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[puterworm]

Lets post political columns from news papers over here

[puterworm]

Pakistani moulana who used to flaunt his photograph with Osama bin Ladin and justify the Taleban’s treatment of women in the ‘light of Sharia’ was caught up in a most embarrassing scandal some years back. When police apprehended a woman running a brothel in Islamabad, she testified that this moulana was among her regular clients (his for two escorts earned him the sobriquet “Maulana Sandwich”). Yet the image conscious khaki-democrats at the helm of Pakistan’s affairs coolly dispatched him to Europe as part of a delegation from enlightened’ Pakistan. The EU authorities promptly deported him for his support for Taleban, embarrassing Pakistan as well as expatriate Pakistanis in EU countries, particularly in Netherlands and Belgium.
No ban has yet been imposed on “Maulana Sandwich’s” travel abroad despite the damage to Pakistan’s image. Nor did the ‘enlightened’ GHQ moderates stop Qazi Hussain Ahmad from traveling abroad to Norway August last year, despite an uproar in Norwegian media since both Holland and Belgium had already denied Qazi a visa due to “security concerns”. Norwegian local government and regional minister Erna Solberg granted Qazi a visa “despite the security risk” on the grounds that his “right to freedom of speech outweighed security concerns”.
There cheers for Scandinavian commitment to freedom of speech. But for the Norwegian-Pakistani community, Qazi’s visit was a thorough disgrace. The rock bottom was his address at Blindern (Oslo University). Asked why his party stood for the death sentence for homosexuals, Qazi lied blatantly, contradicting the charge. The lie became a scandal, exposed by the leading Norwegian newspaper, VG. It carried a detailed story on the issue the next day, headlined “Qazi gets homo shock”, that cited Jamaat Islami’s website which advocates death for homosexuality. The visit was catastrophe for Pakistan’s image from beginning to end. Yet, no ban has yet been imposed on Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s  traveling abroad.
Nor have generals dressed in civvies holding high office in Pakistan ever been barred from traveling abroad despite the damage such visits cause to Pakistan’s democratic image.
Yet the authorities saw fit to impose a travel ban on Mukhtaran Mai, potentially the best image builder for Pakistan on an international level. Ridiculed as an ‘illiterate’_ as if one needs a PhD to narrate the trauma of rape_ she was stopped from traveling abroad in order to avoid damaging country’s image.
She would have tarnished Pakistan’s image aboard had she been a suicide bomber belonging to some banned outfit and planning to blow up a mosque. She would be dangerous for the otherwise enlightened image of Pakistan had she been involved in Daniel Pearl’s tragic murder. She would have brought sham to Pakistan had she stashed money, received as kickback in murky arms deals, in offshore banks.
Instead, she symbolizes women’s resistance in a male dominated society. She symbolizes the strength of a courageous Pakistani woman who has the guts to stand up to ‘shame’. Rape victims, even in West, often shy away from the sort of struggle that she has launched. This is a person Pakistan should rightfully seek pride in Mukhtaran Mai shows the way to victims of sexual violence across the globe. She should make a much better representative than the kind of couriers dispatched to the West on image building missions.
But leave aside the pros and cons of Mukhtaran Mai’s travel abroad , what is more worrying is the high handed method employed to ‘save’ (in fact, hide) Pakistan’s image. The hectic ‘image saving’ episode is yet another manifestation of executing an agenda at gunpoint.
It was back in 1958 when the gun wielders for the first time used their guns to implement their agenda. To stall the first general elections scheduled for March 1959, they intervened and deprived the people of Pakistan their basic right at gunpoint. At last, when elections were held in 1970, the election results were denied at gunpoint. The secession of East Pakistan was the tragic outcome.
Kashmir is another story of achieving a goal trough the barrel of a gun. And it is not only the population of Kashmir that has suffered; the people of Pakistan, too, have paid a heavy price for the attempts to ‘liberate’ Kashmir at gunpoint. Democracy, nuclear policy, foreign policy, judiciary, you name it; one finds every institution’s policy driven by the barrel of a gun.
And while Mai was being detained and intimidated, the state telecommunications corporation was privatized _ also at gunpoint. Leaving aside the pros and cons of the privatization itself, the method employed to carry out the privatization is a manifestation of the fact that khaki rulers do not speak any language but that of guns. From rooting khaki rule to urooting democracy, and from the privatization to ‘image saving’ travel bans, Pakistan is still being run at gunpoint.

Habib Jalib warns of the consequences:

Mohabbat golion say bow rahay ho;
Watan ka chehra khuu se dho rahey ho.
Guman tum ko keh rasta cut raha hai;
Yaqeen mujh ko keh manzil kho rahay ho.
( You are using bullets to sow love/ Washing the face of the land with blood/ You are under the illusion that you are finding your way/ I believe that you are missing the destination).
                             

     
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Sweden.

[black and white]

                         
When terror strikes the West, it's best to batten down the hatches. Especially if you are of the wrong skin colour. So far I 've considered Britain to be an exception in the West. But I may be wrong. Times are changing, and when terrorists struck London on Thursday with rush-hour bombs that left some 50 civilians dead, a number of leaders- led by prime Minister Tony Blair- called upon the British public to ensure that there is no backlash against Muslims.
Although no group had yet admitted setting off the blasts, Blair, who rushed to London from the G8 summit in Gleneagles, said "The vast majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law abiding people who abhor these acts of terrorism every bit as much as we do.
As an Indian who has lived and worked as a London-based foreign correspondent for more than 18 years, I felt relieved. Yet, on my way back from Gleneagles to London, I was singled out at Edinburgh airport for special security treatment. After walking through the metal detectors and being waved past by airport security officials, I was abruptly stopped by a policeman in civvies.
I said I was headed for London and asked him if this was a random check. He said it was, but as far as I could see, I was the only person he had stopped. " This is part of a general tightening of security after yesterday, sir, my policeman informed me, before adding helpfully, "you may well find more of such checks in London.
Don't worry "I told him, "I'm used to this, "there's a lot more that I could have told him. I could have said, for instance, that I was not a Muslim but that would have been too demeaning to me as a national from the India where followers of all faiths, and of no faiths, are equal before the law. I could have told him that not a single Indian has been found among the many followers of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
But he would not understand and I suspect, wouldn't care. I could have reminded him that Richard Reid, the shoe bomber now serving life sentence in the US, is a mixed-race man, with a white mother and Jamaican father. Yet, would that mean he would stop white passengers just as he chose to stop me?
And I could have asked him: "What does a Muslim look like any way?
Does a Muslim look like any of the hundreds of Asian doctors and other health service workers shown on television helping out the estimated 1,000 people wounded in the terror blasts? Or like the Asian bus driver who was interviewed on television saying Londoners will not allow terrorists to beat them down? Or like the thousands of Asians who work in London Underground, the tube system that the terrorists sought to blow up?
This question of the Muslim 'Identity' came into focus Thursday when a community human rights activist advised Muslims to stay home for some time - especially women. He had in mind women who wear headscarves or burqas.
But back at heathrow airport it was a bearded Asian man who was questioned by two heavily armed policemen as I stood waiting for a taxicab. The man looked like he was from Afghanistan or Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. Of the 20-odd car drivers waiting to pick up passengers, he was the only one to be questioned.
I have always considered London to be the most multi-cultural liberal-minded and cosmopolitan city on planet earth. But I also know that London is not Britain. And, no matter where you live, the question of identify and allegiance of who you are, of whether you are with 'us' or not in the battle against terror - is one that is being posed to men and women of colour more than others. And that is a form of discrimination that I hope to see Britain fight and overcome.
                                                 The writer is an IANS
                                             correspondent in London.
                                                               

[puterworm]

koool

[sturie]

you know what khorie, why dont you post the link instead of all the story. dont get me wrong i thing its a good idea, but i think just posting the link would be better.

[jabbar mian]

assallam o alaikum

sturie sister..... sometimes links don,t work ...hence a confirmed posting of an article is a good idea...Admin can guide us on this....

I would also request our valued posters to please give "title",...date and name of the newspaper also along with their article....thanks

wassallam

[SWATIAN]

Yes,

Only Political columns will be posted here, for other articles we have Articles Section.

Sometimes the link becomes dead after a certain period of time,
So its better to post the brief theme of the article/column, not the whole 8 pages story.
But the actual link & source must be mentioned in the end of the columns for reference & verification.

Regards
Swatian

Note:
Soon I will delete other irrelivent replies in this thread.  [other then columns/articles]
I am making this post sticky for the time being.

[puterworm]

Dear Sturie, beleive me or not... i typed that from the newspaper.

[sturie]

hey and i thought i was the only journalist on this forum.....

[Hizbullaah]

Dear Sturie, beleive me or not... i typed that from the newspaper.

Gud 2 no...tha'...PUTER

[puterworm]

Thanks but i look forward to columns from you people too here

[jabbar mian]

please share this column from daily "the Nation", Pakistan, Thursday, Aug18, 2005...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return to Racism

MOWAHID HUSSAIN SHAH
There are some who used to brag in the US and in the UK that racism has been irreversibly rolled back, at least officially. Not any more.
Under the cover of the much trumpeted ‘war on terrorism’, racial prejudice and religious bigotry, which had previously gone ‘under cover’, have now made a respectable comeback.
‘Hate speech’ – instead of being reviled – is, in effect, being tolerated or justified in mainstream Western circles. In the greater Washington area, a radio talk show host on the popular radio station WMAL-AM urged listeners to watch out for “criminal aliens who are in this country destroying this country, stealing jobs, running drugs, raping people.” Significantly, WMAL talk show hosts incited anti-Muslim hatred by calling Islam “a terrorist religion” and accusing it of teaching Muslims to lie.
A case in point is a July 29 article by a Wall Street Journal editor/columnist of Hindu descent, Tunku Varadarajan, entitled “The Feeling of Being Under Suspicion” wherein the scribe, who previously was condemnatory of Muslims, was lamenting the fact that he has come under visual suspicion because he fits the visual profile:
“The fact that I am neither Muslim nor Pakistani is irrelevant: Who except the most absurdly expert physiognomist or anthropologist could tell from my face that I am not an Ali, or a Mohammed, or a Hassan; that my ancestors are all from deepest South India; and that my line has worshipped not Allah but Lord Shiva ….”
To quote verbatim a CNN story of August 3: “Crimes motivated by religious hatred have jumped by nearly 600 percent in London since the July 7 bombings, according to [Scotland Yard].”
Racial profiling is being used in London in the current stop-and-search policy, which targets a specific ethnic and religious group. Some New York officials are endorsing similar racial profiling in New York. In fact, profiling against Pakistanis already appears to have occurred there. The Boston Globe reported on August 14 that “Little Pakistan”, a community in Brooklyn, New York, has been the target of US immigration authorities. Since 9/11, the article states that “4,000 residents have been arrested, detained, or deported, and 15,000 Pakistanis have left New York City,” with many deciding to go “rather than face questions” from US officials.
An August 4 article in the British newspaper, The Independent, entitled “Britain’s Muslim Scapegoats” talks of a “huge rise in race attacks on all ethnic minorities across Britain.” It seems that when Britain’s much-vaunted liberalism was tested, it failed the test. To cite the Monitoring Group: “It is not just abuse, a frightening level is actually attacks.”
The virus is spreading. The 1.5 million Muslims in Italy are coming under greater scrutiny. Many of them, despite living there for years, have a remote chance of getting citizenship. In Copenhagen, Kaj Vilhelmsen, a Danish owner of radio station, Radio Holger, has called for Muslims to be “expelled from Western Europe in order to fight terrorism and that they should be terminated … and to kill some of them.” Similarly, in Holland, hate crimes have soared against Dutch Muslims in the aftermath of the slaying of the grand-nephew of Dutch painter Van Gogh, who was making scurrilous movies about Islam.
A voice of sanity, however, comes through a Washington Post article of July 30 by Colbert King: “You can’t fight terrorism with racism.”
What is clear from the above is that the 20 million Muslims in Europe plus the nearly 1 crore Muslim in America are coming under a systematic assault which, if left unchallenged and unanswered, may permanently marginalise, ostracise, and stigmatise the Muslim presence in the Western world.
Western policymakers often extol the virtues of moderation in the Muslim world while exempting themselves from practicing what they preach. One example is the article by US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in the Financial Times of August 2, the caption of which “There Can Be No Moderate Solutions to Extremism” is both self-explanatory and self-contradictory. Oxfam, the international aid organisation, has accused the US of being lukewarm or evening blocking a proposed international standard that would hold governments responsible for protecting their civilian populations from human rights violations.
Given the spiraling escalation of violence and hate, the moment is now for policymakers in the West and the Muslim world to take stock of the situation and strategically reassess the current course of action and direction which is propelling the world toward catastrophe.
Meanwhile, Muslims in the West still have a few options: shun isolation, be intellectually prepared, and reach out to build alliances. Their existing posture only makes them weak and vulnerable. Remaining quiet and submissive is no longer an option.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[puterworm]

"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, or cool one pain, or help one fainting robin unto his nest again,i shall not live in vain."
- Emily Dickinson

A very nice column. I liked but couldnt type so just scanned for you people.

Read full article:click here

[Ghilzai]

Any body on voilation of Copyright laws if you reproduce articles on this site without getting the consent from the Newpaper where it is published originally. Just a thought .......

[changul]

Relatives of the missing beaten up

By Bakhtawar Mian

 ISLAMABAD, Dec 28: Police broke up a protest demonstration organised by family members and relatives of missing persons, badly beating and arresting several of them after they tried to march to the GHQ to present a memorandum to the Vice-Chief of the Army Staff.

More than a hundred people, mostly women and children belonging to the families of the disappeared, arrived in groups to the square in front of the Flashman’s Hotel. According to the organisers of the protest, the participants had planned to peacefully march to the GHQ to register their concern over the detention of their loved-ones, who they say, have been in the custody of the army and secret agencies for the last several years.

Eyewitnesses said the trouble began when a heavy contingent of police, led by SP Yasin Farooq, SP Muhammad Azam and DSP Rana Shahid, pushed some of the protesters inside the hotel’s boundary wall, shoving and manhandling them badly.

After some time more protesters arrived and started shouting slogans against the police. Those who had been detained inside the hotel also came out to join them.

This led to skirmishes between police and the protesters. According to the eyewitnesses, the protest took a turn for the worse when the police stripped a young man, Mohammad bin Masood, the son of missing Masood Janjua. The witnesses said even then the police continued to drag him, finally throwing him into a police van.

The incident enraged other protesters, especially the man’s young sister, who started crying and flagellating herself.

The police also shoved aside the father of a missing man and later arrested him.

After having failed to march to the GHQ, the protesters blocked the Mall Road for about three hours. Police and protesters fought running battles for some time.

Scared by police highhandedness and arrests, a young girl and a small child lost consciousness and fell on the road, the eyewitnesses said.

Unbowed and determined, the protesters refused to leave the place, end the protest and open the road until the arrested men were released. Later, on an assurance from SP Azam that the detained men would be released, the protesters dispersed peacefully.

However, the younger brother of detained Mohammad bin Masood told Dawn by telephone that his brother had not been released by the police.

The eyewitnesses said that besides an old man and Mohammad bin Masood, several women had been detained and not released till late in the evening.

[changul]

By Qudssia Akhlaque

ISLAMABAD, May 20: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has been mentioned in rather uncharitable terms in US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s biography according to which when he tried to charm Dr Rice on her first trip to Pakistan in 2005, she “stared him down”.

The book titled: `Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power’ by Newsweek Chief of Correspondents and Senior Editor Marcus Mabry has been recently launched in the United States.

Although the biography has been written by an independent journalist, the adjectives used for an incumbent prime minister appear to be unprecedented in their harshness.

Referring to Ms Rice’s first trip to South Asia in March 2005 during which she also visited Pakistan, the author writes: “Yet, when Rice sat down with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who fancied himself a ladies’ man, Aziz puffed himself up and held forth in what he obviously thought was his seductive baritone. (He bragged – to Western diplomats, no less – that he could conquer any woman in two minutes.)

“(He tried) this Savile Row-suited gigolo kind of charm: `Pakistan is a country of rich traditions,’ staring in (Rice’s) eyes,” a participant at the meeting recalled.

“There was this test of wills where he was trying to use all his charms on her as a woman, and she just basically stared him down. By the end of the meeting, he was babbling.”

“The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his voice visibly changed.” Some of the foreign men, the American official said, “They don’t get it …She has a really strong will, and I think people sometimes ‘misunderestimate’ her.”

[khawrichan]

posted is a scan from a daily. i liked and thought others will too

[khawrichan]

Still experimenting.... The column is about malakand by Muhammad Usman Yousafzai posted in daily Jhang

[khawrichan]

Hum Amrica ke ghulam nahi. Plz find the column attached.

[khawrichan]

Yeh dekho kon keh raha hay
By Abdullah tariq Suhail

[khawrichan]

Drone attacks, Ch. Parvez Elahi and IDPs...  Waghera Waghera
By Abdullah Tariq Suhail

[khawrichan]

Talibanization " Aqeel yousafzai ka karnama "
By Hamid Akhtar
hamidakhtar @ hormail .com

[khawrichan]

Baitullah Mehsud, Jehanzeb, Shopein
By: Talat Husain

[imrankhan]

Sarjare - by Orya Maqbool Jan

[khawrichan]

javed choudry. Zero Point
javedch100 @ gmail.com