By Forugh Farrokhzad

From the summer of 1964 through December 1966, Farrokhzad published five poems in various issues of Arash. One of them was “Someone Who Is Not Like Anyone” (1966). In it, she scrutinizes the new Pahlavi Tehran of modern, Westernized, mechanized ways and goods, indicts upper class Tehranis, and calls for social justice for lower class Tehranis. In this poem, Farrokhzad presents a dream of an egalitarian Iranian society. The poem reads:

I’ve had a dream that someone is coming.
I’ve dreamt of a red star,
and my eyes lids keep twitching
and my shoes keep snapping to attention
and may I go blind
if I’m lying.
I’ve dreamt of that red star
when I wasn’t asleep.
Someone is coming,
someone is coming
someone better,
someone who is like no one,
not like Father,
not like Ensi,
not like Yahya
not like Mother,
and is like the person who he ought to be.
and his height is greater than the trees
around the overseer’s house,
and his face is brighter
than the face of the mahdi,
and he’s not even afraid
Of Sayyed Javad’s brother
who has gone
and put on a policeman’s uniform.
and he’s not even afraid of Sayyed Javad himself
who owns all the rooms of our house.
and his name just like Mother
says it at the beginning
and at the end of prayers
is either ‘judge of judges’
or ‘need of needs’.
And with his eyes closed
he can recite
all the hard words
in the third grade book,
and he can even take away a thousand
from twenty million without coming up short.
and he can buy on credit
however much he needs
from Sayyed Javad’s store.
And he can do something
so that the neon Allah sign
which was as green as dawn
will shine again
in the sky above the Meftahiyan Mosque.
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Women executives [in Copenhagen, Denmark] will buy up stock in order to bring shareholders’ attention to the lack of women on boards of directors.
In an effort to place women on company boards, a group known as Best.Women has announced that it intends to buy shares in seven major companies with one or no female board members. By buying the shares, the group hopes to be able to speak during the companies’ AGMs and draw attention to the lack of women in the boardroom.
In addition to its stock purchases, Best.Women intends to hold courses in being a board member.
‘We want to establish a trainee project for 10 women who want to be on boards. We intend to contact companies and urge them to allow one of the women to shadow the boards for a year – unpaid,’ said Susan Lund, a Best.Woman board member who heads the organisation’s training projects.
Best.Woman has purchased shares in Carlsberg, Novozymes, Lundbeck, GN Store Nord, DSV, FL Smith and IC Companys.
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One of the greatest comedians of the Twentieth Century, Charlie Chaplin made one of his finest movies, “Modern Times,” in 1936. The film’s theme is equally applicable in today’s world, where the fast paced life full of stress and tension has turned people into mental zombies.

By Mubarak Ali (historian)

Braudel, a prominent historian of the Annales school of history, argues that the rise of Europe emerged after it became secure from foreign invaders such as the Huns, the Mongols and the Arabs.

The sense of security that emerged during the Crusades as well as the resultant resources from the Mediterranean helped the continent in building the infrastructure and institutions of its society.

The turning point in Europe’s history was from 8th to 10th century, when the Norse invaded the western Europe. In order to defend themselves, Europeans ultimately developed dominant naval power.

The Norse not only invaded western Europe, but also reached the New World. According to Pirenne, a Belgian historian, Europe at that time did not give the New World much importance and the discovery was soon forgotten. When the Vikings invaded the western Europe, they killed, plundered and took away centuries-old wealth that the churches had accumulated. They brought this wealth into the market, which was subsequently used to activate European economy.

According to Braudel, Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries was in the Dark Ages. Economically, it was so weak that it could not bear the burden of great empires. Charlemagne built a great empire, but it soon collapsed in 814 AD and divided into small states. Its resources were so minimal that it could hardly sustain small feudatories. This gave birth to a feudal culture in Europe which continued till modern period.
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The Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan (CCAA) is an independent artistic and cultural center established in August 2004 by a number of young artists. The advisory committee of the centre was later formed by national and international artists and experts.
Initiatives and new approaches in arts are the needs that arise together with social and economic developments of human society. For instance, social and economic progress in the era of Tomorian of Herat resulted in Kamaluddin Behzad School to establish as a novel artistic development.
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Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, speaking at the 6th convocation ceremony of Lahore College for Women University on Saturday, said that “a nation cannot progress without active involvement of women in all walks of life”. He also safely quoted Mao Zedong: “Women hold up half of the sky. To take over the sky and to rule the earth requires a significant contribution from women”.

Across the oceans in the United Kingdom, Information Minister Ms Sherry Rehman, while addressing the Oxford Union Society, proudly highlighted “the political progress” of women in Pakistan, saying their representation in politics was higher than in some developed democracies. A reference, of course, was made to Pakistan being the first Islamic nation to have a woman as prime minister.

Of course, it would have been impolite to mention that Pakistan was also the first Islamic state to cruelly assassinate Ms Bhutto, not to mention the many years in exile she had to endure for survival. The quotation from Mao was also neither here nor there. In Pakistan, the Taliban are robbing the women of their patch of the sky, which is already very small given the on-going transformation of the country in favour of extremist views. It is, of course, praiseworthy that we have a lady speaker in the National Assembly — a great improvement on the old male incumbent — and that a “dictator” got the parliament to admit more women on special seats, but the parliament frequently says things about women that the world hears with disbelief.

The latest news is not that the girls in the Tribal Areas can no longer get education, it is that the rest of the country is fast imitating the “model” Islamic order of places like Swat where girls’ schools have been bombed and some lady teachers have been put to death. The latest news is that in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, restaurants have banned entry to women “apparently after being pressured by religious elements”. Quetta restaurants already had separate rooms for lady customers; now they have put up a placard saying: “For gentlemen only. Women not allowed”.
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The Sun (Latin: Sol), a yellow dwarf, is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter (including other planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and dust) orbit the Sun,[9] which by itself accounts for about 98.6% of the Solar System’s mass. The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately 149,600,000 kilometers, or 92,960,000 miles, and its light travels this distance in 8.3 minutes. Energy from the Sun, in the form of sunlight, supports almost all life on Earth via photosynthesis,[10] and drives the Earth’s climate and weather.
The surface of the Sun consists of hydrogen (about 74% of its mass, or 92% of its volume), helium (about 24% of mass, 7% of volume), and trace quantities of other elements, including iron, nickel, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, magnesium, carbon, neon, calcium, and chromium.[11] The Sun has a spectral class of G2V. G2 means that it has a surface temperature of approximately 5,780 K (5,500 °C) giving it a white color that often, because of atmospheric scattering, appears yellow when seen from the surface of the Earth. This is a subtractive effect, as the preferential scattering of shorter wavelength light removes enough violet and blue light, leaving a range of frequencies that is perceived by the human eye as yellow. It is this scattering of light at the blue end of the spectrum that gives the surrounding sky its color. When the Sun is low in the sky, even more light is scattered so that the Sun appears orange or even red.[12]
The Sun’s spectrum contains lines of ionized and neutral metals as well as very weak hydrogen lines. The V (Roman five) in the spectral class indicates that the Sun, like most stars, is a main sequence star. This means that it generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. There are more than 100 million G2 class stars in our galaxy. Once regarded as a small and relatively insignificant star, the Sun is now known to be brighter than 85% of the stars in the galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs.[13]
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National Priorities Project analyzes and clarifies federal data so that people can understand and influence how their tax dollars are spent.

The above works to an approximate daily cost of:

• $4,681 per household.
• $1,721 per person.
• $341.4 million per day.
click here to learn more

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

A stern, unyielding version of Islam is replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis in Pakistan.
The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state.
For 20 years or more, a few of us have been desperately sending out SOS messages, warning of terrible times to come. In fact, I am surprised at how rapidly these dire predictions have come true.
A full-scale war is being fought in FATA, Swat and other “wild” areas of Pakistan, resulting in thousands of deaths. It is only a matter of time before this fighting shifts to Peshawar and Islamabad (which has already been a witness to the Lal Masjid episode) and engulfs Lahore and Karachi as well. The suicide bomber and the masked abductor have crippled Pakistan’s urban life and shattered its national economy.
Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
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(Submitted by a reader)