South Asia Citizens Web

Women are subordinate to men, should not mix in work or education and must always have a male guardian when they travel, according to new guidelines from Afghanistan’s top clerics which critics say are dangerously reminiscent of the Taliban era.

We are dismayed and pained at the government’s campaign of vilification of the sustained popular movement against the Koodankulam nuclear plant, which has raised vital issues of atomic safety. These issues have assumed pivotal importance worldwide after the Fukushima disaster, the world’s first multiple-reactor meltdown. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has trivialised the movement, and the five months-long relay fast by thousands of people, by attributing it to “the foreign hand”, or Western non-governmental organisations, without citing even remotely credible evidence.

Is the Manmohan Singh government doing to the anti-Koodankulam nuclear plant protesters what the Bush administration did to Iraq under Saddam Hussein – to invent an excuse for using military force? Going by the lengths to which Singh’s ministers have gone in claiming that the agitators are acting at the behest of foreign NGOs, the answer is yes. The government’s dirty-tricks departments are hell-bent on “finding” the equivalent of “proof” of the existence of “weapons of mass destruction” – evidence of diversion of funds to support and transport the agitators.

Union Carbide, whose gases killed their families and whose abandoned chemicals contaminated their drinking water, has never been brought to justice. Carbide has now merged into Dow, but Dow disclaims responsibility for Carbide’s undischarged Bhopal liabilities – including criminal charges relating to 25,000 deaths. What have we "activists" been doing? Trying to tell this story to the world, and to ask good-hearted people, who believe in justice and fair play, to help.

From: Pervez Hoodbhoy
– Date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012, 9:30 PM
and
This has gone viral over the internet...am flooded by good and bad emails.
Background: Tzortzis (Greek, lives in London) converted to Islam and is now hugely popular among young people brimming with eeman...The man is a real entertainer. I had no idea who he was...some students at LUMS asked me to debate him. I agreed. The Islamic society here flew him in at a few hours notice.
Unfortunately, the debate ended (…)