Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Religious tolerance in Pakistan

Religious tolerance in Pakistan | Blog | DAWN.COM

Imagine first the bustling streets of Anarkali in Lahore or Qissa Khawani Bazaar in Peshawar. Now imagine a Hindu or a Jewish person praying on the roadside. If religious tolerance had prevailed in Pakistan, this would be a non-issue as people would simply walk by the praying person.

While I can only speculate how Pakistanis would behave around a non-Muslim praying along the street, I need not wonder how Americans would react to a Muslim praying along the street side.

Just outside the store window in uptown Manhattan (New York), I see a Muslim hawker performing his Afternoon (Asr) prayer on the street side at the intersection of 7th-avenue and West 35th street. He sells DVDs and children’s books in the heart of Manhattan. As he prays, women in shorts and men wearing T-shirts walk by his kiosk. No spectacle is created, or worse no insults or taunts are hurled.


The killing fields of Pakistan | Blog | DAWN.COM

The killing fields of Pakistan | Blog | DAWN.COM

The bloodbath in Karachi continues. The death toll in the last week alone has reached over 100. A glance at the online tally of dead bodies in Karachi leaves not much room for hope in Pakistan’s largest city. The citizens appear helpless, the government looks impotent, and the future looks grimmer by the day.

While the resurgence of violence in Karachi is a recent phenomenon, the rest of Pakistan had been engulfed in senseless violence since 2003. No fewer than 36,000 Pakistanis have died in violent deaths in the past eight years, making Pakistan the hotbed of religious, political, and ethnic violence

Exploring the fault lines | Blog | DAWN.COM

Exploring the fault lines | Blog | DAWN.COM
Almost 37,000 violent deaths due to communal, sectarian, and political strife in a mere span of eight years suggest that somewhere something has gone awfully wrong in Pakistan. There are at least two ways to react to such dismal circumstances. One can either look for scapegoats and blame others for one’s misery; or one can indulge in much needed introspection.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

How bad was the recent recession

With a 6% decline in jobs and a 5% contraction in economy, the recession in 2007 was one of the worst in the past 60 years. See the graphical display by the Bloomberg

 

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Thursday, August 18, 2011

International Development - JICA, Gates Foundation Partner Against Polio in Pakistan

"The Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are joining forces to help eradicate polio in Pakistan through a new strategic partnership that will support the country’s campaign against the disease.

Under the partnership, which was announced Wednesday, Aug. 17, Japan will provide a 4.9 million yen ($63,956) loan to support polio eradication activities in Pakistan through 2013. The loan will be repaid by the Gates Foundation if the projects it finances are successfully implemented by the Pakistani government.

Japan started considering this partnership with the Gates Foundation in July and is also reportedly looking at providing similar loans to help decrease maternal deaths in Bangladesh."

International Development - JICA, Gates Foundation Partner Against Polio in Pakistan

"above mother there is no other"

How desis have desify English.

English as ‘goodly spoken’ in South Asia | World | DAWN.COM

Monday, August 15, 2011

Mick Jagger discovers ragas

Mick Jagger has recently embraced ragas. His soon to be released album with the famed Indian musician A R Rahman will showcase songs in Sanskrit and Urdu.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14471568





Thursday, August 11, 2011

Gender equity in terrorism

While there remains a large gender gap in labour force participation, women in Pakistan have been making strides towards reducing, if not eliminating, the gap. Thursday's suicide bombing attack by a reportedly teenaged female bomber is not the female participation many in Pakistan had hoped for.

According to the local police, a female bomber first lobbed a grenade and then later blew herself up in Peshawar. The suicide bomber's age and gender makes the incident even more concerning than many similar attacks in Peshawar, which were often orchestrated by young boys, often in their early teens.

The social fabric in Pakistan is slowly disintegrating. Young boys and girls belonging to Pakistan's economically depressed areas are becoming ready recruits for merchants of terror and death. What is more troubling is the fact that Pakistan's civil and military leadership is totally inept to cope with the economic, social, and political rot.

More on this is available from the Express Tribune.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/229099/bomb-kills-five-in-pakistans-peshawar-police/


The Bali bomber found in Pakistan

The globalization of terror becomes fairly evident by the arrest of one of the suspects of Bali bombing from the tribal areas in Pakistan.

It is no longer the Uzbeks and the Chechens who found Pakistan's tribal areas as the perfect place to hide and launch their attacks within Pakistan and in Russia, now even the Indonesian militants are springing up in Pakistan. As if Pakistan needed any help on this front from others.

Monday, August 8, 2011

The Saudis Use Oil to Punish the Iranians - BusinessWeek

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA - APRIL 06:  U.S. Ambassa...Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThe Arab (Saudi)-Iranian rivalry is centuries old. rom fighting wars in the ancient times to the last battle fought between Arab Iraqis and Iranians, the Arab-Iranian relationship has been a struggling one to say the least.

The latest episode of this age old rivalry involves trade where Saudis are trying to hurt Iranian oil exports to India! More on this from Bloomberg below:

The Saudis Use Oil to Punish the Iranians - BusinessWeek
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Super flood blamed on lasers, a cruel Pathan – The Express Tribune

Pakistanis fall for conspiracy theories even when more plausible explanations exist. The case of last year's devastating floods is no exception. Many believe in Pakistan that the government deployed lasers to melt glaciers resulting in floods . . .

Super flood blamed on lasers, a cruel Pathan – The Express Tribune