Jack Hunter: Pro-Life Means Anti-Drone

If life is sacred, how can we justify the random killing of innocent children?

By Jack Hunter, The American Conservative,  October 26, 2012

PACOM / Flickr

My pro-life position is simple: Life is sacred. Life is so sacred that for it to be taken there must be an extremely good reason—and there are few good reasons. Convenience is certainly not a good reason. This innate sanctity of human life is something virtually all civilized people recognize despite one’s politics. Even those who identify as pro-choice are only comfortable with abortion to the degree that they can downplay or dismiss the humanity of the subject at hand.

Barack Obama has never claimed to be pro-life. As the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney writes: “President Obama has killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia through a drone war aimed at exterminating the suspected terrorists on his unprecedented and ever-expanding ‘kill list.’”

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Hawking and Mlodinow: Why God Did Not Create the Universe

There is a sound scientific explanation for the making of our world—no gods required

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By STEPHEN HAWKING And LEONARD MLODINOW,

The Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2010

According to Viking mythology, eclipses occur when two wolves, Skoll and Hati, catch the sun or moon. At the onset of an eclipse people would make lots of noise, hoping to scare the wolves away. After some time, people must have noticed that the eclipses ended regardless of whether they ran around banging on pots.

Ignorance of nature’s ways led people in ancient times to postulate many myths in an effort to make sense of their world. But eventually, people turned to philosophy, that is, to the use of reason—with a good dose of intuition—to decipher their universe. Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test—in other words, modern science.

Albert Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” He meant that, unlike our homes on a bad day, the universe is not just a conglomeration of objects each going its own way. Everything in the universe follows laws, without exception.

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Stephen Lendman: Israel Wages War on Human Rights

by Stephen Lendman, Veternas Today, October 24, 2012

Daily incidents reveal Israeli state terrorism writ large. Praying to the wrong God is called terrorism. So is wanting out from under Israel’s repressive boot.

Occupation harshness knows no limits. Torture is official policy. So are virtually all other crimes against humanity. Palestinian civilians suffer most. Children are treated like adults. Going to and from school is hazardous.

Dedicated human rights advocates are targeted. Ayman Ameed Ahmad Nasser is one of many. He’s a researcher and member of Addameer’s Prisoner Support Association.

Established in 1992, Addameer provides legal services for Israeli political prisoners. It supports them nationally and internationally. It works to end torture and other abuses. It conducts solidarity human rights campaigns.

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Eid Greetings To All

 Nasir Khan, October 25, 2012

  Eid Mubarik to all around the world! 

Let's hope that this holy occasion in memory of the sacrifice of Abraham [Hazrat Ibrahim in Islam], the patriarch of three monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity, Islam -  will bring a message of hope, good-will and peace to a deeply divided world, torn by wars and imperial depredations.

US does not want real democracy in Middle East: Chomsky

Visiting AUC for first time in 19 years, Noam Chomsky speaks of potential Israel-Iran conflict and America’s fear of democracy in Middle East

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Randa Ali, ahramonline,  Wednesday 24 Oct 2012

 

Noam Chomsky at the American University in Cairo, 23 October 2012 (Photo: Randa Ali)

Hundreds filled the Ewart Memorial Hall at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on Tuesday to attend a lecture by prominent American political analyst and linguist Noam Chomsky on his first visit to the university in 19 years. “I can’t help but picture the world we live in, the one we’re leaving to our grandchildren, and it is not a pretty picture,” said Chomsky, 83, who arrived from Gaza on Monday.

During the lecture, called “Emerging World Order and the Arab Spring,” he spoke of the increasing threat of nuclear war and environmental disasters.

Chomsky argued that the only way out of the nuclear crisis was to embrace the initiative for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, adding that Egypt had played a leading role in advocating the initiative since 1995.

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Unresolved Kashmir issue and Indo-Pak border tensions: Urdu Weekly Rehbar

Editor’s remarks: The unresolved Kashmir issue continues to be the main cause of border tensions between India and Pakistan. There is no other way to solve this conflict that started in 1947 than to allow the right to self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Contrary to the Indian government claims, Kashmir is not an integral part of India. Kashmir is a country under Indian military occupation. A handful of puppet Kashmiri opportunists who rule the state support the Indian rule but the vast majority of the people of Kashmir demands freedom. As long as the occupation will last, the heroic people of Kashmir will continue to resist the occupiers and they will continue to demand freedom (Azadi).

Nasir Khan, Editor

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Urdu Weekly Rehbar, Srinagar, October 21, 2012

Israeli terror against the aid ship to Gaza

Nasir Khan,  October 23, 2012

Many in Norway and the rest of the world are shocked over the way the Zionists have behaved towards the aid activists to Gaza. But this sort of behaviour towards the aid volunteers including Aksel Hagen shows the total indifference of the apartheid state of Israel towards the rest of the world. It has turned Gaza into the largest concentration camp in the world in total violation of all norms of international behaviour and international law merely because it controls American Government and its foreign policy.

At the same time, all peace-loving activists and sympathisers to the dispossessed and captive Palestinians solute the activists on Estelle for their courage to show solidarity with the captive population of Gaza. The illegal blockade of Gaza is also a major offence against all those people who stand for justice for the Palestinians, respect for international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the UN Charter.

Francis Boyle: Bush, Blair Wanted For Crimes Against Humanity

“We will keep after Bush and Blair for sure for crimes against peace, war crimes and torture in general,” Francis Boyle, a professor of international law

Video-

 

A prominent international lawyer says former US President George W. Bush, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair stand guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes and torture.

In November 2011, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, in which Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois, led the prosecution team, convicted Bush and Blair of crimes against peace and humanity, and genocide over their roles in the Iraq war.

On May 11, 2012, the tribunal also found Bush, former US Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld guilty of the crime of torture.

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Imran Khan and Pakistani people’s expectations

 You Tube: Imran Khan

By Nasir Khan,  October 16, 2012

In response to a  post on Facebook, I  wrote the following short comment:
 
I also hope that Imran Khan may prove to be a better leader if he comes to power. But the power-game is not one-man show and it is never so easy when you are inside the ring. Once in power and on the way to political power many people with good intentions have completely changed their directions from their earlier lofty objectives because realpolitik and entrenched interests of state and society left no options for them. This is how power operates in reality. Pakistan in this sense cannot be an exception.

Without casting any doubts on the good intentions and sincerity of Imran Khan, let’s look at another instance of a promising leader, who had made tall claims to bring a big change in his country and the world. This was Obama during his campaign trail to the White House. The vast majority around the globe was jubilant that the dark long shadow of Bush’s murderous reign was finally to be replaced by a decent, peace-loving and well-educated man.

But what happened is before us. Obama has proved to be the opposite of what he had made us believe about him and his foreign policy. He has made a joke of the international law and has carried out the policies of his predecessor. He has remorselessly been killing people in Pakistan and other places by using his Drones. This is the picture of a man who said one thing and has done otherwise once he had reached the White House.

Jack A. Smith: Obama’s War Record

By Jack A. Smith, Global Research, October 14, 2012

 

When Sen. Barack Obama ran for the presidency in 2008 many wishful-thinking Democratic voters viewed him as a peace candidate because he opposed the Iraq war (but voted yes on the war budgets while in the Senate). Some others assumed his foreign/military policy would be along the lines of Presidents George H. W. Bush (whom Obama admires) or Bill Clinton. Some who identified as progressives actually thought his foreign/military policy might tilt to the left.

Instead, center rightist that he is, Obama’s foreign/military policy amounted to a virtual continuation of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terrorism under a different name. He extended Bush’s wars to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere while greatly expanding the war in Afghanistan, hiking the military budget, encouraging the growth of militarism in U.S. society by repeatedly heaping excessive praise on the armed forces, and tightening the military encirclement of China.

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Malala

 by Badri Raina

When the blood-dimmed tide
Creeps under the door,
Malala appears, quells the yellow
Beast with unwavering dark eye,
And simply says “no more.”

Which is when years of fearful
Preparation by Reason’s brave
Handfuls come to contagious fruition.
Naked new-born babes ride
The blast of innocence, all Malala,
Willing to take the disarmed bullet
In head, limb, gullet.

Where all seemed bust, destiny gels
Into a handful of dust.
Malala avatar, living or dying,
You have raised a cowering nation
Out of dithering and prevarication.
And with that reborn Pakistan,
Billions in the days to come will learn
To be soldiers of the sanity you spawn.

May you be blessed, child of indomitable soul,
May you live old to see the irreversible
Spread of the light that speaks from your eye,
May the nations never turn from the goal
For which you may so readily die.
     
          –October 13, 2012

Akhtar Chaudhry: Uttalelse om Taliban og ekstremisme i Pakistan

Editor’s remarks: Mr Akhtar Chaudhry’s  views on NRK Radio (in Norwegian) on religious extremism in Pakistan  are welcome. I will add only a few lines to the discussion. As I see it, the real problem with the Pakistani people is not only about their religious identity. It is rather that such an identity has been hijacked by religious parties and political organizations with the help of clerics. As a result, people in general are not in a position to make a distinction between their universal religion of Islam and a suffocating version of Islam, mostly in the Sunni tradition, that has been forced down the throats of the people for six decades. Thus a mutilated, perverted and fanatic brand of ‘Islam’ has replaced the egalitarian, universalistic and tolerant aspects of Islam. Many problems our Pakistani people face are closely tied to this unhealthy growth that has taken deep roots in Pakistan. Religious extremists and the Taliban are a clear manifestation of that problem. But the actual problem is far deeper and more widespread in Pakistan and among the Pakistanis living in European countries and North America.

Nasir Khan, Editor

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Akhtar Chaudhry,   Facebook, Oct 13, 2012 4:55pm

Det er bra at religiøse ledere i Pakistan har engasjert seg mot Taliban og ekstremisme.Pakistanere må ta et kritisk blikk på sitt ukritiske forhold til sim religiøse identitet. Her er de mange som manipulerer.Her er min uttalelse til NRK Dagsnytt i ettermiddag.

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PAKISTAN: Where do we go from here?

Editor’s remarks: We should not expect foreign countries to come and help fight religious fanatics and political exploiters in Pakistan. It is the task of the politically-conscious citizens of Pakistan to have a broad common front to combat them. In Pakistan, unlike Norway and other European countries, religion and political power have worked closely together. Islam has been used, misused, perverted and exploited to the full by both the religious parties who have used Islam to impose their political agenda on the people and also by the political establishment who have used Islam for slogan-mongering to gain support. The results are before us. The ideological bankruptcy of the two has left Pakistani people in a quagmire of despair and apathy. The only people who can change the situation are the people of Pakistan, no one else. In a culture where power and the powerful are worshipped, there are brave progressive and democratic people who are struggling to safeguard the political and social interests of the ordinary people and bring a political change in the country. Let us support them!

Nasir  Khan, Editor

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Report: by Dr Saleem Javed, The Friday Times, October 12, 2012

About 1,000 Hazaras  have been killed in Balochistan in the last decade, and the community is protesting all over the world

On October 4, a Hazara public official Sikander Ali was killed and two other men were injured in an attack on their vehicle on the National Highway near Kuchlak. Days later, two Shia men were killed in Quetta.
Almost 1,000 Shias, mostly Hazaras, have been killed in Quetta in the last 10 years. Although attacks on Shias have increased across Pakistan, the Hazara ethnic community in Balochistan has been especially targeted. One in 500 people of this small community of half a million have been killed in Balochistan since 1999. Around 25,000 Hazaras – about 5 percent of the entire Hazara population in Balochistan – have left the province for Afghanistan, Europe and Australia since 2001.
Most young Hazara people cannot attend universities and colleges in Quetta because of security fears. Data compiled by the Hazara Students Federation shows admissions of Hazara students in Balochistan University have declined by 42 percent since 2008, and enrolment in colleges outside Hazara-dominated areas has decreased by almost 95 percent.
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David Swanson: Why Europe Did Not Deserve a Nobel Peace Prize

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By David Swanson, opednews.com, October 12, 2012
 

Yes, indeed, it is a little-acknowledged feat of miraculous life-saving power that Europe has not gone to war with itself — other than that whole Yugoslavia thing — since World War II.  It’s as clear a demonstration as anything that people can choose to stop fighting.  It’s a testament to the pre-war peace efforts that criminalized war, the post-war prosecutions of the brand new crime of making war, the reconstruction of the Marshall Plan, and … and something else a little less noble, and much less Nobel-worthy.

Alfred Nobel’s will, written in 1895, left funding for a prize to be awarded to “the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Fredrik Heffermehl has been leading a valuable effort to compel the Nobel committee to abide by the will. Now they’ve outdone themselves in their movement in the other direction.

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Peter Thompson: Eastern Germany is the most godless place on Earth

Editor’s remarks: The priestly classes have shown the gods to their flocks and followers since the dawn of human history. And Lo! The flocks ‘know’ what the priests say is true. As a result some see the gods, some feel the gods and everybody is happy; the priests, the gods and the flocks! You see, the magic of gods works!! I say to all atheists, agnostics, sceptics, humanists and freethinkers: Get rid of all your arguments, your ungodly knowledge, your false books, your false philosophers! Gently close your eyes and find your way to the nearest priests who will open your mind’s eyes and you’ll see what you thought did not exist!

Nasir Khan, Editor

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Peter Thompson,  guardian.co.uk, Saturday 22 September 2012

A woman dressed as an angel waves from a roof top near the German Reichstag on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Photograph: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

They are sending missionaries to eastern Germany. A recent study called Beliefs About God Across Time and Countries found that 52.1% of people asked whether they believed in God identified themselves as atheists. This compared with only 10.3% in western Germany. Indeed, the survey was unable to find a single person under the age of 28 in eastern Germany who believed in God. Obviously there are some – I think I may have even met some once – but the survey was unable to find them. On the face of it this is an extraordinary finding and it is something that needs some careful explanation.

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Malala Yousafzai operated after being shot by Pakistani Taliban

Editor’s remarks: The brutal murders and violence by the Taliban show no signs of abating. Suddenly, they throw a bomb here or a grenade there in crowded places, killing and maiming people, or they resort to firearms to shoot as they like. But what is not disclosed to our Pakistani people is that these Taliban have not appeared suddenly from some unknown source; in fact they have been in the making for decades in the political anarchy that has prevailed in Pakistan. The major players in this game have been Pakistani politicians and religious leaders (or ringleaders ) of religious parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami, for instance, who have misused the name of Islam for their political ends and have misled the vast majority of Pakistani people that a pure Islam was being re-introduced. 

Thus the field was open for such ‘mujahiddin of Islam’ and the custodians of mosques to brainwash common people into believing that the dawn of Islamic rejuvenation was just around the corner. The Islamisation programme by the sadistic dictator General Zia-ul-Haq was a natural growth of that process that had started long ago. That process had matured and has been showing its results in the shape of sectarian versions of Islam, violence against religious minorities (Ahmadis, Christians, Shias, Hindus, etc.), where the ‘pure’ Muslims, the mujahiddin and the Taliban, are doing Allah’s work and fiery clerics spouting their venom against fellow human beings. 

Can these forces be stopped by an official decree or praying for peace? The answer is No. Much has gone wrong in Pakistan in the name of Islam. It will take much more than pious wishes and prayers  to remove the evil forces that are terrorising the people of Pakistan. 

Nasir Khan, Editor

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• Jon Boone in Islamabad
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 October 2012 09.35 BST

The 14-year-old schoolgirl shot in the head by Pakistani Taliban arrives by helicopter at a hospital in Peshawar Link to this video
Pakistani surgeons have removed a bullet from the head of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old schoolgirl and peace activist who was shot by a Taliban gunman on Tuesday.
Relatives of the girl, who rose to fame for her outspoken opposition to Taliban militancy in her home town of Swat, said she appeared to be doing well after a three-hour operation.
Her father, Ziaudduin Yousafzai, said doctors were encouraged by a CT scan taken after the operation. She was unconscious but had moved her hand slightly after coming out of surgery.
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