Category: politics

The desperation and need is so strong here that after a while I did not want to see it anymore. The roads are getting worse all the time. As you near Kashmore there is now apparently a patch overrun by water. The police allow only one truck to pass at a time because weight and water supposedly make roads sink. This creates a bottleneck which can be as long as 40 to 50 trucks all lined up for hours. Food delivery is getting more precarious in places like Kashmore and Shikarpur because trucks get attacked by people who have not eaten for days. We have figured out that not only transportation but the actual delivery at camps is safer in the dead of night or very early morning when people are sleeping and the roads empty. These people have not eaten for at least 4 days – 10,000 families (x 7 people) locked in a town, hungry and nowhere to go. Full report.

There has been a slow steady drip of negative media coverage of Pakistan since the 1980s, and if it lessened a little in the 90s as civilian governments went in and out of administration, it became inevitably tougher with the return of a military government, 9/11, the “growth” of Islamic extremist organisations in Pakistan, and the ins and outs of apparent ISI-sponsored terrorism in both Mumbai and Afghanistan. At home, Pakistan’s image has been affected by debates about burqas, the bombings in London in 2005 and the country’s perennial linguistic association with “terror”. Full article.

fantastic!

jasonmustian: In all fairness, we’ve been building “ground zeros” near Iraqi mosques since March 2003.

love this story!

Christians in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, join the city’s Muslim residents in fasting Ramadan in continuation of a centuries-old tradition of interfaith solidarity. Mike Kanawati, a Christian resident of Bethlehem, who manages a souvenir and jewelry shop, fasts the days of Ramadan with his Muslim neighbors. “Fasting, either the Christian or the Muslims way, makes one feel the suffering of those who do not have food. My grandmother used to fast, both Christian and Muslim fasting, and we were raised this way to show respect for and solidarity with other religions,” Kanawati said. Full article.

speechless.

unreal isn’t it? i wish it were fake news from the onion but it isn’t – here’s the story in the washington post.

this is what america seems to be moving towards – the open and systematic incitement of hate and bigotry. while pew studies confirm that american muslims r a tiny (only 0.6% of americans r muslims!), well-integrated, middle class, mainstream group in this country, it seems to me that specific efforts r underway to create hate and friction where there is none. it’s about elections, ridiculous expensive wars and a failing economy. some diversion is needed and here we have the perfect scapegoat.

echoes of lynndie england and the banality of evil… ?”Doing terrible things in an organized and systematic way rests on “normalization.” This is the process whereby ugly, degrading, murderous, and unspeakable acts become routine and are accepted as “the way things are done.” There is usually a division of labor in doing and rationalizing the unthinkable, with the direct brutalizing and killing done by one set of individuals; others keeping the machinery of death in order; still others producing the implements of killing, or working on improving technology. It is the function of defense intellectuals and other experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public. (Edward S. Herman)

Former Israeli soldier Eden Abergil’s Facebook photos of her posing with Palestinian prisoners has sparked accusations that ‘souvenir photos’ are widespread in the army. Veterans’ group Breaking the Silence has released a number of soldiers’ pictures, some showing dead Palestinians. The pictures were released with the soldiers’ faces obscured, apart from the image of Abergil. The Guardian has pixellated the faces of the Palestinians. More here.

Pakistan must refuse to pay foreign debt and divert the amount to the relief and rehabilitation of flood-hit communities. Instead of begging for much-needed aid for relief and rehabilitation, Pakistan must stand up and announce the unilateral suspension of repayment of foreign debts, owed to international finance institutions (IFIs) and donor countries. Currently Pakistan is paying about US$3 billion on debt servicing every year. Pakistan’s present foreign debt of $54 billion is increasing. This act alone can bring most of the much-need support for the immediate relief of the flood victims. Full article.

Those western pundits who are always ready to assault illiberal regimes worldwide on behalf of democracy ought not to be so tongue-tied. Here is a well-educated Muslim population, heterodox and pluralist by tradition and temperament, and desperate for genuine democracy. However, intellectuals preoccupied by transcendent, nearly mystical, battles between civilization and barbarism tend to assume that “democratic” India, a natural ally of the “liberal” west, must be doing the right thing in Kashmir, ie fighting “Islamofascism”. Thus Christopher Hitchens could call upon the Bush administration to establish a military alliance with “the other great multi-ethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism” even as an elected Hindu nationalist government stood accused of organising a pogrom that killed more than 2,000 Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat. Full article.

Given that it has apparently taken Obama less than 24 hours to retreat from his relatively mild and obvious statements last night, forgive me if I am underwhelmed by what came out of the president’s mouth after weeks as a bystander to very ugly, escalating and spreading racism. It’s even worse than that — just a few days ago, the White House actually said that the anti-Muslim incitement in this country is within the bounds of reasonable discourse and was not “dangerous.” I beg to differ. It is dangerous and if people do not stand up to it I fear that there will be more violence targeting Muslims, such as the bombing of a mosque in Florida a few months ago. Full article.

free speech and democracy anyone?

Israel appears to have banned access to the hilarious song and video “Internet killed Israeli PR” by MDT (Minor Demographic Threat) which makes fun of Israel’s shoddy hasbara (propaganda) after its attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which it killed 9 peace activists and injured dozens of others. Full article and video here.

Esposito said politicians’ fearmongering over Muslims was similar to exploitation of fears that the country was being swamped by a tide of illegal immigrants. “Islamophobia is not just about religion. It’s about people who are of colour and a whole set of presuppositions about these people,” he said. “You can see it not only with Muslims but with Mexicans, people who look Hispanic. Now we have hard data from Gallup and Pew that demonstrate in America how integrated the vast majority of Muslims are – economically, politically and religiously. And yet a significant number of Americans can be appealed to in what is nothing less than hate speech, the same hate speech directed against immigrants.” Full article.

?”The plan for a mosque just blocks from the World Trade Center site has ignited a national debate about the limits of tolerance and the symbolism of ground zero.” — the limits of tolerance??? Full article.