By B. R. GOWANI

Angelic it always makes you feel
When delivering a critical spiel
The rule is: When it’s the other folks
Just use harsh words and don’t coax
Another thing you need to know
The country should be a foe

Iran’s tactic to control and scare
Women, is to stone and use snare
One demoted from stoning to death
Is now counting in jail her breath
Sakineh is accused by the bulls holy
Who treat powerless and weak as lowly

Now enters the First Lady of France
With the useful human rights lance
How can they assign you to this abyss?
“Every part of me refuses to accept this”
No dispute with her regarding this affair
But about French wrongs, does she care?

What does she think of her spouse
Who with Roma behaved like a louse?
Does she feel the immigrants’ pain
Whose neighborhoods are a police reign?
When would she see the ills in France
And stop feigning this virtuous prance?

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

Watch also BBC and France 24

by MICHAEL HOLDEN

(Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.
…
“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

Reuters for more

(Thanks to Arpan Patel)

by WYNNE PARRY

A maternal ancestor to all living humans called mitochondrial Eve likely lived about 200,000 years ago, at roughly the same time anatomically modern humans are believed to have emerged, a new review study confirms.

The results are based on analyses of mitochondrial DNA. Found in the energy-producing centers of cells, mitochondrial DNA is only passed down the maternal line, and can be traced back to one woman.

However, this doesn’t mean she was the first modern woman, rather it indicates that only her descendants survive to the present day.

Live Science for more

(Thanks to reader)

by NAJID HUSSAIN

The celebrated Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan is a man of many ambitions. He was a favorite of Indira Gandhi and then patronized Mulayam Singh Yadav of Samajwadi Party. Lately he agreed to promote himself by working for Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister who masterminded the massacre of Muslims in 2002. A victim of that tragedy appeals to him to be true to the legacy of his secular father, an eminent poet, and desist from serving Modi.

The celebrated Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan is a man of many ambitions. He was a favorite of Indira Gandhi and then patronized Mulayam Singh Yadav of Samajwadi Party. Lately he agreed to promote himself by working for Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister who masterminded the massacre of Muslims in 2002. A victim of that tragedy appeals to him to be true to the legacy of his secular father, an eminent poet, and desist from serving Modi. Read more….

Main hoon unkey saath, rakhte jo seedhi apni reedh… (I am with those who keep their spine straight)

From Madhushala by Harivansh Rai Bachchan

Dear Amitabh,

I remember the day in 1982, when the news of your serious injury on the sets of Coolie broke. It said you may not survive. The country was shocked. Millions cried. Special prayers for your good health and long life were offered in temples, mosques, churches and gurdwaras. I joined the prayers for your health and long life.

The writings of your father, the late Shri Harivansh Rai Bachchan, had a great influence on me. From early childhood, I have read his poetry and prose that combined Kabir, Keats, Tagore, Omar Khayyam and Shakespeare into artful construction of ideas with deep reflections.

INSAF Bulletin for more

(Thanks to Feroz Mehdi)

RUSSIA TV

Iceland is set to give a private army contractor the green light in what critics are calling the most ambitious move by a corporation to perform tasks once reserved for national militaries.
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Few countries have suffered worse from the global crisis than Iceland, an island of 320,000 in the northern extremes of the Atlantic Ocean that was once hailed – due to its commitment to sophisticated, albeit highly risky financial services – as one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world. Those halcyon days are over.

RT for more

by NADIA BERENSTEIN

There is no law in any state in the U.S. restricting condom possession, but if you’re a sex worker, you might have reason to believe there is a legal limit. Law enforcement officers in New York City, Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area routinely confiscate condoms from suspected suspected sex workers, sometimes filing them as evidence of prostitution. Almost everyone interviewed for a recent Sex Workers Project survey, Baskin says, “mentioned a certain number of condoms over which they
felt more concerned about increased harassment.” Cyndee Clay, executive director of D.C.-based Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive, says, “It’s a common enough practice that everyone knows about it.”

Ms. for more

AVAAZ

Life saving relief efforts for Pakistan’s tens of millions of flood victims could be crippled if its government is forced to send abroad a shocking 30% of its annual budget revenues to foreign creditors on debt incurred by previous dictatorships.

Earlier this year, we persuaded creditor governments to drop Haiti’s debt after it was devastated by an earthquake — and now we could do the same for Pakistan.

We need to act fast — right now international financial institutions and donor countries are assessing how to assist Pakistan. Sign this urgent petition to end this stifling debt and send this on to friends, and it will be delivered directly at the highest level to the the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Petition to the IMF and all Pakistan’s creditors:

In the wake of Pakistan’s devastating floods, we call on you to immediately declare a two year moratorium with no interest on all of Pakistan’s debt payments, as a first step to fully cancelling its unjust debt. We also urge you to ensure aid is given in the form of grants not loans.

Please sign the Petition now!

by APRILLE MUSCARA

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 31, 2010 (IPS) – Among its unstable and conflict-ridden neighbours, Rwanda stands out. It has been pegged as a model of development and one of Africa’s success stories: Since the 1990’s, when a civil war ravaged the country, average incomes have doubled, its people have become healthier and less hungry and it has the highest proportion of women parliamentarians worldwide. Yet, maintaining this stability is a government accused of muzzling its opponents and committing human rights abuses.

For the last 16 years, Rwandans have lived under the shadow of the infamous 1994 genocide that eliminated one-tenth of its population in a mere 100 days. During that period, 800,000 ethnic Tutsi along with some peaceful Hutu were systematically murdered at the hands of a violent Hutu regime until Tutsi forces led by current Rwandan president Paul Kagame was able to wrest control.

Inter Press Services for more

Link

by Dr. SAROJINI SAHOO

The entire feminine discourse has been reduced to a grand celebration of infidelity and contemporary Hindi women writers are like prostitutes because they dare to promote female sexuality in their works.

So says Vibhuti Narain Rai, a vice chancellor at the Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University in recently published articles in the Naya Gyanodov Journal and in the Indian Express.

The Naya Gyanoday is a journal of the Jnanpith Trust, which confers the most prestigious Jnanpith awards. Sri Rai is also a member of the panel that chooses the prestigious Jnanpith awards. In this interview, Mr. Rai criticised that women writers of today are competing to prove themselves to become ‘sabse badi chhinal’ and one can find the references of ‘kitne bistaron men kitani baar’ in their work. ‘Naya Gyanoday’ means ‘New Realisation of Knowledge.’

Mr. Rai, and also somehow Mr. Ravindra Kalia, the editor of the journal, prove that for them, their ‘new realisation’ is that repression of female sexuality is more acceptable for men to become themselves more sexually promiscuous. This modern-day double standard may have rather practical roots in their minds where they can use such ‘vulgar’ words to represent their reprehensible behavior. The honourable VC Rai acts in the way the fundamentalists often act. Readers can certainly mark how the socio-political fundamentalist groups often act to save their great cultures.
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by VINAY LAL

Tsutomu Yamaguchi and Charles Donald Albury died within months of each other. The former lived to the ripe old age of 93, and passed away in January this year; the latter died in May last year, at the age of 88. I was reminded of Yamaguchi this month, as the bells tolled, as they do every August 6th and 9th, in remembrance of the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and when, poring through my files, the obituary of Albury came to my notice, I knew at once that their stories had to be told together. There is no other way to tell their stories, even if their lives, and obituaries, have never been linked together.

Yamaguchi and Albury never knew each other; neither was known very much to the outside world, even if their names are, or will be, indelibly sketched in history books in unlikely ways. They ought to have known each other, all the more so since Charles Albury was dispatched to kill not Tsutomu Yamaguchi but the likes of him. We cannot characterize Yamaguchi’s killing as a targeted assassination; some will even balk at calling it a killing, considering that Yamaguchi survived the attempt to eliminate him by close to sixty-five years and, more poignantly, outlived Albury. Indeed, Albury would never have known of Yamaguchi’s existence when he was sent on his mission, and I doubt very much that he knew of him at all before he died. If Albury did know of Yamaguchi, he seems never to have betrayed that knowledge or acted upon it in any way.
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by CARL ZIMMER

I wrote about how life has to evolve within constraints–constraints of physics, development, and history. One of the examples I used was the laryngeal nerve in giraffes. It travels down the giraffe’s neck, takes a U turn, and then heads back up again. It seems ridiculous, but makes sense if you think about how it was laid down in fish without necks…

Link

Discover for more

by BENJAMIN DANGL

Miners in Potosí, Bolivia set off sticks of dynamite as cold winter winds zipped through the city, passing street barricades, protests, hunger strikers and an occupied electrical plant. These actions took place place from late July to mid-August against the perceived neglect of the Evo Morales administration toward the impoverished Potosí region.

This showdown in Bolivia is similar to conflicts across Latin America between the promises of left-leaning governments, the needs of the people and the finite resources of Pachamama (Mother Earth).

Upside Down World for more

by KIM GAMAL

KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq — A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.

Washington Post for more

(Thanks to reader)

by PETER CHAMBERLIN

How could a bunch of “lone wolf” researchers be considered dangerous to the United States? The official explanation given is that we confuse those who hear or read what we have to say, undermining the national unity and trust in government which is necessary to wage war. That is as good an excuse as any to explain why the American people have not rallied around this war of terror. The national unity that politicians whine about was achieved only once in the beginning of this war, before the politicians and the corporations revealed the war for what it has always been–a war to control oil and gas.

There Are No Sun Glasses for more

(Thanks to Ingrid B. Mork)

by SABRINA TAVERNISE

In elite circles, Mr. Dasti is reviled as a thug, a small-time hustler with a fake college degree who represents the worst of Pakistan today. But here, he is hailed as a hero, living proof that in Pakistan, a poor man can get a seat at the rich men’s table.

The New York Times for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

by KELLY OLSEN

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Talk of the global economic recovery fizzling doesn’t faze Cho Byung-cheol, president of a small South Korean technology company that has already set up a branch in China and plans one soon in the United States.

The company, which designs and makes semiconductor-based high-speed data storage and processing equipment, is planning to boost its South Korean workforce of nearly 60 by half, says Cho, who founded Seoul-based Taejin Infotech Co. in 1996. Sales, which totaled only 8.4 billion won ($7 million) last year, could swell fourfold this year and reach 100 billion won next year, he predicts.

Yahoo for more

(Thanks to reader)

by WILLIAM BLUM

Link

Things which don’t go away. Things the American government and media don’t let go of.
And neither do I.

Iraq

“They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts,” declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. ¹

It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.

Enough to make him forget.

But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured … the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up … an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.
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by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Thirty years ago, fewer than 350,000 people were held in prisons and jails in the United States. Today, the number of prisoners in the United States exceeds 2,000,000. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics concludes that the chance of a black male born in 2001 of going to jail is 32 per cent, or 1 in three. Black boys are five times as likely as white boys to go to jail. Former prisoners are permanently relocated on society’s margins, these days some 5 million of them, denied the right to vote in most states. Professor Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow argues convincingly that we have a purposeful system of mass incarceration, with blacks as the prime victims.

Counterpunch for more

SPIEGEL ONLINE

Are Muslim immigrants a drag on German prosperity? A new book by provocateur Thilo Sarrazin, a board member of the German central bank, argues that they are. His over-the-top comments have triggered yet another debate on immigration in the country.
…
In the interview, which appeared in the cultural magazine Lettre International, he also said that “a large number of Arabs and Turks in (Berlin) … have no productive function other than in the fruit and vegetable trade.” In the same interview, he claimed that the Turks were “conquering Germany … through a higher birthrate.”

Spiegel Online for more

by DINYAR GODREJ

The jackboot of the rich world is quite effective. At the end of 2008, these were the percentages of refugees in the total population: in Canada – 0.23 per cent, the US – 0.06 per cent, Britain – 0.05 per cent, and Australia – 0.05 per cent. Hardly the resource-devouring, culture-swamping flood that the rightwing press shouts about. In total, if all nations where the per capita income is over $10,000 are put together, they host a mere 9 per cent of the world’s refugees. Countries like Brazil and Ecuador make a much better fist of dealing with refugees – settling their claims promptly and not denying them the right to work to support themselves.

New Internationalist for more

by Mark Weisbrot

From 1960-1980, income per person — the most basic measure that economists have of economic progress — in Brazil grew by about 123 percent. From 1980 to 2000, it grew by less than 4 percent, and since 2000 it has grown by about 24 percent. It would difficult to exaggerate the importance of this economic “regime change.” Of course, economic growth is not everything, but in a developing country it is a prerequisite for most of the social progress that most people would like to see.

Monthly Review Zine for more

Check Out My Leggings from Indelible Dance on Vimeo.

via 3 Quarks Daily

by LIN EDWARDS

A senior astronomer with the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, Dr Seth Shostak, has reported in an article published online that perhaps we should be seeking alien “life forms” that are thinking machines instead of concentrating the search on biological life forms.

Physorg for more

by BEENA SARWAR

When India generously offered $5 million to Pakistan, cyberspace and media pundits exploded with negative comments. From Pakistan came comments like: “Too little too late” and “Pakistan should not accept because of the bloodbath in Kashmir”. From India came: “The PM should withdraw the offer if Pakistan doesn’t immediately accept it”, and “India should not offer aid to Pakistan because they sponsor terrorism”.

It is to the credit of both governments that they did not succumb to this pressure.

Meanwhile, Indians at home and abroad, as well as others, are increasingly stepping up on a private level to help out with flood relief efforts in Pakistan.

Aman ki Asha for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

NEW AGE

The foreign minister, Dipu Moni, has said the government is ready to offer nationality to thousands of Urdu-speaking people mostly languishing in refugee camps as ‘stranded Pakistanis’ since Bangladesh’s emergence in 1971.

New Age for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

by SOUTH ASIAN MEDIA NET

But in Peshawar, considered the gateway to Afghanistan, traders in the busy bylanes of its bustling markets continued to put up signboards stating ‘Indian dress material available’. Shopkeepers here say without the signboards, not many buyers walk in. Because of the ban, Indian textiles reached Pakistan’s markets through the tedious route of first being exported to Afghanistan and then smuggled into Pakistan on horseback.

South Asian Media Net for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

by BINDU SHAJAN PERAPPADAN

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

“The film captures many `firsts-on-film’, including Dalits being forced to dismount from their cycles and remove their shoes when in the upper caste part of the village. It exposes the continuation of caste practices and untouchability in Sikhism, Christianity and Islam, among the Communists in Kerala, and within some of India’s most revered academic and professional institutions,” said Stalin.

The Hindu for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

SURVIVAL

In the early 1980s, diamonds were discovered in the reserve. Soon after, government ministers went into the reserve to tell the Bushmen living there that they would have to leave because of the diamond finds.

In three big clearances, in 1997, 2002 and 2005, virtually all the Bushmen were forced out. Their homes were dismantled, their school and health post were closed, their water supply was destroyed and the people were threatened and trucked away.

They now live in resettlement camps outside the reserve. Rarely able to hunt, and arrested and beaten when they do, they are dependent on government handouts. They are now gripped by alcoholism, boredom, depression, and illnesses such as TB and HIV/AIDS.

Survival for more

by CARLOS OSORIO and MARIANNA ENAMONETA, with CLARA ALDRIGHI

Washington, D.C., August 11, 2010 – Documents posted by the National Security Archive on the 40th anniversary of the death of U.S. advisor Dan Mitrione in Uruguay show the Nixon administration recommended a “threat to kill [detained insurgent] Sendic and other key [leftist insurgent] MLN prisoners if Mitrione is killed.” The secret cable from U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, made public here for the first time, instructed U.S. Ambassador Charles Adair: “If this has not been considered, you should raise it with the Government of Uruguay at once.”

The National Security Archive for more

by COLLIN HARRIS

A reminder of the backdrop against which NAFTA was implemented is crucial for understanding the broader implications for both Mexico and the United States. The globalization campaign, of which NAFTA is one stage, had been met with popular protest and mass resistance all over the world. Popular movements against the corporatist crusade to globalize the doctrines of “laissez-faire” began in the global South, eventually penetrating the affluent core of the global economy and climaxing (as of yet) in mass protests against the pillars of the global economic order in Seattle. Similarly, NAFTA was implemented in spite of general public opposition. Typically, dissent and thoughtful criticism of the expected consequences of NAFTA were silenced in the United States, with rare but revealing exceptions. As President Salinas toured the U.S. explaining why NAFTA would set Mexico on a path toward first-world status, an analysis by the Office of Technology Assessment, a research bureau of Congress, concluded that NAFTA would likely harm the majority of the North American population. Negotiations moved forward with this well in mind. In the New York Times, hardly hostile to state and corporate power, Tim Golden reported, “Economists predict that several million Mexicans will probably lose their jobs in the first five years after the accord takes effect.”

ALAI for more

by VINAY LAL

(Here is Part I)

One of the most notable elements in the public discourse on the proposed Islamic Center in lower Manhattan, which is conceived as a multistory building of which the mosque will constitute one part, is the extraordinary and troublesome ease with which it came to be characterized as the “Ground Zero Mosque”. The association of ‘mosque’ with ‘ground zero’ informs all arguments emanating from those who have voiced their opposition to this project, just as it becomes the pretext for rendering this ‘Ground Zero’ as “hallowed” ground. Some supporters of the project, and even those who might profess indifference to the entire controversy, have observed quite rightly that the Islamic center and mosque is in fact two city blocks away from ‘Ground Zero’. But such an argument presupposes that opponents of the proposed Islamic Center are interested in, and willing to be persuaded by, facts. If one were interested in facts, one could point to many more that are pertinent to this discussion: at least two churches – St. Paul’s Chapel, which dates to 1766, and the Church of St. Peter, in what is described as “New York’s oldest parish” — exist in closer proximity to ‘Ground Zero’ than the proposed mosque. The supposition that adherents of Islam wish to claim ‘Ground Zero’ solely for their own faith is nothing short of preposterous. But none of this is very germane, since such controversies are never at all about ‘facts’.

If the numerical table begins with zero, let us likewise also commence with ‘ground zero’ and the implications of rendering this as ‘hallowed ground’. The term ‘ground zero’ is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “that part of the ground situated immediately under an exploding bomb, esp. an atomic one.” The OED has traced the first occurrence of the phrase to an article appearing in the New York Times on 7 July 1946 (p. E10), wherein it was stated, apropos of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, that “the intense heat of the blast started fires as far as 3,500 feet from ground zero”; as a further illustration of how the phrase has been deployed, it points to the September 1955 of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: “There was no noticeable contamination even at ground zero at Hiroshima.” We can see that the OED’s stress on “esp[ecially] an atomic” bomb, to describe the impact on the ground situated directly underneath an exploding bomb, is not misplaced. Now, within hours of the attack upon the Twin Towers, the phrase ‘ground zero’ began to be used by American reporters: the intent, it is reasonable to infer, was to suggest that that the destruction of the World Trade Center (and a portion of the Pentagon) was America’s Hiroshima (and Nagasaki).
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APITCHATPONG WEERESATHAKUL talks to CHRISTINA NORD

It is about remembering – is there a political dimension to remembering?

In Thailand, yes. Because of the manufacturing of memory. Or rather the things you are not allowed to remember. “Primitive Project” was set in Nabua in Northeast Thailand. It is a village that was occupied by communist insurgents and also by the government. So it was at the centre of a conflict.

… without wanting to be?

Exactly. The people were forced become communists. If they got stopped by the police and asked whether they had seen any communists and they said no, they would be beaten up. And if they said yes, I am a communist, they would be killed immediately. So they had no choice but to go into the jungle and become communists. This started in the ’60s and went on until the early ’80s. And no one wants to remember it today.

Sight and Sign for more

by LARRY GREENEMEIER

CyberKnife and other noninvasive radiosurgery systems are producing ever more accurate energy beams, raising the possibility of extending the use of potentially lethal radiation to fight Parkinson’s, epilepsy and other afflictions

Targeted beams of high-intensity radiation can shrink early-stage tumors with limited collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue. The addition of robotics and image guidance systems in recent years has made these stereotactic, or directed beam, radiosurgery systems an even more versatile weapon against cancer, attacking not only brain tumors (for which they were originally designed) but also other diseases virtually anywhere in the body.

Scientific American for more

by VINAY LAL

“A bulldozer demolishes a Roma camp in Villeneuve d’Ascq, near Lille, as part of the French government’s immigration strategy.” PHOTO/Luc Moleux/Reuters/Guardian

Some 150 years after the French Revolution, Chairman Mao was asked what he thought of that watershed moment in modern history. Mao is reported to have said, ‘It’s too early to tell’! Mao has been credited with many things, but his sardonic wit has been underestimated. What might he have had in mind? That a revolution devours its own children is something about which Mao would have known a thing or two. Could it be that the promise of the French Revolution had never been fulfilled? Whatever liberties the revolution brought to France, it diminished neither the appetite for colonies among the French nor their bloodthirstiness in suppressing the aspirations for freedom among others. Toussaint Louverture and the Haitians were among the first to be brought to the brutal awareness that ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’ were intended to enrich the lives of not all humans but only those who pompously declared themselves custodians of civilization.

The French are at it again: when they are not purifying their language, or congratulating themselves for their supposed refinements – from wines and perfumes to lingerie and fashions — they are busy engaging in ethnic cleansing. Their attention has now turned to the Roma. Well might it be said that they scarcely have a monopoly on this exercise, what with Americans flying repeated sorties over the last few decades over Cambodia, Vietnam, Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan, to mention only some of the darker nations which have experienced the terror of American bombing, but of course no country has such fanciful ideas about its own ‘civilization’ as do the French. The French have never been short of overweening pride: the law of February 23 2005, before it was repealed by President Jacques Chirac in early 2006, stipulated that ‘school courses should recognise in particular the positive role of the French presence overseas, notably in north Africa.’ Even as the French National Assembly was pushing through this odious piece of legislation, the heavy hand of the state was coming down upon young men of North African origin who are largely viewed as inassimilable to French society.
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by AHMED RASHID

THERE IS perhaps no other political-military elite in the world whose aspirations for great-power regional status, whose desire to overextend and outmatch itself with meager resources, so outstrips reality as that of Pakistan. If it did not have such dire consequences for 170 million Pakistanis and nearly 2 billion people living in South Asia, this magical thinking would be amusing.

This is a country that sadly appears on every failing-state list and still wants to increase its arsenal from around 60 atomic weapons to well over 100 by buying two new nuclear reactors from China. This is a country isolated and friendless in its own region, facing unprecedented homegrown terrorism from extremists its army once trained, yet it pursues a “forward policy” in Afghanistan to ensure a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul as soon as the Americans leave.

For a state whose economy is on the skids and dependent on the IMF for massive bailouts, whose elite refuse to pay taxes, whose army drains an estimated 20 percent of the country’s annual budget, Pakistan continues to insist that peace with India is impossible for decades to come. For a country that was founded as a modern democracy for Muslims and non-Muslims alike and claims to be the bastion of moderate Islam, it has the worst discriminatory laws against minorities in the Muslim world and is being ripped apart through sectarian and extremist violence by radical groups who want to establish a new Islamic emirate in South Asia.

The National Interest for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

Link

BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION

“Ms Ariyawathie (left) was deeply traumatised, doctors said.” “Doctors say this X-ray shows nails embedded in the housemaid’s hand.”

Doctors have removed 13 nails and five needles from a Sri Lankan housemaid who said her employer in Saudi Arabia hammered them into her body.

LP Ariyawathie, 49, told staff at Kamburupitiya Hospital her employer inflicted the injuries as a punishment.

BBC for more

(Thanks to Salim Amersi)

Grit TV

by KRIS KOTARSKI

Last week, business and technology journal Fast Company reported that a U.S. company named Global Rainmakers Inc. is embarking on a grand techno-fascist project in Leon, Mexico, where it will roll out iris-scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.”

When the million-plus residents of Leon go to the bank, get on a bus or walk into a medical clinic, their eyes will be scanned by machines that can handle up to 50 people per minute in motion, automatically entering the information into a central database monitored by the police.

Calgary Herald for more

via 3 Quarks Daily

by JOHN BRADDOCK

The legislation extends to all newly hired workers a 90-day “trial period” during which they can be sacked for no reason and without recourse. The measure was imposed in March last year for workplaces with fewer than 20 workers but will now cover every worksite in the country. According to Labour Department figures, 22 percent of workers recruited under the initial phase had been dismissed within the 90-day period. Extending the provision means it can apply to more than 400,000 workers who start new jobs every year.

World Socialist Web Site for more

SOUTH ASIAN MEDIA NET

Despite the hurdles, the next generation is expected to see even more women thrive in the work force. Several South Asian countries, including India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, have achieved gender parity at the primary school level, according to the World Bank. In Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, gender parity has reached the secondary school level. In India, women make up more than 40 percent of the students at engineering colleges, the steppingstones to stable, middle-class jobs, according to the Indian government. In the mid-1980s, no more than 8 percent of engineering college students in India were women.

South Asian Media Net for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

by PATRICIA COHEN

Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience.

The New York Times for more

by B. R. GOWANI

In the year 2008 of Our Lord
When I entered the presidential race
12% people alleged that I’m a Muslim

And in March 2009
The people who believed I’m Muslim
remained almost the same, that is, 11%

But by then had faded from people’s memory
Reverend Jeremiah Wright
Perhaps Allah willed it so

When it was August 2010
The number alleging this fallacy had risen
To an impressive 18%

In 2011, the rumors went bullish
As the numbers shot high
And attained about 50%

Now it is 1433 of the year of the Hijra*
The polls finally declared me a Muslim
A whopping 67% believes in my non-Christian-ness

Forced conversions do happen, I know
But this is the first poll-conversion
Not Muslims, but Christians, have made me a Muslim!

I should have accepted the Godly verdict
Issued back in 2010 by that Religious-seeds analyst from
Godsanto Corporation

My Party disqualified me
From contesting the second term
Because my Muslim-ness was a liability

Republicans refused to accept me in their party
And I couldn’t dare run as an independent
Because many of my contributors shunned me

Unfortunately, the year 1433 (AH) is also the year 2012 (CE)
Neither has the time stopped nor the world ended
But for me it was the Day of Judgment

I was left with only two choices:
Move to a Muslim country or join CI
I joined Cordoba Initiative as an Imam

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

*Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar and originated with the migration or hijrah of Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE.

by DOMINIQUE MOISI

Former Prime Minister Michel Rocard did not mince words about Sarkozy’s recent proposals to strip foreign-born French nationals of their citizenship if convicted of threatening the life of a police officer, practicing polygamy, or female “circumcision.” “One has not seen such measures since the Vichy regime or since the Nazis,” Rocard declared. Equating Sarkozy with Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime is, of course, an exaggeration, but Rocard’s concerns are shared by many French – and not only intellectuals and pundits.
…
To stigmatize immigrants, Muslims in particular, or to destroy the camps in which Roma live, is a much easier task, even if it reveals the truly opportunistic and amoral nature of both Sarkozy and those who surround him.

Project Syndicate for more

by CARLY SILVER

Foreign religions grew rapidly in the 1st-century A.D. Roman Empire, including worship of Jesus Christ, the Egyptian goddess Isis, and an eastern sun god, Mithras

Greco-Roman religious scholar Luther Martin says that Mithraism remained de-centralized throughout the Empire. Its contemporary, Christianity, got its central administration from St. Paul, who derived it from Judaism. Both it and Mithraism “were…pretty much locally controlled affairs,” he says, though Christian communities did “come together as a coherent institution…after Constantine.”

In later years, Christian commentators recognized similarities between Mithraic and Christian rites and were quick to condemn them. In Chapter 70 of Dialogue with Trypho, the 2nd-century Christian author Justin Martyr writes that Mithras’s worship in a cave and his “rock birth”–a frequent depiction of the god, emerging from a stone–is taken from Daniel 2:34 and Isaiah 33. The Mithraists “have no understanding” of these Scriptures, says Justin.

Archaeology for more

by TOBIN HARSHAW

Time’s poll dealt with Islam more broadly:

Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim. In all, just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim.

The New York Times for more

by AMITAVA KUMAR

On August 24 in New York City, around 6 p.m., a driver named Ahmed H. Sharif picked up a fare at East 24th Street and Second Avenue. The passenger was 21-year-old Michael Enright, who asked the cabbie a question that has now been heard around the world: “Are you a Muslim?” When the driver said yes, the passenger first greeted him in Arabic and then said, “Consider this a checkpoint.” Enright pulled out a knife and, in the words of an assistant district attorney, slashed the cabbie’s “neck open halfway across his throat.” Sharif managed to lock his attacker in the car, but he soon escaped. Enright was later arrested; both he and his victim were taken to the same hospital.

Later, Sharif released a statement via the New York Taxi Workers Alliance: “I feel very sad. I have been here more than 25 years. I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before,” said Mr. Sharif. “Right now, the public sentiment is very serious (because of the Ground Zero Mosque debate). All drivers should be more careful.”

Vanity Fair for more

BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION

Police say they struck a deal equivalent to more than $250,000 (£159,000) for the 20-year-old man.

Albino body parts are prized in parts of Africa, with witchdoctors claiming they have special powers. The Tanzanian government has promised to take action.

BBC for more

by HAMID KHAN

Dear Friends, Hope all’s well. Please join The Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance – LATWA on Saturday August 28th at 6 PM in a celebration of courage, resistance and resilience. Please share this widely and lets send a loud message to the corrupt and exploitative taxicab companies and their sleazy lobbyists who have engaged in self dealing for too long all under the City’s watch that No More Business As Usual. Please help us make this a huge success. Hope to see everyone there.

YOU ARE INVITED TO A FUNDRAISER TO CELEBRATE MILESTONES
LOS ANGELES TAXI WORKERS ALLIANCE
SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 2010
6 P.M. to 9 P.M.
ST. MARY’S ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
5707 SHENANDOAH AVE.
LOS ANGELES, CA. 90056
RSVP to Sentayehu Silassie: 323.376.9703 or
silassie@att.net
Tickets @ $25 driver rate
$40 non-driver rate
Please make checks payable to:
LATWA
5208 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90019

(Thanks to Asad Zaidi)

Link

(Thanks to Mansoor Sharif)

by CAHAL MILMO

Duo prepare to launch £41,000 rocket that will eventually fly one of them 100km high

The Soviet Union gave the world cosmonauts, America followed with astronauts and China eventually added its own Sinonauts. If all goes to plan on a floating platform in the Baltic sea during the next three weeks, a 63cm-wide rocket hand-built by two self-employed engineers will herald the unlikely arrival of a new breed of space pioneers – the Danonauts.

The Independent for more

by MUMBI NGUGI

“The Tanzanian government has promised action to protect albinos.” PHOTO/AFP/The Post Online

For those of us born with albinism in East Africa, and for the many fathers and mothers of children with albinism, the last three years have been a never-ending nightmare.

As though the card that nature dealt us was not hard enough to deal with, we now have to live in fear of people who believe that killing us and using our limbs for witchcraft will bring them great wealth.

We have to battle skin cancer because we do not have melanin, yet most of us cannot get adequate education, and even if we do, getting employment is a major challenge. So we end up working in the sun, as farmers or hawkers, and die before our 30th birthday.

We have to deal with a society that is largely silent about our plight, and media that refuse to find a way of referring to us in ways that can bring to the fore our humanity, rather than our genetic condition.

All Africa for more

by NILANJANA S. ROY

NEW DELHI — The numbers are in dispute, but the story they tell has remained the same for four decades: 200,000 women (or 300,000, or 400,000, depending on the source) raped during the 1971 war in which East Pakistan broke with West Pakistan to become Bangladesh.

The American feminist Susan Brownmiller, quoting all three sets of statistics in her 1975 book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,” compared the rapes of Bangladesh with the rapes of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers at Nanjing in 1937-38.

The New York Times for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

by VINAY LAL

Nearly all the fundamental questions that might animate anyone interested in what I would call ‘the question of America’ seem implicated in the swirling controversy that has arisen over the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in lower Manhattan. As much as any other place in the world, the history of the United States is inextricably interwoven with the narratives of immigrant groups. Muslims are, for the most part, among the more recent of the immigrants who have made their way to the United States, furnishing the latest challenge to those who insist that America remains the ultimate haven of religious freedom. Are the Muslims as welcome in the US as the adherents of any other religion? If so, what arouses the passions of those Americans who, to put it mildly, feel resentful about the proposed installation of an Islamic center and mosque at what is called ‘Ground Zero’? If not, does that tell us something about the limitations of religious freedom in the US and expose the grand lie that the freedom of religious belief and practice is the most venerable of all the freedoms, real or imagined, to which America is said to give unrivalled expression?

There are other prior questions: are immigrants from Indonesia, the Gulf states, North Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and many other parts of the world which are predominantly Islamic to be viewed first as Muslims and then as being immigrants from those countries? If, as is apparently the case, the answer is in the affirmative, is that because (say) Indonesian or Pakistani Muslims themselves insist that their principal identity is as Muslims, or is it because in the United States, as in most of the West, it is fondly imagined that religion is the fundamental and most irreducible part of an identity in what is characterized as the Muslim world? Was it not the ‘Muslim world’ that Obama addressed last year, and can one imagine a Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist leader addressing the ‘Christian world’? Why is it even that the ‘Muslim world’ comes so effortlessly to the tongue of most people, including those we suppose are intelligent and even leaders of free societies, but that the phrase ‘Christian world’ would strike the same people, even when they are observant Christians, as awkward?
Read the rest of this entry »

by KATLA MCGLYNN

Stewart showed clips from his show last week, in which he mocked Fox News for playing a dangerous game of association based on speculation, and wherein Fox continued to mention a nameless man with ties to Imam Rauf through the “Kingdom Foundation.” It turns out the man they are referring to but never name is Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the biggest shareholders of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Huffington Post for more and to WATCH VIDEO

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

Avaaz.org’s Ricken Patel on BBC World’s HARDtalk from lee-sean on Vimeo.

by RAJA MURTHY

MUMBAI – Webster, Oxford and other dictionary merchants are yet to define “mango diplomacy”, but when that day dawns the origins of the term would be sub-continental, with Pakistan and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh featuring as its pioneers.

Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani sent Manmohan a gift of five crates of mangoes on August 20, marking perhaps the most significant fruit delivery in South Asia. Relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbors had plunged so low that the Pakistani government took over a week to decide whether or not to accept from India US$5 million of urgently needed aid, despite over 20 million of its people struggling for survival in one of most devastating floods in recent times.

Asia Times for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

KUENSEL ONLINE

Buddha Air 23 August, 2010 – When one of Nepal’s private airlines, Buddha air touches down at Paro airport today, the country’s 29 year old commercial aviation industry will be welcoming its first foreign airline that will operate commercial air services to Bhutan.

Kuensel for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

WORLD SCIENCE

Just a few weeks of over­eat­ing may af­fect your weight and fat stor­age years lat­er—even if you lost the weight you in­i­tially added, sci­en­tists are re­port­ing.

A study pub­lished in the re­search jour­nal Nu­tri­tion & Me­tab­o­lism found that a four-week ep­i­sode of in­creased en­er­gy in­take and de­creased ex­er­cise can cause high­er weight and fat mass more than two years lat­er.

World Science for more

by GAVAN MCCORMACK

For those pondering the decline of American hegemony and rise of East Asia, recent events in Japan offer food for thought. In August 2009 the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan won a landslide election victory with a swing of over 11 per cent against the Liberal Democratic Party which had ruled almost continuously since 1955. Hatoyama Yukio, the new Prime Minister, had set out a new course for the country. ‘As a result of the failure of the Iraq war and the financial crisis, the era of us-led globalization is coming to an end’, he argued. ‘We are moving towards an era of multipolarity’:

The recent economic crisis resulted from a way of thinking based on the idea that American-style free-market economics represents a universal and ideal economic order, and that all countries should modify the traditions and regulations governing their economies in line with global (or rather American) standards. But globalization has progressed without any regard for non-economic values, or for environmental issues or problems of resource restriction.

The financial crisis, Hatoyama continued, ‘has also raised doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency’. In this context, Japan ‘must not forget our identity as a nation located in Asia’:

I believe that the East Asian region, which is showing increasing vitality, must be recognized as Japan’s basic sphere of being . . . We should aspire to move toward regional currency integration as a natural extension of the rapid economic growth . . . We must spare no effort to build the permanent security frameworks essential to underpinning currency integration. [1]

New Left Review for more

CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH

The piece begins by telling readers that: “THIS YEAR, for the first time since 1983, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives from payroll taxes — $41 billion. This development is not an emergency, but it is a warning sign (emphasis in original).” It certainly is a warning sign. The falloff in Social Security tax revenue is a warning that the economy is seriously depressed due to the collapse of the housing bubble. Double digit unemployment leads to all sorts of problems, including the strains that it places on pension funds like Social Security.

CEPR for more

You Tube

via TED

by KATHERINE BOUTON

“Delusions of Gender” [by Dr. Cordelia Fine] takes on that tricky question, Why exactly are men from Mars and women from Venus?, and eviscerates both the neuroscientists who claim to have found the answers and the popularizers who take their findings and run with them.
…
Sometimes all it takes is their own words, as in this example from Dr. Brizendine’s 2007 book “The Female Brain”: “Maneuvering like an F-15, Sarah’s female brain is a high-performance emotion machine — geared to tracking, moment by moment, the nonverbal signals of the innermost feelings of others.” Is Sarah some kind of psychic? Dr. Fine clarifies: “She is simply a woman who enjoys the extraordinary gift of mind reading that, apparently, is bestowed on all owners of a female brain.”

The New York Times for more

SOUTH ASIAN MEDIA NET

DHAKA: A Bangladesh court has ruled that people cannot be forced to wear skull caps, veils or other religious clothing in workplaces, schools and colleges.

The ruling came after reports that a college in the north had forced students to wear veils.

The high court also ruled that women cannot be prevented from taking part in sports or cultural activities.

South Asian Media Net for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

50 Years of  New Left review 1960-2010

In NLR 64, July–August 2010

Gavan McCormack: practical lessons in world hegemony, as Japan’s attempt to strike an independent course and shift a US base from Okinawa is cut down by the Obama Administration.

Adolfo Gilly recalls his life as a roving agitator and writer, traversing 20th-century Latin American and European revolutionary movements.

Sabry Hafez surveys the slums of Cairo, and their homology in a striking new genre of narrative fiction.

Mark Elvin compares attitudes to the natural world in classical Chinese and European poetry.

Slavoj Zizek on the Eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis and the possibilities for an internationalist response.

Peter Nolan and Jin Zhang assess the comparative weight of China’s largest firms and Western multinationals.

Fredric Jameson considers the aesthetics of the new globalised Wagnerian Regieoper.

Book Reviews

Jacob Collins on Regis Debray, Le moment fraternite. Can radical bonds of fraternity be forged in an atomized world?

Gregor McLennan on Terry Eagleton, Trouble with Strangers and Reason, Faith, and Revolution. Jesus and Lacan join forces in an ethics of revolutionary goodness.

Michael Hardt on Michel Foucault, Le gouvernement de soi et des autres and Le courage de la verite. Final meditations on militant life.

by PETER ROBSON

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to revoke the Northern Territory intervention that discriminates against Indigenous communities, as the Australian government tries to justify its continuation to the United Nations (UN).

On August 5, Amnesty said: “Over three years, the Northern Territory Emergency Response has taken away many rights from Aboriginal communities.”

Green Left for more

by ASGHAR VASANWALA

As we know, Pakistan-flood has its 20 million victims. This disaster is unprecedented. When we see TV images we find that Government relief is in utter chaos and feel 63 years in independence how the Pakistani state has failed in providing the basic needs of its citizens. When you see similar floods in China, Chinese Government’s and its people’s response is in stark contrast.

Pakistan’s 20 million people need your help for surviving. They need food and water right now. You can send it free from anywhere in world, through PIA, the Pakistani Air line. Please click following video link regarding how to pack food and water. Please call PIA. Feeding the hungry is a great humanitarian deed.

Link

by AMMAR ALI JAN

For over three decades, all the mass movements witnessed in Pakistan have revolved around individuals. The most classic example is of the Pakistan National Alliance’s (PNA) movement against Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Pakistani politics was clearly divided into two camps: pro-Bhutto and anti-Bhutto. The PNA was a bizarre alliance that included right-wing Mullahs, communists from the National Awami Party (NAP) and liberals such as Asghar Khan. The only issue that united them was their hatred for Bhutto, and since there was little emphasis on a positive alternative, they only managed to pave way for the military takeover by General Zia. And we know how well that turned out to be!

The News for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar; his comments: ” Thank Goodness the cheesy Zardari jokes and the venom have begun to subside. Children you can relax now, the class will begin…….”)

by LAYLA ANWAR

Painting by Betool Fekaiki.

Postscript. I have not used that word in ages…

A postscript — there is a script and there is a post script, another script that comes after the main script…

What I retain is the word – script.

I have affinities with this word – script. Maybe because deep down I believe we are all living out a script…a personal script, a collective script…and I don’t understand how come no one has ever paid attention to the script…

An Arab Woman Blues for more

by AMY GOODMAN

Hamdani was later praised by President George W. Bush as a hero and mentioned by name in the USA Patriot Act. But that was not how he was portrayed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. In October, his parents went to Mecca to pray for their son. While they were away, the New York Post and other media outlets portrayed Hamdani as a possible terrorist on the run. “MISSING—OR HIDING? MYSTERY OF THE NYPD CADET FROM PAKISTAN” screamed the Post headline. The sensational article noted that someone fitting Hamdani’s description had been seen near the Midtown Tunnel a full month after 9/11. His family was interrogated. Hamdani’s Internet use and politics were investigated.

Truth Dig for more

via Z Net

by JASON DITZ

It is now 10 days since the Turkish government American journalist Jake Hess for “terrorist links.” The 25 year old Hess, who works for Inter Press Services (IPS) and whose writings have appeared at antiwar.com, is still being held without charges and the Turkish Interior Ministry has still not approved his deportation.

Anti War for more

by ALEX ABUTU AUGUSTINE

Africa is a step closer to setting up its own space agency, with the approval of a planned feasibility study by the 53 member states of the African Union earlier this month.

The African Space Agency, as it would be known, would be intended to help ensure the continent becomes an important player in the global space programme.

Science and Development Network for more

CANDIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

Young B.C. sex offenders were subjected to controversial testing with a genital measuring device for more than two decades, despite regular concerns from within government.

Government officials, clinicians and researchers within the B.C. Children and Family Development Ministry were often at odds over the continued testing with a genital sensor device designed to measure arousal rates.

CBC for more

by AYESHA SIDDIQA

Looking at the devastation caused by the floods, it seems that God may have joined the CIA or RAW. The torrential rainfall, which brought the worst floods in the last 80 years in the territory today called Pakistan, must be the work of a god who seems to have defected to the other side.

This idea is probably as ridiculous as similar suggestions about the flood being man-made and probably the work of India, Afghanistan or the CIA who want to take control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding the fact that the worth of nuclear weapons for security against the threat we face is overrated, such theories basically demonstrate part of the larger farce which seems to be playing out in this country after the natural disaster.

Let Us Build Pakistan for more

Link

by VINAY LAL

Link

“A Dialogue with Edward Said” March 5, 2003
Midnights Children Festival Events
Moderated by Akeel Bilgrami

JUMP TO:
(0:00) Intro of Segment and Akeel Bilgrami, moderator.
(2:29) Trajectory of Salman Rushdie’s writing
(11:47) What was the impact of “Midnight’s Children” on writers in the middle east?
(15:18) Does “Midnight’s Children” accurately capture the legacy of colonial rule in India?
(17:30) Were the hopes of ex-colonized people ever really redeemed with the coming of independence?
(21:04) Rushdie’s book “Shame” emphasizes tremendous corruption among leaders in the context of being colonized, who true does that ring for you?
(26:14) The importance in Rushdie’s work of having a genuine understanding of history
(29:41) Forcastings and interplay between “Satanic Verses” and “Midnight’s Children”
(32:37) Rushdie seems to be saying that there is something tyrannical about fundamentalist Islam that must be fought, even with a war if necessary.
(37:28) Yet most muslims aren’t like that. Still they find it difficult to openly and strongly criticize the fundamentalists in their midst even then they oppose them. How can these people gain the confidence to do that? Don’t Rushdie’s stances make this more difficult?
(45:39) How should we think and live with hope in the face of such gross and powerful mis-representation in the world politically?
(52:39) Audience Questions: What are your views and Rushdie’s views about how Kashmir ought to be handled going forward?
(54:30) Please elaborate on Richard Perle’s advisement of Netanyahu about new policies in 1996.
(1:02:11) What influence have Rushdie’s writings had on people in places where colonialism is further in the past?
(1:07:30) Has any of Rushdie’s work been translated into any of the Indian languages or Arabic?
(1:09:18) Does the fact that Rushdie has a somewhat distanced relationship form experiencing the kind of multiculturalism that he’s advocating
make it easier for him to take that position?
(1:13:13) Rushdie’s view that Islam has been captured by the worst elements of dogmatism and fanaticism.
(1:19:56) How would you say that Rushdie continues the tradition set forth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez of magical realism and national allegory?
(1:22:26) What do you see as the further of Islam in the west in the post 9/11 and how can muslims proliferate a progressive division of Islam that respects human rights and a culture of democracy in the muslim world?

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

by HABIBA HAMID

One of the first things my mother did was recognize the talents of a teacher who grew to become one of our closest family friends. Aisha Abdullah is a tall, African American convert to Islam with a heavy southern drawl. Her stoicism and imposing calm got her appointed as headmistress in a Manarat school in Jeddah, where she ran a tight ship.

Dilettantes threatened her career and played the race card like it was going out of fashion. But she would have none of it. She wasn’t chosen for her political savvy or ability to pander to a brash set of royals. But Mrs. Aisha, as many still refer to her even after all these years, could and did face down and discipline scores of spoilt children.

Manarat sought to demolish ideas of wealth, class, race and nationality in an egalitarian project which mixed expatriates from Africa, Asia and Europe with Saudi nationals, with classes in both English and Arabic. Schools across Saudi Arabia, from Al-Khobar to Jeddah, were built from the ground up with white-washed walls and cool marble floors. The daughters of laborers were taught alongside royals irrespective of race, class and wealth.

The Daily Star for more

SANSAD

Four hundred and ninetytwo Tamil men, women, and children, including some pregnant women have arrived in Vancouver, BC, after several months on the sea aboard the modified cargo ship, Sun Sea. They are being held in custody while the Immigration and Refugee Board hears their claims for refugee status.

Processing of claims for refugee status should be a routine matter, performed according to international law governing refugees and currently established law and practice in Canada. But the arrival of Tamil refugees on the Sun Sea has been surrounded by fear-mongering and racism by the Government of Canada through its spokesman, Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews. The Government of Canada has chosen to frame the arrival of these unfortunate people to our shores in desperate quest of safety as “terrorist” and “criminal”, the two words most likely to resonate with a public fed daily on fear from these sources. The refugees being Tamil are assumed to be terrorists, and the people who enabled them to come are assumed criminals, “people smugglers,” who have profited enormously from this trade. Adding more fuel to the fear and hate he has generated, Minister Toews has cast this as a “test case,” since he sees hordes of refugees waiting to invade our shores depending on the outcome of these hearings. The responsibility of the Immigration and Refugee Board to act in a manner that is according to the law, fair, and humane is made heavier by the smog of fear and racism produced by the Government of Canada.

The blindness of the Government of Canada to the conditions in Sri Lanka that have driven the Tamil refugees to embark on the Sun Sea merely adds to its deplorable record in recognizing the suffering of people under oppressive regimes except when it suits its interest to do so.

For twenty five years Sri Lanka had been in the grip of a civil war that produced one of the largest populations of internally displaced people in the world and sent many thousands abroad in search of refuge. These conditions did not disappear magically with the military victory of the Sri Lankan Government over the LTTE in May, 2009, when, denying the appeals of the UN and the international community for restraint the Government bombed civilian populations and launched rocket attacks on hospitals and denied access to relief agencies and journalists. Sri Lankan journalists daring to report on the situation were driven into exile or murdered. More than 7.000 innocent civilians died; at least 13000 were seriously injured; around 12,000 people “disappeared”; and 300,000 people became internally displaced. Many of the displaced are still in camps, unable to return to their destroyed homes; many of the combatants are still incarcerated and subjected to torture.

South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD) condemns the Government of Canada’s hypocritical use of the discourse of human rights and its current racist fear-mongering against Tamil refugees. We demand fair and humane treatment for the refugees who have come on the Sun Sea and all people who seek Canada as a refuge to rebuild their lives following the cynical and brutal abuse of human rights by their governments and/or the devastation of war.

We endorse the actions of support for the refugees noted below and urge people to attend the demonstration and sign the petition:

Demonstration: “CANADA: STOP JAILING AND DEPORTING REFUGEES, LET THEM STAY!SUPPORT THE TAMIL MIGRANTS! SAY NO TO RACISM”

Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories
Saturday August 21 @ 3:30 pm
Gather at Vancouver Art Gallery, Robson Side

Sign the PETITION

SANSAD

by SAM DOLNICK

“The most important reason was because he was reaching out to us and asking what are your needs, what are your concerns,” said Zakir A. Khan, a local real estate agent who has taken on the role of Mr. Sepulveda’s liaison to Bangladeshis. “People are saying he is respecting us, he is valuing us.”

For months, Mr. Khan pointed out, Mr. Sepulveda’s campaign trucks have rolled through the neighborhood blaring slogans in English, Spanish and Bengali.

“This was the first time we’re hearing our language on the loudspeakers,” he said. “It was very exciting.”

The New York Times for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

by EHSANUL HAQUE JASIM

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami has finalised its new name to face changed situation if the party is banned and to continue its politics under a new banner, according to the sources.

The sources further said the new name of the party will be ‘Bangladesh Socialist Party’ or ‘Justice Party’ and the party will continue its politics by taking a new name from the two names.

The government and the Election Commission (EC) are thinking to impose ban on the country’s religion based politics as the Supreme Court’s in line with recent verdict on the fifth amendment of the constitution.

The New Nation for more

(Thanks to Robin Khundkar)

KUENSEL ONLINE

Although counselling was introduced into the education system in 1996, its effectiveness was limited. Counsellors were expected to play a dual rolel with the additional responsibility as subject teachers. The concept failed. “There were complaints from all sides that the counselling program wasn’t going well,” said Sonam Jamtsho.

With emotional problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence among Bhutanese youth increasing, a need for a dedicated counselling program was finally acknowledged. The royal civil service commission (RCSC) approved an education ministry proposal to recruit full time counsellors last year.

Kuensel Online for more

(Thanks to Pritam Rohila)

by B. R. GOWANI

“Protesters again rallied in Midland Beach today against the sale of an empty convent to a Muslim group that would turn it into a mosque.” PHOTO/Hilton Flores/Advance/Staten Island

How can we claim this as our country
when we know it’s yours?
the milky people from Europe
stole it from the Native Indians
built it with slave labor,
enriched it with colored labor and resources
so that one day you can claim it as yours
and show this banner to all

Nobody bothered you
within your territory,

but you allowed not
others to manage themselves
you stretched yourself out so much and now
the entire planet has your claw marks all over
now: everything is yours
and so are we
­­as Arundhati Roy said we are all
“subject[s]” of the US Empire

Time for Muslim leaders to reflect

The decision by the Muslims leaders to build an Islamic Center and a mosque in the vicinity of the destroyed twin towers of the World Trade Center has led to an unprecedented outrage by the families of the 9/11 victims and very many others, including a section of the US society whose bigotry has not been a secret. The former group’s feelings can be understood. Interestingly though, some Democrats and others have also joined the prevalent anti-mosque sentiments. The motive of the bigots is entirely different. The likes of Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have a twofold purpose: To further their own cause in the 2012 presidential election and, secondly, to help Republicans in the Congressional elections this November.

Also worthy to note is that even though they are both hard core Republicans but, if either of them wins the presidential election, s/he would tone down the rhetoric and would be seen hosting an Iftar party for the rich Muslims with an eye on their pockets.

By joining the chorus, the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai Brith has angered some people who were aware of its hypocrisy but were afraid to criticize. Fareed Zakaria (a Muslim), host of CNN’s GPS (Global Public Square) and the editor of the Newsweek’s international edition returned the award he was presented by the League in 2005. (Why did he accept it at all?) The league is a very strong part of the Israeli Lobby in the US.*

Fanatic Jews are famous for passionately opposing use of the word “holocaust” for any tragedy; they believe it should only be used for the Nazi genocide of the Jews. However, in opposing the Cordoba Initiative, the League’s National Director Abe Foxman compared the 9/11 victims indirectly to the Holocaust victims when he said:
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by SAFOORA ARBAB (a PhD student)

The monsoons, generally a welcome balm from the sun-scorched heat, has wrecked havoc in its wake this time, as you may all have heard by now. Though the death toll is not as high as other natural disasters the world has recently encountered, the devastation is far greater than any of us has as yet grasped. According to the UN it is one of the biggest emergencies the planet is currently facing, and considering the number and scale of disasters looming around the globe, the imagination has yet to grasp the magnitude of this. Even for us here in Pakistan–those of us not directly effected by the floods–it’s hard to imagine. And being inundated with one calamity after another, both man-made and natural, its hard to rouse ourselves to face this as yet not fully fathomed, and unprecedented new disaster. But its in the aftermath of the floods, whose effects are only now being seen and felt, that will allow the imagination, most unfortunately, to grasp this new crisis. And hopefully propel us to to act to counter as much of its effects as we possibly can.

People are organising their own relief efforts, or giving to reputable NGO’s, as the government too is mistrusted with aid money. That too hampers the intent to help.

My family has organised a small scale relief effort in our village in Charsadda–one of the areas in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa hardest hit by the floods. So far we have been able to gather enough funds to feed as many as possible with cooked meals through out the month of Ramzan. We continue to raise funds and hope to provide basic essentials, as well as water sanitising tablets, medicines for diarrhea and cholera, portable stoves and cooking utensils, and clothing.

If you would like to contribute to this fund you can do so via money gram or western union, or contact me with your suggestions for other means at safoora.arbab@yahoo.com.

Here’s a website Tonic that lists other organisations providing help.

Not listed on that website is Avaaz

Imran Khan has also started a relief effort, and I believe you can donate via paypal through his website Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf

There are of course many relief efforts underway, try to help wherever and however much you can before we actually do fully fathom, and directly see, the magnitude of this new calamity that has hit the earth.

PS. If you think it appropriate, please forward this appeal. Thanks.

by IEVA RAUBISCO

On 8 May 2008, employees of the Chechen Ministry of Foreign Relations, National Policy, and Press and Information performed a rite of sacrifice commemorating Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov, the pro-Russian president of the Chechen Republic who had been assassinated four years previously, on 9 May 2004, during a ceremony devoted to the victory of the allied forces in WWII. Bulls were slaughtered and meat was given to an orphanage in Grozny. Before reading out the mawlid (in Chechnya, a collective prayer) to pay respects to the assassinated president, the vice-mufti <2> of Chechnya, Magomed Khatanaev, remarked:

If anyone were to have told us some twenty to thirty years ago that one day it would be possible to offer praise to the Prophet Muhammad and carry out a rite of sacrifice in the government offices, he would have been considered insane. Praise be to God that today we can openly utter the name of the Almighty and our Prophet, perform namaz, <3> and observe the rules of the Holy Quran. Minister [of External Relations, National Policy, Press and Information] Shamsail Saraliev’s proposal that such a rite should be performed here [at the Ministry] proves that he and his subordinates are pious and generous people honouring the memory of the noble sons of Chechnya, such as Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov. (Grozny Inform, 8 May 2008)

Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford for more

by ANGEL PAEZ

Susana Villarán on campaign trail. PHOTO/La Republica/IPS

LIMA, Aug 18, 2010 (IPS) – The campaign for the October municipal elections in Peru has brought new hope to the badly weakened left, in the form of Susana Villarán, who has shot up from the “other candidates” category to third in the polls in the race for the mayor’s office in Lima.

Inter Press Services for more

by SALMAN HAMEED

Irtiqa for more

via 3 Quarks Daily

by MALLAM USMAN MAIKANO

It is not my intention here to hold brief for Prof Gana but I must confess that I am at a total loss on what parameter comrade Jega utilized to arrive at his assessment of Prof. Gana’s antecedent and credibility. In any case, it is my humble opinion that if most of our leaders from the North are as honest, brilliant and dedicated to duty as Prof. Jerry Gana, the effort and achievements of our late hero, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, would not have been in vain. It is a fact that those moving around today and appropriating to themselves to be the leaders of the North are the same persons that supervised the economic and infrastructural degradation of the North. Comrade Mahmud Jega’s main complaint in the write-up under consideration is that Prof. Jerry Gana organized a “Phoney” Northern political summit. But it beats ones imagination to label a conference that was organized and attended by Chief Solomon Lar, Alhaji Shehu Malami, the Governor of Kaduna State, Chief Bernabas Gemade, Prince Abubakar Audu, Senator Bala Mohammed, Senator Isiah Balat, Engr. Mohammed Abba Gana, Dr. Hassan Adamu and many others as phoney.

Daily Trust for more

World Socialist Web Site

Japan’s growing assertiveness in East Asia had established it as a regional power and brought it to conflict with the Great Powers for influence in China, including the UK, Germany, France, Russia, and another new power in the Pacific, the United States. In the Taft-Katsura agreement, concluded only weeks before the annexation, the US agreed to recognize Japanese mastery over Korea in turn for Tokyo’s recognition of US control over the Philippines.

World Socialist Web Site for more

by MUAREEN DOWD

Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Perfectly Unclear President: You cannot take such a stand on a matter of first principle and then take it back the next morning when, lo and behold, Harry Reid goes craven and the Republicans attack. What is so frightening about Fox News?

The New York Times for more

by NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD and CLIMATWIRE

Most experts are still cautioning against tying any specific event directly to emissions of greenhouse gases. But scientists at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva say there’s no doubt that higher Atlantic Ocean temperatures contributed to the disaster begun late last month.

Scientific American for more

Wöhr Multiparker 730

(Thanks to Mansoor Sharif; his comment: “How come the high tech US has no such system whereas the less advanced Hungary has it?”

by MARGARET KIMBERLY

All of these examples of public theft mean that America’s demise is real and becoming more and more obvious by the day. It is no longer a subject of conjecture among a small group of well informed people. When the state of Hawaii reduces the number of days students will attend public school and Utah proposes eliminating the 12th grade altogether, the destruction of our society is plain for all to see.

The American empire has reached its military apex, with troops stationed in more than 100 countries, and two wars of occupation which have lasted for more than eight years. The height of brute force brings with it the nadir of support for human needs. The two conditions go hand in hand. It is impossible to sustain military spending which exceeds that of every other country on earth combined, without also stealing from the public.

Black Agenda Report for more

Link

Kartick is Patrick Sebag, born in Tel Aviv to Moroccan parents, a music producer, and keyboard player. Gotam is is Yoyam Agam, a “sound designer” also originally from Israel but now living in Chennai, India where he co-founded EarthSync, a production house that aims to nurture folk, native and tribal music. Travelling together through Singapore, they were both upgraded to business class on an overbooked airplane (the good news), but sentenced to a three day wait in the business class lounge until visas and passports were straightened out (the bad news). They passed the time on their laptops and wireless, assembling soundscapes, creating the genesis of Business Class Refugees.

Tikkun Daily for more

by ALEX MESSENGER

Returns on Australian compulsory superannuation savings, a scheme sold to workers as a substitute for the old-age pension, have barely surpassed the rate of inflation over the last 14 years, according to official figures compiled by the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). These figures are proof that the superannuation system, which Labor and the trade unions proclaim as their “proudest achievement”, is one of the greatest swindles in Australian history.

According to the ABC’s compilation of figures released annually by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the average annual return on superannuation investments between 1997 and 2009 was just 3 percent, as compared to an inflation rate across the same period of 2.8 percent. Taken over past decade, superannuation funds have returned less than the inflation rate—meaning that workers would have been better off simply putting their money in the bank.

World Socialist Web Site for more

by JANELLE WEINER

In the United States just 13.6% of infants are exclusively breastfed to six months, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s 2009 Breastfeeding Report Card. Rates are higher in many developing countries – 38% overall – but increased urbanization and Westernization is undoing what was once common and appropriate infant-feeding behaviors, says Labbok. Working Bangladeshi mothers, for example, rarely bring their infants to work with them and often introduce complementary foods as early as the second month. In Nigeria, where women once carried babies to market, increased urbanization has meant a shift to non-baby-friendly jobs. Even in countries with official maternity leave policies, working mothers in the informal sectors are denied the benefits of legislation.

Women’s International Perspective for more