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Posts tagged with: Video

The Excellence Edge

Excellence Edge

Yesterday I had the chance to sit in on the live telecast speech by the three top leadership consultant gurus Ken Blanchard, Marcus Buckingham and Tom Peters. It was an event organized by Octara which took the initiative to host the satellite up-link at Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. The telecast started at 8:00pm sharp and lasted well past midnight ending at around 2:00am. and was being transmitted to over 60 countries across the globe with an estimated viewership of over a million people captivated for the 5 hours of the presentation.

Locally Octara had its own share of hiccups, as we were initially served with the Spanish translation for a good 20 odd minutes, it was rectified after a few frantic calls by the event manager to Luma Corp in the US. The attendees like myself had paid a hefty sum for attending this telecast, these kinks should have been ironed out by Octara well in advance serving top notch quality event management requires the agency to go the extra mile and not sit cross legged until the show has commenced. If that was any sign of things to come, it got repeatedly worse as Karachi Sheraton went through a series of three electrical blackouts which naturally knocked everything into the stone ages. I should not blame Octara for the KESC issues but it did cast a bad image into the mess. Each blackout took a good minute for the Sheraton’s generators to kick in and then another odd minute or so before the video signal was restored and projector lamps resume functioning.

Ken Blancard was first up discussing the steps needed into developing a true leader, I felt he was truly inspirational and had the entire audience revved up to conquer the world with his amazing stories and concepts to boot.

Ken was followed by Marcus Buckingham, who talked about developing the employees strength and allowing them to mature in their own realm of development. His casual style and periodic humor kept the audience captivated through out the 1 1/2 hour presentations.

Tom Peters, the guru of management consulting was up next and he talked about achieving excellence in management. Sadly Tom Peters did not live up to the hype to which he is understood to be as, I personally felt he lacked considerably on delivering a truly inspirational speech which was delivered by the previous two orators. His entire style was more like a disorganised grumbling narration of his concepts, he had a massive 120 slide presentation which he tried to squeeze into the allotted time. The slides were far from acceptable and lacked professionalism and creativity. Read my analysis of his presentation in the post titled Tom Peters and his Presentation Blunders.


Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace (Day 2)

Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace

The second day of the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace was quite interesting to say the least, which covered issues of technology and legal implications on free speech movement

Issac Mao, hails from China and talked about some very interesting ways how the Chinese by pass the GFW (Great Fire Wall). The authorities maintain a very active blocked list, which can dynamically change on a minute to minute basis adapting to any new and offensive content that the Chinese might cause problems. After hearing the lengths to which the internet surfers in china go about in attempting to by pass this blockage one really needs to appreciate the access we usually take for granted

Dr. Awab Alvi Don’t Block the Blog talked about the struggle of bloggers in Pakistan fighting against the local censorship (Slides, Audio)

Nart Villeneuve, Citizen Lab showed how their organization helps in doing research in a number of countries trying to better understand how governments which can be a resource to the internet users in that specific location, hence maybe armed with that knowledge one can proceed accordingly (Slides, Audio)

Dini Wildiastuti, Article 19 discussed the benefits of the hundreds of reports freely available on the Article 19 website which are predominantly legal implications in this interconnected world (Slides, Audio, Video)

Jeff Ooi, RSF talked on the impact of terrorism and national security laws affecting cyberspace (Slides, Video)

Rebbecca Mackinnon, Global Voices / Berkman Center shed light on the business of the Internet and how to learn from the guru’s like Yahoo and Google, she discussed the creation of the extremely successful Global Voices Project (Slides, Video)

JV Rufino, INQ7 an editor discussed how the his local Philippine internet news agency caters to the booming Internet and has positioned itself into a highly successful local business model. He discussed a few interesting interactions between the Marketing and Editorial team trying to balance content to profit (Slides)

Owais Aslam Ali, Pakistan Press Foundation shed some interesting views of how the offline community slowly embraces the world wide web (Video)

Andrew Lih closed the day with a technical workshop on wikipedia demonstrating the value and easy of edit ability of this massive constantly evolving encyclopedia, he also showed examples of how to implement the wiki model in organizing projects on a global basis.

The day ended with a delicious dinner at Jade Garden hosted by Smart Communications


Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace (Day 1)

Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace 1

Today concluded the first day of the Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace Conference. A large number of speakers from across the region spoke at lengths highlighting the battles of free speech being fought within their own countries. Check out the presentations and video clips of all the sessions at Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace Blog.

I personally would recommend these following speakers which were the highlight during the day

    Prof. Ying Chan, University of Hong Kong, she spoke about the demographics of the Asian internet access. Her Presentation is here
    Kunda Dixit, Nepali Times, he talks about the battle tussle with the King’s men in Katmandu and Nepal. His presentation is here
    Chi Dang, who sheds light on the resistance movement and very innovative ideas of Vietnamese activists to by-pass internet monitoring. Her presentation is here
    Andrew Lih talked about blogging and podcasting in China, and the new breed of web publishers who post on the internet despite so many restrictions imposed by the Chinese Govt. His presentation can be downloaded here
    Manuel Quezon, discussed the heated controversial tapes exposing Philippine President in election rigging in the run-up to the previous election, which led to a rally of raids and arrests. His presentation is here
    Rebecca Mackinson, Global Voices, she discusses the creation of Global Voices Online and the model to encourage the alternative news media as the future alternative to the traditional content. Her presentation is here
Free Expression in Asian Cyberspace

If you care to enjoy seeing the event in PodCast/VideoCast proceed to the Asia 0900 blog who are recording the events in real time.

After the long grueling day we were served with a sumptuous dinner at the a restaurant on the Manila Bay, enjoyed a casual night hosted by Sen. Juan Flavier



Bin Laden – The Voice

Osama Bin Laden

Usama Bin Laden retains control of FBI’s most wanted terrorist list, despite the fact that it has been upwards of five years of intense pursuit by a number of US Agencies with absolutely no sign him, but it surprises me that every so often a mysterious tape appears at the doorsteps of the Al-Jazeera network and it gets immediate coverage world-wide. The tape is always a crappy recording in Arabic with tremendous amount of background noise and the newscasters have ALWAYS made it a point to state that this voice has not yet been confirmed. When will we get solid confirmation that the voice has finally been verified. Its almost like presnting important evidence in court yet not confirming the source, BULL SHIT.

What bugs me is it has over time appears the US uses this voice snippets to reassure the American of the constant looming threat and hence justifying the invasion in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Never has the public been assured the voice is authentic and it seems this person who continues to haunt George Bush could have well been dead well back in 2002, I would not be the least bit surprised of a massive cover-up by the US to ensure they retain a villain justifying their worldwide conquests.

Just a slow, composed, husky voice out of a telephone line recorded on a scratched tape (not digital; a mere cassette). No video. Just a voice – capable of sending the markets into a tailspin and the networks into hysteria, spiking the oil bourses in London and New York, resetting the global agenda, unleashing armies of US intelligence analysts scrambling to confirm if the voice is real or fake.

You had totally vanished from the face of the Earth for more than a year. You are the most wanted man in the world. You re-enter the global stage just with your voice, a mere whisper. The simplicity of it. What politician would not dream of such power? – Asia Times Online

…….I again start to wonder what new games does the US plan to experiment on us, as usually a voice tape then leads to new invasion tactics around the world, though this new tape released on 18th Jan appears to be calling for peace, so has the US finally gotten tired of playing the aggressor and is thinking of planning a careful retreat.

What is your analysis of this situation – I personally am sick ‘n tired of seeing Usama being used as a puppet for George Bush’s conquests


Fallujah Massacre

I stand here today stunned at how cruel can the world really get. Why? you might ask, well I just happened to watch the 30 min video of the Fallujah – The Hidden Massacre by the American forces in Iraq. These supreme upholders of the world standard of Human Rights and Democracy have used the Napalm gas (outlawed after Vietnam) to exterminate the insurgent forces.

Mind you the video is horrifying and jaw dropping. This is a report by an Italian TV, who somehow got it out of the censored media in Iraq. People might challenge its authenticity etc etc. but for me watching the video leaves me burning red hot.

Fallujah – The Hidden Massacre


US Army at it Again

Here we go again for another roller coaster tussle between the US and Islamic world. A shocking video documentary that was aired on Australian TV, where it showed US soldiers burning two dead Taliban bodies. This has again shocked the world at how the US Army conducts its operations on foreign land. A few alarming incidents have come to the attention in the past year, the desecration of Quran at Gitmo, the Abu Gharib Prison abuse scandal and now the video footage of US soldiers burning two Taliban soldiers. Sadly its becoming a bad habit of the only self-proclaimed saviours of democracy in the world.

We now await the start of the roller coaster ride which historically is carefully worded statements and soon followed by criminal charges on all the soldiers ‘seen’ in the video. Muslims have been screaming for a long time that these are not isolated and rare incidents as the US Top-brass usually blames, but more of a widespread mentality throughout the US invasions.

The video shot by Australian freelance journalist Stephen Dupont shows soldiers making statement like –“Attention Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs, You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be. You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion and you bring shame upon your family.”

…….It would be sad if this turns into an expertly organised cover-up without putting the entire Army to task in an attempt to root out the problem. I protest, the US being the only super power of the world should not create such examples of such blatant violations of Geneva Convention. God forbid as I would have to start worrying how the illiterate Anti-US forces will react to such mistreatment, you are dealing with people who have never read the Geneva Convention.

I am not supporting a knee-jerk reaction by various Anti-US forces but such incidents by respectable nations is setting a poor example for others to follow suit. Careful! Careful!, United States you are treading dangerous waters by humiliating a nations religious beliefs.

Update @ 2:30pm PST – Read the stupid logic presented by Time – Stench Prompted U.S. Troops to Burn Corpses

I amm on the look out for the actual video footage – if anyone has found the link please forward it to me so we can provide a link for other readers to this blog



AKU Expels 10 Students on Murder Charges Finally

I am sometimes quite hooked onto SA Tribune, for its blunt reporting style, though Shaheen Sehbai the ex-editor of The News is wanted by the Paki Govt because the Danial Pearl video tapes landed on his doorsteps and Shaheen instead of handing the tapes over to the establishment convinently showed up at the US Embassy to present the evidence, for this reason he came on the most wanted list so had to leave Pakistan ASAP. Well placed journalists say his reporting style is unique and is wasting his talents running an Anti-Establishment journal. Enough…. now to the latest disclosure, the report seems to be well investigated even with attached supporting evidence.

A few students of AKU were found to be involved in the murder of a third-year student and one of the accused was the son of a Army Colonel who was also appoitned to the Higher Education Commision and taught at the Army Medical College.

Assad Aftab, a 3rd year student of AKU, was found dead in the Hostel room of another student Zeeshan, son of an Army Colonel, on Sept 16, 2004 in mysterious conditions. When the body was found, family members said the AKU emergency doctors proclaimed it as a “suicide” by “overdose of drugs” and wanted the family to take it away and bury it, without involving the police. When the family refused, police was called and an autopsy was done the same night at the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Center (JPMC).

The autopsy report was not immediately available to the family so they were confused but it clearly showed the cause of death as “Asphyxia due to suffocation” and “overdose of Benzodiazepine”. The report also noted that there were “groove type” marks over both wrists as if the hands had been tied before death.

…… Read more @ SA Tribune

UPDATE 8th May 2005 – Daily Times splashed this news item across Sunday’s newspaper read more @ Dailytimes.com.pk


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