes which in many cases have ruined individuals and families who let their debt spiral completely out of control, because it seemed such an abstract sort of problem and wasn't getting in the way of their new cars, TVs, furniture etc.

The fact of the matter is that people's ignorance and lack of financial intelligence made them vulnerable to companies which offered them easy credit cards without really telling them how expensive that credit would be. I think vulnerable people should be protected from business hungry salespeople by some form of government regulation.

This easy credit has been happening in the west for years and in Pakistan since the 1990s. However, the situation in Pakistan has really spiralled out of control in the past eight years with the artificial boom of the Shaukat Aziz economy. With the advent of all those foreign franchises and coffee shops, with mobile phones and internet access has come a sort of general expectation that one must -- and can -- acquire anything one's heart (or family) desires. People have thus tended to lose any sense of proportion about what is important and what is not, and have spent way beyond their means in order to live beyond their means.

The result has been rather skewed social attitudes about what is important and what is not.

A good example is people's attitude to mobile phones. This is one item that people seem willing to fork out thousands of rupees on regardless of its actual value to them in terms of functionality. This "must have" accessory is one item that people from all social classes seem unwilling to compromise on, as it somehow defines their self worth of techie status. I myself, am currently involved in an ongoing disagreement with my 12 year old daughter about the matter of a high tech phone. I have cut down her requests to acquire such a phone even when she wants to use her own pocket money for this purchase. I have also intercepted and blocked her attempts to get this as a birthday gift from her well-meaning and doting relatives when they ask her what she would like as a present. I keep trying to impress upon her that her mobile phone is not a fashion accessory or status symbol, but merely an instrument of communication by which her parents can know where she or her sister are, or be notified if they are in any difficult situation or have been delayed at school or elsewhere.

Luckily, my eldest offspring is going through a sensible phase and has sided with me on this and told her sister off saying "people get mugged and beaten up just because of expensive looking phones."

In capitalist societies, it is a constant battle against social expectation and aggressive advertising, but one needs to be very clear about what one's priorities are and what one's moral framework is. Not saving much, or living from month to month is different from being hugely in debt. Debt will lead to desperation and crime. Indeed debt was one factor in the rather distressing story of a woman called Karen Matthews who was recently convicted for fraud and kidnapping her own nine year old daughter to collect the reward money.

I have also just read about a banker who was so worried about the economic situation that he went and threw himself in front of a train, leaving behind a baffled wife and child. A well-educated CEO, surely the man could have downsized rather than kill himself?

But we also need to reform social thinking to some extent. I recently had a conversation with an extremely nice man, who got laid off from a hotel job which was why he was now working as porter. As part of his redundancy benefits, he had received a package of about six lakh rupees which he then spent on his son's wedding!!

Yes. I know we are told that in capitalism, you can spend your money on whatever makes you happy, but I do hope the situation changes now, and people ponder a little more on what it is acceptable or justifiable to spend on. Perhaps instead of spending on another new sofa, high tech TV, ipod,designer bag or mobile phone, one could think about putting money in a scholarship fund or hospital or blood bank. There is a feel good factor too, and we need to be reminded of it, rather than just letting ourselves be brainwashed by the glossy advertising of high capitalism....

Best wishes