Month: June 2010

by PETER GOODSPEED

Eighteen years ago, as manager of a family-run Afghan restaurant on North Halsted Street in the Chicago’s Wrigleyville district, Ahmed Wali Karzai spent his days serving aushak (leek dumplings) and lamb dwopiaza, tenderloin sauteed with yellow split-peas and onions.

Today, the chubby 49-year-old half-brother of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, is the most powerful man in southern Afghanistan. The “King of Kandahar” has built up a shadowy political and commercial empire that touches virtually every institution and individual of influence.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan for more

by NADEEM F. PARACHA

Kudos to television journalist, Talat Hussain, for surviving the audacious Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla, and returning home to tell the tale.

…

The way certain frontline members of the present government received Talat (as if he had just returned after liberating Palestine from the clutches of the aggressive Zionist state), the question arose (at least in some cynical minds), where exactly were the same ministers and elected politicians (from both the PPP and PML-N), when the Ahmadi community was picking up the bodies and limbs of their dead ones slaughtered by extremists on the May 28?

Not a single leading member of the ruling cabinet and the opposition (except Interior Minister Rehman Malik) bothered to visit some of the injured Ahmadi men, women and children at a hospital in Lahore.

Dawn for more

by DEVENEDER SHARMA

With 15,274 dead, 5,74,000 affected, and a verdict that should have been delivered in 26 days taking 26 long years, and that too a mockery of justice, no heads have rolled. While the newspapers are splashed with reports of the Bhopal verdict, I find Prime Minister Manmohan Singh quoted in a separate report from Srinagar, which he visited yesterday, also published on the front pages. Isn’t it amusing to read the PM saying: ‘Will Safeguard human rights in Kashmir.’

You couldn’t even safeguard the rights of the Bhopal victims, Mr Prime Minister.

Counter Currents for more

(Submitted by Mukul Dube)

by ABDUL NISHAPURI

We SALAM and pay our tribute to great Pakistani Journalist/Anchor Syed Talat Hussain for being a part of Freedom Flotila to end the Zionists siege imposed on Gaza strip.It is worth mentioning here that We the people of Pakistani Gaza (PARACHINAR) are also facing inhuman siege imposed jointly by militants so called Taliban (worse than Zionists) and establishment since April 2007 as the Gaza in palestine. And It was the same courageous Journalist/Anchor Syed Talt Hussain who only visited the Be-sieged Pakistani Gaza (PARACHINAR) and highlighited the misries and problems of the area in his Programme Live with Talt.Great syed talat Hussain for highlighting oppressed areas.

Let Us Build Pakistan for more

by EMAN AL NAFJAN

It all began in May 2007 when an Egyptian Sheikh called Mohammed Atiya came out with a fatwa advising women to breastfeed their male coworkers if their job entails spending time alone together. Shiekh Atiya was quickly fired from his post at the Azhar University and the whole thing was swept under the rug. Until this week when Shiekh Al Obiekan, a royal judicial consultant at the Saudi Ministry of Justice renewed it all by replying to a question on a TV interview.

Saudi Woman’s Weblog for more

(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)

EMIRATES TRIBUNE

Thus, a report about the intention of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to travel to Gaza aboard a Turkish navy vessel accompanying a new attempt by protest boats to break Israel’s maritime blockade was enough to drive Israeli officials crazy.

In this context, an Israeli occupation commander said Monday Israel would view an attempt by Erdogan to sail to Gaza as an act of war.

“If he comes here with Turkish warships there can be no doubt that it would amount to a declaration of war,” Major-Genral Uzi Dayan told Army Radio. “We need to draw a clear line and say that whoever crosses it will not be boarded but sunk.”

Emirates Tribune for more

(Submitted by Ingrid B. Mork))

ZIA SARDAR talks to Bux Qalandar Memon

During my childhood racism was much more overt. It was largely about the colour of your skin. ‘To Let’ signs on houses often carried the refrain: ‘No Blacks, Irish or Dogs’. People would cross the road to avoid you when they saw you coming. I was a regular bunch bag for racist bullies and thugs and came home from school routinely battered and bruised. Initially we were all ‘blacks’; then all Asians become ‘Pakis’ and ‘Paki bashing’ became a favourite sport of racist thugs. The 1960s and 1970s, an era of recession, saw the rise of the fascist movement; and the consequent rise of several youth movements such as the Southall Youth Movement. There were two dominant kinds of racism: police and popular. Various racist murders and cases of police injustice led to a number of riots in places like Birmingham, Bradford and Brixton.

Naked Punch for more

(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)

Lahore Film and Literary Club invites you to Salman Shahid’s film, “EXHIBITION”

Is it real? Or is it a dream? A surrealistic commentary on our times with a satirical twist

Duration: 25 minutes
Date: Friday , 11th June 2010
Time: 7 pm sharp (no entry after 7 pm)
Venue: South Asian Media Centre, 177-A, Shadman 2

For details and directions contact: Ms. Sarah Tareen
Tel: 0300-459-1184
Coordinator South Asian Documentary Festival
Film & Television Institute Productions

by KELLY ZEN_YIE TSAI

I’m not white, but
I love me a white person’s wireless internet café.

I don’t wear a thrift store grandpa sweater,
scraggly beard, and oversized plastic glasses
with my skinny jeans.

I don’t expect the neighborhood
to change around me. I don’t want it to,
but I am clearly the face of this change.

You could hardly gather from my eyes, my skin,
my hair, and say this girl is reppin’ Bed-Stuy…hard.

(Usually people guess Korean from Flushing.
Wrong on both counts).
Continue reading “The ballad of a maybe gentrifier”

by SAMAR AL-BULUSHI and ADAM BRANCH

US INTERESTS IN THE International Criminal Court

US overtures for pragmatic engagement with the ICC in Africa should be understood in the context of increased US military engagement in Africa, particularly the new military command for the continent, AFRICOM. Since the US announced the creation of AFRICOM [US Africa Command] in 2007, activists have sounded alarm bells about its implications. Recalling the Cold War legacy of intervention that contributed to the militarisation of African states and the funding of proxy forces, they are concerned that AFRICOM will serve as a vehicle to expand the ‘war on terror’ into Africa, to secure US access to Africa’s oil and to challenge China’s increasing commercial and political influence. They cite dwindling development aid as contrasted with massive increases in foreign military financing via AFRICOM as evidence of the US government’s prioritiation of narrow security interests over democracy, the rule of law and African interests more broadly.[6] Gender rights activists have highlighted the potential for AFRICOM to undermine efforts to demilitarise African communities, particularly those emerging from conflict.[7] Considering the US track record of destructive interventions in Africa during the Cold War and the US military’s disregard for international law in Iraq and Afghanistan, Africans have reason to be wary of greater US military involvement on their soil. The possibility that AFRICOM might add justice enforcement to its repertoire is therefore a genuinely troubling development, and the ICC risks becoming the latest pawn of US military strategy on the continent.

Pambazuka for more