GIN2013: Global Issues Network Conference @ NYUAD

I just returned after attending GIN2013: a conference organized by New York Universirty Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). The conference aims at framing global issues in a local perspectives and encouraging teams of students (earlier only high school students and adding university students from this year on-wards) to put forward a solution to solve an issue locally. 

The 3-day conference program is fully packed with Discussion/Breakout sessions interspersed with keynote talks by global and local leaders. Students work in a team of 5-6 members, lead by a facilitator, to discuss an issue of importance in one of the areas: heath, education, technology, energy and waste management. Their goal is to research key issues in the particular area, find potential solutions to the problems and finally propose a sustainable action plan, with clear objectives, a detailed timeline and an estimate of costs to implement the solution. The students are guided by the mentors, including the keynote speakers in the conference who help students brainstorm deeper into particular implementation issues and make sure the plan is feasible.

I must say such a conference is an ideal platform for students of different backgrounds from all across the globe to meet and work together on issues of global importance. Many a students must have left with new perspectives, ideas and strategies and a better understanding of other cultures. The talks by His Highness Sheikh Abdul Aziz aka Green Sheikh, Jeffery from Microsoft, Natasha from globalthemostat and Scott the entertainer and inspirational speaker from Canada were all amazing and inspirational. 

The NYUAD team led by Benjamin and Michaell et al. really put up a great show overall clearly reflecting their excellent management skills at such an early stages in student life.  I hope this idea continues and expands and people from more universities and high schools are included in management roles as well.

I will like to end by saying "Thanks guys, it was a wonderful to be with you, Keep in touch. It's a small world after all" to my team members: C.Wang, Noura, Alistiar, Zoe, DJ, and some of other friends and organizers (off course not a comprehensive list and in no particular order): Ben, Michael, Jaime, Musa A. Bajwa, Amal, Iryna, 'Evaan Smith', Clara, Satchi, Saad, Farah+Paula, the big list of South-East Asians, and  finally Sana,Humair, Lindzy.  

Jinnah's Take on Potential Problems to be faced by Pakistan

Today, I revisited Jinnah's historic speech on 11th August 1947 to the first constituent assembly of Pakistan. 

Here I list the things, in Jinnah's own words,  that held top priority in Jinnah's vision of Pakistan and the challenges he thought Pakistan would have to cope with . 

The original text of speech can be accessed from a host of sources like, Pak Tea House or Left Side of the Right Brain, where it was posted today. 


1. First Duty of a Government 
"You will no doubt agree with me that the first duty of a government is to maintain law and order, so that the life, property and religious beliefs of its subjects are fully protected by the State."

2. Bribery and Corruption

"That really is a poison. We must put that down with an iron hand and I hope that you will take adequate measures as soon as it is possible for this Assembly to do so"

3. Black-Marketing
"A citizen who does black-marketing commits, I think, a greater crime than the biggest and most grievous of crimes. These black-marketeers are really knowing, intelligent and ordinarily responsible people, and when they indulge in black-marketing, I think they ought to be very severely punished, because the entire system of control and regulation of foodstuffs and essential commodities, and cause wholesale starvation and want and even death."


4. Nepotism and Jobbery
"I want to make it quite clear that I shall never tolerate any kind of jobbery, nepotism or any any influence directly of indirectly brought to bear upon me. Whenever I will find that such a practice is in vogue or is continuing anywhere, low or high, I shall certainly not countenance it."


5. Religious Freedom
"You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State."



If we compare Jinnah's vision of a state as guardian of its subjects and free from the vices mentioned above with the current state of affairs, we are, no doubt, still at ground-zero. We have to re-visit our own mistakes, re-think our strategies and boot up again. 

PMLN Fake Twitter Accounts - Part II

VentureBeat posted an article with some stats on fake followers on twitter, few hours back. 

Study shows 15% of Mitt Romney’s Twitter followers are fake

The article mentions about growing trend in such paid services and how it goes against the  terms of service of twitter. 

After reading the article, I had another look at the PMLN fake twitter accounts, I mentioned in the last blog. 

It was fun to figure out the survival strategy of the paid services. Maintain a certain amount of unique content with  each profile to save it from the rash of twitter against spammers. 

Identical tweets continue

If one takes a cursory look at the following twitter accounts: 

1. MudassarSultan1
2. IffatRehanKazmi
3. MadihaAliChohan

It is clearly visible that the first four identical tweets are the about PMLN, IK, CJ and PPP. Fifth tweet, at the time, I am looking the accounts, is a quototation. The quotation is different across different accounts. A nice way to keep the overall profile content unique. 

Just as sometimes, as students,  we would copy the whole assignment but modify / delete / add few sentences to try to establish that somehow our work is different from the rest of class/group. 

The quotation is second last tweet in the picture below. 

One of the quotes from an accounts reads, "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." 

Indeed we don't trust a few. However, dear paid services, you seem to do with 'do wrong to none' part what non-practicing followers of a religion do.  

Source accounts for tweets and pictures

The first profile in the eariler list, MudassarSultan1, describes himself/herself/itself as "a creative designer, intellectual, social worker who loves to read , write, paint... and gets high on music :) or love whatever comes first :))"

Well, to acknowledge the creativity of this account, it's enough to state that this account is the first source of this tweet and the picture which was re-sent, I dare not say re-tweet here, by all other accounts which seem to be part of the fake PMLN twitter 'gang'.

Another account, which is evidently, part of this gang,  synchronously re-tweeting quotes, is  RidaShahJaffery. However, we find some sanity here and little engagement in twitter conversations hints at the profile to be real. The accounts's total tweets, 120+,  are on higher end of the account average of the 'gang'. The comic by Tamoor about SKMH funds r'e-tweeted' PMLN 'gang' originated from this account. 

--------------------------------------------------------

All in all, the respected Khadim e Ala who matched Lahore to Paris continues to be  promoted through use of paid software services that regularly generate fake accounts and data. 

Is this the way PMLN is committed to it's 3 E's: Energy, Education and Economy ?? 

P.S: Moeez Pirzada had a good discussion in his program Sochta Paksitan on National Health Policy in Pakistan and why all political parties are silent about this issue of real importance.  The sane reader might wanna have a look at it. 

Is PMLN attempting too hard to make into Social Media??

Probably we all happen to find, at times,  strange patterns on twitter, the simplest being "This is trending in Paksitan or this is trending worldwide." Some patterns are annoying, like when your timeline is filled with Faisal Qureshi's replies to teens and trolls. You find journalists literally screaming about trolls At times there's a group of ordinary tweeps or even journalists like Dr. Shaid Masood, Ahmed Noorani and Razarumi engaged in conversations.  In one of my earlier I mentioned about MQM kinda exploiting the the #socmm12 social media mela to flood tweets about what MQM does and what it does not.

 But today, as I was following  comments and responses about the Shaukat Khanum, I noticed a sudden barrage of re-tweets rather same message tweeted from a dozen or more accounts. Re-tweets, continuous, within a blink of an eye and with no mention whatsoever of the original source. No sings of a re-tweet. And surprisingly no other tweet from ordinary tweeps in between. I was totally baffled what is going on. You better look the snapshot below.  For sake of space I have presented the tweets in two columns.

Wao, a great number of people talking in favor of PMLN. I had believed eiter MQM or PTI dominated the presence on twitter. But what's going on here. PMLN. I have much more interests than mere politics but this was quite  intriguing.

At the outset, there is something wrong with the profile picutes. Ok,. why not look at few of the profiles in the list. There are some similarities: 

1. A good number of accounts have no description at all.  For others, its so obscure and non-consistent  with the general appeal and types of tweets from the profile. 
2.  All of them have on average 80-100 tweets and 90% of the tweets are the same... and somehow synchronized precisely to a second... not Minutes... if you happen to notice!!!
3. All the accounts unfortunately are combined to re-tweet tweets by PMLN against other parties and tweets about Let's Join PMLN and let's meet PMLN leaders and respected CM Shehbaz.

In the picture below, three accounts are show with same set of tweets at the same time... what an amazing synchronization. 

Here's more, certain accounts go shopping together and tweet same tweets about Ramadan, like reading Quran and welcoming Ramazan. What a spirit of unity. 

 I won't rush make any claims and assumptions about whose running all these accounts.  But apparently there's a strong connection to PMLN and its attempts to gain some hold in social media sector. May be someone is testing a Beta version of software on PMLN tweets to malign them. 


P.S.:  Before delcaring me a PTIAN, PPPIAN, or JI-AN, have the courage to pass by one of my blog about Khadim e Ala at least. Though his highness' silence on recent blames by N-league is intriguing.

Different angles of a Car running on Water ... !!!

The car fiasco continues. Today, we have more to hear from Dr. Atta again followed by some encouraging comments from Dr. Qadeer Khan who took it more empirically and asked to put all claims to test ignoring for a while whether it seems scientifically plausible or not. His tone was rather encouraging in a general sense. He pointed towards inventions that were once thought impossible.  We also have comments from a solemn and serious PCSIR official who tells us how they are supporting Engr. Agha in his efforts. 

I do not want to comment on the  technical aspects of kit. Lets wait for the kit to be put to real test. I would like to highlight some other dimensions attached to the issue and the way it is being portrayed in the national media. 

If someone from PCSIR appears to talk about a project, they have been working, we would expect them to tell us briefly about the current status of the project. What did they expect initially as the output, where they stand now and any results that have that can be shared with the public. None of this appears in the interview. Why in the first place PCSIR chose to support the project? Does it have a history of financially supporting such independent claimants? If so, do they have a a criteria?? Or did they just supported it out of blue as they had some directions from someone in higher ranks of government ?? 

In most cases, a project of this magnitude can be divided into a number of phases and/or components. We have reports and results for each of the components at each phase. This way we have a clear understanding of what we are upto and what we need to work more upon and more importantly what we must abandon at a particular stage. 

If an idea has potential worth and is worth putting more effort into, what are we waiting for since 1st July. Why don't we bring some funding agency like ICT R&D into action and issue funds for further discovery. Why we still don't have any views from a scientist/engineer who is working specifically in the related field. Asking just for opinions of likes of Dr. Atta and Dr. Qadeer does not decide the fate of a technical problem in the first place. We need to see the real results no matter who says what. 

For the media and anchors who seem determined to make a case of supporting a landmark invention, why can't they resist the temptation to predict the probable causes of death before the actual post-mortem. If they are so keen on offer their services to the scientific community, why it never occurred to them to highlight with the same zeal some real research efforts going in some of our universities. 

As regards Agha Waqar himself, he is so religious about the issue. He has 'guts' to challenge all the achievements of one of top notch scientists of the country with his trick question 'Do you even where we get Hydrogen from?'. Then he has to explain to worthy Dr. what is H2O.  Again, why he don't dig a little into biography of Dr. Atta before challenging him on what he has done for the nation. To quote  Veena Malik, "Ye Kiaa Baat Hui", Dr. Sahib. Aaap humain yunhi reject kia ja rahy hain. 

Let's talk of general public like me. We have something to rant about now. For us this is a political conspiracy. It is the whole Pakistan against a Sindhi inventor. For us, here is the  Dr. Atta who is jealous of achievement of Mr. Agha. Now we have another reason to call all others 'Duffers'. For us this is the downfall of Rental power plants. For us this is a topi drama of media and allows to fabricate more dramas around it. But as Dr. Atta and Dr. Qadeer both mentioned, the 'proof is in the pudding'. 

It feels exactly like a mini-Kalabagh being generated out of this issue. We better stick to the proof of pudding than make it a political deal.