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Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza wedding song and pictures

2010-12-26T23:20:00.000-08:00

Shahrukh Khan, Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza Dance Together

2010-12-26T23:16:00.000-08:00

SAHARA AWARDS 2010 SHAHRUKH KHAN DANCE WITH SANIA & SHOAIB MALIK

Tennis sensation Sania Mirza talks to Sexy Pooja Bedi

2010-12-26T23:10:00.001-08:00

Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza :- Latest Hot News

2010-12-26T23:09:00.001-08:00

Aisam-ul-haq Qureshi: We are not terrorists

2010-12-26T23:03:00.000-08:00

Aisam’s speech at US OPEN 2010 Mens Double Prize ceremoney. Aisam & Rohan spread message of Peace, especially Aisam’s proud comments about Pakistan.

Kal Tak with Javed Chaudary 12th October 2010 – Imran Khan

2010-12-26T23:01:00.000-08:00

Watch Kal Tak With Javed Choudry 12th October 2010.Guest Imran Khan,Khuwaja Asif PML N.aisal Kareem Kundi ( Deputy Speaker National Asembly.On 12 October 1999, Pakistani army launched a coup, and took control of the country. The coup was led by General Pervez Musharraf, who soon after appointed himself as the Chief Executive of the country. This change in status was brought about by a proclamation of emergency in the country and issuance of a number of orders by the Chief Executive.

World’s Funniest Soccer Goal Celebration

2010-12-26T22:58:00.000-08:00

Parents of Two Innocent Brothers Killed In Sialkot Punjab Pakistan

2010-12-26T22:56:00.000-08:00

Clifton Blast Video | Abdullah Shah Ghazi Mazar Blast Video

2010-12-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

Karachi: Several injured in two blasts near Abdullah Shah Ghazi Tomb
At least four people have been killed and several others sustained injuries in twin blasts near shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi, Dunya News reported on Thursday. Two children, security guard and policeman are among the dead.
According to Dunya News correspondent, both the blasts were occurred near walk-through gates of the tomb. Panic prevailed after the incident. Police and law enforcing agencies cordoned off the tomb and relief activities have been started.
Emergency has been imposed in Karachi hospitals and paramedical staff has been called. The injured are being shifted to nearby hospitals including Jinnah Hospital. Situation of some of the injured is stated to be critical.
The Mausoleum and Dargah of Abdullah Shah Ghazi is located in Clifton, neighbourhood of Saddar Town in Karachi.

Zakir Naik banned from lecturing in Indian State – NDTV News

2010-12-26T22:43:00.001-08:00

Obama announces end of combat mission in Iraq

2010-12-26T22:41:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama declared an end to the seven-year US combat mission in Iraq and told war-weary Americans that our central mission as a people is to restore the sagging US economy and US must focus on its fight against al Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan.
Obama, who inherited the war from President George W. Bush and is fighting another in Afghanistan, said he had fulfilled a 2008 campaign promise to end US combat operations in Iraq. After seven years of bloodshed that has brought sacrifice from Americans and Iraqis and consumed vast resources from tight budgets, Obama said that Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. Obama hailed the removal of all but 50,000 U.S. troops, who will have a training and advisory role, saying that this was my pledge to the American people as a candidate for this office. Obama has promised to pull all US troops out of Iraq by the end of 2011. The effective change on the ground will not be huge because the U.S. military has already been switching the focus toward training and support over the past year. Iraqi forces have been taking the lead since a bilateral security pact came into force in 2009.

Islamabad tonight 14th october 2010 – Imran Khan

2010-12-26T22:37:00.000-08:00

Islamabad tonight 14th october 2010

Zardari and Sara Palin in Punjabi Dubbing

2010-12-26T22:34:00.000-08:00

This is the same video in which zardari passed comments I might hug but this time in Punjabi dubbing! funny!!!!

Salman(junoon) abusing Quran & Islam

2010-12-26T22:32:00.000-08:00

Shocking Comments by Salman Ahmed on Islam and Quran MustÃ‚Â watch this.
Nation is shocked: Is Salman Ahmed (Lead Guitarist of Junoon Group) a Muslim.?

India and Pakistan, a love story (Really)

2010-12-26T22:18:00.000-08:00

By Saba Imtiaz,
March 30, 2010

Pakistan has a habit of conferring the title of “daughter” on women. There was Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of the East, a title the late prime minister was recognized by until the day she died. Then there was Aafia Siddiqui, a neuroscientist who was dubbed the daughter of Pakistan by a country outraged at her alleged abuse at the hands of coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan just welcomed its new favorite daughter — albeit a daughter-in-law — Indian tennis player Sania Mirza. Mirza became a pin-up girl in India when she debuted on the world stage, and everything from her tennis attire of short skirts to her fiancé were analyzed breathlessly.
But this week, Mirza dropped a bombshell with the announcement that she was engaged to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik. India and Pakistan — countries that have been at war and share a deep rivalry when it comes to sports — erupted with the news. After all, Mirza, whose career has been marred with injuries and varying degrees of success, is one of India’s most recognizable names. When she broke off her engagement to childhood friend Sohrab Mirza this year, Indian news media outlets analyzed why she had decided to call it quits. Clearly, as Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik would have said, a “foreign hand” was at play.
Shoaib Malik has captained the Pakistani cricket team, but his own career and personal life have been rather tumultuous. He was recently banned by the Pakistan Cricket Board for a year, and there has been a barrage of rumors about his dating several women in India. Detractors would undoubtedly say that these are all conspiracies to debase a man of the land of the pure.
While Pakistani families debate over whether Mirza will be allowed to wear short skirts, where the couple will reside (they have announced that they will live in Dubai), and which country the two will support, the couple has tried to play down the “cross-border incursion.” Mirza told the Indian press on Tuesday, “I’m going to keep playing. I will play for India, and inshallah he will play for Pakistan,” Mirza said. Malik, on the other hand, is already settling into the role of doting fiancé. “I fully understand what it takes to be an international sportsperson. I’ll support Sania in her career as long as she wishes to play. Representing India at the 2012 Olympics is very important for her, and I will be the proudest husband if she can win a medal for her country.”
The couple has plans to marry next month (though reportedly they’ve only been dating for the last six months). Meanwhile, Pakistani news channels have taken to promoting the engagement using Indian film songs, newspapers have used cricket analogies, and a Photoshopped image of Malik’s face in Mirza’s engagement photograph has done the rounds on the Internet for the past two days. As Pakistanis crow over their newest daughter, they realize that the ball is finally in their court!
Saba Imtiaz works for the Express Tribune, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan scheduled to launch this Spring.

Shoaib Malik in another scandal(Partying & Dancing Pictures)

2010-12-26T22:16:00.000-08:00

Shoaib malik former Pakistani cricket captain is going to marrry with indian tennis super star Sania mirza, after his marriage date his previous scandals are headlnes of both indian and Pakistani media following are some pictures of Shoaib malik caught in another scandal

Photos of US soldiers’ alleged rape, sexual abuse in Iraq

2010-12-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

This Post contains Sexual Contents Viewers Discretion is Advised Jalaybi Team could not independently confirm the authenticity of the images.

Photos obtained by Press TV reveal alleged sexual harassment and rape of Iraqi prisoners at US-run Abu Ghraib detention center by American soldiers.
The alleged pictures illustrate American soldiers raping and sexually harassing Iraqi detainees.
Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist from Washington, told Press TV that there was a lot to explain with respect to the photos.

“That is exactly what was taking place in Abu Ghraib and that information came to me from many many different sources some of whom actually stationed in Abu Ghraib at the time,” Madsen said.
The allegations that these photos are fake were made by neoconservative media, He added.
To clarify the issue, Madsen said when some of the disputed photos were randomly published by the Boston Globe in 2004; the paper came under attack as part of neoconservative propaganda.
He also ruled out the reports claiming that the photos were taken from pornographic movies.This is while the Pentagon has rejected that the photographs even existed.
On Thursday, Antonio Taguba, a retired US general who conducted an inquiry into the abuses at the US-run prison in Iraq, sent shockwaves around the world by explaining about the heinous pictures in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency,” the British newspaper quoted Taguba as saying without releasing any of the images.
The daily added that one of the pictures depicted a male American soldier apparently raping a female detainee, while another showed a male translator raping a male prisoner. Another photo showed how a female detainee was forced to disrobe and expose her breasts.
There were also photos showing US soldiers sexually assaulting the prisoners with objects like truncheons, wires and phosphorescent tubes.
US President Barack Obama had promised to release some 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan; however, later on he backtracked on his pledge and blocked the release of the photographs.
Taguba said that the gruesome nature of the photos was to such extent that he could understand why Obama is reluctant to authorize their release.
For more photos please check http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm

Pictures: Meera with her Husband Atiq-ur-Rehman

2010-12-26T22:07:00.000-08:00

On the request of media and friends we are posting these images. Looks like married couple enjoying at some beach and photos are some real photos not computer edited.Viewers comments are required.

14 Year Old Brazilian Girl Is Almost 7 Feet Tall!

2010-12-26T22:03:00.001-08:00

Zaid Hamid on Babri Masjid Issue

2010-12-26T22:02:00.000-08:00

Pervez Musharraf Special Interview on Geo – Sohail Waraich

2010-12-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

Former President of Pakistan Pervaiz Musharraf in an exclusive interview with Geo News’ senior correspondent Sohail Warraich in London.

Incident of dera ghazi khan

2010-12-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

Abdullah Chandia shot dead Naseem Abbas, a cloth merchant and local office-bearer of the Tehrik-i-Jafria, in Choti Zaireen for unknown reasons. Later, he surrendered to police.

A mob chased Abdullah to the Choti police station and came out with his body. The mob celebrated the man’s death and people lifted DSP Iqbal Chandia onto their shoulders.

Later, the mob burnt the body.

Abdullah’s family alleged that he had been murdered by police. On his family’s plea, the DSP and SHO Noor Ahmad Chandia were booked for murder.

Another case was registered against about 1,500 people.

However, both officials were absolved of the murder in departmental inquiries.

It is said that the footage shown by TV channels on Tuesday was a part of police inquiries.

Before this incident, police were suspicious of Abdullah’s activities and monitoring his movement.

Different TV channels aired the footage of the entire incident.

Regional Police Officer Ahmad Mubarak Ahmad said the footage could incite sectarian violence in the district.

DSP Iqbal, who is currently serving in Dera Ghazi Khan town, said there was nothing new in the footage and he had been absolved during departmental inquiries.

Pakistani Aggression (Not Afraid)

2010-12-26T21:55:00.001-08:00

Toshiba Satellite M500 Touch screen

2010-12-26T21:54:00.000-08:00

Toshiba rides on the latest trends in notebooks by presenting a pair of laptops with multitouch screens 13 to 14 inches, Satellite M500 and U500 Touch Touch, equipped with Core 2 Duo and Windows 7 pre-installed.

After the HP Pavilion TouchSmart DV3 and Acer Aspire 5738PG , also made its debut in Toshiba notebook market with touch screen and does so with two different models: the Satellite M500 and U500 Touch Touch. As suggested by the nomenclature traditionally adopted by Toshiba, the U500 is characterized by greater portability because equipping a 13-inch diagonal screen against dell’M500 14 inches, but the latter having its LED backlight panel. Both will still feature multitouch technology built-in support provided by the operating system Windows 7 (here in the Home Premium version): all activities that require the use of a mouse can be easily done with the pressure on the screen, and use gestures to make it even more intuitive and immediate interaction with their content.

To further improve the user experience with the new Satellite Touch, both notebooks will be equipped with a touch-ready software suite called LifeSpace, specially developed by Toshiba to “increase personal productivity in a unique and fun.” The suite consists of two software: Bulletin Board and ReelTime. The first is essentially a virtual wall on which to place your photos, save links, videos and organize documents, mark notes and appointments, or checklist to manage activities. ReelTime can easily find a file rather than newly opened scrolling visual history of the system with a simple hand gesture.

Front Line with Kamran Shahid – 10 Oct 2010 – Shahid Khan Afridi

2010-12-26T21:51:00.000-08:00

Cricketers Sarfraz Nawaz and Shahid Afridi in Today’s episode of Front Line with Kamran Shahid.

iPhone 4 vs iPad! Which is Better?

2010-12-26T21:43:00.000-08:00

Not so long ago Apple re-invented what we perceive as a mobile phone with its first iteration of the iPhone. And three years later, it decided to try and do it again with the iPad, which sets out to fill the – apparent – void between phones and netbooks.

But how do the new iPhone 4 and the iPad weigh up against one another as products?

Granted, in an ideal world we’d have both, but as we all know the world is very much far from ideal. So, within this context, we pit the two devices against one another to see which is worth your hard-earned cash.

Screen

Obviously, the iPad, at 9.7-inches, is significantly larger than the 3.5-inch iPhone 4 – this is a given. Another given is that both are designed for different purposes. But, on the whole, when you look at the actual core aspects of the screen, such as pixels, there isn’t that much in it – even though the iPad is much bigger.

For example, the iPad has a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, which is, indeed, very impressive and because of its size it’s obviously better suited for watching films on than the smaller iPhone 4.

Khabar Naak – 10th October 2010

2010-12-26T21:41:00.000-08:00

Aftab Iqbal presents a hilarious episode of Khabar Naak from Geo TV.

Twins Share One Heart

2010-03-17T03:30:00.000-07:00

THESE conjoined twins have just one HEART and their parents face an agonising dilemma over their future.
Emma and Taylor Bailey, three, are fused from the breastbone to the bellybutton and share a heart and liver.
Docs told parents Tor, 34, and Mandy, 32, they must be separated in the next two years because the stress on the heart is increasing.

Mind-Control Coming To A Computer Near You?

2010-03-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

The world’s largest high-tech fair is the place to go to find out how you can play games or do daily chores all by just using the power of your mind.

At the annual CeBIT fair, crowds gathered around a man sitting at a pinball table, wearing a cap full of electrodes attached to his head. The man controlled flippers with ease without the use of his hands.

Michael Tangermann, of Berlin Brain Computer Interface, told spectators “He thinks: left-hand or right-hand and the electrodes monitor the brain waves associated with that thought, send the information to a computer, which then moves the flippers,”

Although the technology can be used as a fun gadget, there is so much more it could possibly do. Scientists are researching potential ways the technology would be able to monitor brain waves of motorists to help improve reaction times in a crash.

In an emergency where a driver needs to stop quickly, brain activity kicks in around 200 milliseconds before even the most alert driver can hit the brake. Although, scientists are not thinking that the car should automatically brake for the driver, Tangermann said. He did say, however, “there are various things the car can do in that crucial time, tighten the seat belt, for example.”

Using the monitoring technology, a car could also tell whether the driver is drowsy or not, potentially keeping the driver safe, by alerting them to take a break.

At another booth, spectators watched a man wearing a similar device as he sat in front of a screen with a large keyboard, with letters flashing in an ordered sequence. The user concentrates on a letter flashing on the screen and the brain waves stimulated at this exact moment are registered by the computer and the letter appears onscreen.

Currently, the technology is slow-going — it took the man about 4 minutes to write a five-letter word — but researchers are hoping to perfect the technology in the close future.

Another device showed users controlling robots with their mind. The user concentrates on flashing lights from a small box that has lights on each of four compass points. Depending on which light he concentrates on, the robot will move in that direction.

Scientists say the technology is being perfected for use by persons with disabilities, allowing them to communicate and operate devices with their brain. “In future, people will be able to control wheelchairs, open doors and turn on their televisions with their minds,” said Clemens Holzner from g.tec.

The Nature and Significance of NATO-US-Israeli War Crimes

2010-03-17T02:59:00.000-07:00

Here is the speech by George Galloway MP at the War Crimes Conference & Exhibition that took place at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia on 28th October 2009.

Obama Caught Lip-Syncing Speech

2010-03-17T02:58:00.000-07:00

Another Failure of Indian Missile Test

2010-03-17T02:55:00.000-07:00

The Times of India

BALASORE: India’s new Advanced Air Defence (AAD) interceptor missile, capable of destroying hostile missiles, on Monday encountered coordination problem and failed to take off during a planned launch from the Integrated Test Range at Wheeler Island off Orissa coast.

“Coordinated exercise between target missile Prithvi from Chandipur and the indigenously built interceptor from Wheeler Island could not take place properly during the planned trial,” defence sources said.

Though Prithvi – the target missile – was test-fired at 10.02 hrs from a mobile launcher from ITR’s launch complex-3 at Chandipur-on-sea, 15 km from here, the interceptor missile failed to blast off, they said.

Though the exact reason behind interceptor missile’s failure to take off was yet to be ascertained, preliminary analysis suggested that the target missile might have deviated from its stipulated trajectory, leading to lack of proper coordination, the sources said.

The trial, aimed at developing a multi-layer Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system, was originally scheduled to be held on Sunday from the two different sites of the ITR but had to be put off due to some technical snag in a sub-system at Wheeler Island, they said.

Wheeler’s Island is located about 70 km across the sea from Chandipur and the AAD missile was to intercept the target at an altitude of 15 to 20 km over the sea.

Lahore bombings planned in Afghanistan

2010-03-17T02:53:00.000-07:00

TheNation

LAHORE – In a major breakthrough, the intelligence agencies have nabbed the mastermind of Lahore blasts and his close aide in a pre-dawn raid in southern Punjab, sources concerned disclosed, adding that the attacks had been crafted at an Indian consulate in Afghanistan a couple of months ago.
Qari Muzammal, the close aide of the mastermind and a commander of the banned outfit, has confessed to the investigators that India provided cash and ammunition to his group through its consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad to carry out attacks in Lahore.
The security agencies arrested the mastermind of the Lahore blasts, his crony Qari Muzammal and three foreigners during the successful operation. The sources, however, did not disclose the name of the mastermind and said he was being interrogated under tight security.
It is said that the culprit had just reached a remote district of southern Punjab when the security agencies carried out raids in the wee hours of Saturday, during which important evidence besides computer record, CDs and banned literature was also seized.
“He directed the Lahore RA Bazaar attacks from Faisalabad,” a source privy to the investigators said, adding that the attacks on Special Investigation Agency (SIA) building in Model Town and RA Bazaar were interconnected.
The mastermind of Lahore bombings left Faisalabad after local TV channels started airing the footage of the blasts, while he had directed the SIA building attack from Chakwal.
The security agencies traced his whereabouts after intercepting phone calls he was making to his group members in the tribal region near Afghan border.
In last December, a top Indian government official visited Kabul and met Qari Muzammal, who had fled to Afghanistan via Balochistan after the GHQ attacks in Rawalpindi. Two weeks ago, he infiltrated into tribal areas from Pak-Afghan border after a short visit to Mumbai, where he met top Indian officials and got brief training.

Zaid Hamid Accused of Karachi Murders

2010-03-17T02:51:00.000-07:00

Following the assassination of Tehreek-e-Tahfuzz-e-Khatm-e-Nabuwat clerics on late Thursday night, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) has given a strike call for Saturday.

The announcement was made at a press conference held at the JUI headquarter on Friday by Ameer, JUI Karachi, Qari Usman.

The strike call is being backed by other political and religious parties with Jamaat-e-Islami, JUP Sahibzada Karim, PML, NDP and other political groups extended their support.

Addressing the press conference, Qari said, “Zaid Zaman, commonly known as Zaid Hamid Khalifa of Yousuf Kazab, is the main person who brutally murdered our leaders. After hectic consultations, we have decided to nominate him in the FIR.”

Holding the Sindh government responsible for this tragic act, he demanded that culprits should immediately be arrested and Khalifa of Kazab should be hanged to death.

The decision to give a call for strike was taken after night long session between the Ulemas of Deoband sect as according to them, the government has become helpless and Ulemas are left at the mercy of terrorists, he added.

“The strike would be peaceful as Islam is a peace loving religion. We, the believers, do not want to come out on the streets but the situation has forced us to express our resentment,” Qari said. He appealed to the citizens to remain indoors during the strike and urged the traders and transporters to make the strike successful by closing business and keeping the vehicles off the road.

“Had the government arrested the killers of Mufti Shamzai and Mufti Yousuf Ludhyanvi the incident would have not occurred,” he charged. He said that if government failed to apprehend the real culprits, we would be compelled to take any action as this incident has broken all previous records and it is hard to keep the followers of Jalalpuri calm.

Moulana Akram Nomani speaking on the occasion showed a letter of Moulana Saeed Ahmed Jalalpuri in which he had openly challenged Zaid Hamid for his claim of declaring Yousuf Kazab a true Muslim.

He also disclosed that a day ago, Zaid had also called Moulana Ludhvani threatening to kill him and he succeeded in his ulterior motives. He said that no government personalities have approached them so far apart from the governor Sindh, who in continuous contact with the Ulemas.

Press Conference of Jamiat Ulema Pakistan (JUP) on Death of Molana Saeed Ahmed JalalPuri

Afghanistan not safe for the Indians

2010-03-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

Security is high alert in Pakistan

2010-03-17T02:40:00.000-07:00

Why all the confusion about identities of prize catches?

2010-03-17T02:37:00.000-07:00

CNN Crossroas

Was he or wasn’t he? You might have been scratching your head as you read conflicting reports about whether Adam Gadahn, the American-born mouthpiece for al Qaeda, had been captured in Pakistan. Some unnamed Pakistani officials said they got him, while anonymous American officials shot back that there is no evidence to support the claim.

Now we are as certain as we can be that it is not him. We have both Pakistani and American officials saying Gadahn is not in custody, but why the contradictions, the confusion in the first place?

Former senior U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say the Pakistani government has been very good at letting the U.S. know within a reasonable period of time when it has captured someone noteworthy. Furthermore, they say the Pakistanis want credit for it. But it can be complicated.

One reason: Pakistan is hardly a cohesive society. Large portions of the country lie outside the control of the central government. The authorities at the federal level sometimes don’t know what is going on in far-flung parts of the country. In some parts – like North and South Waziristan – tribes are much more influential than the government. Foreign extremists and terrorists need the blessings of tribal leaders to remain within their territory.

Often times suspects are caught in remote areas. It takes time for the Pakistanis to understand who they have. Physical appearances might have changed, dental records or fingerprints aren’t readily available.

Once it is established they have a prized catch – especially if it’s an al Qaeda or Afghan Taliban leader – then the Pakistani officials have to decide how to handle the suspect. The U.S. will undoubtedly want access to the individual. If the person is an American, then the Pakistanis would be obligated to provide at the very least, U.S. consular access. There could be requests to transfer the person to the United States or elsewhere.

Pakistani officials may also want some time to figure out how they will play their cards. What will they get for their efforts? One thing they don’t want is to be seen as being in the pocket of America.

The U.S. could have it own motives for not wanting a name to be immediately disclosed. What intelligence can be gained through interrogation while the suspect’s cohorts are unaware of the detention? It’s been reported that news of the detention in February of the Taliban’s #2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was held back for several days for this reason. In the case of an American citizen, the U.S. might want to have physical control of the person before an announcement out of fear the transfer would be blocked or the suspected terrorist is set free. A court in Lahore, for example, recently blocked any attempt to extradite Baradar to Afghanistan where Americans would likely have better access if not outright control of him.

While one former U.S. official maintains the Pakistanis would not lie to the U.S. about the identity of someone in detention, another says the U.S. is still wary when it comes to completely trusting the Pakistanis. According to this former official, there are many factions in the government who will deceive you or not tell you everything. And this person believes the Pakistani government today is more disjointed than was the case during the military rule of General Pervez Musharraf.

Regardless of whether the U.S. would have wanted to delay disclosure of a capture, current and former government officials say that to mislead or lie to the press would simply be asking for trouble, and cost the U.S. government credibility.

The value to keeping a name secret is to use the time to get as much information as possible before the person’s contacts know what has happened. “Once it is out there, it’s done,” an official says.

One of the officials summed up the confusion over the fate of Adam Gadahn as an unfortunate distraction from the co-operative relationship that has developed between the U.S. and Pakistan in tracking down and arresting terrorist suspects.

The Beast File: Google (HUNGRY BEAST)

2010-03-17T02:34:00.000-07:00

Meet Google. The noun that became a verb. The world’s favourite search engine, and the company whose motto is “Don’t be evil…” Graphics by Patrick Clair, written by Elmo Keep and Jon Casimir.

Lahore Sucide Attacks Caught on Mobile

2010-03-17T00:59:00.000-07:00

LAHORE: Two suicide attackers blew themselves up near security forces vehicles in R A Bazar area of South Cantt as crowds gathered for Friday prayers killing at least 39 people including five security personnel and injuring 95.

“Thirty-nine people were killed and 95 wounded in the attacks,” Inspector General Police Punjab Tariq Salim Dogar told reporters after visiting the blast site.

“We have collected concrete technical evidence, which will help identify the attackers. Both the attackers were on foot,” he added.

Five security men were dead and 15 injured in the attack, security sources said.

“There were two suicide bombers who attacked two military vehicles within the space of 15 seconds,” SSP Operations Mohammad Shafiq told Geo News.

“The heads of both attackers have been found,” he said.

Rescue workers and paramedics rushed to the R A Bazaar, a densely populated area of the city. The area was crowded as the blasts occurred shortly before the main Friday prayers were to start.

Emergency has been declared in city hospitals and injured were shifted to CMH and other hospitals.

Security forces have cordoned off the area and traffic was blocked. Media was not allowed to go near the scene.

Video: Twin suicide attacks in Lahore

2010-03-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

The genius of an oeuvre is measured by the breadth of its message – Avatar as not “just another war movie

2010-03-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

Pulsemedia

Following last night’s choice of the Oscars’ jury to award Katherine Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker with the Best Picture prize, the debate has since then moved to the pubs and the ether. It appears to be primarily concerned with whether Bigelow’s portrait of “the” war does justice to the genre and whether, with time, Avatar will come to be recognised as more deserving of the aspired title. The debate however is having the effect of reducing Cameron’s gargantuan critique of modernity to “just another war movie”, adding to the already popular dismissal of the film, by the intellectual left, as a western guilt-fantasy.

Lets start by considering the assumption that Avatar is “just another war movie”.

If indeed we accept that Cameron’s intention was to provide us with a science-fictional portrait of war, then we must also conclude that von Trier’s Dogville is nothing more than an aesthetically minimalist representation of the Great Depression. Just as von Trier exploits the Great Depression as a historical backdrop against which he develops a provocative portrayal of human nature, so does Cameron in the use he makes of military intervention in Avatar.

I can understand that the topical violence that characterizes both projects might easily lend itself to the juxtaposition of one film against the other but, beyond that, the two projects remain profoundly different, both in terms of their subject and in the breadth of their message.

Whereas The Hurt Locker is a self-proclaimed war movie, Avatar is not. Avatar is at its core an ecological movie, which offers a powerful and accessible critique of modernity that brings to the fore what Horkheimer and Adorno would have referred to, perhaps more poetically, as the dialectic of enlightenment. At the heart of the film lies a critique of the artificial separation of the physical and the metaphysical that is characteristic of modern, western philosophies, and which we carry with us since Plato’s times. This original sin, which gave birth to modernity, is what has condemned us as a civilization to our expulsion from the Garden of “Pandora”, with a progressive loss of our connection to nature and, by virtue, of our humanity. It is this slow process of de-humanisation that has left us, in Cameron’s view, both physically and metaphorically crippled, and which Cameron chooses to embody in the character of Private Jake Sully.

Although not as elegant in its execution as Lawrence’s celebrated allegory of our infertile modernity in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Cameron’s juxtaposition of the physically challenged Sully to his muscled Avatar-counterpart is certainly reminiscent of the powerful juxtaposition of the wheelchair-bound husband of Lady Chatterley to her virile and rural lover. Ironically, what posterity has come to recognise as one of the literary masterpieces of the 20^th century, was originally slated by critics as pure filth. Whether this will be another element that Cameron will come to share with Lawrence, only time will tell.

What is certain, however, is that in his critique of modernity, and not just of war, Cameron draws repeatedly from the wealth of insights provided by theories of “deep ecology” and “ecological psychology”, such as those developed by Arne Naess and Theodore Roszak. And while there is a middle ground between modern capitalist societies and “primitivism” – used here with reference to its theoretical meaning and not derogatively – the two are juxtaposed as a way of conveying a strong sense of the void that separates us from our nature.

Cameron’s constant recalling of the deep and spiritual connection with Gaia, or Pandora if you prefer, makes it difficult to push the radical environmental message of this film to the sidelines in favour of a reductionist military interpretation of the film. Military intervention in Avatar is not employed in a context of war, but in one of violence in its broadest application, and one that finds its expression in the association of militarism to that of power, or “hegemony” if I may quote Gramsci.

Whilst the violence resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan originates in the relatively recent ideological agency of the neo-conservatives, the violence portrayed in “Avatar” is driven by the material interest of transnational capital dating back to Colonial times of the Dutch West India Company – and whose pillaging and plundering continues today through the agency of international trade rules at the service of the modern corporate oppressor of the likes of Shell, Monsanto, Motorola and so forth.

The kind of violence portrayed in Avatar addresses therefore far more universal and profoundly metaphysical questions of human nature, hubris and modernity that transcend not only the historical context of the Iraq and Afghan wars, but of war itself.

The power of Cameron’s critique lies therefore in the breadth of its message, for it allows to draw from the allegory of the Na’vi’s faith to serve as an avatar for struggles as diverse as those affecting the oppressed Palestinians or the indigenous tribes of Bolivia; from military occupation, to environmental depredation. For this very reason, it feels unfair to reduce Avatar to just another war film because it constitutes the first mainstream blockbuster movie to give us a critical and progressive view of our “human ecology”, one that, in contrast with The Hurt Locker, offers us a more holistic and somewhat Aristotelian interpretation of human nature.

Bollywood Actor: Abhishek Bachchan Interview with CNN 2010

2010-03-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

Dr. Zakir Naik, Shahrukh Khan, Soha Ali Khan on NDTV with Barkha Dutt

2010-03-17T00:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. Zakir Naik with Shaharukh Khan, Soha Ali khan, karan Johar, Kabir Khan, Maulana Mehmood Madni and with some others invited by NDTV 24 by 7 in the Show of Barkha Dutt on Topic MUSLIM IDENTITY.

News and Events

2010-03-12T01:06:00.000-08:00

Pakistani Boy with his Girlfriend Wheeling on Bike

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Pakistan Poverty vs Ministers Expenses

Worlds Largest Cabinet of Pakistan and its expenses
in the behaviour of the inmates that changed him. He tells his story to Al Jazeera in his own words.

Valentine’s Day in Peshawar

Indian policeman beating a women

Iran’s science progress fastest in world: Canadian report

Press Tv
Fri, 19 Feb 2010
A Canadian firm evaluating the global output of science and technology says scientific advancements in Iran has grown 11 times faster than any other country in the world.

Science-Metrix — a Montreal-based company dedicated to the quantitative and qualitative evaluation and measurement of science, technology and innovation — has released its most recent report on “geopolitical shifts in knowledge creation” since 1980, Newscientist reported on Thursday.

In the report, Science-Metrix says the number of scientific publications listed in the Web of Science database shows that the standard growth in the Middle East, particularly in Iran and Turkey, is nearly four times faster than the world average.

“Iran is showing fastest worldwide growth in science,” said Eric Archambault, who authored the report.

“Asia is catching up even more rapidly than previously thought, Europe is holding its position more than most would expect, and the Middle East is a region to watch,” he added.

According to Archambaut, while Iran’s publications have somewhat emphasized on nuclear chemistry and particle physics, the country has also made significant progress in medical science and agriculture development.

Archambaut said Iran’s technological advancements this year have been to an extent that they may even outshine those of China, whose prominence in world science is known to have been growing.

Despite more than thirty years of Western-imposed sanctions, Iran has made great strides in different sectors, including aerospace, nuclear science, medical development, as well as stem cell and cloning research.

Among the country’s most recent accomplishments, which has garnered international acclaim, was the February 2 launch of Kavoshgar 3 (Explorer 3) satellite carrier into space with living organisms — a rat, two turtles and worms — onboard.

In January 2010, the country became the first Middle Eastern country to produce transgenic animals, such as sheep and goats that express foreign proteins in their milk and are, therefore, considered valuable sources of protein for human therapy.

Also Iran has become one of the few countries that have the technology and the means to clone farm animals, which could lead to advances in medical research, including using cloned animals to produce human antibodies against diseases.

A lamb named ‘Royana’, a kid named ‘Hanna’ and two calves named ‘Bonyana’ and ‘Tamina’ were the first animals successfully cloned in the country.

Spiderman in Pakistan

US Guantanamo guard converts to Islam

2010-03-12T01:04:00.000-08:00

As the US government moves to shutdown its detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, stories are emerging of the way it affected those inside.

Former inmates have talked about the deprivation and pressures they faced.

But Terry Holdbrooks was on the other side. He was a US soldier and he says he saw something in the behaviour of the inmates that changed him. He tells his story to Al Jazeera in his own words.

Cricket Revolution In-game

2010-03-11T23:33:00.000-08:00

Cricket Revolution is a multiplayer cricket sports action title for the PC. With single and multiplayer game modes, local and global tournaments, and challenging AI opponents that learn from your every move, Cricket Revolution is a cricket gaming experience unlike any other! Get into your gear and get ready for global cricket competition in your bid to dominate the online leaderboards!

Cricket Revolution is a cricket game meant for the cricket fan and the developers make no bones from the get-go about their seriousness in revolutionizing the market. The problem is, does this game try too hard to be taken seriously?

From the days of Brian Lara Cricket on the Sega Mega Drive, cricket games haven’t evolved much. Cricket Revolution challenges our prevalent notions of what a cricket game should be and provides the gamer with a realistic playing experience as well as access to a healthy multiplayer community.

News Videos

2010-03-11T23:27:00.000-08:00

The-only-democracy-in-the-middle-east
Israeli army hits hard against children and saplings in Nebi Salah:

Fight Raja Riaz Vs Chaudry Zaheer udin in Punjab Assembly

Sheikh Rasheed Exclusive After Attack

Sheikh reaheed live talk after attack on him in his election office in islamabad to watch full news and politics talk shows visit:

A new understanding for the U.S. and Pakistan?

2010-03-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

By Imtiaz Gul, FP

During a briefing at his office in the garrison town of Rawalpindi earlier this month, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani staunchly defended Pakistan’s efforts to combat the militant groups operating on its territory, while pointing toward the still-prominent perceived threat from India as a reason for not taking the operations further.

“During our counterterror campaign we have lost 2,273 army and paramilitary soldiers including three generals, five brigadiers, as many as 73 senior intelligence operatives, and also faced the blowback from Islamist militants,” Kayani told us, citing internal instability, a violent spate of suicide bombings — 87 in 2009 alone — and an adverse impact on Pakistan’s economy.

The Pakistani Army has been conducting counterinsurgency campaigns in 11 tribal areas plus Swat since 2007, including some 209 major military operations, and has committed almost 150,000 of its 550,000-troop army to this effort in the northwestern border regions, the general told us. Kayani noted that Pakistan remains concerned about India’s Pakistan-specific military capability, as six of India’s 13 strike corps are currently deployed along the border, and India’s involvement in Afghanistan is ongoing.

Kayani also pointed to the “Cold Start doctrine” propounded by archrival India and the talk of “limited war” under a “nuclear overhang,” suggested by the outgoing Indian army chief in November, saying that this policy and rhetoric do alarm Pakistan’s security apparatus. “You plan on an adversary’s capability and not intentions,” Kayani explained. While the capability takes years to build, intentions may change overnight and Pakistan simply cannot depend on other’s intentions, he reasoned.

“I explained to NATO leaders in Brussels [during a recent security conference there] that understanding Pakistan’s strategic framework would help them understand the situation in a much better way,” Kayani said. Before his late January presentation in Brussels, Kayani had made a similar forceful case before the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the Army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi. “If you care about India getting upset, care about us as well. You have to balance the concern for India with concern for our interests,” was the blunt message he described.

Kayani reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to a “peaceful, stable, and friendly Afghanistan.” As he said earlier this month, “We cannot wish for Afghanistan anything that we don’t wish for Pakistan.” In this context he brushed aside the allegations of Pakistan pursuing “a strategic depth policy” in Afghanistan. “This does not imply controlling Afghanistan. If Afghanistan is peaceful, stable, and friendly we have our strategic depth because our western border is secure… You’re not looking both ways — as simple as that.”

Kayani again insisted that Pakistan must “consolidate our gains and fully stabilize the areas secured, lest they fall back to terrorists,” in response to the oft-repeated demand from the U.S. that Pakistan move against militants based in North Waziristan. “Constraints of our capability to absorb and operate, limited cutting edge counterintelligence and counterterrorism capability, and limited budgetary space should be factored in,” he said, referring to last fall’s Pakistani military operations in South Waziristan, which had served as a of terrorism for Pakistani, Arab, and Uzbek Islamist militants. Kayani explained that the Army had managed to hamper militant logistics and restrict operating space in North Waziristan.

From that, it’s straightforward to discern that Kayani’s army would far prefer to choose the scale and timing of any military operations into North Waziristan, rather than be dictated to by the United States. The Army says that any “military adventures into the tribal regions require extreme caution and consideration for the future.” International troops will not be in Afghanistan forever, the Pakistani argument runs, so in several years Pakistan will be on its own to co-exist with the very tribes that would be hurt when or if the Pakistani Army moves against the militants nestled among them. Thus, Kayani has been explaining to the U.S. and NATO that Pakistan must balance the West’s comparatively short-term interests in containing and eliminating the insurgencies with its own long-term objectives, namely securing its western border without offending the tribes that live in that region.

And when Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said in December that he “couldn’t give the Pakistani Army anything but an ‘A’ for how they’ve conducted their battle so far,” it was after Mullen had spent several hours flying over the mountains and gorges of Pakistan’s Swat Valley with Kayani. Mullen was apparently so impressed that he asked Kayani to take the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal on a similar tour so he could “get a sense of how and what you need to fight in such a difficult terrain,” according to the general.

McChrystal flew over from Kabul shortly thereafter for the detailed aerial view of Swat’s hilly and forested topography that had served as a natural sanctuary for the terrorists of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and left with an appreciation for Pakistan’s counterinsurgency campaign, according to Kayani. For Kayani, who took charge of Pakistan’s army in November 2007, this was hard-earned praise.

And recently, President Obama asked Congress for an additional $500 million to support Pakistan. If approved, the ‘Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund’ would jump to $1.2 billion in the fiscal year beginning on October 1, 2010, and the money under the fund would be used to train and equip the Pakistan military to fight militants more effectively along the Afghan border.

Several Pakistani generals, including Kayani, believe the praise by Mullen and the subsequent request by Obama for additional counterinsurgency funding for their anti-militant reflects a new understanding among the coalition of Pakistani concerns and constraints. The language and vocabulary emanating from Washington and London toward Islamabad has changed in recent months, a prerequisite for creating greater trust among the coalition partners, according to Pakistani generals. Let us see what wonders the changed vocabulary can work in the coming months.

Will the Shiv Sena succeed?

2010-03-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

MUMBAI: A deserted ticket window at a cinema hall in Mumbai is an unusual sight. More so when it’s the day before the release of a Shah Rukh Khan-starrer. But that’s precisely the scene across the city. Posses of policemen have replaced the jostling queues of film-mad Mumbaiites and ticket scalpers.

Mumbai is holding its breath. Will My Name Is Khan release at all? Will cinema owners take the risk of screening it in defiance of the Shiv Sena, the parochial, right-wing party that is desperately looking for a way to stay relevant? Ask a theatre manager in Mahim, the heart of Shiv Sena country, and she says screening the film is a risk she’d rather not take. “We simply can’t afford the damage that Sena goons can cause,” she says.

It’s a sentiment echoed by large multiplex chains, which have put on hold bookings for the film, after Sena chief Bal Thackeray issued a diktat against it a few days ago. Thackeray claimed to be incensed at Khan’s support for Pakistani players in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and his assertion that the demand for preference in jobs for locals in Mumbai was absurd. “Mumbai belongs to all of India,” the superstar had asserted, also refusing to apologise for his stand that Pakistanis be allowed in the IPL, a cricket league owned by the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India that is only two seasons old, but is already ranked among the top 10 global sporting properties.

The real reason for Thackeray’s theatrics, though, is apparent to all.

The aging satrap chose his son Uddhav, a political greenhorn, over his nephew Raj, a natural, to lead the Sena. Raj rebelled, forming a rival party – the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) in 2006. Both parties are relevant only in the Indian province of Maharashtra and the competition for Marathi votes was well and truly on.

Raj captured the political advantage by carrying out violent agitations against ‘outsiders’ — migrant North Indians who escape the crushing poverty of their home provinces by coming to India’s financial capital to drive taxis and take up menial jobs. He claimed they were taking away jobs that should have gone to Marathi-speaking locals. While the claim is questionable – and the agitation against the spirit of the Indian Constitution that allows all Indians to settle anywhere in the country – it succeeded in capturing the imagination of a section of the local youth.

This manifested itself in last year’s provincial elections in Maharashtra. The MNS sucked away a huge chunk of the Sena’s traditional Maharashtrian vote bank, its candidates winning in even the staunchly Sena bastion of Dadar in Mumbai. It was a stunning political erosion of the Sena, its worst showing in provincial elections in 20 years. The party won only 44 seats against its 2004 tally of 62. Raj’s MNS walked away with 13.

The second body blow was delivered by Rahul, the son of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The Congress heads the coalition that is in power in India. Uddhav was left red-faced when Rahul, who had also said in North India that the country belonged to all its citizens, ignored threats from the Sena and discarded his helicopter and cavalcade to visit Dadar on a suburban train. It didn’t help that Khan is said to be close to Rahul.

Faced with political oblivion, the Sena had to do something drastic. And fast. In this context, Khan’s comments were a godsend for Uddhav. Raj had forced the director of My Name Is Khan, Karan Johar, to apologise for referring to the city as ‘Bombay’ in a previous production. Uddhav demanded that Khan do the same.

Khan refused and Uddhav launched a typical Sena agitation: a mix of violence and acidic comment pieces in the party mouthpiece, Saamna. At stake – apart from Mumbai’s reputation as a cosmopolitan, tolerant melting pot – is Rs 100 crore ($22 million) that is riding on My Name Is Khan. For the film to be a commercial success, it has to net at least Rs 60 crore ($13 million) in India, making up the rest in international sales. Mumbai and Maharashtra traditionally make up about 40 per cent of any Bollywood film’s taking in India; in this case, Rs 24 crore ($5 million).

Any dent in that chunk could mean massive losses for the producers, theatre owners and Fox Star Studios, which acquired the distribution rights for Rs 81 crore ($17 million). All the stakeholders will remember that the Sena has a history of terrorising Bollywood. In 1998, Sena activists attacked theatres screening Deepa Mehta’s Fire because it had lesbian overtones. Last year, the party tore down posters of Kurbaan (another Johar production) because they showed a bare-backed Kareena Kapoor embracing Saif Ali Khan. That apart, the Sena had also disrupted a performance of Pakistani ghazal maestro Ghulam Ali Khan at a city hotel in 1998.

Most of Mumbai is backing Khan and social networking sites, Twitter, and TV channels are buzzing with outrage at the Sena’s threats. However, at the time of writing, most of Mumbai’s leading cinema halls have declined to screen the film, the government’s assurances of providing adequate security notwithstanding.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, hoping to reassure Mumbai, said he would watch My Name Is Khan in a theatre. Which one, asks Mumbai, given that most of them have refused to show the film. The Sena’s last-gasp effort to grab the political limelight may just have succeeded.

Ashraf Engineer is Senior Associate Editor at Hindustan Times, Mumbai.

News Videos

2010-03-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

Cyber Crime in Pakistan

Washington, DC Snow Storm

Washington, DC Snow Storm from Es Video! on Vimeo.

THE US SHOULD STEP BACK FROM ITS SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH ISRAEL

Rethink your point of view with Intelligence Squared US, Oxford-style debates live in New York City. Launched in 2006, IQ2US can be heard on over 200 NPR stations across the country, and seen on the Bloomberg Television network. From global warming and the financial crisis, to Afghanistan/Pakistan and the death of mainstream media, IQ2US brings together the world’s leading authorities on the day’s most provocative issues. Witness an exciting battle of ideas, wit, and persuasion as the experts on both sides challenge your convictions. Best of all, your vote decides who has carried the day.

Shahrukh Khan Tells BBC About His Naked Scanner Printout

2010-03-11T23:12:00.000-08:00

The Timeless Face of Terror

2010-03-11T23:10:00.000-08:00

terrorists are no more representatives of their religion than Nazis or Communists were of Christianity. Kati Marton on calling a spade a spade.

I have spent the last two years studying the face of Terror. No, not the bearded, turbaned image of an Al Qaeda cave dweller, but another version, one that unspooled as I translated my family’s secret police file in the archives of the Hungarian Communist Party. The two faces are really not that different.

The communists, like Al Qaeda, started with a utopian dream of righting wrongs and empowering the powerless. Even the Nazis saw themselves in such a light: They would restore jobs and honor to their humbled countrymen. For all these movements, a more perfect world beckoned at the end of the rainbow. This is how they attracted their fanatical followers even as they used terror and fear to gain power.

It is Muslims who are the primary victims of Al Qaeda’s terror in the name of their religion.

I first saw the true face of fear when, as a six-year old whose parents had just been arrested, I was taken by uniformed agents of the state to the house of my mother’s best friend for shelter. But when that lady saw those agents of terror, she refused to open her front door, and my sister and I were left homeless.

Such regimes succeed because most people are not killers, and because most of us simply cannot imagine the unimaginable—the extreme brutality of these movements. Most of us cannot wrap our minds around factories whose sole product is death, or planes carrying men, women, and children suddenly turned into missiles.

Our mistake is not to see these dangers from the outset. We have to do a better job of calling terrorists what they are: enraged killers who are winning the propaganda war. For much too long, we have allowed cold-blooded murderers to label themselves and what they stand for.

But Al Qaeda is no more a descendent of the great Abrahamic religions than the communists who arrested, imprisoned, and tortured my parents were committed to creating a peoples’ paradise in Eastern Europe. If the Vatican was less than forceful in separating Christianity from the horrors of the fascists, so, too, are Islamic leaders too timid in stating that their religion does not condone or reward the killing of the innocent.

In newly opened communist secret police files, I learned for the first time that my father, Communist Hungary’s last independent journalist, was forced to stand facing a wall while two agents shouted obscenities at him for endless hours. Thus was he broken and forced to “confess” that he was a CIA agent. In desperation he tried to commit suicide. But first he tried to smuggle a letter to my mother instructing her to divorce him, marry a westerner, and make sure his children forgot him. This was the result of one of the twentieth century’s bold experiments on humans—and all in the name of the great utopian vision of a workers’ state, conjured up by a pair of nineteenth-century German philosophers, Marx and Engels.

The Nazis, too, had their grandiose labels and their promises. My grandparents did not survive that wave of insanity. For their crime of being less than 100 percent pure Hungarians (whatever that is), they were shoved into airless trains that took them to the gas chambers.

I wait for the great religious humanists of our day to say loudly and clearly that the underwear bomber has as little to do with Islam as the secret police officer who browbeat my father into a confession did with Marx’s utopia. It is true that when the Nazis were using the cover of Christianity in their persecution of Jews, the Vatican’s reaction was much too restrained. Today, it is Muslims who are the primary victims of Al Qaeda’s terror in the name of their religion. I cannot forget Mohammed Atta’s final instruction before he launched the 9/11 massacre: No pregnant woman, the killer prescribed, should be allowed near his grave, as that would “defile” his final resting place. Can any religion claim such a man as its own?

Arthur Koestler, a countryman of mine, himself seduced by the false god of communism, once noted, “a dispassionate observer from a more advanced planet, who could take in human history from Cro-Magnon to Auschwitz would come to the conclusion that our race is a very sick biological product.”

Our challenge is to prove Koestler wrong. We can start by not allowing cold-blooded killers to deceive us about who they are: murderers wearing different uniforms.

Kati Marton’s latest book, Enemies of the People – My Family’s Journey to America, is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award.

In Democracy only one person has right to speak

2010-03-11T23:08:00.000-08:00

‘Laws of science do not apply in Aafia Siddiqui case’

2010-03-11T23:06:00.000-08:00

Aafia Siddiqui’s lawyer says the laws of science do not apply in the case against the Pakistani woman who is charged with attempting to murder US soldiers and FBI agents.

Siddiqui is accused of grabbing a US warrant officer’s M-4 rifle in a police station in Ghazni, Afghanistan and firing two shots at FBI agents and military personnel when being interrogated for her alleged possession of documents detailing a ‘terrorist’ plan.

On Monday, Siddiqui’s lawyer Linda Moreno said in the final stages of her trial in the Manhattan Federal Court that the “science” supported her testimony that she didn’t touch the weapon or fire it, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Where are the bullet holes? …Did the Afghanis take the bullet holes? …There is no physical evidence that an M-4 rifle was touched by Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, let alone fired,” Moreno said.

She went on to say that Siddiqui appears to have been interrogated in a “sort of a Bermuda Triangle of a room” in which the evidence of the alleged crime had disappeared before reaching the courtroom.

“According to the government, the laws of science don’t exist in that small room in Ghazni, Afghanistan. The laws of physics don’t apply.”

The prosecution says she burst from behind a curtain and attempted the ‘murder’ and was shot in the abdomen.

Last week, Siddiqui said she was concerned about being transferred to a “secret” prison by the US forces and was trying to slip out of the room when she was shot. “I’m telling you what I know. I walked toward the curtain. I was shot and I was shot again. I fainted,” she said.

The prosecutors condemned the defense as ‘lies.’ “She raised her right hand and she lied to your face. She lied and lied and lied,” Prosecutor Christopher LaVigne was quoted by The New York Daily News as saying in the closing arguments of the trial.

“We’re here, folks, because the defendant committed attempted murder. She had the motive to do it. She had the know-how to do it,” La Vigne was quoted by the Journal as saying, despite the accused’s insistence that she did not even know how to use firearms.

The defendant was thrown out of the trial twice after protesting over not being given “a chance to speak,” calling the trial a sham and saying her children had been tortured.

Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.

US officials allege that she was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag.

She has been brought to the United States to face charges of attempted murder and assault. Siddiqui faces 20 years in prison on the attempted murder charges and life in prison on the firearms charge.

Rana Sanullah in another scandal

2010-03-11T23:04:00.000-08:00

The international press’ take on Afridi’s ‘chomp’

2010-03-11T23:02:00.000-08:00

“Shahid Afridi shocked us all when he took a couple of momentary breaks from sanity to chow down on the white ball like a mule on an apple in the final One-day International between Australia and Pakistan. It was some of the most bizarre footage I have ever seen from a game of cricket,” writes Michael Slater. -Video grab

News, comments and features from the international press on Afridi’s ‘bite’ and Khalid Latif’s take-down.

Australia

Shaun Tait says ball-tampering ‘probably’ prevalent

“It probably goes on, but I have never seen it with my own eyes,” Tait said.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/shaun-tait-says-ball-tampering-probably-prevalent/story-e6frf9if-1225826097060

Nannes rejects Afridi ball tamper claims

“Twenty20 paceman Dirk Nannes has rejected Shahid Afridi’s claims on ball tampering and insists bowlers can be effective without breaking cricket’s laws.”
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-sport/nannes-rejects-afridi-ball-tamper-claims-20100202-narn.html

I would have walked over tackle: Ponting

“In the wake of the pitch invasion at the WACA Ground on Sunday night in which a spectator crash-tackled Khalid Latif, Australian captain Ricky Ponting said he would have led a walk-off if he had been in the shoes of Pakistan skipper Shahid Afridi.”
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/i-would-have-walked-over-tackle-ponting-20100201-n8wx.html

Pakistan calls for barriers, alcohol ban

“Pakistan Sports Minister Aijaz Hussein Jakhrani has urged Cricket Australia to set up barriers at grounds and ban alcohol following the tackle by a spectator on Khalid Latif in Perth on Sunday night.”
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/pakistan-calls-for-barriers-alcohol-ban-20100201-n8×6.html

Australian cricketers must be messengers of peace in tackling racism

“Australia needs to start addressing the real issues. Indian students killed in Melbourne, Pakistanis assaulted on the field in Perth, blazing headlines around the world, a nation’s reputation dragged into the mud, and never mind that the PM is fluent in Mandarin and that many settlers from Africa and the Punjab and elsewhere are as happy as mankind can be. It cannot continue, in cricket or outside.”
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/cricket/australian-cricketers-must-be-messengers-of-peace-in-tackling-racism-20100201-n8×3.html

Shahid Afridi’s cheating defence: everyone does it

“Aerodynamic experts who have conducted wind tunnel tests on swing bowling told The Australian yesterday the easiest way to gain reverse swing is to disturb the quarter seam close to the main seam. If the narrow seam is lifted by something like a player’s teeth or fingernail it will reverse.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/shahid-afridis-cheating-defence-everyone-does-it/story-e6frg7mf-1225825697588

Ricky Ponting laughs off Afridi’s ball-biting actions

“I think he himself must have realised when they changed the ball, he had actually been caught in the act.”
http://www.perthnow.com.au/sport/ricky-ponting-laughs-off-afridis-ball-biting-actions/story-e6frg1wu-1225825613401

Afridi a self-confessed ball tamperer

“The game and its rules are changing. You should be allowed to tamper with the ball after the 30th or 40th over.”
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/cricket/afridi-a-self-confessed-ball-tamperer/story-e6frey50-1225825723561

Afridi’s ball-munching madness

India

Experts for legalising ball tampering to even bat and ball contest

“When all that (ball-tampering) first came out and the ball was reversing … People were saying hang on, we can’t have that. We can’t have the ball swinging around after fifty overs. Well, why not? Why can’t we do that?” Fox Sports quotes former Australian bowler Brendon Julian, as saying.”

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100202/926/tsp-experts-for-legalising-ball-tamperin.html

Afridi needs to explain, says Graeme Smith

“It was strange. Maybe he didn’t appreciate the lunch that was given in Australia,” joked Smith, before turning serious.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/top-stories/Afridi-needs-to-explain-says-Graeme-Smith/articleshow/5525713.cms

Bitegate: Afridi comment sparks backlash

“Madness and Shahid Afridi are usually inseparable, but could it be that the now-banned Pakistan skipper’s byte is worse than his bite?”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sports/cricket/top-stories/Bitegate-Afridi-comment-sparks-backlash/articleshow/5525662.cms

England

When cricket plays true

“But then this was Shahid Afridi, found in the thesaurus under words such as “mercurial” and “temperamental”. You can now add “nuts”.”

http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/columnists/article287251.ece

Afridi tucks in

“There must have been a bet, or perhaps he was drunk. Those are the only explanations I can think of for the most extraordinarily stupid action near the end of today’s final ODI between Australia and Pakistan.”
http://timesonline.typepad.com/line_and_length/2010/01/afridi-tucks-in.html

Shahid Afridi: Time to legalise ball tampering?

“Shahid Afridi added another chapter to an eventful career by chewing on a cricket ball in the middle of a one day game. He has been widely condemned, but is it time to think the unthinkable and legalise ball tampering?”
http://betting.betfair.com/cricket/bat-and-ball/cricket-betting-time-to-legalise-ball-tampering-010210.html

PICTURE SPECIAL: Australian fan who rugby tackled Pakistan’s Khalid Latif banned from cricket for life but fined just £277

“The actions of 37-year-old Yangebup man David James Fraser in running onto the WACA in yesterday’s fifth one-day international and tackling Latif to the ground made a mockery of the ground’s security and dented the WACA’s reputation.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/cricket/article-1247646/Australian-fan-rugby-tackled-Pakistans-Khalid-Latif-banned-cricket-life-fined-just-277–picture-special.html

Why didn’t media people say All is Well All is well to Zulfiqar Mirza?

2010-03-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

Karachi:11 killed, 40 injured as bomber struck mourners’ bus

2010-03-11T22:58:00.000-08:00

At least 11 people were killed while 40 others injured as a suicide bomber struck a bus near a nursery at Shara-e-Faisal, Karachi.

CCPO Karachi Waseem Ahmed told the reporters that the explosion occurred when a motorcyclist rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a bus carrying the mourners.
Resultantly, a man died while several others injured. The explosion was so powerful that it was heard many kilometers away from the site; clouds of smoke engulfed the area. Law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area, while rescue efforts were also kicked off and the injured were being shifted to the hospitals. Meanwhile, the President and Prime Minister strongly condemned the nasty terrorist activity and issued directives to provide best possible treatment to the injured. Interior Minister Zulfiqar Mirza sought blast report from CCPO Karachi.

CCTV Footage Jinnah Hospital Karachi Bomb Blast

2010-03-11T22:55:00.000-08:00

Trial Begins But Where Are the Children?

2010-03-11T22:53:00.001-08:00

ibrahimsajidmalick.com

As the War on Terror enters a new decade with a new administration, ghosts from the Bush era are beginning to emerge from the dark corridors of hidden detention centers, secret renditions, and elusive intrigues.

One of those ghosts whose story has been haunting the imagination of the Pakistani public for several years and recently even in Europe, is now beginning to capture the attention of Americans bold enough to enter the war’s most ghastly graveyard.

It is the ghost of Dr. Aaffia Siddiqui, a Pakistani MIT graduate and mother of three, who disappeared from the streets of Karachi in March 2003 along with her 3 children, at the time age under 6 mos, 3, and 7.

For years her family searched for her desperately, at times believing the worst; that she was dead. Then suddenly, 5 years later the ghost appeared live in the flesh, 12,000 miles from where she had disappeared.

In September 2008 the MIT Mom was brought to a Manhattan Court Room to be indicted on charges of trying to kill American soldiers and being a member of Al Qaeda. She was frail, delusional, incoherent, and wounded with a bullet wound to her abdomen dressed so badly that the judge had to order immediate medical attention. Her mugshot picture portrayed unspeakable horrors.

During the pre-trial hearing Dr. Siddiqui appeared in a complete veil, unusal for her according to family members. Her court room outbursts and body language signified a completely broken human being. Although there has been no independent assessment of her mental condition, she was clearly paranoid and incoherent. Moreover, her family has been unable to see her or communicate with her.

Few American’s are familiar with the facts surrounding her case; even less are familiar with the shocking claims being made by her family and indeed, by a majority of Pakistanis. Pakistan was so concerned with her plight that there have been resolutions passed in the parliament demanding her release. Meanwhile the western media has portrayed her as the Mata-Hari of Al-Qaeda, the female version of Chemical Ali, the “mother” of all terrorist. And much of this continues even as the prosecution made a stunning reversal when they announced to the court on January 11^th that they would “not be charging” her with any connection to “any terrorist group”; This includes any connection to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Osama bin Laden.

However to the family, to the majority of Pakistanis, and to her growing number of supporters throughout the world, she is in fact prisoner 650, known as the “Gray Lady of Bagram”, whose shreaks and cries were so disturbing that the prisoners went on a hunger strike to demand that the torture against her stop. Several released detainees have since identified Dr. Siddiqui as the same prisoner 650 and several human rights groups also maintain that she is indeed prisoner 650. In fact, the weeks before her sudden and mysterious appearance at a police station in Afghanistan, human rights groups had been intensifying their demands to have prisoner 650 identified and produced.

Even more disturbing than what may have happened to her is what has come of her two still missing children. Though the older child who is now 13, was returned to the family in Pakistan shortly after her arrest, there is no information on the whereabouts of her two younger children who should now be age 6 and 9. Whether or not the prosecution is able to prove its limited attempted murder case to an American jury, surely no one can deny the innocence of the two missing young children.

The case of Aafia Siddiqui raises a number of mysterious questions are still to be explored. Now that the prosecution has decided not to charge her with terrorism why was she placed on the FBI’s terrorist list to begin with? What happened to her during those 5 missing years. What was the level of cooperation between Pakistani and American intelligence in her pursuit and possible abduction? What does her case mean for the future of Pakistan, U.S. relations. How does her case redefine the war on terror and the meaning of law, liberty, and human rights in 21^st century America? And, the most troubling and pressing question of all; where are the children?

The trial of Aafia Siddiqui will begin on January 19th at the S.D.N.Y. courthouse at 500 Pearl St. Manhattan, New York.

We are expecting her case to wrap-up in two weeks. Cell-phones and laptops are not allowed. So we will cover as real-time as possible.

School bombing exposes Obama’s secret war inside Pakistan

2010-03-11T22:51:00.000-08:00

Christina Lamb
The Times Online
February 7, 2010

The discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week reignited the fears of many Pakistanis that Washington was set on invading their country.

Barack Obama has banned the Bush-era term “war on terror” and dithered about sending extra troops to Afghanistan, but across the border in Pakistan, the US president has dramatically stepped up the covert war against Islamic extremists.

US airstrikes in Pakistan, launched from unmanned drones, are now averaging three a week, triple the number last year. “We’re quietly seeing a geographical shift,” an intelligence officer said.

Read entire article

Gates confirms Blackwater presence in Pakistan

2010-03-11T22:43:00.000-08:00

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirms that American security firms Xe Services LLC, formerly known as Blackwater, and DynCorp have been operating in Pakistan.

The two firms are operating in private capacities, Gates said on Thursday, adding that the companies were abiding by Pakistani laws.

However, he said that if the Pakistani parliament votes for a ban on the presence of the firms, the US government would comply with it.

Blackwater won notoriety for having gone on a shooting rampage in a heavily trafficked Baghdad intersection in September 2007 killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians.

Blackwater Worldwide changed its name to Xe Services LLC in February 2009, after it came under international criticism for its disregard for civilian lives.

Two former Blackwater mercenaries have also been charged with the 2009 murder of two Afghan civilians in Kabul.

Asad Durani, former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had earlier told Press TV that the notorious firm, Blackwater, was involved in the deadly drone attacks on Pakistani territories, which usually result in civilian casualties.

“I learned somewhere that these people are employed certainly for…the logistic support at the drone bases. That is understandable,” Durani said earlier in January.

Gates, meanwhile, said that Washington is considering sharing its Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology with Pakistan.

“These UAVs are useful and we have a budget for them,” Gates said in an interview with a privately-run Pakistani television on Thursday.

He claimed that the drones had proved productive in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“We are working together with Pakistan army in this connection,” Gates said, adding that discussions were underway with Pakistan military leadership on technical matters in this regard, a Press TV correspondent reported late Thursday.

Defense officials in his delegation later said that the US will provide 12 Shadow drones to Pakistan.

The Shadow drone is about 3.3 meters (11 feet) long and has a wing-span of 4.2 meters (14 feet), with sensors and cameras feeding video images back to operators on the ground.

Complete speech of Imran Khan Ilford London PTI UK Tehreek e Insaf

2010-03-11T22:40:00.000-08:00

Five Sisters

2010-03-11T22:37:00.000-08:00

A terrific song and compilation. In memory of Palestinian children murdered

An Oral History of Pakistan in Four Minutes

2010-03-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

Audit deems Pakistan aid program a failure

2010-03-11T22:01:00.000-08:00

Colum Lynch
A $45 million USAID program aimed at improving the ability of Pakistani tribal leaders to govern a politically sensitive stretch of territory along the Afghan border has failed to achieve its primary mission of improving the delivery of basic services, according to an audit by the agency’s inspector general.

The two year-old development program for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) was designed to help improve living standards in one of Pakistan’s poorest and most politically unstable territories. So far, only $15.5 million has been spent on the initiative.

More specifically, the program — which is run by Development Alternatives, Inc. — was set up in January 2008 to aid local government officials and charities in developing the capacity to absorb the large amounts of Western assistance that have flowed into the area to challenge the political standing of the region’s extremists.

It funds the activities of the FATA development authority, which employs 100 people, and FATA secretariat, which oversees nearly 30,000 local employees, including teachers and health- care workers. But the “program has made little headway in achieving its two main goals,” according to the audit.

“It has not achieved the goal of improving the capacity of FATA governmental institutions to govern,” according to the audit, which was produced by the inspector general’s office in Manila, the Philippines. And it “did not increase the capacities of [local] NGOs to promote good governance, although some progress was made.”

The report cites some advances, including training in financial management and program and development planning for 1,224 local officials. The program also provided some training and office equipment for 42 nongovernmental organizations.

The program has been plagued by a deteriorating security situation that has prompted USAID to order Development Alternatives and other American contractors to relocate to Islamabad from Peshawar, where a USAID official was killed in November 2008.

The report says that the program was further delayed after the contractor’s chief representative resigned in September 2008, leaving the position vacant until January 2009. It took 9 months to identify local charities to support, and 400 computers purchased for government offices remain in unopened boxes. Another 72 laptops were unaccounted for at the time of the audit.

In a response, USAID’s Pakistan mission director, Robert J. Wilson, said the agency would seek to ensure the delivery of the computers by the end of March. He said that 55 of 72 missing laptops have been found and that USAID will bill the contractor and the Pakistani authorities for the rest if they don’t turn up.

The report also faults a change of political strategy by the Obama administration, which is now calling for U.S. assistance to be channeled through local charities, for placing the program in limbo.

In June, USAID refused to provide full funding for a $15.3 million request from Development Alternatives as it began to rethink its practice of directing most of its funds to U.S.-based contractors. In October, USAID asked the company to prepare a plan to shut down its operations, but never made a decision to close it.

In response to the audit, Wilson said that USAID had agreed in December to extend Development Alternatives’ contract through the end of 2010.

Girls Eyes Produce Crystals

2010-03-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

A Lebanese girl has eyes which are producing an average of eight small crystals a day.

Osama bin Laden, Climate Expert

2010-03-11T21:56:00.000-08:00

Alan Caruba

Canada Free Press
January 30, 2010

To the world’s experts on climate change, let us now add the name of Osama bin Laden to those of Al Gore; UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon; the Chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri; numerous heads of state over the years; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; members of Congress still trying to pass Cap-and-Trade legislation; and the odious IPCC scientists who apparently colluded to foist false data on the public in order to further the fraud of global warming.

This is, of course, a short list given the vast number of people who attended the recent UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen. It reportedly cost the taxpayers over a million dollars for the U.S. delegation and that does not include the cost of the President’s attendance. In his State of the Union speech, Obama received a chorus of laughter when he spoke of the “overwhelming evidence” of climate change.

Bin Laden is getting increasingly desperate in his appeals to the world’s Muslims and, in a recent audiotape, “he blamed the Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification, and floods across the globe,” according to a report by the Associated Press.

Bin Laden’s real complaint, however, has always been that he cannot replace the Saudi royal family and control that nation’s oil and the revenues that flow from it. One of the many sons of a prominent Saudi family, bin Laden went off to aid the Afghans in their fight against the Soviet Union and, ironically, it was covert American weapons aid that made their victory possible.

He could have settled for being a hero of that conflict, but like so many egomaniacs, he decided to fight the crusades over again and all subsequent Western influence in the Middle East in the name of Islam.

A succession of terrorist attacks flowed from that decision. U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed, an American warship was attacked in Yemen, and the most spectacular attack was, of course, the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth plane was brought down by its passengers.

Americans seem to have forgotten that George W. Bush responded forcefully to 9/11 and to the threat of Saddam Hussein to the entire Middle East. This is in contrast to President Obama’s futile efforts to get the Iranian ayatollahs to cooperate. Dictators are not famous for being nice.

As the AP report noted, bin Laden has mentioned climate change and global warming in past messages, but his latest on January 29 was the first to focus on it as a major theme along with the need to destroy the American economy. With regard to the latter, he seems to be getting a lot of help from President Obama who has tripled U.S. debt during the past year.

The significance of his latest audiotape seems to be a belated effort to piggyback the global warming issue at the same time it is crashing and burning worldwide due to revelations that the data on which it was based was deliberately falsified.

Claims that Himalayan glaciers were melting were false and this was made known to the IPCC Chairman Pachauri two months before the Copenhagen conference, but he managed to wait until after the conference to publicly correct the IPCC report.

Bin Laden’s bad timing suggests that his campaign is losing support. It is almost comical that he would try to enlist the support of global warming diehards in his quest to overthrow the Great Satan, America, and the Little Satan, Israel, but there is nothing comical about his continued threat to the nation and the world.

The silence of Al Gore as the planet has cooled since 1998 suggests that even he knows that his self-enrichment plan is coming to an end. Only President Obama seems or pretends to be oblivious to the idiocy of cutting “greenhouse gas emissions” in the name of a planet that is not warming.

In this quest, Obama has now been joined by Osama.

Israel Makes Waves by Simulating an Earthquake

2010-03-11T21:52:00.000-08:00

(IsraelNN.com) The Seismologic Division of the Ministry of National Infrastructure’s Geophysical Institute will attempt to simulate an earthquake in the southern Negev on Thursday. The experiment, financed by the U.S. Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km/621 mile radius.
The experiment intends to improve the understanding of sound waves in the atmosphere. Scientists will then be able to fine-tune Israel’s seismological equipment to give advance warning of earthquakes. Measurements will also be taken in other countries, including Cyprus, Greece, France, and Germany.

Israel will create a controlled explosion of 80 tons of explosive material, which will simulate the intensity of a tremor after an earthquake of Magnitude 3. Natural earthquakes of a similar intensity occur in the Middle East region about once a week, without the public feeling them.

Courtesy, U.S. Geological Survey

The results from the experiment will be available to the entire scientific community and is expected to make an additional contribution to scientific research of sound waves in the atmosphere and earthquakes.

In the last few years, the Geophysical Institute has created several earthquake simulations in order to calibrate its equipment. In June 2004, the institute detonated 32 tons of explosives in the southern Negev. In June 2005, the institute detonated 20 tons in the Beit Alfa quarries in the Jezreel Valley south of the Galilee. The success of the experiments has significantly contributed to improving the accuracy of identifying earthquakes in Israel.

The Ministry of National Infrastructure and Finance Ministry have recently financed a three-year plan to upgrade Israel’s seismological equipment, as part of Israel’s earthquake advance warning system.

WakeUp Karachi

2010-03-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

Shahid Afridi tampering ball

2010-03-11T21:48:00.000-08:00

Video of Shahid Afridi tampering with cricket ball, he was blatantly chewing on the ball

Slapped with a two-match ban for ball tampering in the final ODI in Perth, Pakistan all-rounder Shahid Afridi on Sunday apologised and said he would never commit the mistake again.

“I’m ashamed of myself. I shouldn’t have done such an act. It happened in the heat of the moment. I apologise for my mistake,” Afridi said.

Afridi was banned for two Twenty20 Internationals after pleading guilty to a ball-tampering charge during the fifth ODI against Australia by Match Referee Ranjan Madugalle.

Afridi, who led Pakistan in the final ODI in place of the unfit Mohammad Yousuf, was caught on camera chewing on one side of the ball while walking to the run up with bowler Mohammad Asif.

Dance Party For Pakistani Journalists/TV anchors at US Embassy Islamabad

2010-03-11T21:46:00.000-08:00

Pakistani anchors must be protesting against drone attacks while partying like they do on TV

Shaukat Paracha, Asma Shirazi, Meher Bukhari, Saima Mohsin are some of the names that were in attendance, in a Drink & Dance party hosted by the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W Patterson.

The Dollar Bubble

2010-03-11T21:43:00.000-08:00

The Dollar Bubble starring Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Jim Rogers, and others. Prepare now for the U.S. dollar collapse.

IPL auction was wrong: Shah Rukh Khan

2010-03-11T21:34:00.000-08:00

Speaking to NDTV, Shah Rukh Khan says he believes the Pakistani players should have been chosen. But, he went on to say that since there were issues between India and Pakistan, the IPL should have handled the issue better.

Pakistan Former Air Chief Marshal Tanvir Ahmed in a Govt of India Add

2010-01-25T01:29:00.000-08:00

Hope and Obama: One Year later

2010-01-25T00:40:00.000-08:00

On January 20, 2009 Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States. He entered office with the assistance of a slew of successful advertising campaigns centered around the idea of ‘hope,’ and endorsements from a myriad of institutions and well-known public figures — all the way from former president Bill Clinton, to public opinion influencer and talk-show host Oprah Winfrey. The clip below appeared earlier this week on Fault Lines. Host Avi Lewis interviewed a variety of voices, from those who were initially die-hard supporters, to Sarah Palin fans.

The boundaries within

2010-01-25T00:38:00.000-08:00

By Asha’ar Rehman
Saturday, 23 Jan, 2010

THE Shabab-i-Milli crowd is out in force in Lahore. They can hardly be expected to demonstrate for peace and are certainly not protesting the recent show of belligerence on the borders for which the Indian forces have been held responsible.

They are not angry at having to receive the bodies of Pakistanis who have died in Indian jails or at the frequent arrests of Pakistani fishermen. What they are pressing for is the Pakistani cricketers’ right to make fast bucks in the Indian Premier League.

This is a reminder of how grave the paradox is, one which extends beyond India-Pakistan ties.

The so-called IPL snub to Pakistani cricketers can certainly be viewed as a setback to the system. The protagonists of the system have been relying too heavily on things to sort themselves out. The mantra says that all you need to do is to introduce capital-intensive activity in a sector and rest assured that this means will in time become an end in itself.

In this case, it is merely about the cricket circus, with the global chief manager of the game expressing how eager he is for Pakistan and India to resume cricketing ties. He is justified in seeing capital-expansion potential in the Ashes-like rivalry between the two South Asian neighbours. But can the formula, be applied to all situations indiscriminately?

The standard diagnosis and prescription procedure is somewhat reminiscent of a theme in a Manto story whose main character believed he had a cure for constipation and wanted to convince people that they all suffered from it.

Take something as complicated as Kashmir. Trade alone, it is sometimes argued, can make the Kashmiris overcome their accumulated problems. Trade does take us forward. It creates a constituency for peace. But having said that, the Kashmiris have every right to be wary of an illusion machine that has a knack for coming up with selective images to prove the success — or failure — of an initiative.

While economic, and more precisely financial exchange and mutual monetary benefits, are handy and a boon for a peace process, what we are essentially looking for is peace and reconciliation of the political type. We are looking to create a situation which can guarantee smooth selling and buying. Seriously, buying and selling have to be couched in positive political realities, even if words such as ‘plebiscite’ and ‘referendum’ are out of fashion.

The latest wave of ghairat sweeping Pakistan is illustrative of the complex that we have built over time. For the first year or so in power, the Gilani-Zardari combine appeared to be going out of their way to extend an olive branch to India. Whereas the thinking at the top and subsequent policies of the state may still be the same, certain Zardari loyalists have been constrained by political realities to raise the Indian bogey once again.

Not to speak of PPP lawmaker Jamshed Dasti whose desperate search for a popular issue, other than the embargoed push for a Seraiki province, has led to many comic situations; even Interior Minister Rehman Malik has been quite vociferous in his condemnation of Indian designs. (Need we be told, Mr Malik, that the game is far from over? National interests remain and if anything they have become international interests.)

Latest is that Sports Minister Aijaz Jakhrani has asked for a ban on Indians playing in Pakistan as also on the telecast of future IPL games in the country. It can be, looking at it from one angle, predicted that the process is set to continue. Mr Jakhrani’s words are not likely to prevent interested Pakistanis from following the next IPL season on television.

From another, however, it is clear that the way the Pakistani players were rushed into an IPL auction, on a popular level, has caused great harm to the ideal of good-neighbourly relations between Pakistan and India. Popular sentiments are a difficult area.

In pure market terms, it is not difficult to figure out why no club in the IPL bid for the exciting Pakistani talent on sale earlier this week. With Sohail Tanvir and to a lesser extent Kamran Akmal helping her Rajsathan Royals clinch the first IPL title a couple of seasons ago, Shilpa Shetty tried to explain that it was not a case of her not wanting to have Pakistani players in her lineup; it was a situation where she could not have them for reasons of security, etc. She and other bidders at the now infamous auction can hardly be faulted for choosing not to gamble on men they were not sure that they would be able to field.

Much media space has been given to the delight Indians must be experiencing at disgracing a set of Pakistanis; it will also be useful to have a look at the role of Pakistani authorities in the episode.

We have to remember that no Pakistani player was put on sale at an earlier auction for the coming edition of the IPL. The fact that Pakistani players were included in the second auction was due largely to the insistence of the Pakistan Cricket Board and the players themselves. A little more effort on the part of the PCB, with the cooperation of the Pakistani mission in India and our top cricket administrators would have known what was in store for the players on the day of the auction.

For those who thought of it as more than a business matter and for those whose ghairat is easily violated, an honourable way would have been for the individuals, or the PCB on their behalf, to withdraw their names from the auction. What the PCB did instead was hope that the process itself would throw up a solution, which it didn’t. Next a helpless PCB chief revealed to the world that the IPL boss, Lalit Modi, did not even bother to take his telephone call. Looking for snubs, this certainly was one.

David Blaine talks about his journey into Human Endurance

2010-01-24T23:46:00.000-08:00

Dr Mahathir Mohamad panned over statement

2010-01-24T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Star
PETALING JAYA: The statement by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad that the Sept 11 attack was “staged” could not come at a worse time when the nation is facing its own issues, says the Merdeka Centre.

Its director Ibrahim Suffian said Dr Mahathir’s statement did not help with the country’s image at a time of religious tension.

He said Dr Mahathir should know the difference between the fiction of Avatar and the reality of the attack that happened nine years ago.

“Conspiracy theories aside, people actually died in that suicide attack. Dr Mahathir’s statement is disrespectful to the victims for it to be described that way, with reference to a Hollywood movie,” he said yesterday.

Ibrahim said that as the founder of the Perdana Global Peace Organisation, Dr Mahathir should know the root causes of terrorism and point out what led him to draw such conclusions.

DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang in a statement said that Dr Mahathir would have created “an international incident” between Malaysia and the United States if he was still the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, Malaysian Assembly of Mosque Youth (Pemuda Masjid) de facto leader Dr Mohd Nawar Ariffin said more discussions should take place on the allegations made.

“Dr Mahathir is a prominent figure who contributed a lot to the country. Although the statement incites controversy, perhaps it should be taken positively as an encouragement for people to dig out the truth. He is known as an evidence-based person when making statements,” he said.

The statement also sparked a chain of reactions on the Internet with many blogging and tweeting on the issue.

On Wednesday, Dr Mahathir said there was strong evidence that the Sept 11 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 could have been “staged” as an excuse to mount attacks on the Muslim world.

“If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,” Dr Mahathir was quoted as saying.

The United States Embassy declined to comment on the matter.

Student Refused to take the Award from Farooq Sattar MQM

2010-01-24T23:36:00.000-08:00

Why Pakistan will not mount new attacks on militants

2010-01-24T23:34:00.000-08:00

With its announcement that it will launch no new offensives against the Taliban in 2010, Pakistan’s army appears to have opened a new innings in its favourite game with the West, says the BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad.

For the United States, the statement by the Pakistan army could not have come at a worse time.

Its main intelligence agency, the CIA, is still coming to terms with the death of seven personnel in a suicide attack in Afghanistan by an al-Qaeda “double agent”.

That attack, the worst suffered by the agency in four decades, was apparently planned and carried out by Taliban militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Under pressure from the US, the Pakistan army launched an operation there in the main Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan in November 2009.

The army has since been able to secure that territory and push out the militants.

While some have been captured, most senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders have fled the region.

Intelligence officials say they have now taken refuge either in other nearby tribal regions or the neighbouring Balochistan province.

Mission impossible

Top US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have been calling for the military to go after the militants in these regions.

All this comes at a time when Pakistan’s government is already under a great deal of domestic criticism.

This is mainly due to increased missile strikes by the US targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders in the tribal areas.

These have turned a sometimes ambivalent tribal population against the Pakistan military.

Analysts say the tribesmen see the strikes, which have claimed more lives of civilians than of militants, as contiguous with the military operation.

But US officials have continued to press for more action, painting doomsday scenarios for Pakistan.

The latest such warning comes from US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who said in India that al-Qaeda was planning to carry out attacks to provoke war with Pakistan.

But the Pakistan military appears to have its own views on the subject, and their say is likely to count the most.

Pakistani Cable operators to boycott IPL telecast

2010-01-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

LAHORE: As the Indian Premier League (IPL) controversy deepens, cable operators on Thursday announced a ban on the telecast of IPL matches.

Heeding a call by the sports minister, the Cable Operators Association of Pakistan (CAP) announced a boycott of the telecast of all the IPL matches after none of the Pakistani players were selected for the league.

The announcement was made at a press conference in Lahore.

Addressing the conference, CAP President Captain Retd. Jabbar Ahmad said that the association condemned the attitude of Indian Cricket Board.

He said that the decision was taken in a meeting of the cable operators association and it will be implemented across the country.

President Asif Zardari Speech in Faisalabad

2010-01-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

More Evidence The Pentagon Is Fighting A Religious Crusade

2010-01-24T23:22:00.000-08:00

Picture of the day

2010-01-24T23:20:00.000-08:00

Two Idiots

My children were tortured, this trial is a sham: Aafia

2010-01-24T23:18:00.000-08:00

Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiqui has told jurors at her trial that she was held in a secret prison in Afghanistan, her children were tortured, and the case against her is a sham.

On Tuesday, Siddiqui was thrown out of the New York courtroom where her trail is being held after shouting the remarks at the jurors.

The MIT-educated neuroscientist is currently on trial, facing charges of trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2008 and connections with Al-Qaeda operatives.

She was ejected from her federal court trial after her second outburst, Bloomberg reported.

“Since I’ll never get a chance to speak,” she said in the courtroom. “If you were in a secret prison, or your children were tortured…”

She insisted that she knew nothing about a plan to carry out terrorist attacks on targets in New York, The New York Daily News reported.

“Give me a little credit, this is not a list of targets of New York,” she said. “I was never planning to bomb it. You’re lying.”

Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges.

US officials allege Aafia Siddiqui was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag.

They say that while she was being interrogated, she grabbed a US warrant officer’s M-4 rifle and fired two shots at FBI agents and military personnel but missed and that the warrant officer then fired back, hitting her in the torso.

She was brought to the United States to face charges of attempted murder and assault. Siddiqui faces 20 years in prison if convicted.

However, human rights organizations have cast doubt on the accuracy of the US account of the event.

Many political activists believe she was Prisoner 650 of the US detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, where they say she was tortured for five years until one day US authorities announced that they had found her in

Taliban Bombing Caught on Tape

2010-01-24T23:16:00.000-08:00

CBS News RAW: An Iranian Press TV crew caught the moment when one of the Taliban explosions hit Kabul. Taliban militants launched attacks on key government targets

President Zardari Speech in Punjabi

2010-01-24T23:15:00.000-08:00

CCTV Footage Accident Caught on Tape

2010-01-24T23:14:00.000-08:00

Highly Qualified Minister of Pakistan

2010-01-24T23:12:00.000-08:00

Reema.Zindagi, Dajjal aur Dollar

2010-01-24T23:11:00.000-08:00

Reema Khan reading her article “Zindagi, Dajjal aur Dollar” in the program Raat Gaey hosted by Wasi Shah

Pictures:Snow Fall in Murree Pakistan

2010-01-24T23:08:00.000-08:00

Pictures:Earthquake in Haiti

2010-01-24T23:06:00.000-08:00

Boston

Tuesday afternoon, January 12th, the worst earthquake in 200 years – 7.0 in magnitude – struck less than ten miles from the Caribbean city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The initial quake was later followed by twelve aftershocks greater than magnitude 5.0. Structures of all kinds were damaged or collapsed, from shantytown homes to national landmarks. It is still very early in the recovery effort, but millions are likely displaced, and thousands are feared dead as rescue teams from all over the world are now descending on Haiti to help where they are able. As this is a developing subject, I will be adding photos to this entry over the next few days, but at the moment, here is a collection of photos from Haiti over the past 24 hours.

Haiti Earthquake Caught on Tape

2010-01-24T23:03:00.000-08:00

Shopping in Kabul: Life goes on in war zone capital

2010-01-24T22:57:00.000-08:00

KABUL: The security check at the entrance to a French restaurant in Kabul can be both cursory and confusing.

“Anybody got a weapon?” the guard asks as a small group crowds into a holding chamber — called a “cage” — before being admitted into the restaurant complex.

“Yes, I’ve got a gun,” says one man.

“OK,” says the guard, and waves everybody through.

A diner in the upmarket Heetal Plaza Hotel, meanwhile, might find a thickset man chomping a hamburger at the next table, with a large pistol in a holster on his hip.

But while Kabul is the capital of a country at war, it doesn’t always feel that way as the sun glints off distant snow-capped peaks and street life reflects a vibrancy uncowed by three decades of conflict.

Guns, guards and soldiers are everywhere.

But so are markets and shoppers, who risk their lives crossing chaotic roads crammed with everything from trotting donkey carts to smart four-wheel drives and menacing military vehicles.

In the labyrinth of dusty streets and back alleys, deep potholes determine the side of the road drivers choose to use, leading to skilful weaving of traffic which would do credit to an Afghan carpet-maker.

Walk through Chicken Street — of hippy-trail fame before the Soviet Union invaded on Christmas Day 1979 — and it is possible to forget there is a war on.

Shops offering jewellery, furs, Afghan scarves and hats vie for attention alongside butchers and money changers plying their trades at stalls in the street itself.

Heavily bearded men in flowing, baggy clothes — wrapped in scarves and turbans against the nose-numbing cold — chat and make deals. But women are scarce.

Of the few who venture out, some wear the all-enveloping blue burqas derided in the West as symbols of the extreme subjugation of women under the former Taliban regime.

But many of them carry babies and beg, suggesting the face-concealing burqa may sometimes play a bigger role in hiding shame than in conforming to Taliban dress codes years after the Islamists were ousted by the US-led invasion in 2001.

Despite the threat of kidnap, whether by Taliban or criminal gangs, a brief stroll down Chicken Street by a Westerner is likely to be disturbed by little more than the enthusiastic attention of street urchins.

But the sudden roar of a fleet of military helicopters overhead is a reminder that Afghanistan has had little relief from conflict in the past 30 years.

Despite that, like urbanites around the world, many love their city.

“I’ve lived all my time in Kabul,” says Mohammad Siddique, 48, a driver for an international company who describes himself as “a living history” of the years of conflict.

“I saw a lot of war, but I never moved from Kabul, and I like my city.”

Doug Wankel, a former US Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations, who lived in Kabul for two years before the Soviet invasion of 1979, returned in 2004 and has lived here ever since.

“I like the Afghan people, they are very strong, proud and independent. They make good friends and you can rely on them,” says Wankel, now managing partner of security firm Spectre Group International.

Windows in his home were blown out by the most recent suicide attack in Kabul, opposite the Heetal Plaza Hotel on December 15, which killed eight people and wounded 40 others.

“It’s a cost of doing business in Afghanistan — but it’s still worth it,” he told AFP.

Despite the devil-may-care attitude of Kabul’s citizens, they face a rapidly escalating war.

The number of civilians killed in the conflict jumped last year to 2,412, making 2009 the deadliest year for ordinary Afghans since the US-led invasion, the United Nations said.

Last year was also the deadliest for foreign forces fighting the Taliban, with 520 troop deaths, up from 295 for the year before, as the insurgency has escalated and spread.

But carnage is nothing new for Afghanistan and Kabul.

In the courtyard of the Gandamack Lodge, named after a battle in 1842, an ancient cannon stands as a reminder of Britain’s disastrous and bloody invasion of Afghanistan more than 150 years ago.

source Dawn

Some Beautiful Night Scenes of Karachi

2010-01-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Shankar Mahadevan-Aman Ki Asha

2010-01-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

“CBS News RAW”: daytime pictures of the aftermath of the Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. There were crying victims among the downed buildings.

FIA cyber crime wing loses to hackers

2010-01-13T06:57:00.000-08:00

By Imran Ali Teepu
Saturday, 12 Jan, 2010

ISLAMABAD: The website of Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA’s) cyber crime wing meant to register complaints against electronic crime was hacked Thursday night.

A senior FIA official told Dawn on Friday that, “the site has been defaced rather than hacked, and we are conducting an investigation into the cyber breach.”

A hackers’ group, claiming itself as Pakbugs, wrote on the main webpage of the FIA’s cyber crime wing that “I was wondering if someone wanted to report, complain, track, someone? Where shall they go? The FIA or Pakbugs?”

The official of FIA’s cyber crime wing said: “The act is a ‘cyber crime’ and the so-called hackers will be dealt under the bill on electronic crime.”

The crime is punishable with up to 14-year imprisonment, he added. “The website will shortly be uploaded again” he said.

Answering a question, the official said: “If we found out that the website was defaced by the some individual(s) in a foreign country, we would contact the relevant cyber security department as per the laid down procedures.”

Neutral cyber experts monitoring such developments on the internet told this reporter that “the site was hacked,” basing their claim on the argument that the main hacked webpage kept on displaying till Friday evening.

Owner of a software development firm, on condition of anonymity, said: “I am in talks with foreign investors to shift their data centre to Pakistan because of cost-effective broadband, but the question is not about the cost its about the security of the data centre.”

He said: “If such events continue to take place, foreign investors will shy away from shifting their businesses to the country quoting such examples.”

Zaid Hamid Speaking Against MQM

2010-01-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Yemen’s Most Wanted

2010-01-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

Nasir al-Wuhayshi

Rap sheet: As leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Wuhayshi has proven to be both a skilled politician and an innovative, often brutal, adversary. Once Osama bin Laden’s secretary, Wuhayshi is a member of the younger and more radical generation of Yemen’s al Qaeda cadres. In 2006, he broke out of a maximum-security prison, along with 22 other militants, in Yemen’s capital city of Sanaa. In January 2009, he spearheaded the unification of al Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi branches under his control.

Anwar al-Awlaki

Rap sheet: Awlaki is ethnically Yemeni, but actually hails from New Mexico. As an imam, he preached in mosques throughout the United States, including in San Diego; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Washington, D.C. (While in San Diego, he was also arrested for soliciting prostitutes.) Technologically savvy, he also has a reputation as an “e-imam,” having created a popular website where he doled out advice and posted “sermons” to spread his radical views.

Said al-Shehri

Rap sheet: Shehri, a Saudi, was captured in December 2001 in Pakistan, where he claimed to be providing humanitarian relief for Muslim refugees. He was subsequently transferred to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, where the U.S. charges against him included “participat[ing] in military operations against the United States and its coalition partners,” as well as plotting to assassinate an unnamed writer.

Qasim al-Raymi

Rap sheet: Raymi has been associated with al Qaeda in Yemen since well before the creation of AQAP, previously serving as deputy to Wuhayshi for its predecessor group al Qaeda in Yemen. In February 2006, he escaped prison as part of the same jailbreak that freed Wuhayshi. On June 21, 2007, Raymi released the audio statement that announced the formal re-establishment of al Qaeda in Yemen with Wuhayshi at its head. He has successfully evaded authorities ever since, most recently escaping a raid designed to capture him in the southern Abyan province last December.

Hizam Mujali

Rap sheet: The Sanaa-born Mujali hails from a family of al Qaeda members: His younger brothers Arif and Yahya are also active in terrorist circles. Hizam Mujali was stopped at a checkpoint in 2003 and, while resisting arrest, shot and killed a Yemeni police officer. He was also part of the infamous 2006 prison break. However, he eventually turned himself back in to the Yemeni government, striking a deal that would allow him to keep his freedom on the condition that he did not rejoin al Qaeda. That condition appears to have recently been broken: The government targeted him in a raid it launched in Arhab Province this past December. Although they captured his brother Arif, Hizam managed to escape.