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Rehman Malik meets Hamid Mir! Who is protecting whom? Who is scratching whose back? Who is loyal and who is not? Over the years, Mr. Hamid Mir has been associating with various unsavory characters. Mr. Mir has never come clean on his own links with David Hasinsky (Principle architect of GEO-TV and VOA, Ex US-Navy “Officer” and AJC member), Casper Weinberger (Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (‘GBE’) in 198), Al-Qaeda or the ISI or the Army. Geo has strategic links with SkyTV of the UK, CNN, IBN-CNN in India and the Voice of America (VOA). See article on VOA Geo alliance in Pakistan. http://www.usembassy.gov/pakistan/h05111301.html .Its a quarrel among thieves. Former friends have now become enemies! Lets just keep it at that–and lets not blow it out of proportion. Mr. Mir is riding the white steed now and is of course playing the game of being more sanctimonious than thou.
Mr. Rehman Malik is a Zardari loyalist and is responsible for him getting into power. Mr. Rehman Malik’s role in the murder of Ms. Benazir Bhutto is yet to be investigated and Geo has done nothing to investigate either Shehanshah or Mr. Malik.
Mr. Hamid, despite his recent pretensions was a product of the establishment and a product of the ISI and Pakistani Army. As a journalist he had deep links with the underworld, and was rewarded by allowing him to interview Osama Bin Laden. In his recent role, he has been very critical of the Army, the ISI, and the Talibs. At the height of the Bombay crisis, Mr. Mir challenged the government’s story and tried to show that the Indians were right and the Pakistanis were wrong. He made a lot of enemies that day.
Why was the notorious David Hazinski (more about this scoundrel in this article and the one we wrote in 2008) doing at the Geos HQ? At GEO-TV’s main broadcast center in Karachi, Hazinski built a newsroom around 24 Mac G4s running Final Cut Pro. News footage is captured with 40 Sony PD150s and 15 PD100s. NewTek Video Toaster 2 systems are used at bureaus in Islamabad and Lahore to switch between the main broadcast center. In addition to designing a systems approach for GEO-TV, Hazinski helped teach the station’s staff how to use the equipment and how to produce television news.
Hazinsky is a “US Navy Petty Officer with contacts with the State Department and the American Jewish Committee (AJC).” What are Hazinski’s links with the VOA? See this
According to (http://www.intelligentmc.com/people.html) “Most recently, he re-designed the central International Broadcast Center for the Voice of America in Washington and is consulting on new network launches for the VOA”. Lets see what else is going on at Geo.
Mr. Mir like the CIA and the US was very pro-Talib, and very pro-Army during the first Afghan Jihad. During the 2nd one, Mr. Mir regularly criticizes the Pakistan Army and the ISI–similar to the tact taken by the US and the American intelligence agencies. Mir had his reasons for doing that! Mr. Mir challenged the world on exposing him. We just did, and also have written extensively on the origins of Geo and the usual suspects were involved in its birth, growth, evolution, and monopolization of the Pakistani media. Simply put, Geo will safeguard its commercial interests and not the interests of Pakistan which it has sworn to uphold. That article was published on this site several years ago when Geo was just starting out–and it wasn’t pretty.
http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/is-geo-tv-an-affiliate-or-is-it-a-subsidary-of-cnn-time-warner-inc/
Excerpts from that article are reproduced at the bottom of this article.
English: Hamid Mir with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Will Hamid Mir explain his and Geo’s connection of Hazinski? (See details in other article or bottom of this article) WHO IS DAVID DAVID HAZINSKI? Why did Geo hire a known Neocon for help in content?
Hazinski owns Intelligent Media Consultants, LLC, a company responsible for training the staffs and helping to launch eight television networks around the world, mostly on the sub-continent. These include Aaj Tak and CNN-IBN in India and GEO TV in Pakistan. He has also consulted for broadcasters and publishers such as the Voice of America, Gramedia in Indonesia, and Alsumaria in Beirut and Baghdad. While on the faculty, Hazinski spent two years as writer, co-host and technology advisor of the internationally syndicated World Business Review with Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Before coming to UGA, Hazinski served six years as an international correspondent for NBC News, covering the U.S., Europe, and Central America — and ten years before that as a TV reporter with stations in Charlotte and Pittsburgh. Office: 139, Fax Number: (706) 542-2183, E-Mail Address: hazinski@grady.uga.edu
Some say that VOA ads on Geo, along with Geo allowing the Voice of America permission to air its program on Geo could have been one of the reasons. The Voice of America pays Geo very handsomely for airing its point of view. With Dollars comes influence. PEMRA explicitly disallows foreign TV channels to broadcast their networks from Pakistan, unless the foreign channel has permission from Pemra. Geo regularly broadcasts VOA programming (which openly spreads malicious and false propaganda against China), and perpetuates the US point of view.
That US point of view is also broadcast on Geo in the Pakistani version of the VOA report–the one hosted by Mr.Najam Sethi in Punjabi, Anglosized Punjabi, Pujabish-Urdu with occasional words in Urdu and English. Mr. Sethi’s views (though sugar coated) are sometimes to repugnant to the Pakistani mindset that Geo places an explicit explanation ahead of his program which says “the views of this author do not represent the views of Geo”, and that Geo encourages all points of view.
Geo is also beholden to Indian commercial interests. It started the “Aman ke Asha” wave which simply states, that Pakistan should forget about boundary disputes and make peace with India. Some link Mr. Mir’s investigation into Kassab to his links across the border. The PPP government while really upset by Hamid Mir, is now going through the motions of trying to cover up the ineptitude of the government, the incompetence of the ISI and the inefficiency of the Army.
After the hanging of Mr. Kassab, Mr. Mir was openly threatened by various militants who blame him for getting Kassab hanged. One such group actually said that “there will be many more Kassabs.”
Most analysts expected an attack on Mr. Hamid Mir — in light of the publication of the confession of Ajmal Kassab, in which he accused Mr. Hamid Mir in particular and Geo TV in general. This revelation came out of an article published in the Times of India which has access to the interrogation of Kassab. Apparently the Indian interrogator asked him about his opinion in the aftermath of the report published by Geo, in which Mr. Mir and is fellow journalists visited the alleged home town of Ajmal Kassab. The Indians thought that Geo had blown the cover of Kassab. Kassab said that Himad Mir and Geo were agents of the raw.
Mr. Najam Sethi in a recent program alluded this fact that Mr. Mir and Geo sent teams to village which Geo claimed were the ancestral villages of Mr. Kassab. This has now been widely reported in the world, Indian and Pakistani media–and surely does paint a target of Mr. Mir and Geo TV.
Why did the PPP government not provide additional security to Mr. Mir? Did Rehman Malik hate Mir so much that he wanted him dead? Malik visited the residence of Hamid Mir in Islamabad and vowed to provide him effective and elaborate security. Earlier, explosive material, detonator and battery packed in a bag and affixed beneath the vehicle of Mir, was found outside his house in the federal capital. Is this a joke?
The interior minister said “that security personnel from police and FC are being provided to the journalist while a police inspector of his own choice will be also deputed for his security.” Malik also announced to constitute a fact-finding committee, including a magistrate, police officials and two journalists, which will probe the incident. Lets see if any of this is in the realm of reality.
Appendix A
(Excerpts of an expose on Geo TV) published in 2008.
STRANGE HAPPENINGS AT GEO THAT CANNOT BE EXPLAINED: Here are some facts about Geo and some example of how Geo demoralizes the population and the general body of the Pakistani diaspora.
GEO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CRASH OF THE STOCK MARKET: Geo repeatedly tele-casted false news about the Pakistani economy, the political situation and hence the stock market crashed in PakistanIn a pre-orchestrated campaign. Geo focuses on the negative news and instead of focusing on solutions it shows bodies of dead people in contradiction of PEMRA and all decency requirements. Geo focuses on petrol prices but does not inform the viewers that most private cars in Pakistan now run on CNG (liqufied petroluem gas) which costs $5 for a tank full. Most people driving cars are not affected by the rise in petrol (gasoline) prices.
In a planned manner Geo suppresses and ignores good news like 5.1 billion dollar of oil refinery in Pakistan. Geo usually ignores good news like $28 Billion Emar international island development. Geo is averse to good news about Pakistan–there is no discussion of the Bullet Trains in Pakistan. Geo does not focus foreign interference in Pakistani affairs. Geo did not discuss the 89 separatist movements in India in 2007 …from Seven Northeastern sister states, to the Naxalite insurrection, to Bihar to Kashmir, to Assam etc…
Geo Dramas: 50 percent of the dramas are Indian dramas on Geo and 25 percent are with mix cast (Indian and Pakistani) and Indian film.
Geo focuses on showing beheading of people and other depressing news. Why did Geo not focus on showing 250 million people sleeping on sidewalks in India? Geo did not cover for 36 hours the killing of 3000 Muslims in Gujrat?
Urdu is not used by many hosts. Morning host shows are in English and “Urdlish” ( a horrible combination). The Younger generation is being spoiled by using them as instruments of hedonism. Some of the shows are way beyond the pale on being modern. Nudity is not modernity. Science and Technology is modernity.
Geo plays into the hands of the opposition parties. It does not discuss opportunities for development. When Mr. Shaharayar interviewed the President of Azad Kashmir he interrupted him and did not allow him to speak about the problems with the article of accession of Kashmir to India (which is now lost) if it ever existed. Geo continues to use Indian jargon like “partition”. Partition signifies a temporary dissection of the whole. India was never whole. Even during British times there were more than 500 states in the Subcontinent. Some of them banded together to make Pakistan and others banded together to make India. Discussion of Kashmir, Manvadar, Junagarh are non-existent on Geo. Most Geo maps show Kashmir as part of Pakistan. Azad Kashmir is never shown. Some Geo maps sill show the Northern Areas as part of India or part of Kashmir.
Kamran Khan was getting RS 25 lakh per month. Income vs. salary? Dr. Shahid Mahmud used to get Rs 22 laks per month. He was a member of NSF student Hamid Mir the Editor of “Ausaf” get Rs. 22 Lakh per month. Nadia Khan gets Rs 6 lacs per month. Income vs. salary?When Geo was not able to broadcast the 8-hour cricket match, Geo said they lost 1 billion Rupees, After the ban Goo kept on broadcasting for 36 hours without any income?Let us investigate the players involved with Geo from information that is publicly available. We see these links which will be analyzed.
1) The controversial David Hazinski an ex US Navy Petty Officer with contacts with the State Department and the American Jewish Committee (AJC)
2) Who is Todd Fratz and why does Geo associate with such characters?
3) Casper Weinberger, Ronald Reagan’s indicted and pardoned Secretary of Defense who predicted the “Next War” with a rogue state like Iran. Why does Geo align itself with known war mongers.
4) Geo has strategic links with SkyTV of the UK, CNN, IBN-CNN in India and the Voice of America (VOA). See article on VOA Geo alliance in Pakistan. http://www.usembassy.gov/pakistan/h05111301.html
ORIGINS OF GEO:
Geo was started with the help of an ex US Naval Petty Officer by the name of Hazinski who has links with Mr. Casper Weinberger and many Indian channels.
According to (http://www.intelligentmc.com/people.html) “Most recently, he re-designed the central International Broadcast Center for the Voice of America in Washington and is consulting on new network launches for the VOA”. Mr. Hazinski is the principal of the company called IntelligentMC (http://www.intelligentmc.com/Welcome.html,2870 Peachtree Road #713, Atlanta, GA 30305-2918, USA, email: info@intelligentmc.com, url: http://www.intelligentmc.com).the other principal of Intelligent MC is Mr. Todd Frantz. “Todd comes to IMC from 10 years at CNN in Atlanta”. He has links to “Cox Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research at The University of Georgia”.
David Hazinski, associate professor at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, is the principle architect of GEO-TV and managed the station’s launch. Hazinski was contacted by the Jang Group, Pakistan’s largest newspaper publisher and GEO-TV’s owner, after he shepherded the successful launch of a similar station in India in January 2001. Aaj Tak, the first all-news, Hindi-language channel in India, now has a 60% share of the news audience in India. As one of the owners of Intelligent Media Consultants, an Atlanta-based company that helps its clients design efficient and profitable network operations through the creative application of broadcast technology, Hazinski has worked all over the world launching news operations in markets starved for unbiased reporting. “This is really the cutting edge of technology and journalism,” says Hazinski, a former NBC news correspondent who says he and his partners have helped launch at least a dozen news operations in the last 10 years. “These are new markets. They haven’t been exposed to lots of TV.”
Because most of Intelligent Media’s clients are unfamiliar with broadcast news techniques, Hazinski says he is able to tailor unique approaches that maximize their limited budgets. “These people are willing to try new things because they don’t want to pay the outrageous costs associated with news production in the United States,” he says. “Right now, based on what we learned in Pakistan, we’re convinced we can launch a network today for half of what it would have cost three years ago. And no one would see any quality difference on the air – even if we aired it in the U.S.”
At GEO-TV’s main broadcast center in Karachi, Hazinski built a newsroom around 24 Mac G4s running Final Cut Pro. News footage is captured with 40 Sony PD150s and 15 PD100s. NewTek Video Toaster 2 systems are used at bureaus in Islamabad and Lahore to switch between the main broadcast center. In addition to designing a systems approach for GEO-TV, Hazinski helped teach the station’s staff how to use the equipment and how to produce television news. Greg Pope, a freelance editor and producer formerly with CNN, spent one month in Karachi this summer training GEO-TV’s news staff, which primarily consists of newspaper journalists. “We basically had to convert people from print journalists to TV journalists,” says Pope, adding that he had never taught production techniques in a classroom setting to non-English speaking students. “These print people were basically issued cameras and editing equipment and within months were transformed from pen and paper to this new electronic media. Some of them didn’t even know how to use a keyboard when we started.”
Considering the steep learning curve for the Pakistani journalists, Pope says he was amazed at their perseverance and enthusiasm. “These people are tired of having Western news and government news shoved down their throats,” says Pope, who estimates that he taught 100 people to shoot and edit video. “They want their own voice. They want to represent themselves in their own way.” But there is still a chance that the government will shut down GEO-TV. Pope says that while he was training the news staff, it was widely believed that there were spies for PTV within their ranks. However, in recent years the Jang Group has won many battles for freedom of the press, so there is hope that GEO-TV will succeed. “If they have minimal government interference, [GEO-TV] will change the face of Pakistan,” says Pope.
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/broadcast/video_voice_people/
WHO IS DAVID DAVID HAZINSKI? Why did Geo hire a known Neocon for help in content? He owns Intelligent Media Consultants, LLC, a company responsible for training the staffs and helping to launch eight television networks around the world, mostly on the sub-continent. These include Aaj Tak and CNN-IBN in India and GEO TV in Pakistan. He has also consulted for broadcasters and publishers such as the Voice of America, Gramedia in Indonesia, and Alsumaria in Beirut and Baghdad. While on the faculty, Hazinski spent two years as writer, co-host and technology advisor of the internationally syndicated World Business Review with Caspar Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan. Before coming to UGA, Hazinski served six years as an international correspondent for NBC News, covering the U.S., Europe, and Central America — and ten years before that as a TV reporter with stations in Charlotte and Pittsburgh. Office: 139, Fax Number: (706) 542-2183, E-Mail Address: hazinski@grady.uga.edu
Hazinski holds a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship, the university’s highest teaching award and has been appointed a Senior Teaching Fellow and a member of the Teaching Academy. He has received more than a dozen local, state, and national journalism awards, including a Golden Quill for Investigative Reporting. Mr. Hazinski has been advocating restricting what he calls “Citizenship jounalism” which he considers dangerous. (http://tinyurl.com/yvjoox),(http://tinyurl.com/26byuh). Investigative reporters may scrutinize the details of Mr. resume posted at the bottom of this post. Also posted on (http://www.grady.uga.edu/CV/Hazinski.2005.pdf)
http://www.athensworld.com/2007/12/response-to-professor-david-hazinski.html
WHAT DOES THE GEO CONSULTANT MR. HAZINSKI BELIEVE IN? His address to the American Jewish Council dated 12/13/2007. You can read his article at the bottom of this page. http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/12/12/citizened_1213.html
WHO IS CASPER WEINBERGER? And why did Geo associate with a known war monger? Caspar Willard “Cap” Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006), was an American politician and Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from January 21, 1981, until November 23, 1987, making him the third longest-serving defense secretary to date, after Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld. He is also known for his roles in the Strategic Defense Initiative program and the Iran-Contra Affair.
Following his resignation as Secretary of Defense, Weinberger was placed under indictment by Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh. The formal indictment charged Weinberger withseveral felony counts of lying to the Iran-Contra independent counsel during its investigation. Weinberger received a Presidential pardon from President George H.W. Bush on December 24, 1992, after Bush had failed to win a second term. In 1996, Weinberger co-authored a book entitled The Next War, which raised questions about the adequacy of US military capabilities following the end of the Cold War. After he published his book, his colleagues from the Reagan administration broke contact and refused to speak with him.
Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (‘GBE’) in 1988, awarded in recognition for an “outstanding and invaluable” contribution to military cooperation between the UK and the US, particularly during the Falklands War of 1982. Wikipedia
WEINBERGER DISCUSSES IRAN AND THE NEXT WAR: From Publishers Weekly
Weinberger, secretary of defense for most of the Reagan years, collaborates with Schweizer, president of the James Madison Institute, to present five possible near-future scenarios in which the U.S. goes to war. Scenario one is based on a North Korean invasion of South Korea that ends in stalemate after a limited nuclear exchange. Number two casts Iran as a rogue state using ballistic missiles to alter the Middle East’s balance of power. The third scenario postulates a radical Mexican government scapegoating the U.S. as the source of its country’s woes. A fourth describes the conquest of Europe by a resurgent Russia?again with the aid of nuclear weapons. In scenario five, the U.S. and Japan reignite the Pacific War of 1941-1945, this time using “cyberstrikes” against information systems, chemical warfare and a nuclear exchange. The authors tell their stories through the eyes of fictional participants. This format, familiar to readers of techno-thrillers, is an effective framework for dramatizing a set of pessimistic conclusions. Because of America’s reduction of its conventional armed forces and its failure to build a missile defense system, none of the scenarios have outcomes more positive than stalemate achieved at high cost. The authors’ lament for such a missile system and for the armed forces of the past won’t convince those who believe that the dominant modes of future conflict will be terrorism and guerrilla war, however. Weinberger and Schweizer nevertheless make a case deserving serious consideration by citizens and policy-makers alike. PUblisher’s Weekly posted on Amazon.
DESTABILIZING PAKISTAN: Geo has been blamed for participating in and highlighting events per CNN instructions. Why is Geo not reporting Gen. Kayani’s statement that he suspects a foreign hand in the assassination to destabilize and denuclearize Pakistan? The silence is deafening! Saboteurs trained in Afghanistan have been inserted into Pakistan to aggravate extremist passions here, especially after the Red Mosque operation.
Chinese citizens continue to be targeted by individuals pretending to be Islamists, when no known Islamic group has claimed responsibility. . A succession of “religious rebels” with suspicious foreign links have suddenly emerged in Pakistan over the past months claiming to be “Pakistani Taliban”. Some of the names include Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Baitullah Mehsud, and now the Maulana of Swat. Some of them have used, and are using, encrypted communication equipment far superior to what the Pakistani military owns.
Money and weapons have been fed into the religious movements and al-Qaeda remnants in the tribal areas.
Exploiting the situation, assets within the Pakistani media started promoting the idea that the Pakistani military was killing its own people. The rest of the unsuspecting media quickly picked up this message. Some botched US and Pakistani military operations against al-Qaeda that caused civilian deaths accidentally fed this media campaign.This was the perfect timing for the launch of Military, Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, a book authored by Ayesha Siddiqa Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language paper and a correspondent for “Jane’s Defence Weekly”, a private intelligence service founded by experts close to British intelligence. (Ahmed Quraishi is an investigative reporter, currently hosting a weekly political talk show titled Worldview from Islamabad.)
This compares Geo with ARY and PTV
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ptv.com.pk+arydigitaltv.com+geo.tv/?metric=uv
This compares Geo with CNN and Foxnews websites.
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/cnn.com+foxnews.com+geo.tv/?metric=uv
Here are thestatistics on the number of posts and discussion of Geo on various boards:
http://boardreader.com/tp/Geo+tv.html
If things do not change, Pakistanis should cancel Geo and let them suffer.
Pakistan Cyber Force
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