The following comments, two poems of Rehman Baba, and a news report have been submitted by Safoora Arbab. Ms. Arbab is a PhD student at the Columbia University.

“Pashtun poet Rehman Baba’s mausoleum bombed? in the same spirit as the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. A blow to all poetry lovers, and especially to the best of Pakhtun culture and spirit of tolerance. And really pointed that it was the self proclaimed moral police stopping women from attending public shrines. The direct connection between the oppression of women and the militarisation of the world is starkly shown in this case.”

Sow Flowers
By Rehman Baba

Sow flowers so your surroundings become a garden
Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet.

If you shoot arrows at others,
Know that the same arrow will come back to hit you.

Don’t dig a well in another’s path,
In case you come to the well’s edge.

You look at everyone with hungry eyes
But you will be first to become mere dirt.

Humans are all one body,
Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.

My Lord
by Rehman Baba
Look! My Lord is such a great doer of things,
That my Lord commands full authority.

Of great and virtuous people that one can name,
My Lord is beyond them all.

He is not dependent upon others for his needs.
My Lord owes nothing to anyone.

He created life from nothingness.
My Lord is this kind of creator.

He has fashioned all created things.
My Lord hears all speech.

Of which there is no similarity of likeness,
My Lord is the maker of such scents.

Of every structures in this world or the one to come,
My Lord is mason of them all.

He is the reader of unwritten scriptures,
My Lord is the knower of all secrets.

The overt, the covert and the part-known,
My Lord knows them all.

What is created, what is concealed, what is between,
My Lord is aware of them all.

He does not have any associate in his kingdom,
My Lord is a king without a partner.

His oneness is not due to weakness,
For my Lord is infinite in one body.

He needs friendship from no one,
Whose friend is my Lord?

I don’t need to look elsewhere,
For my Lord is with me in my home.

He is not transformed or changed O Rahman!
My Lord is always constant.

http://rahmanbaba-poetry.com/

Pashtun poet Rehman Baba’s mausoleum bombed

By Ali Hazrat Bacha

PESHAWAR: The mausoleum of renowned Pashto mystic poet Abdur Rehman Baba was bombed by unidentified miscreants, badly damaging its structure and his grave in the Hazarkhwani area early on Thursday.

No one was hurt in the bombing, but the blast has left residents deeply shaken.

The shrine’s watchman had received a threat from suspected militants on his cell phone three days ago. He told police that the attack took place to crack down on the tradition of women making pilgrimages to the site of the grave of Rehman baba; a 17th century poet, revered for his message of love and peace.

The high intensity device almost destroyed the grave of the Rehman Baba and the gates of a mosque, canteen and conference hall situated in the spacious Rehman Baba Complex.

Police said the bombers had tied explosives around the pillars of the tombs, to pull down the mausoleum.

Following the occurrence visibly shaken followers and volunteers were seen wielding sticks and forcing the visitors to leave the area, fearing that the badly damaged structure of the mausoleum might crumble down.

The police said they suspected the involvement of outlawed Lashkar-i-Islam chief, Mangal Bagh in the incident but were investigating the matter to ascertain the facts.

‘We have been able to give them a black eye and this is their way of getting back at us. Its pure desperation,’ a senior police official said.

The news of the occurrence soon spread like wildfire and a large number of his followers and other people visited the shrine.

A bomb disposal squad official said that five explosives each weighing around five kgs were planted at the shrine. The explosives, the official said were packed in containers which had been jointly connected and detonated simultaneously.

‘The entire area was covered with thick smoke and dust soon after the blast,’ said the president of the volunteers of the shrine association of the complex, Sardar Khan, who was busy in removing rubble of the damaged portions.

He told Dawn that he was the first one to reach the shrine after the blast. ‘I saw major portion of the grave was blown up and the building was badly damaged but no one was present there,’ he said and added that he informed the local police and some media persons about the incident.

He claimed that in past some groups of Taliban-like persons with long hair and beards used to come there and asked the caretaker of the shrine why they had not been forbidding women from visiting the shrine.

‘Once two Taliban came and said that performing prayers in the complex mosque was harram and when I heard that I asked them to get lost,’ the chief volunteer said.

He said that apparently the miscreants had entered the complex by scaling the boundary wall from the rear side and planted the explosives beneath the four main pillars and one in the grave by connecting them through an electric wire.

Provincial minister for culture and tourism, Syed Aqil Shah, visited the site and stated that although the said complex was attached to the archive department, but he would take up the issue with the Chief Minister regarding the repairing or reconstruction of the mausoleum.

He said that apparently the structure was damaged beyond repairing and had to be reconstructed.

The caretakers said that they had three watchmen who used to perform duties on rotation basis. The concerned watchman said that he was preparing himself for Fajr (morning) prayer when he heard a loud blast.

‘I was puzzled and couldn’t decide as to what I should do,’ one of the caretakers said adding that he had no weapon to resist any attacker. The caretakers and other employees of the complex said that they had time and again informed the officials of Archives Library to beef up security at the complex but to no avail.

Malik Wazir a member of the Rehman Baba Adbi jirga said that there was only one watchman who couldn’t check movement of the suspected people around such a vast area of the complex.

He suggested that there must be at least three watchmen armed with sophisticated weapons in each single shift.

The people demanded establishment of a police check post in area. They said that the nearby Akhun Baba graveyard had become a safe heaven for criminals and no one could safely pass through the Rehman Baba Road after evening in routine.

The tomb was a part of the spacious complex housing a conference hall, library, mosque, canteen, guest house, small shrines of some other saints, Tawoos Baba, Syed Sattar Bacha and Syed Sultan Bacha.

The work on construction of the complex was initiated on November 17, 1991 and completed in 1994 with an estimated cost of about 15 million rupees.

Police officials of Yakatut police station said they had no information about threats to the caretakers. They said it couldn’t be ascertained as to who was behind the crime. The officials reported that a case against unidentified terrorists had been registered at the police station.

The local Nazim of Hazarkhwani Union Council Hidayatullah Khan Advocate told Dawn that it was a terrorist act and the local population had decided to stage a protest demonstration against it today (Friday).

The nazim said the building was not repairable and demanded of the government to reconstruct it as soon as possible. He said the local lashkar (volunteers) would devise strategy within a couple of days to protect lives and properties from the militants.

Every year, 8 March is celebrated around the world as International Women’s Day. We have planned a program of information and fun for your classroom to celebrate International Women’s Day with a focus on women, peace and politics. Have a great learning experience!

http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/womensday/index.asp

How It Happened

A Brief History of International Women’s Day

The idea of an International Women’s Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies.

On 8 March 1857, women working in clothing and textile factories (called ‘garment workers’) in New York City, in the United States, staged a protest. They were fighting against inhumane working conditions and low wages. The police attacked the protestors and dispersed them. Two years later, again in March, these women formed their first labour union to try and protect themselves and gain some basic rights in the workplace.

On 8 March 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter work hours, better pay, voting rights and an end to child labour. They adopted the slogan “Bread and Roses”, with bread symbolizing economic security and roses a better quality of life. In May, the Socialist Party of America designated the last Sunday in February for the observance of National Women’s Day.
Following the declaration of the Socialist Party of America, the first ever National Woman’s Day was celebrated in the United States on 28 February 1909. Women continued to celebrate it on the last Sunday of that month through 1913.

An international conference, held by socialist organizations from around the world, met in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1910. The conference of the Socialist International proposed a Women’s Day which was designed to be international in character. The proposal initially came from Clara Zetkin, a German socialist, who suggested an International Day to mark the strike of garment workers in the United States. The proposal was greeted with unanimous approval by the conference of over 100 women from 17 countries, including the first three women elected to the parliament of Finland. The Day was established to honour the movement for women’s rights, including the right to vote (known as ‘suffrage’). At that time no fixed date was selected for the observance.

Read More

By Cindy Shiner

In Nigeria, new subscribers are signing up with mobile phone services at a rate of almost one every second. In Kenya, they can transfer money, get exam results and even find dates using their phones. African farmers can decide what crops to plant by checking prices at local markets using their cell phones. Physicians can help nurses in rural clinics diagnose patients by “telemedicine.”

This is just a sampling of the exciting age of technological innovation that is opening up in Africa. But developing information and communication technology (ICT) is posing a huge challenge — in Nigeria, growth is so fast that networks can barely cope, and poor connectivity and congested lines are frequent problems. Across the continent, there is a huge backlog in the provision of broadband Internet.

Yet an end to the “digital divide” — the gap between the technologies available in developed and developing countries — is in sight.

New undersea cables are being laid which will vastly improve broadband Internet access between African countries and between the continent and Europe, Asia and North America. Third-generation (3G) mobile technology, which enables mobile phone owners to connect to the Internet via their mobile phones, is spreading. Monopolies which have inhibited growth are breaking down.

Says economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University: “I actually think that we’ve turned the corner on the digital divide… a gap that seemed to be widening pretty relentlessly is now going to be narrowing in the coming years and I think narrowing quite quickly.

“We’ll find that it’s in business, it’s in emergency services, it’s in public education, it’s in primary healthcare, banking, distance learning, scientific communications, entertainment and all the rest, and this will make a very big difference.”

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) says the number of mobile phones overtook fixed telephone lines in 2001, and that the mobile phone industry in Africa is growing at twice the global rate.

Richard Bell, the chief executive officer of East Africa Capital Partners, a Nairobi-based venture capital group, believes East Africa will move within two or three years from being “one of the most backward regions in the world” for ICT to becoming “one of the most aggressive, competitive forward regions.”

The new cables being installed off the coast of East Africa are expected to make an enormous difference, both in terms of improved connectivity and more affordable prices.

Read More

(Submitted by Shahabuddin Haji)

See it at:

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/130378

The Dow is sinking and Obama’s budget is a disaster. But despite dire trends, free markets will prevail.

By Mark Skousen

New York – Officially, President Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget is titled “A New Era of Responsibility.”

That’s false on two counts. It’s an era – not of responsibility, but of big-government taxation, spending, and regulation. And it’s not new. History is full of attempts to inflate the state to grow the economy. Virtually all have ended badly. As Monday’s sell-off reminds us, Wall Street’s verdict on Obamanomics has been quick and sharp.

The president’s budget is right in castigating the “troubled past” of the Bush administration, which spent money like a drunken sailor on education, healthcare, bailouts, and two seemingly endless wars in the greater Middle East, with virtually no regard for how to pay for a rapidly growing national debt.

But now we must confront the troubled future. Obama has adopted the big-spending policies of George W. Bush, with trillions more proposed for education, bailouts, and healthcare. He wants to sharply reduce (but not end) the American presence in Iraq. At the same time, he plans to deploy an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, which may lead to an expanded quagmire there.

Hasn’t Obama read the bestseller “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One School at a Time,” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin? A Pakistani general who talked with Mr. Mortenson aptly identified the real problem in Afghanistan: “The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever.”

In some ways, Obama’s plans are more grandiose than Bush’s. He wants to encourage green technology and energy independence, and move toward national healthcare. The cost is enormous. The deficit for this year alone is expected to reach $1.7 trillion.

To help pay for this, Obama proposes the largest tax increase in history. Some of this, such as new taxes on oil and gas companies, is explicit. Some of it, such as the new cap and trade program, is quite subtle. And some of it will “merely” repeal the Bush tax rates on high incomes. But all of it represents a tremendous muzzle on the economy at a time when it needs to be unleashed.

Even these huge tax hikes won’t be nearly sufficient to pay for the outlays. In fact, to pay for it in full, The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Uncle Sam would have to confiscate every penny earned by Americans making at least $75,000 a year.

What’s the future for Obamanomics? The stock market’s reaction doesn’t bode well. The Dow has fallen 18 percent since the last trading day of Bush’s term. Clearly, Wall Street thinks that Obama’s tax, spend, and regulate policies will be a disaster.

Despite the dire headlines, the world is not coming to an end, we are not headed into another Great Depression, and free-market capitalism has not breathed its last breath.
In my book, “The Big Three in Economics,” I found that the press has frequently and prematurely written the obituary of Adam Smith and his free-market philosophy, only to see a new and more vibrant global marketplace reemerge after being savagely attacked by Keynesians, Marxists, and assorted socialists. Market capitalism survived and prospered after the boom-bust industrial revolution of the 19th century, and the Great Depression and world wars of the 20th century. It will recover from the financial panic of 2008-09 and Obamanomics.

Adam Smith, the supreme defender of market capitalism, expressed this optimism well in 1776 when he wrote in “The Wealth of Nations”:
“The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition … is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration.”

In sum, the ideas of Adam Smith and his modern followers will make a comeback. Already, pro-market forces are gathering in Congress to defeat Obama’s ambitious and highly socialistic agenda. Charities and nonprofits are already up in arms about the proposed limits on tax deductions for wealthy donations for good causes.

I’m doing my part by holding the world’s largest gathering of free minds at FreedomFest, July 9-11, 2009, in Las Vegas. For details, go to www.freedomfest.com. I hope you will join us.

• Mark Skousen is editor of Forecasts & Strategies, and author of “The Big Three in Economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes.”

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HANOVER (Reuters) – German twenty-somethings would ditch their spouses and do without a car in a heartbeat if they had to choose between having them or Internet access or a mobile phone, according to an industry study.

In a survey by German broadband association Bitkom around 84 percent of respondents aged 19-29 said they would rather do without their current partner or an automobile than forego their connection to the Web.

Living without a mobile phone was also unthinkable for 97 percent of those questioned in that age range.
Nevertheless, Bitkom president August-Wilhelm Scheer said on Monday in Hanover that did not mean that “the Web is an anonymous medium that leads to social indifference.”

One of the main themes at this year’s annual tech trade fair CeBit in Hanover is what the organizers have dubbed “Webciety,” short for WorldWideWeb society.

Bitkom said 1,000 people had taken part in the survey, and one in two people said they had made new friends thanks to chat forums and Internet communities. Around 8 percent said they had found a new partner thanks to online relations.

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(Submitted by a reader)

Research in The FASEB Journal clears major hurdles for bioengineered replacement organs

Bethesda, MD—By now, most people have read stories about how “grow your own organs” using stem cells is just a breakthrough away. Despite the hype, this breakthrough has been elusive. A new report published in the March 2009 issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) brings bioengineered organs a step closer, as scientists from Stanford and New York University Langone Medical Center describe how they were able to use a “scaffolding” material extracted from the groin area of mice on which stem cells from blood, fat, and bone marrow grew. This advance clears two major hurdles to bioengineered replacement organs, namely a matrix on which stem cells can form a 3-dimensional organ and transplant rejection.

“The ability to provide stem cells with a scaffold to grow and differentiate into mature cells could revolutionize the field of organ transplantation,” said Geoffrey Gurtner, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery at Stanford University and a senior researcher involved in the work.

To make this advance, Gurtner and colleagues first had to demonstrate that expendable pieces of tissue (called “free flaps”) could be sustained in the laboratory. To do this, they harvested a piece of tissue containing blood vessels, fat, and skin from the groin area of rats and used a bioreactor to provide nutrients and oxygen to keep it alive. Then, they seeded the extracted tissue with stem cells before it was implanted back into the animal. Once the tissue was back in the mice, the stem cells continued to grow on their own and the implant was not rejected. This suggests that if the stem cells had been coaxed into becoming an organ, the organ would have “taken hold” in the animal’s body. In addition to engineering the stem cells to form a specific organ around the extracted tissue, they also could be engineered to express specific proteins which allows for even greater potential uses of this technology.

“Myth has its lures, but so does modern science. The notion of using one tissue as the scaffold for another is as old as the Birth of Venus to the Book of Genesis,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “Eve may or may not have been formed from Adam’s rib, but these experiments show exactly how stem cell techniques can be used to turn one’s own tissue into newly-formed, architecturally-sound organs.”
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(Submitted by a reader)

By B. R. Gowani

We’re 50% of world’s population
But our prominence
In politics, religion, business
You can count on your fingers

Those few who reach the top
Some works for their sisters
Others are a blot
To our own specie

For dowry we’re burned
For lust we’re raped
For love we’re flogged
For resisting we’re stoned
For uncovered-face, we’re disfigured
For our religion we’re abducted

Somewhere two of us
Equals one man
Elsewhere one of us
Strips for several men

Somewhere we’re covered
From head to toe
To rot our bodies
Elsewhere we’re displayed
Almost naked in windows
To sell our bodies

Some places won’t let us alone
Alone we go and invite arrest
We’ve to be accompanied by
Father, brother, husband, or son
Even younger brothers and sons
Become our guardians

Ultrasonography outcome –
Murdering fetuses of our kind;

Almost every man has a Bush
In his pants,
Who’s always looking for WMDs
Weapons of Mass Desire
And is perpetually at war
Like the US soldier,
Yet we’re temptresses and whores

Our hymens, they want intact
Yet, their bloody loafers
Have been to dozens of places

Their desires know no bounds
But they want to control ours
And so forcefully
They mutilate our body and spirit

The United Nations tries hard
To grant us our rights
But clerics, politicians, and others
Always blockade our rights

These ingrates forget
That for nine months we carried them
Suffering pain and misery …

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

Also read:
To Wail, or Not to Wail (Part I of II)
To Wail, or Not to Wail (Part II of II)