by BRUNO VINCENS
Women are smoking more. In the short term, their tobacco consumption should exceed that of men, who are smoking less. While less obvious, women are also drinking more alcoholic beverages. Most importantly, women are the biggest users of psychoactive drugs and anxiolytics. This increase in female addictions also includes the use of illegal drugs.
Humanite for more
by Dr. PRITAM ROHILA
Lately, government officials from both sides of the Indo-Pak border have been making right kind of noises in support of peace between the two countries. We hope they really mean it, and pursue it diligently till they succeed.
Surely, it will not be an easy task. In order to accomplish this long-awaited dream of many Indians and Pakistani, they will have to be sagacious and far-sighted. They will need to look beyond their instinctive fears and anxieties, and allow greater role for their
wisdom in their deliberations. They should transcend their turbulent history, and overcome mutual suspicions. Finally they better rein in the rogue elements among them, so that any misadventure does not derail the process.
Continue reading “Indo-Pak peace”
by ZARMINAE ANSARI
There are many “Ashas” (hopes) in my heart as I sit under the sheer rock faces of the stark mountain landscape with almost fluorescent green trees in the lush Shigar Valley, admiring the painstaking conservation of a 400 year old fort palace into a magnificently run hotel managed by the Serena chain, in this breathtakingly beautiful part of northern Pakistan. The sound of the river rushing below drowns out most thoughts, but I keep returning to the possibility of “Aman”. Can the lessons taught by the work of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in Skardu be learned and applied in other parts of the country to offer educational and economic alternatives to brainwashed, disenfranchised youth and stop them being recruited by terrorist networks?
Aman ki Asha for more
(Submitted by Pritam Rohila)
SANSAD Invites you to a Public Meeting
To remember Dr. Hari Sharma (1934-2010)
Educator, writer, photographer, activist, community leader, champion of the oppressed
Sunday, July 4, 2010
2.00 pm – 5.00 pm
SUR 2600
Simon Fraser University-Surrey Campus
13450 102 Avenue, Surrey, BC
(At Central City Complex 102 Avenue just south of Surrey Central Sky Train Station)
Speakers from the community and Simon Fraser University will pay tribute to Dr.Hari Sharma’s contributions to scholarship, education, the South Asian community in British Columbia, and the cause of justice and peace in the world. Raminder Bhullar and Zahid Makhdoom will sing. People from the floor will be welcome to speak.
Co-sponsored by Department of Sociology-Anthropology, Simon Fraser University, Punjabi Vichar Manch, Progressive Intercultural Society (PICS), Progressive Nepali Forum in America (PNEFA),and Pakistan Action Network.
With generous support from Simon Fraser University-Surrey Campus and SFPIRG
Organized by SANSAD, # 435, 552A Clark Road, Coquitlam, B.C., Canada, V3K6Z8; phone: (604) 421-6752; e-mail: sansad@sansad.org
MS.
This week a young man in Saudi Arabia was convicted and sentenced to 90 lashes and four months jail time after being caught on mall security cameras kissing a woman, reported the Associated Press. The man, seen in the company of two females, was arrested by the Saudi religious police for publicly “exchanging kisses and hugs” with one of the women accompanying him. The two women were also arrested.
Ms. for more
by NICK RYAN
This Sunday two armies are threatening to clash on the streets of the East End of London. One involves a broad coalition of ethnic, Islamic and far-left groups, plus trade unions, churches and teachers. The other is a loose collection of far-right thugs, football hooligan ‘firms’, UKIP aficionados, and the odd Sikh or two, united by a fear (or hatred) of Islam.
Open Democracy for more
(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)
by VINAY LAL
PHOTO/News Dire
In the very first week that I arrived at UCLA in the fall of 1993 as a new faculty member in the Department of History, I was introduced to Professor Teshome H. Gabriel. He was described to me as a film scholar, and as the moving spirit of the collective, comprised mainly of younger faculty and graduate students in the humanities, known as “Emergences”, also the title of the journal published by the group. In those days, the group would meet on Friday evenings, and we gathered at the bar in the basement at the Faculty Center where Teshome, liberally and unstintingly spending money on others as he seems to have done his entire life, would order pitchers of beer for the group. It took very little time to discern that, as good a scholar as he was, he was also an extraordinary person, a friend generous to a fault, a person full of unusual creativity, wise counsel, good spirits, and fortitude. And so it is a blow in the extreme to find that Teshome will no longer be in our midst, even if in spirit he remains with all those who were fortunate to have known him.
Continue reading “Friend, master storyteller, scholar, and humanist par excellence: Reminiscences of Teshome H. Gabriel”
by NANCY DAVIES
Since neither the federal government of Mexico nor the Oaxaca government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO) will put aside the blockade of San Juan Copala, one might conclude that the policy of the governments is to starve out the autonomous community which wants self determination and control of their lands and territory.
The second humanitarian caravan “Bety Cariño y Jyri Jakkola” to San Juan Copala was halted three times, and finally headed back to Huajapan de Leon to consider their next step. They eventually decided to return to Mexico and Oaxaca.
Upside Down World for more
by JARED A. BALL
During a speech aired on Memorial Day this year Noam Chomsky said, “The drug war is used as a pretext to drive the superfluous population, mostly black, back to the prisons, also providing a new supply of prison labor in state and private prisons, much of it in violation of international labor conventions. In fact, for many African Americans, since they were exported to the colonies, life has scarcely escaped the bonds of slavery, or sometimes worse.” This week I had a chance to sit down with Mr. Kwasi Seitu, a veteran activist with decades-long experience in organizing Black resistance to police brutality and what is often a malicious judicial system. Mr. Seitu has for many years now suffered first-hand and worked against the violently rapacious nature of the system described by Chomsky as “sometimes worse” than slavery. From Mississippi to where he now resides in Washington, D.C., Seitu has been on the front lines of this on-going tyrannical relationship between the Black community and the nation’s institutions.
Black Agenda Report for more