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Archive for April, 2013

$50 Million Buys Pakistani Media to Defeat Imran Khan: Stealth Programs Pressititutes on ARY, AAJ, Dunya, Express, Waqt, GEO

$50 Million Buys Pakistani Media & Ex-PTI Opportunists to Demonize Imran Khan  

By Jehangir Khan Orakzai

 

Unknown-2Imran Khan should NEVER come to power in Pakistan’s upcoming elections. That is the key objective of NATO, Western Think Tanks and Feudal/Industrialist/Military entente in Pakistan. A populist leader cannot rule Pakistan. He/she needs to be eliminated, because he/she will not serve the interests of Western Powers. Pakistan’s history tells us that populist leaders had a short life span in a country like Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and even Murtaza Bhutto were eliminated mysteriously. Not a single of these assassination were ever investigated by neutral observers or commissions. Populist leadership in Pakistan is either eliminated physically or by political assassination and intrigues. The belief of a common Pakistani that his nation has been hijacked by foreign powers has a kernel of truth to it.

 

At present, Imran Khan is a thorn on the side of its ISAF allies and US. There is a concerted effort to remove him from the political scene by demonizing his character. Presstitutes like GEO, ARY, AAJ, and Dunya, plus several popular newspaper have received millions of rupees in funds from the Western embassies, among them are US, UK, Netherland, France, Norway, UAE, Saudi Arabia and others in Islamabad. Many members of Pakistan Tehrik Insaf are enticed with financial and commercial incentives to leave the party. These are the stealthily corrupt individuals, who came into the PTI to ride the tide of its popularity. An in depth searches of these individuals’ background reveals their feudal or Jagirdarana roots. These opportunists had a choke hold on Pakistan’s politics and they are back in action to claim, which they consider is rightfully their inheritance: an inherent right to rule Pakistan and steal whatever is left in the country. Spearheading this movement is a nexus of strange bedfellows, PML (N)-PPP-US Interests in Pakistan, represented by Jagirdars, Waderas, Industrialists, and fifth columnists in the Pakistan Media, led by GEO, AAJ, ARY, and Dunya. The scions of the Mir Khalil-ur-Rahman family represent the media business interests, who put their own financial interests above that of the nation.

 

How does this propaganda work? As election strategies progress, so is the use of political campaigning.

 

1.  Direct personal attacks on TV, opposed to surrogates doing the attacking

 

Result: The effects it can have on “someone who is uneducated,” like the majority of electorate or voting public in Pakistan. Historically speaking, even in the US Elections, “Name-calling and invective are themselves nothing new in American political life. Washington was called a “Whore Master” and would-be-monarch; Jefferson a coward and atheist; Lincoln, a “rail-splitting baboon.” Franklin O. Roosevelt, Jr., as a surrogate for John Kennedy in the West Virginia primary in 1960, declared Hubert Humphrey was a draft dodger.

2. Bribe media owners, commentators (exceptions are Talat Hussain, Shahzeb Khanzada, Iftikhar Ahmed and a handful of others) and reporters. A Report from London Institute of South Asia (2) described these activities in details below:

Results:

Pakistan Media Corrupted

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Starting 2010 the Obama administration made plans to spend nearly $50 million on Pakistani media to reverse anti-American sentiments. This has done wonders as one sees the erstwhile hostile (anti US policy) TV anchors changed like chameleon changes its colors. In the perception of many Pakistanis, the card being played right now by US establishment and its allied media is to weaken the only institution left intact in Pakistan; its military. Pakistani media that has immature anchors, journalists and some of the opportunist politicians who are trying to settle their score with the military establishment is reinforcing the military-bashing campaign

 

 

 

 

Imran Khan

Only in Pakistan do the media champion the cause and lionize traitors and terrorists that act against their country. Would the British media have acted in the same way in the case of IRA or the Spanish for ETA or the Indians for the Kashmiris, Sikhs and Naxalite?

The media is ideally perceived as the fourth pillar of the state (alongside the judicial, legislative and executive powers), but in Pakistan, most people have come to distrust the media and those who practice journalism. Presently, Pakistanis are demanding that star anchors of various current affairs programmes and other journalists be held accountable for their actions.

US- Afghanistan-Pakistan

The war in Af- Pak did not progress as planned by the US. The US – Pakistan standoff over a range of issues worsened the situation where Pakistan is well placed to extract maximum leverage from US towards a Taliban friendly dispensation backed and dominated by Pakistan.  However this may not be forthcoming because of weakened establishment and a corrupt and pliant government in Pakistan. The dirty picture emerging in Af- Pak has US fighting for influence with major stakeholders such as China backed Pakistan and Iran. Both these countries can be instrumental in finding a face saving formula for the US to resolve the crisis and affect a graceful exit.

In his article ‘The Lost War’ Patrick Cockburn writes that it is an extraordinary turn-around that in a decade the Americans are departing and the Taliban are back in business. A leaked NATO report on interrogations of 4,000 captured Taliban, Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters and civilian shows that Taliban prisoners are in a confident mood. They believe their popular support is growing, Afghan government officials secretly collaborate with them, and, once foreign troops are gone, they believe they are going to win.

Afghans like to bet on winners, and the US action will convince many that these are increasingly likely to be the Taliban and Pakistan rather than the Afghan government. No wonder NATO officials looked as anxious as they pretended that the US action had not come as a nasty surprise.

The US has failed in Afghanistan and the Taliban will become stronger. But it is unlikely they can win a total victory. The non-Pashtun communities, a majority of the population, will resist them. Reconciliation will be very difficult in a country as deeply divided as Afghanistan. In the foreseeable future the war may soon be over for the Americans, but not for Pakistanis and certainly not for the Afghans.

India Getting Trapped

In the new Cold War between US and China, India is being groomed to play the role Pakistan played as a US ally in the cold war with Russia. (And look what happened to Pakistan.) Many of those columnists and “strategic analysts” who are playing up the hostilities between India and China, can be traced back directly or indirectly to the Indo-American think tanks and foundations. India must understand and learn from Pakistan’s case that being a “strategic partner” of the US   means collaboration (interference) at every level. It means hosting US Special Forces on Indian soil (a Pentagon Commander recently confirmed this to the BBC). It means sharing intelligence, altering agriculture and energy policies, opening up the health and education sectors to global investment. It means opening up retail. It means an unequal partnership in which India is being held close in a bear hug and waltzed around the floor by a partner who will dump her the moment she refuses to dance.

There is certainly more of the smell of war in the air around the Persian Gulf this year than any other year in recent times. This is driven by fear that Iran is inching ever closer to actually getting its hands on the bomb and that its window of vulnerability to an Israeli attack may be closing rapidly. The prospect of an Iranian nuclear bomb is not so much an existential threat to Israel as an end to Israeli nuclear hegemony and full-spectrum dominance over all other countries in the Middle East.

India has good relations with Iran based on shared trade and security interests. Iran supplies about 12 percent of India’s oil imports. Delhi has also had a long-standing interest in building a gas pipeline from Iran to India, but that would have to run through Pakistan. US pressure on India to cut its reliance on Iran oil and gas has created a complex situation for India. India has to balance a complex array of interests in the region. Some Indian independent strategists are of the view that there has been an equally long-standing convergence of strategic interests with Iran in Afghanistan and Pakistan that will outlast the Western military involvement in Afghanistan.

Supreme Court a Forlorn hope of hapless Pakistanis

It appears that the Supreme Court of Pakistan has inadvertently fallen prey to these schemes as the timings of hearing the Mehran Bank scandal suggests. Since the hearing of this case was commenced by the Supreme Court the media went berserk in a relentless attack on the institution of the Army and ISI. Never in the history of Pakistan or for that matter any nation in the world, the local media and politicians have maligned, humiliated and insulted their own armed forces with no holds barred.

An independent judiciary would pose a threat to the corrupt. The picture looked promising when an independent judiciary (Supreme Court) was reinstated after a truly memorable struggle and thus the expectations were high.  In the perception of many its judgments are slow and it has failed to enforce its own judgments. Ikram Sehgal, a journalist with high integrity and repute writes: All cases are pending for unknown reasons! The nation is losing confidence in the judiciary. “Justice delayed is justice denied “.

Agreed, The Supreme Court did not have guns or armored divisions or special service group to force subservience to its edicts. But, it had a surfeit of moral authority and the active public support to back it if the need for that ever arose. Ikram Sehgal goes to the extent of saying that the Supreme Court should have been able to call on all institutions including the instrument of last resort, the armed forces. Pakistan government and its Prime Minister and The President take pride in its open and willful defiance /disobedience of the judiciary. Most Pakistanis subscribe to the view that there were countless opportunities for the judiciary to assert its authority through a combination of issuing expeditious judgments and following up on their implementation through the use of constitutional powers vested in it. It is on both these fronts that the judiciary has been found wanting. As a consequence of this failing, the proponents of the corrupt status quo have become more daunting in their misdemeanors, thus adding to the woes of a beleaguered people most of whom are incessantly fighting for a few miserly morsels every day.

When President Zardari and his son Bilawal openly attacked the Supreme Court (specifically the Chief Justice of Pakistan) and the Army, only then perhaps His Lordship understood the game plan and stated that he shall not allow anyone to defame the Armed Forces or the Judiciary of Pakistan. Too late too little My Lord, the damage has been done and may we have the audacity to suggest that such comments are unnecessary and meaningless coming from the highest judicial officer unless they are translated in appropriate timely judgment that court has the will and wherewithal to implement.

Pakistan- Besieged or Held on Ransom?

Raoof Hassan befittingly remarks in his article in the News International that Pakistan is a besieged country in the hands of its leadership and their crude machinations solely crafted for their vile advancement.

Pakistan’s misery can be traced to the incompetence, woeful lack of sincerity, an inherent defiance of the rule of law and deep-rooted corruption of its rulers who have adorned its throne playing out a ghastly sequence of masquerades. Exploiting an economically captive electorate is rather easy to bring forth a coterie of people who control their purse strings. Is this democracy by any stretch of imagination? Crimes are being perpetrated in the name of democracy and religion while the relatively clean higher judiciary and the Army are sitting placidly watching this sordid drama of plunder and loot.

A Ray of Hope

Imran Khan has emerged in Pakistan as a light at the end of tunnel. A survey conducted by the institution   in the urban center revealed that 80% of educated elite would support him in future election. However, well over 55% conceded that winning at polls is different ball game. Whereas the current rulers PPP along with a very friendly opposition of PML (N) would easily exploit an economically captive electorate in towns and rural areas fully supported by the feudal lords in Punjab and Sindh and the warlords /Sardars of Balochistan would capture enough seats.

 

Many suggest the only way out for Pakistanis is to come out in the streets and launch a people’s movement to Islamabad to topple the masquerading plunderers of this hapless country. Imran has the ability and charisma to start this movement for restoration of true democracy in Pakistan. He need not worry about the establishment. This time around there is little chance of telephone call from General Kayani to call off the march to Islamabad as he did during the long march (for restoration of the superior judiciary).

3. Pakistani Newspapers Banned in Afghanistan by ISAF and at India’s Insistence

Afghanistan has issued a nationwide ban against Pakistani newspapers to stop what security officials consider anti-government propaganda aimed at Kabul.

Ihsanuddin Taheri, a government spokesman, told the Reuters news agency on Saturday that Pakistani newspapers are often “misleading” in their reporting of the Afghan administration and wrongly accuses NATO-led forces of “occupying” the country, rather than offering security support.

He added that some papers have also published speeches by Taliban leaders, hampering the government’s effort to bring the Taliban into peace talks aimed at ending the country’s 11-year conflict.

“We totally reject these statements and the ban is to show them this,” Taheri said.

Afghan border police have been ordered to sweep shops in the eastern provinces of Nuristan, Kunar and Nangarhar near the Pakistan border to seize copies of Pakistani papers, he said.

The east of the country has been the focus for foreign and Afghan security operations against fighters over the summer months ahead of a NATO pullout of most combat troops by 2014.

Ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been strained by months of cross-border shelling which officials in Kabul have blamed on Pakistan’s military.

Islamabad accuses Afghanistan of failing to stop anti-government fighters operating from mountain havens on Kabul’s side of the border.

On Thursday, the Afghan foreign minister told the UN Security Council in New York that diplomatic ties with Pakistan were under threat.

The newspaper ban, which is likely to worsen already tense cross-border ties, could only be reversed by a ministerial decree.

4.How Propaganda is used as a Tool to Influence nations like Pakistan. Fortunately for Pakistanis with less than 58 percent literacy rate, these cutting edge propaganda tools fail miserably. You cannot win hearts and minds of people by sophisticated marketing deception or propaganda.

 

References

http://www.lisauk.com/view.php?i=86&em=1

http://tribune.com.pk/story/442395/education-endowment-pakistans-literacy-rate-needs-to-improve/

http://www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/propaganda

 
 

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C. Christine Financial Times: The Tehran-New Delhi Axis-India-Iran Nuclear Missile Cooperation is below US radar

The Tehran-New Delhi Axis

Unknown-14Iran, with its Islamic regime, seems a strange ally of India, a predominantly Hindu democracy. But the two nations have been overcoming past antagonisms and developing closer ties that will affect not just Southwest Asia and the Middle East but also the United States. Their new relationship could powerfully influence such important matters as the flow of energy resources, regional and worldwide efforts to combat terrorism, and political developments in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other states in Central Asia. The consequences will not always suit U.S. interests. 

Before the Islamic revolution, in 1979, Iran’s ties with the West greatly vexed India, which had championed the non-aligned movement. Those concerns disappeared after the revolution, of course, but were soon replaced by concerns about Iran’s support of Kashmiri aspirations and its efforts to spread Islamic revolution to other Persian Gulf states. Nevertheless, after the Cold War ended, Iran and India discovered that they shared a stake in checking U.S. global power, opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan, fighting narcotics trafficking in Asia, and developing mutually beneficial energy options. 

More recently New Delhi and Tehran have found common ground in the reconstruction of Afghanistan and in the preservation of Pakistan as a functioning state (because its collapse would pose even more of a threat to India than its survival). The two have also recognized that closer ties would help each nation meet important needs of its own: for Iran, India could be a source of technical expertise, industrial goods, and foreign investment; for India, Iran could be a much needed additional source of energy and could serve as a gateway to Central Asia (which India seeks in order to develop new markets) and as a new military flank against Pakistan. In the realm of domestic politics, too, India has strong reasons for wanting improved relations with Iran. As India witnesses a surge in Hindu nationalist politics and sentiment, it needs to signal to its increasingly marginalized and disaffected Muslim population (the second largest in the world) that it has Muslim interests in mind. 

The most important milestone in the development of Indo-Iranian ties came this past January, when Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami visited New Delhi as the chief guest for the Indian Republic Day parade—an honor reserved for the closest friends of India. During the visit Khatami and India’s Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee signed an accord that focuses on economic, scientific, and technological ties between the two countries and that also provides a framework within which to explore a defense relationship. This new relationship began to take shape in March, in a small-scale naval exercise that Indian diplomats refer to as a “port call.” Meanwhile, Iran seeks to buy arms and spare parts from India, which is steadily acquiring the capacity to manufacture a wide array of Russian military hardware, and India sees Iran as a major buyer that could help to defray the costs of this manufacturing program.

C. Christine Fair

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INDIA’S MISSILE TECHNOLOGY HELPERS; Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Israel, France

 

Unknown

India: Missile Helpers

India has Transferred Nuclear and Missile Technology to Iran

The Risk Report
Volume 1 Number 1 (January-February 1995) Page 8

People who live in glass houses, shouldn’t throw stones.

India did not build its missiles alone. The world’s leading rocket producers gave essential help in research, development and manufacture.

France
Licensed production of sounding rockets in India
Supplied the liquid-fuel Viking rocket engine, now the “Vikas” engine of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) second stage
Tested Indian-produced Vikas engine in France

Israel

Apart from ongoing medium-range and long-range ballistic missile programs, which cost a combined $2 billion, the India and Israel are building a variety of missiles, including a ground-to-ground land attack missile.

That missile is publicly described as a project of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), but it is actually a joint effort with Israel, according to sources.

Increasing the range of the land attack missile from 1,000 to 3,000 kilometers is a joint Israel-India Program.

Germany
Delivered measurement and calibration equipment to ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) laboratories
Trained Indians in high-altitude tests of rocket motors and in glass and carbon fiber composites for rocket engine housings, nozzles and nose cones
Designed high-altitude rocket test facilities
Conducted wind tunnel tests for Satellite Launch Vehicle – SLV-3 rocket
Developed radio frequency interferometer for rocket guidance
Developed computers for rocket payload guidance based on U.S. microprocessor
Supplied documentation for a filament-winding machine to make rocket engine nozzles and housings
Helped build Vikas rocket engine test facilities
Designed hypersonic wind tunnel and heat transfer facilities
Supplied rocket motor segment rings for PSLV

Russia
Supplied surface-to-air missiles which became the models for the Prithvi missile and the second stage of the Agni medium-range missile
Sold seven cryogenic rocket engines

United Kingdom
Supplied components for Imarat Research Center, home to the Agni missile
Supplied magnetrons for radar guidance and detonation systems to Defense Research and Development Laboratory

United States
Launched U.S.-built rockets from Thumba test range
Trained Dr. Abdul Kalam, designer of the Agni
Introduced India to the Scout rocket, the model for the Satellite Launch Vehicle – SLV-3 rocket and the Agni first stage
Sent technical reports on the Scout rocket to Homi Bhabha, the head of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission
Sold equipment that can simulate vibrations on a warhead

 

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Kyle Mantyla: Like Pakistan, America has no shortage of lunatics: Erik Rush: Kill All Muslims in Response to Boston Marathon Attack

SUBMITTED BY Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 4/15/2013 4:37 pm

Kyle Mantyla

 

The Dirty Dozen Hate Mongers of America

 
http://hatesermons.blogspot.com/2008/10/dirty-dozen-hate-mongers-of-america.html

 
“Smearcasting documents the public writings and appearances of Islamophobic activists and pundits who intentionally and regularly spread fear, bigotry and misinformation in the media. Offering a fresh look at Islamophobia and its perpetrators in today’s media, it also provides four snapshots, or case studies, describing how Islamophobes manipulate media in order to paint Muslims with a broad, hateful brush.”

It is incredible that we condemn the hate speeches particularly in the Middle East, yet we allow them here on the national media. Spreading hate, causing one to hate the other must be checked in the interest of public peace.

Thank God, anti-Semitism is declining in some pockets while shamelessly it surging in other places. Now these men and a few women are bent on selling hate in America, destroying the very fiber of this nation.

We have to regulate “hate speeches” in the line of “Anti-Semitism” and encourage civility in America.

NEW YORK, Oct. 8 /PRNewswire/
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR),

the national media watchdog group, released a first-of-its-kind report today that profiles 12 of the leading Islamophobic pundits and media figures and examines the ways they’ve negatively influenced media coverage in the U.S. The report, “Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation,” describes a loose network of right-wing, anti-Muslim partisans who regularly use innuendo, questionable sources of information and even lies to smear, and effectively marginalize, Muslim Americans in the media. The report is available for download at:

http://www.smearcasting.com/

If these guys can spend their time on working for peace, rather than working to create chaos, the world would be a better place. Of course, it is all about money, there is no money in peace, where as hate mongering sucks up all the dumbos who fund it generously.

Mike Ghouse

David Horowitz

David Horowitz is the Islamophobia movement’s premier promoter. Through his “Islamofascism Awareness Week” (see Islamofascism Case Study), which brought leading Muslim-bashers to more than a hundred college campuses in October 2007, and via his website, FrontPage Magazine, which features the movement’s leading writers and links to other anti-Muslim sites, Horowitz has made himself the chief publicist of the Islamophobic movement. (Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab writings at Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine have been exposed for inaccuracy by, among other outlets, the New Yorker magazine–4/14/08.) But more than a promoter, Horowitz is also a key participant. He appears in his own venues as well as in other right-wing arenas, such as the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel. In one Fox appearance (5/9/08), he linked Muslim student associations on college campuses across the U.S. to the “terrorist Jihad against the West”:

The point here is that there are 150 Muslim students’ associations, which are coddled by university administrations and treated as though they were ethnic or religious groups, when they are political groups that are arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the fountainhead of the terrorist jihad against the West.No doubt the students are part of the “between 150 million and 750 million Muslims” Horowitz claims “support a holy war against Christians, Jews and other Muslims” (Columbia Spectator, 10/15/07). During a speech at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Horowitz accused students wearing green in support of the schools’ Muslim Student Association of supporting Hamas, and students wearing Arab Keffiyehs of honoring Yassir Arafat and terrorism (Santa Barbara Independent, 5/15/08).

Daniel Pipes – Daniel Pipes(see Case Study: Daniel Pipes’ Witch Hunt at a Public School)The founder of the Middle East Forum think tank, Pipes has been introduced by the national media as a “scholar” of Islam (e.g., CBS Sunday Morning, 9/10/06; Fox News Special Report, 11/26/02) and a “noted Middle East expert” (CNN Moneyline, 5/8/03) who was “years ahead of the curve in identifying the threat of radical Islam” (CBS Sunday Morning, 9/10/06). However, Pipes’ “expertise” has included erroneously linking the Oklahoma City bombing to Islamic groups (USA Today, 4/20/95), as well as warning (National Review, 11/19/90): “Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene…. All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” A defender of racial profiling of Arab-Americans (CNN American Morning, 11/18/02), Pipes has also warned (American Jewish Congress, 10/21/01) that “the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims” entail “true dangers” for American Jews. As one of the leaders of the “Stop the Madrassa” campaign against a secular Brooklyn-based Arabic language school (seeCase Study), he himself has admitted (New York Times.com, 4/28/2008) to misleading the public by using the word “madrassa” to get attention. His columns are featured in the New York Sun, New York Post and National Review, and have also been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Time. Pipes has been interviewed on CNN, MSNBC and PBS, as well as on NPR. A Bush-appointed director of the U.S. Institute of Peace (2003-05), he has a growing reach on college campuses through his Campus Watch initiative, which encourages students in McCarthyite fashion to monitor their professors’ political views and report deviations from the conservative ideology Pipes espouses.

Bill O’Reilly

After the September 11 attacks, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly (9/17/01; FAIR Action Alert, 9/21/01) had a whole list of predominantly Muslim countries that he proposed to attack if they did not submit to the U.S.–starting with Afghanistan:

The U.S. should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble– the airport, the power plants, their water facilities and the roads…. This is a very primitive country. And taking out their ability to exist day to day will not be hard…. If they don’t rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period.Also on his list were Iraq (“Their infrastructure must be destroyed and the population made to endure yet another round of intense pain”) and Libya (“Nothing goes in, nothing goes out…. Let them eat sand”).

This enthusiasm he has expressed for attacking countries with Muslim populations is an O’Reilly trademark (e.g,. Radio Factor, 6/18/04, 3/8/06, 7/26/06). In fairness, he’s also expressed similar interest in decimating non-Muslim countries. (See Extra!, 7-8/99.) But his disregard for Muslim civilians is matched by the anti-Muslim sentiments he frequently expresses on both his nationally syndicated radio show, the Radio Factor, which has a reach of 3.5 million listeners (Talkers Magazine, Spring/08) and cable TV show. O’Reilly has bemoaned (O’Reilly Factor, 7/8/05) the fact that areas of London are “just packed with just dense Muslim neighborhoods, which breed this kind of contempt for Western society. Why do they let them in?” He defended airport security profiling of Muslims (O’Reilly Factor, 8/16/06), saying: “We’re not at war with Granny Frickin. We’re at war with Muslim fanatics. So all young Muslims should be subjected to more scrutiny than Granny”–a move that he said would not be “racial profiling” but rather “criminal profiling.” O’Reilly compared a University of South Carolina assignment asking incoming freshmen to read a book called Approaching the Quran:

The Early Revelations to teaching Hitler’s Mein Kampf in 1941 (O’Reilly Factor, 7/10/02). O’Reilly also told Stuff magazine (11/02; Extra! Update, 6/03) that “the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries.” On his syndicated radio program (Radio Factor, 11/29/06), O’Reilly blamed killings in Iraq on the religion of its people: “They’re all Muslims, and they’re doing what they do. They’re killing each other. And they’re killing Americans.” Like fellow cable hosts Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, O’Reilly offers a national platform to some of the most egregious Islamophobes. His O’Reilly Factor, which consistently leads ratings in the world of cable news with an audience of over 2 million prime time viewers (New York Times, 8/22/08) has hosted such noted Dirty Dozen members as Robert Spencer (11/20/06) and Pat Robertson, who declared on the O’Reilly Factor (2/27/02) that “out of a billion-plus people there are probably 150 million really fire-breathing Muslims.”

Debbie Schulessl

Debbie Schlussel may tout herself to her fan club as the “greatest sexy, blonde and beautiful commentator,” but her Islamophobic rhetoric is as ugly as the rest. Schlussel jumped to the erroneous conclusion (Debbie Does Politics, 4/16/07) that a “Paki” was responsible for the Virginia Tech shooting. (She remarked that “even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.”) When Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign team prevented two Muslim women from sitting behind him during a speech (see Islamophobia Election piece, p. n), Schlussel asserted (Debbie Does Politics, 6/19/08) that they were “Muslim Terror Front-Group Activists” (One of them faced this accusation because she held a position at the University of Michigan-Dearborn Muslim Students Association.) Claiming a “unique expertise on radical Islam/Islamic terrorism” (DebbieSchlussel), Schlussel presents America as being in “the war of our lives with Islam,” and depicts the American Muslim community as a dangerous fifth column. She has asserted (FrontPage Magazine, 2/10/05) that “Fox’s 24…actually tells the truth about Islamic terrorists”:

They are here on our shores, pretending to be loyal Americans, and they are plotting to take over our country. With the help of plenty of complicit Muslim-Americans, working for the government and government contractors.A resident of the Detroit area, which has large Muslim and Arab populations, she wrote immediately after the September 11 attacks (9/17/01): “Don’t blame federal agents for Tuesday’s lapse in national security. Blame my neighbors–the Arab-American and Muslim leaders who’ve actively blocked the fight against terrorism for years.” Schlussel (DebbieSchlussel, 11/13/07) has raised national security concerns about Muslims being employed in certain fields, and having access to public resources that would allow them to teach their own children Arabic:

As long as we continue to hire Muslims to be translators and analysts, as long as we continue to give money to Arabic and Muslim schools to teach their kids Arabic instead of non-Muslim, non-Arab Americans, as long as the FBI (and ICE) continues to turn down Sephardic Jews and Maronite Lebanese Christians who speak Arabic and who’ve applied for jobs in favor of extremist Muslims…the result we will get is…spies, spies and more spies.She has also questioned (12/18/06) “Barack Hussein Obama’s” patriotism based on his father being born Muslim. Schlussel’s columns have been published by the Wall Street Journal (6/24/05), the New York Post, and the Jerusalem Post. She has appeared on Fox News, CNN, ABC, Howard Stern and ESPN, and, in 2002=03, her own radio show on a CBS-owned Detroit station. Her blog Debbie Does Politics appears on the websites Townhall.com and PoliticalUSA.com, has she has also been quoted by Rush Limbaugh and in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and USA Today.

Pat Robertson

If you’re looking for Christian charity toward Muslims, don’t look to Rev. Pat Robertson or his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Robertson subscribes to Robert Spencer’s view that Islam is, in its essence, violent and irrational. He describes (700 Club, 8/29/06) Osama bin Laden as a true disciple of the Quran “because he’s following through literally word-for-word what it says.” Robertson tells viewers of his signature CBN show, the 700 Club, that Islam is “not a religion” but a “worldwide political movement…meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law” (6/12/07). At the same time, he claims Islam is a “bloody, brutal type of religion” (4/28/06) whose followers only “deal with history and the truth with violence” and “don’t understand what reasoned dialogue is” (9/25/06).

When cartoons that portrayed Muhammad negatively sparked protest among Muslims, Robertson announced (3/13/06): “These people are crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it’s motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it’s time we recognize what we’re dealing with.” Robertson is not ranting that his enemies are possessed by demons on a street corner; his soapbox is a world-wide television syndicate reaching 200 countries and 97 percent of U.S. television markets (CBN.com). His show also serves as a platform for other Islamophobes (e.g., Robert Spencer, 9/21/06; Daniel Pipes, 4/9/03).

Michael Savage

If Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer serve the movement by providing intellectual arguments for its rank and file, Michael Savage serves as its angry rabble-rouser. And Savage’s reach is remarkable: His radio show Savage Nation reaches a reported 8.25 million listeners per week (Talkers Magazine, Spring/08), the third most popular political talk radio show in the country (trailing only Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity). Savage is notorious for his relentlessly hateful language–he was fired from his MSNBC gig when he labeled a caller a “sodomite” and told him to “get AIDS and die” (FAIR Action Alert, 7/7/03)–and Muslims are often his target.

“When I see a woman walking around with a burqa,” Savage told his listeners on July 2, 2007, “I see a Nazi…a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children.” Savage sees a monolithic Islamic scheme to take over the U.S.–“We know you want to take over America. We know you wanna push your religion down everyone’s throat,” (Savage Nation, 7/2/07)–and imagines himself one of the few brave souls standing up against the onslaught (10/29/07): “I’m not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I’m not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I’m not getting on my all-fours and braying to Mecca…. I don’t wanna hear anymore about Islam.

Take your religion and shove it up your behind.” Savage has even called (4/17/06) for killing a hundred million Muslims, saying that people are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, “Oh, there’s a billion of them.” I said, “So, kill 100 million of them, then there’ll be 900 million of them.” I mean, would you rather die–would you rather us die than them? I mean, what is it going to take for you people to wake up? Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die? Because you’re going to have to make that choice sooner rather than later.

Steve Emerson

The founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism think tank, Emerson regularly crops up as an “expert on Islamic terrorism” (New York Times, 1/16/01) in national media outlets ranging from the New York Times and Washington Post to CNN and NBC News (where he is employed as an analyst); he specializes in advancing allegations linking Muslim groups in the U.S. to fundamentalist Islamic international terrorism.

A proponent of a theory that “the U.S. has become occupied fundamentalist territory” (Jerusalem Post, 8/8/97), he has written (Jewish Monthly, 3/95; Extra! 7=8/95) that “the level of vitriol against Jews and Christianity within contemporary Islam…sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.” Veteran reporter Robert Friedman accused Emerson of “creating mass hysteria against American Arabs” (Nation, 5/15/95) with his film Jihad in America.

As a consultant for an Associated Press series about American Muslim groups, Emerson presented AP reporters with what he claimed were FBI documents describing mainstream American Muslim groups with alleged terrorist sympathies, according to the AP series’ lead writer, Richard Cole (Extra!, 7=8/95). However, Cole said that AP staff discovered that the dossier was almost identical to one earlier authored by Emerson himself. Emerson’s FBI dossier “was really his,” according to Cole. “He had edited out all phrases, taken out anything that made it look like his.”

Emerson erroneously blamed the Oklahoma City bombing on Middle Eastern groups, proclaiming on CBS Evening News (4/19/95; Extra! 1=2/99): “This was done with the attempt to inflict as many casualties as possible. That is a Middle Eastern trait.” He said on CNBC (8/23/96) that “it was a bomb that brought down TWA Flight 800”; investigations by the National Transportation Safety Agency (8/23/00) and the FBI (11/18/97) concluded otherwise. He also misidentified (CNN, 3/2/93) the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing–blaming it, ironically enough, on Yugoslavians, when the people convicted of the attack were Arabs.

Despite his track record, he continues to be identified as a “terrorism expert” (Fox News Hannity & Colmes, 1/11/08; NBC Today, 6/4/07, Wall Street Journal, 6/6/07). Emerson can still be heard testifying in congressional committees on terrorism (CQ Congressional Testimony, 4/9/08, 7/31/08), as well as on the media, in the middle of discussions about Islamic terrorism, warning (CNBC’s Kudlow & Company, 6/8/07) of the FBI’s failure to “battle…groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other jihadists that don’t break the law.”

 

Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin calls Islam “the religion of perpetual outrage” on her two blogs, MichelleMalkin.com (8/1/06, 2/11/08) and Hot Air (2/9/08), though Malkin herself seems remarkably easy to outrage. When celebrity chef Rachael Ray was featured in a 2008 Dunkin’ Donuts ad wearing a black-and-white paisley scarf that vaguely resembled an Arab keffiyeh, Malkin created such an uproar over what she imagined to be a “hate couture” symbol of “murderous Palestinian jihad” (MichelleMalkin.com, 5/28/08) that Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad and issued an apology (Huffington Post, 5/28/08).

In her book In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in WWII and the War on Terror, Malkin argued that the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans was explained and justified by what she presented as evidence of subversion; she drew a present-day parallel to alleged subversion amongst Muslim and Arab populations in the U.S. today.The main thesis of the book was condemned as historically incorrect by the Historians’ Committee for Fairness (8/31/04), which stated that Malkin’s book was “contradicted by several decades of scholarly research, including works by the official historian of the United States Army and an official U.S. government commission.”

On her website (8/10/06) Malkin explained why by she no longer uses the term “Islamofascism”: I stopped using the terms “Islamic fascist” and “Islamofascism” a while ago…because they obscure rather than clarify. The views held by the Muslim jihadis who want to destroy us are not marginal views held only by a minority of “Islamic fascists.”

Malkin is a New York Times bestselling author and was named by the London Observer (3/16/08) one of the 50 most powerful bloggers. Her columns are also published on Vdare, the white nationalist website (Extra!, 3-4/05).

Glen Beck

Glenn Beck claims he doesn’t hate Islam, just its “evil” extremists, but during his eponymous CNN Headline News show and the Glenn Beck Program–the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25 to 54 (CNN.com)–he has repeatedly associated Islam with Nazism. He drew a parallel between Mein Kampf and “jihad” because, he said, both mean “my struggle” (Glenn Beck, 11/17/06), and he has warned (Glenn Beck, 7/12/06) of “World War III and the impending apocalypse,” declaring that “whether you like it or not, this is a religious war. Radical Muslims want to wipe everybody else off the face of the earth.”

Beck reserves some hate-talk even for “good” Muslims (Glenn Beck Program, 8/10/06):
All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin’ hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, “Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.” I’m telling you, with God as my witness… human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it…. When people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

Beck had made earlier allusions to putting Muslims in concentration camps, predicting in 2006 (Glenn Beck, 9/5/06): “In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West.”

Beck has asked Muslim guests to distinguish themselves from Islamic terrorists. “I mean, you’re reasonable,” he said to Sharida McKenzie, organizer of a Muslim Peace March (Glenn Beck, 10/4/07). “How do we know the difference between you and those that are trying to kill us?”

When Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, appeared on his show (Glenn Beck, 11/14/06), Beck said: “I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, ‘Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies.'” Beck added: “I’m not accusing you of being an enemy, but that’s the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.”

Commenting on ABC News (Good Morning America, 5/23/07) on a Pew Research Center public opinion poll of American Muslims, which, according to Pew’s report (“American Muslims: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” 5/22/07) showed” absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world,” Beck stated that the findings showed that “the seeds of destruction are being planted.”

Although Beck apologized for the remark (Reliable Sources, 3/18/07), he continues to display anti-Muslim sentiment on his radio and television programs, through his magazine Fusion and as an occasional source on ABC News.

Robert Spencer

According to American Muslim and former Nixon advisor Robert Crane (The Politics of Islam(ism): Decolonising the Postcolonial, 11/10=11/07), Robert Spencer is “the principal leader…in the new academic field of Islam-bashing.”

Spencer is the author of several books attacking Islam, including the New York Times bestsellers The Truth About Muhammad, Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (Regnery, 2006) and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Regnery, 2005). He is the publisher of the “notoriously Islamophobic website” Jihad Watch (Guardian, 2/7/06), a subsidiary of the David Horowitz Freedom Center; a columnist for right-wing outlets like Human Events and WorldNetDaily; and a recurring guest on Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News show, as well as several Fox News shows.

Though his scholarship has been questioned by Islamic scholars (e.g. Crane, AmericanMuslim.com, 10/20/07; Louay M. Safi, Media Monitors Network, 12/29/05; Khalil Mohammed, FrontPage Magazine, 4/18/05), Spencer serves as an intellectual force in the movement, specializing in one-sided interpretations of the Quran. He has written (cited in Crane, MuslimAmerican.com, 10/20/07) of Osama bin Laden’s use of quotes from the Quran:

Of course, the devil can quote scripture for his own purpose, but Osama’s use of these and other passages in his messages is consistent (as we shall see) with traditional understanding of the Quran. When modern-day Jews and Christians read their Bibles, they simply don’t interpret the passages cited as exhorting them to violent actions against unbelievers. This is due to the influence of centuries of interpretative traditions that have moved them away from literalism regarding these passages. But in Islam, there is no comparable interpretative tradition.

Yet Islam does in fact have an interpretive tradition, which Spencer seems bent on ignoring. His New York Times bestseller The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam has been faulted (Crane, AmericanMuslim.com, 10/20/07) for promoting a Puffin English-language version of the Quran that contains no explanatory commentary as superior to versions which include “many thousands of footnotes evaluating 14 centuries of interpretative tradition” and “the wealth of classical Islamic scholarship on both the inner and outer meaning of the Quran and on the hadith that reflect this wisdom.”

According to Crane, “Spencer’s readers are carefully steered away from all contact with the Islamic interpretative tradition, which equals or exceeds that of any other religion, because any scholarly knowledge about Islam would expose all his extremist interpretations to ridicule.”

By selectively ignoring inconvenient Islamic texts and commentaries, Spencer concludes that Islam is innately extremist and violent, and
Unfortunately, however, jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute “Sharia” worldwide is not propaganda or ignorance, or a heretical doctrine held by a tiny minority of extremists. Instead, it is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology. (Jihad Watch, 3/3/07).

Of course, a similarly selective reading of the Torah might lead one to conclude that Jews favor killing homosexuals, as well as those who wear garments that mix cotton and wool. Spencer’s methods have prompted even conservatives such as Dinesh D’Souza (who challenged his views on Islam in a C-SPAN debate–3/1/07– and on his blog–AOL News Bloggers, 3/2/07) and Stephen Schwartz (FrontPageMag.com, 10/28/04) to denounce him as one-sided and intolerant.

But those methods have made Spencer a mainstay in the Islamophobia circuit, featured, for example, at Horowitz’s 2007 Islamofascism Awareness events. And they haven’t decreased his popularity in official circles: His website boasts that he has led seminars on Islam and jihad for, among others, the U.S. Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and “the U.S. intelligence community.”

Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn has a penchant for using ethnic slurs, including “chinks” and “japs” (Spectator, 3/24/01), but he is at his most prolific and poisonous on the subject of Muslims. In his 2006 New York Times best seller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, Steyn warns of the “demographic decline” posed by Europe’s emerging Muslim population, and suggests there are lessons for Europeans in the Balkan example of ethnic cleansing. As he explains, “You can’t buck demography–except through civil war”:

The Serbs figured that out–as other Continentals will in the years ahead: If you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

It’s enough to make one wonder what Steyn has in mind when he insists that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is “a Muslim” (Chicago Sun-Times, 1/21/07).

Islamophobic rants on Europe’s demographic decline and “grim Eurostatistics” (National Review, 6/2/08) are a regular feature of Steyn’s columns, which run in the National Review and New York Sun. In addition to writing frequently in other major U.S. outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Sun-Times and Atlantic Monthly, Steyn often substitutes for talkshow hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Sean Hannity

Remarking on reports that U.S. congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, was planning to be sworn in with a Quran, Fox News personality Sean Hannity (Hannity & Colmes, 11/30/06) drew a parallel between Islam and Nazism, asking a guest on his show, “Would you have allowed him to choose, you know, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible?” (Hannity insisted he was not equating Mein Kampf and the Quran, rendering his point entirely unclear.) But more important than his occasional personal forays into Muslim-bashing, Hannity regularly provides a welcoming national platform to some of the country’s leading Islamophobes, through his nationally syndicated Sean Hannity Show on radio and his Hannity & Colmes show on Fox News (with only occasional challenges on Hannity & Colmes by co-host Alan Colmes).

On the Sean Hannity Show (2/9/04), U.S. Representative Peter King (R.-N.Y.) told Hannity’s listeners that 85 percent of mosques in America are “ruled by the extremists,” constituting “an enemy living amongst us.” King added that while most American Muslims were more moderate, “they don’t come forward, they don’t tell the police.”

Hannity’s remarks on the Quran came in a show (Hannity & Colmes, 11/30/06) that featured talkshow host Dennis Prager, who denounced Ellison’s plans to be sworn in on the Islamic book. Hannity uncritically summarized his argument for him: “You said that his doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, and they’ll see it as the first sign and realization of a greatest goal, which is the, you know, making Islam the religion of America.”

Also on Hannity & Colmes (9/18/02), Pat Robertson called Islam fraudulent and a scam, Mohammad “an absolute wild-eyed fanatic,” and said that Al Qaeda was merely “carrying out Islam.” Other Islamophobes that have appeared on Hannity’s two shows include Ann Coulter, David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes.

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The Shalimar Gardens, Lahore, Pakistan

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The Shalimar Gardens, Lahore, Pakistan 

The Shalimar Gardens (Urdu: شالیمار باغ), sometimes written Shalamar Gardens, were built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in Lahore, modern day Pakistan. Construction began in 1641 A.D. (1051 A.H.) and was completed the following year. The project management was carried out under the superintendence of Khalilullah Khan, a noble of Shah Jahan’s court, in cooperation with Ali Mardan Khan and Mulla Alaul Maulk Tuni.

The Shalamar Gardens are laid out in the form of an oblong parallelogram, surrounded by a high brick wall, which is famous for its intricate fretwork. The gardens measure 658 meters north to south and 258 meters east to west. In 1981, Shalimar Gardens was included as a UNESCO World Heritage Site along with the Lahore Fort, under the UNESCO Convention concerning the protection of the world’s cultural and natural heritage sites in 1972.

The three level terraces of the Gardens
The Gardens have been laid out from south to north in three descending terraces, which are elevated by 4-5 metres (13-15 feet) above one another. The three terraces have names in Urdu as follows:

The upper terrace named Farah Baksh meaning Bestower of Pleasure. 
The middle terrace named Faiz Baksh meaning Bestower of Goodness. 
The lower terrace named Hayat Baksh meaning Bestower of life.

Shah Nahar : Irrigation of the Gardens
To irrigate the Gardens, a canal named Shah Nahar meaning Royal canal, later also known as Hansti canal, meaning Laughing canal was brought from Rajpot (present day Madhpur in India), a distance of over 161 kilometers. The canal intersected the Gardens and discharged into a large marble basin in the middle terrace.

410 fountains
From this basin, and from the canal, rise 410 fountains, which discharge into wide marble pools. The surrounding area is rendered cooler by the flowing of the fountains, which is a particular relief for visitors during Lahore’s blistering summers, with temperature sometimes exceeding 120 degrees fahrenheit. It is a credit to the ingenuity of the Mughal engineers that even today scientists are unable to fathom how the fountains were operated originally. The distribution of the fountains is as follows:

The upper level terrace has 105 fountains. 
The middle level terrace has 152 fountains. 
The lower level terrace has 153 fountains. 
All combined, the Gardens therefore have 410 fountains.

Water cascades
The Gardens have 5 water cascades including the great marble cascade and Sawan Bhadoon.

The buildings of the Gardens include:

Sawan Bhadum pavilions 
Naqar Khana and its buildings 
Khwabgah or Sleeping chambers 
Hammam or Royal bath 
The Aiwan or Grand hall 
Aramgah or Resting place 
Khawabgah of Begum Sahib or Dream place of the emperor’s wife 
Baradaries or summer pavilions to enjoy the coolness created by the Gardens’ fountains 
Diwan-e-Khas-o-Aam or Hall of special & ordinary audience with the emperor 
Two gateways and minarets in the corners of the Gardens 

Some of the varieties of trees that were planted included:

Almond 
Apple 
Apricot 
Cherry 
Gokcha 
Mango 
Mulberry 
Peach 
Plum 
Poplar 
Quince Seedless 
Sapling of Cypress 
Shrubs 
Sour & sweet oranges 

Numerous other varieties of odoriferous (fragrant) and non odoriferous and fruit giving plants 

The site of the Shalimar Gardens originally belonged to one of the noble Zaildar families in the region, well known as Mian Family Baghbanpura. The family was also given the Royal title of ‘Mian’ by the Mughal Emperor, for its services to the Empire. Mian Muhammad Yusuf, then the head of the Mian family, donated the site of Ishaq Pura to the Emperor Shah Jahan, after pressure was placed on the family by the royal engineers who wished to build on the site due to its good position and soil. In return, Shah Jahan granted the Mian family governance of the Shalimar Gardens. The Shalimar Gardens remained under the custodianship of this family for more than 350 years.

In 1962, the Shalimar Gardens were nationalised by General Ayub Khan because leading Mian family members had opposed his imposition of martial law in Pakistan.

The Mela Chiraghan festival used to take place in the Gardens, until President Ayub Khan ordered against it in 1958.

The Shalimar Gardens are located near Baghbanpura along the Grand Trunk Road some 5 kilometers northeast of the main Lahore city.

 

Also Visit: Shalimar

 Courtesy:
Name:
sarfraz hayat
Joined:
January 2006
 
Currently:
England
 
 

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