Finance Minister Ishaq Dar called Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) a “disinformation army”.
In a media talk on Thursday, responding to a question by a journalist about him taking Rs72 crore in back salary, the minister said, “This is the disinformation army of PTI who malign everything” and termed them as “imrandos”.
“I didnt take a single penny and don’t have any intention to take any money,” he added.
During the talk, when asked about decreasing petrol prices, he said, “Abhi kal toh ki hai”. (We reduced the prices just now).
The finance minister also addressed the continuous depreciation of the US dollar against the rupee, saying that the greenback depreciated without him doing anything.
He also announced a power subsidy package for Pakistan’s export industries with per unit electricity cost set at Rs19.99.
Dar said the annual burden of the subsidy would amount to around Rs90-100 billion, adding that the “all-inclusive” package was announced for the five major exporting sectors, and not just the textile sector.
Meanwhile, in response to a question on whether the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was taken into confidence on the package, the finance minister said: “I don’t need to take the IMF into confidence, when I know what I am doing then it is my responsibility to create fiscal space for it and I have done so.”
Moreover, the minister said the market is now going in the “right direction” and correcting itself.
Britain’s Prince Harry — who is often at war with the British press — was on Wednesday announced as a commissioner for a US study into misinformation online.
The non-profit Aspen Institute said it was “honoured” to have the Duke of Sussex as one of the 18 members of its “Commission on Information Disorder.”
The announcement came a day after Harry became Chief Impact Officer at San Francisco life-coaching startup BetterUp as he adds to his growing portfolio of jobs since stepping away from royal duties last year.
As part of the Aspen study, Harry will help conduct a six-month investigation into misinformation and disinformation in the American digital world that will start in April. The commission aims to identify the biggest causes of the sharing and spreading of false information and find solutions to help the government, private sector and civil society respond.
“The experience of today’s digital world has us inundated with an avalanche of misinformation, affecting our ability as individuals as well as societies to think clearly and truly understand the world we live in,” Harry said in a statement.
“It’s my belief that this is a humanitarian issue — and as such, it demands a multi-stakeholder response from advocacy voices, members of the media, academic researchers, and both government and civil society leaders,” he added.
The prince is likely to bring his own experiences of media coverage of his life to the commission.
Harry told US talk show host James Corden in February that he left royal life and moved to the United States with Meghan Markle because the British press was “destroying his mental health.”
The prince has long had a difficult relationship with Britain’s tabloids, blaming press intrusion for contributing to his mother Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in 1997.
Harry and Meghan have filed several lawsuits against newspapers and last April told Britain’s tabloids that they were ending all cooperation with them due to “distorted, false or invasive” stories.
An explosive interview they gave to Oprah Winfrey this month — in which they claimed an unnamed royal had asked how dark their baby’s skin would be — plunged the monarchy into its biggest crisis since the death of Diana.
Meanwhile, Harry’s new boss at BetterUp has said that the British royal likes to be called Harry in the workplace.
“He’s a colleague, he’s a partner, and so we address him as Harry,” said Chief Executive Alexi Robichaux.
Robichaux said he met Queen Elizabeth’s grandson, through a mutual friend in late 2020, and talked about how to encourage mental wellbeing.
“Through a series of conversations over months, (we) really had a lot of shared energy and enthusiasm for how it could be really awesome to find a way to work together and advance the shared mission,” he said.
As well as being an executive, Prince Harry said in a blog post that he was also a user of the service. Robichaux said he and the coach he was paired with are still working together.
As for how much Prince Harry is being paid in his new position, Robichaux declined to say.
“As a private company, you can imagine we don’t disclose compensation information of any of our folks. But I think it’s fair to say he’s deeply invested in the success of BetterUp,” he said.
In the wake of months-long protests by the farmers, the Indian media has accused Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry of running an international disinformation campaign against India along with Khalistani leader Bhajan Singh Bhinder (also know as Iqbal Chaudhry) and journalist Pieter Friedrich.
Friedrich became part of the investigation after his name was mentioned in the toolkit that Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg tweeted on February 4.
The ‘toolkit’, which had the detailed plan of action for amplifying farmers’ protests and listed a number of social media handles to be followed, is now being probed by Delhi Police in connection with the tractor rally violence on Republic Day. The police had also announced to book Thunberg for conspiring against India.
But now, the Indian police think that Fawad is the mastermind of this campaign while Friedrich, a critic of the Indian government, is the face of the campaign.
According to News18, Bhajan Singh Bhinder is the “uncle of Fawad” and the mastermind of the slander campaign against India. It alleged that Fawad is helping the Sikh activists to run a campaign against India.
The PTI minister, however, tweeted the news clip on his social media account, calling the claims “absurd”.
Fawad said India doesn’t need foreign actors to sabotage its image, as its prime minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are enough to destroy India’s global standing.
Indian leadership and media is run by Jokers accusing me of running an international disinformation campaign against India is absurd, let me assure you with leadership like #Modi no one needs to plan anything he himself is enough to destroy #Endiahttps://t.co/bnNOfmsHpv
On Sunday, Delhi police arrested a young climate activist arrested over a farmers’ protest “toolkit” also shared by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Delhi police confirmed the arrest of Disha Ravi, who is in her early 20s, in a tweet on Sunday that accused her of being a “key conspirator in (the) document’s formulation & dissemination.”
The EU DisinfoLab, a Brussels-based NGO that focuses on researching and tackling sophisticated disinformation campaigns targeting the European Union (EU), its member states, core institutions, and core values, has uncovered a 15-year-old operation by India.
Titled ‘Indian Chronicles: deep dive into a 15-year operation targeting the EU and UN to serve Indian interests’, the DisinfoLab termed this as the “largest network” of disinformation they have exposed so far. According to their research, India used hundreds of fake media outlets and the identity of a dead professor to target Pakistan.
According to the BBC, the researchers uncovered 265 pro-Indian sites operating across 65 countries and traced them back to a Delhi-based Indian holding company, the Srivastava Group (SG). BBC says that the content produced on fake media outlets is amplified with the help of Asian News International (ANI) – India’s largest wire service and a key focus of the investigation.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office on Saturday rejected the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ “attempt to deny responsibility for the elaborate and reprehensible” disinformation campaign against Pakistan. Indian MEA had earlier said that “India does not practice disinformation campaigns”, a denial that falls flat on its face when you go through the DisinfoLab’s in-depth research.
It was no secret that India was involved in such disinformation operations globally to discredit Pakistan but the extent of the way these networks has been used is quite eye-opening. In 2017, Geo News reported that “the Indian mission in Geneva is controlling anti-Pakistan activities and the local Swiss administration has been paid heavy amounts in commercial deals for these campaigns across its public transport, road networks, and private business venues” after an expensive multi-faceted campaign in Geneva targeting Pakistan was highlighted when the 36th session of the UNHRC was underway.
India thinks of itself as a regional superpower in South Asia and leaves no stone unturned to malign Pakistan and has used extensive paid propaganda campaign to achieve its nefarious designs. Last month, Pakistan handed over a dossier on India’s terror campaign to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, urging him to prevail on New Delhi to desist from its illegal and aggressive activities. In light of the new report by EU DisinfoLab, the international community must investigate how the EU and UN were duped by India’s disinformation campaign, including a controversial visit of European parliamentarians (MEPs) to Indian-Occupied Kashmir last year.
It is pertinent to note that the world continues to ignore the atrocities being committed in Occupied Kashmir by the Indian forces. Global human rights organisations and the international media highlighted Indian atrocities but the international community has largely turned a blind eye to grave human rights violations because of the Indian economic market. It is unfortunate that the world community, due to vested interests tied to the Indian market, has taken no action against India.
Pakistan must keep highlighting this new report, which was unearthed by a neutral NGO that has nothing to do with Pakistan. The world must wake up to India’s disinformation campaign.
