Author: mara.ahmed

an invasion, occupation and war that pits a military superpower against the second poorest country of the world…

check out this photojournalistic essay by ricardo garcia on the helmand refugee camp in afghanistan here.

“Maybe the antiwar left only protests when Republican presidents are in office. Maybe it’s not about Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, it was only about George Bush. Maybe for the antiwar left, it’s not about pacifism or soldiers’ lives or even what’s in our national interest. Maybe it’s just about Republicans.” (Mary Kate Cary)

?”Sixteen years since apartheid ended, and amid the hoopla and false hopes promoted by the 2010 soccer World Cup, millions of black South Africans still live in self-built shacks – without sanitation, adequate water supplies or electricity. In Durban, almost in the shadow of the massive multibillion-rand Moses Mabhida stadium [paradoxically named after a veteran leader of South Africa’s Communist Party], poor people are fighting for their right to live near work, schools and health facilities. A Place in the City — made in 2008 — will overturn all your assumptions about “slums” and the people who live in them. In this film, the grassroots shackdwellers’ movement, lay out their case – against forcible eviction; for decent services – with passion, eloquence, and sweet reason.”

brilliant! “A third argument, very prominent today, is that the burqa is a symbol of male domination that symbolizes the objectification of women (that they are being seen as mere objects). A Catalonian legislator recently called the burqa a “degrading prison.” The first thing we should say about this argument is that the people who make it typically don’t know much about Islam and would have a hard time saying what symbolizes what in that religion. But the more glaring flaw in the argument is that society is suffused with symbols of male supremacy that treat women as objects. Sex magazines, nude photos, tight jeans — all of these products, arguably, treat women as objects, as do so many aspects of our media culture. And what about the “degrading prison” of plastic surgery? ” Full article.

All these decades later, destiny or providence or something has delivered Mr. Feldman and Mr. Bayyari to the same acre of land at the bottom of one of Fayetteville’s many hills. There Mr. Bayyari, now a general contractor, will build the first permanent temple for the Reform Jewish congregation in Fayetteville, of which Mr. Feldman is president. And Mr. Bayyari, a Palestinian-American Muslim, is doing the job at no charge. Without his sacrifice, the congregation probably could not afford the project at all. Full article.

The international community has largely remained silent on the plight of Kashmiris. Apart from a few exceptions, the international news media has failed to report on the systematic nature of oppression in Kashmir. It is time the human rights and global justice activists express their solidarity with the struggling people of Kashmir. It is time that we collectively put pressure on the Indian government. Please read and sign here.

Remarks made by Bono, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof and President Barack Obama stating they hoped Palestinians would find their Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) or Gandhi completely ignore Palestinian nonviolent resistance to brutal oppression. The presumption that the Palestinian struggle is mainly violent is disturbing. And the dismissal of the people who have sacrificed time, money and even their lives to fight injustice with nonviolence is callous. Full article.

if this is not a violation of privacy, i don’t know what is.

A bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate requiring all airports to use full-body scanners lacks sufficient privacy safeguards, says a prominent watchdog group. The Electronic Privacy Information Center says the bill, introduced in the Senate by Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), “contains particularly weak privacy provision[s] that ignore many of the problems with the devices already uncovered.” Full article.

Tens of thousands of people attended a memorial ceremony today, June 11, marking the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, when Bosnian Serb paramilitaries executed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys toward the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The massacre, deemed genocide by the UN war crimes court and the International Court of Justice, was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. The ceremony included the burial of 775 recently identified victims, who will join the 3,749 already there.

“If they build a mosque there, I’m going to bomb the mosque,” said one outraged resident who lives across the street from the proposed house of worship between East 28th and East 29th streets on Voorhies Avenue. The resident, who refused to give his name, identified himself as a former Israeli soldier who had lived on Voorhies Avenue for eight years. Full article.

If the security forces can treat dead women like hunting trophies, not only trussing their bodies to poles, but taking pride in displaying their kill, is it surprising that their behaviour towards the living is so atrocious? After every deadly attack by the Maoists, ‘civil society actors’ are summoned by TV channels to condemn the incident, substituting moral indignation for news analysis. And yet, the same media is strangely silent on police or paramilitary atrocities against civilians. Full article.

We are told, in many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are “competing narratives”. How very cosy. There’s no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories. “Competing narratives” now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase, from the false language of anthropology, deletes the possibility that one group of people – in the Middle East, for example – is occupied, while another is doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly “competing narratives”, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are – are they not? – “in competition”. And two sides have to be given equal time in every story.

[…] Similarly, the pernicious phrase “Af-Pak” – as racist as it is politically dishonest – is now used by reporters, although it was originally a creation of the US State Department on the day Richard Holbrooke was appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoids the use of the word “India” – whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story.

Furthermore, “Af-Pak” – by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the “Af-Pak” envoy, specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase “Af-Pak”, which completely avoids the tragedy of Kashmir – too many “competing narratives”, perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, “Af-Pak”, which was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the State Department’s work. Full article.

this article generated one of the most productive and interesting discussions on my fb wall. will write about this at some point.

verdict in oscar grant’s murder: “involuntary manslaughter” – so much for our democracy and freedoms!