Baithak

You might not be aware of this, but there are a lot of dickheads on the Internet.

Since this phenomenon seems to get worse with the size of the crowd, it is theorized that we will reach a critical mass; an Asshole Apocalypse, if you will. That’s when casual Internet users–and the corporations who want their business–will step in.

There are ways to solve this crisis, but I’m telling you now, you won’t like some of them.

But first, the problem…
Right away let me shut down everyone who’s snorting derisively into their can of Mountain Dew and saying, “Trolls will be trolls!” You should know that there are billions of dollars at play here. The trolls are driving away business, and that simply won’t be allowed to continue. I’m not saying I’m rooting for it–I’m saying that’s the economic reality

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Why does many a familiar argument I hear from our TV pundits remind me of Amalie (“Emily”) Noether?

“Emily, who?” I hear you mutter; followed, no doubt, by “And what the **** is he talking about?”

Even as I chuckle quietly at having bemused most of you (except, possibly, those who have a solid background of physics or mathematics), I wonder if I am being fair to readers by opting to write the sort of column I fear this one will likely turn out to be.

Upon further reflection (with apologies for a bit of naughty one-up-man-ship), I will box on. For, the sorts of connections I propose to make — convoluted and obtuse though they will seem to some — have always had a special kind of intellectual fascination for me. These columns may ultimately be intended for you, but if they were not also for me I would not bother writing them.

So let me start by first telling you a little about Emily Noether. This German lass was probably the finest female mathematician of all time. She did her path-breaking work in those heady years of the early twentieth century when Physics was being revolutionised by a host of brilliant men. And, she earned their unanimous and ungrudging respect for her contributions to their understanding of Nature at the most fundamental level…..

“Emily, who?” Symmetry and invariance —Munir Attaullah

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Amy Goodman: World leaders from nearly two dozen countries met in Washington over the weekend to discuss plans to increase regulation of international financial activity. They acknowledged that a failure of market oversight in countries like the United States had precipitated the financial crisis. Meanwhile, here at home, it’s been a month into the Bush administration’s more than $700 billion bank bailout. Last week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson outlined a new bailout strategy intended to boost consumer borrowing and promote financing for companies that give out loans. President-elect Obama’s transition team is reportedly working on improving the management of the bailout come January 20th. According to Naomi Klein’s latest article in The Nation, “The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington’s handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.” The article is called “In Praise of a Rocky Transition.” … “Criminal”? Explain.

Naomi Klein: Well, there’s a few elements now that are being described as illegal that we’re finding out. First of all, the equity deals that were negotiated with the largest banks and also some smaller banks, representing $250 billion worth of the bailout money, this is the deal to inject capital into the banks in exchange for equity. The idea was to address the so-called credit crunch to get banks lending again. The legislation that enabled this was quite explicit that it had to encourage lending. Barney Frank, who was one of the architects of that legislation, has said that it violates the act if the money is not going to that purpose and is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers. He said that violates the acts, i.e. it’s illegal. But what we know is that it’s going precisely to those purposes. It is going to bonuses. It is going to shareholders. And it is not going to lending. The banks have been quite explicit about this. Citibank has talked about using the money to buy other banks…..

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A think tank closely tied to U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama is calling for a “dramatic strategic shift” in Washington’s policy towards Pakistan, one designed to both strengthen civilian institutions and promote an effective counter-insurgency against al Qaeda and indigenous Islamist extremists in the tribal areas along the Afghan border who increasingly threaten the country’s stability.

In a report released here Monday, the Centre for American Progress (CAP) is also urging Washington to pursue its goals in Pakistan as part of a broader multilateral effort and a regional strategy designed to address Islamabad’s security concerns with Afghanistan and India.

“The United States needs to make a shift from a reactive, transactional, short-term approach that is narrowly focused on bilateral efforts,” according to the 71-page report, “Partnership for Progress”.

“Instead, a more proactive, long-term strategy should seek to advance stability and prosperity inside Pakistan through a multilateral, regional approach,” it argued, adding that Pakistan “will pose one of the greatest foreign policy challenges for the incoming Obama administration.”

The report, the product of a year-long study that included consultations with a U.S.-Pakistan Working Group consisting of 33 of Washington’s top Pakistan specialists, is likely to be regarded as a bellwether for where the Obama administration will take U.S. policy.

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By Baithak.Net

This is the Questionnaire by Barak Obama’s TransitionTeam.

If this Questionnaire is to submitted to the nearly 60 strong Ministers in Gilani Government, and the Advisors, Speakers and others in high office, how many would muster and survive an examination of their replies by say a select team of seven or nine veteran journalists?

Michael Dorf comments on it here and says some of the questions are of dubious value.

By asking applicants for all possible sources of damaging or embarrassing information, the President-elect and the applicants can better anticipate what they will be up against. Yet that approach risks rewarding unfair attacks that might never even materialize. Given the choice between a bland appointee with few political liabilities and a bold, talented appointee with politically-salient liabilities that are ultimately unconnected to his or her ability to do the job, the incoming administration will be tempted to err on the safe side. At the same time, some highly-talented applicants will be intimidated by the questionnaire itself. The prospect of taking a pay cut to work in government is already a disincentive to many people who currently work in the private sector. By making real the additional prospect of public humiliation, and the possibility that a prestigious but relatively low-paying government position may not even materialize at the end of the process, the Obama transition team’s questionnaire could scare off some of the best candidates.

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When this happens (if ever) then that would be the day Jamhooriyat would win and Aameriyat would lose permanently in Pakistan

Peru’s army commander-in-chief, Edwin Donayre, will appear on Nov. 25 before anti-corruption prosecutor Marlene Berrú, who is investigating his alleged responsibility for 80,000 gallons of gasoline that are unaccounted for.

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Next is the un-vetted appointment of Hazar Khan Bajarani as our education minister. Obviously, the man has come under a lot of flak from various quarters for his dubious role in heading a tribal jirga which handed over little girls in marriage. Shame! The minister is mum on the issue. If he is innocent of the alleged crime, why has he not spoken up? Instead, his poor ministry has had to put up a mealy-mouth defence of him. Why get the education ministry to do his dirty work; why can’t the minister himself stand up and tell us all to shut up because he is innocent? By the way, what “valuable services” has the minister rendered to the nation according to the same statement put out for the press? We wait with bated breath for the Ministry of Education to enlighten us on Bajarani’s heroics.

Un-vet 2 is minister Israrullah Zehri. He too is silent. The last time he opened up his mouth was in the Senate when he vociferously defended honour killings that had come to light. The government has mysteriously gone quiet over the alleged live burial of women accused of violating tribal law. Will the report ever filter out to us? Probably not. Will the report based on the findings of MNA Nafisa Shah on the alleged mauling to death of 17-year-old Taslim Solangi ever pass our eyes? Probably not. A woman in an email to me wonders why the minister for information is silent. “I have been reading continuously in the papers recently that Ms Sherry Rehman is courageously forging ahead with her initiative of purposing a bill on legislation against harassment of women in the workplace. A commendable effort, for which she should be lauded. How come then there is deafening silence from her … zipped lips…about the recent appointments by Zardari/Gilani hukoomat of two ministers who have actively promoted abominations against women and minors like Vani and honour killings in the name of tradition? Does she have nothing to say on that? Those acts go beyond harassment….forget about women entering the workforce, what about the minor girls who may not even make it to adolescence if men like Zehri and Bajarani get their way. Why is Ms Rehman suddenly stricken mute when it comes to explaining her president/PM’s controversial appointments? Are they not sending out mixed messages to the hapless awaam?”

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This compartmentalisation of knowledge is asinine. As it is, we already have a tremendous problem in Pakistan because our entire policymaking system has been outsourced to aid agencies. I have no axe to grind against multilateral agencies and I really do believe that they are trying to do good for Pakistan: my point is simply that the work they produce cannot be squirreled away and hidden. What we are stuck with now is a system in which multiple agencies commission multiple reports on similar subjects, most of which then disappear from public view. This is not acceptable.

More realistically, all that is needed is for the Ministry of Finance to make a rule saying that a copy of every single report submitted to the Economic Affairs Division by development agencies must be simultaneously placed on Google books.

Having all reports available on the internet for free is not going to fix poverty in Pakistan. But it is going to allow those trying to fix poverty to think smarter. And that’s a thought to which I hereby raise a glass of furiously shaken orange juice. LINK

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By Baithak.Net

The election of the United States’ first African American president has been welcomed as evidence the nation is belatedly moving beyond bigotry. But two new studies suggest that at least one unconscious prejudice — a fear or dislike of Muslims — remains very much alive.

“Islamophobia,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Wednesday at a two-day United Nations interfaith dialogue, “has emerged as a new term for an old and terrible form of prejudice.”

The first is “The Turban Effect,” published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by a team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney. It suggests that simply noticing someone is a Muslim increases aggressive tendencies on the part of non-Muslim Westerners.

Psychologists Christian Unkelbach, Joseph Forgas and Tom Denson modified a pre-existing computer game in which participants are instructed to shoot at subjects carrying weapons, but hold their fire when they spot someone who is unarmed. The target subjects were of both genders and a variety of races, but, most importantly for this study, some were given a Muslim appearance — that is, they wore a turban or the hijab….

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Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani woman suspected of links to Al Qaeda and charged with trying to kill American interrogators in Afghanistan, is mentally unfit to stand trial, according to her psychiatric evaluation.

Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is “not currently competent to proceed as a result of her mental disease, which renders her unable to understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against her,” US District Judge Richard Berman said on Monday while reporting the results of the evaluation.

Berman ordered a hearing on Wednesday to discuss how to proceed with Aafia’s case, including the possible use of medication to treat her.

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LAHORE, Nov 18 (IPS) - Some 370 foreign actors, musicians, dancers and puppeteers have defied the warnings of their friends, families and governments to participate in an international performing arts festival in Lahore, cultural capital of the world’s ‘most dangerous country’.

The privately organised 12th World Performing Arts Festival, Nov 13-23, showcases Pakistani and international dance, theatre, film, music, and puppetry in the largest such event in the region.

This is the 26th international festival organised by the Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop (RPTW), a group launched in Karachi in the early 1980s by the family of the late Rafi Peer, the Germany-educated ‘grand old man’ of modern Pakistani theatre who died in 1974. His youngest sons, twins Faizaan and Sadaan, started out with puppet and theatre performances in Karachi.

In 1992, they organised the first international festival in their native Lahore, springing from artist Faizaan’s passion for puppets, bringing together puppeteers from around the world. Since then, the Peerzadas (literally, ‘Peer’s sons’) as the family is called, have organised up to three international festivals a year, showcasing puppetry, dance, music, and theatre.

The World Performing Arts Festival brings together all these disciplines, plus film…..

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By Baithak.Net

If you can read Urdu: Irshad Haqqani’s column:

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The US has struck a tacit agreement with Pakistan on a “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy that allows unmanned aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in the country’s restive western regions, a US daily said in a report that could be damning for the ruling PPP.

Senior officials in both countries described the deal worked out in September as one in which Washington refuses to publicly acknowledge the attacks by Predator aircraft while Islamabad continues to complain noisily about the politically sensitive strikes. In recent months, the US drones have fired missiles at Pakistani soil at an average rate of once every four or five days. At least three senior Al Qaeda figures were killed in Predator strikes in October.

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By Baithak.Net

“At the beginning of the eighth century the Arabs brought one of history’s greatest revolutions in power, religion, culture and wealth to Dark Ages Europe. The Arabs were to stay there until the end of the fifteenth century and for much of that time – until roughly the beginning of the twelfth century – Islam in al-Andalus [Muslim Spain] was generally religiously tolerant and, above all, economically robust.”

At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, Charles Martel beat back the Muslim forces. Gibbon’s well-known pronouncement influenced the value judgments rendered by historians as to the desirable outcome from the competition between these two world orders. “Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.”

This book provides a corrective to both sides. The West refuses to acknowledge its debt to Islam. Muslims refuse to reflect earnestly on their decline. “Andalusians assimilated the new learning in the sciences and humanities with an almost-untroubled alacrity, thereby creating a basis of knowledge that would provide the foundation for the Renaissance in Christendom certain to come. In the polarised twelfth century, the flow of knowledge gave way to a virtual flood. Muslim learning, having seeped into the Christian West for decades from Andalusia, commenced a torrential outflow. It was a process mimicking osmosis at first and later, a conveyor belt… by the first quarter of the twelfth century, philosophy and science fairly tumbled out of ‘occupied’ Toledo into Christian Europe.

“The seepage of early times had yielded the writings of Ibn Hazm, historian, jurist and Platonist of al-Zarqiyal (Zarquallu). Toledan astronomer (whose Toledan Tables shaped the development of Latin Astronomy) Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Sephardic philosopher and poet of Zaragoza, influential in the Latin West as Avicebron… A man of science and philosophy who became well known to literate Christians was a Persian who never travelled to al-Andalus. His Latinised name was Avicenna. A child prodigy born in a remote corner of the Muslim empire at the end of the tenth century, Abu Ali ibn Sina had assimilated the entire contents of a sultan’s library by the age of eighteen. Ibn Sina the philosopher caused the doctors of the Church much worry about his synthesis of Platonic pantheism and Aristotelian rationalism. Ibn Sina the physician was eventually received almost with veneration.”

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This calls for another hearty laugh. The Mayor of Kabul, who is guarded by the Americans and feels safer outside Kabul in foreign countries has extended this olive branch to Taleban’s Mullah Omar ~ t

Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered Sunday to provide security for the Taliban’s reclusive leader if he agrees to enter peace talks, and suggested that the U.S. and other Western nations could leave the country or oust him if they disagree.

Karzai’s comments come as international political and military leaders are increasingly mulling whether negotiating with the Taliban is necessary as the insurgency gains sway in large areas of Afghanistan.

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For four days, Cape Town’s convention centre will be filled with a profusion of languages, colours, and ideas as some 2,200 delegates from 144 countries take part in the 11th International Forum on Women’s Rights and Development, organised by the Association of Women in Development (AWID).

The conference theme, “The Power of Movements,” is an expression of AWID’s mission to advance women’s rights worldwide by strengthening the impact and influence of women’s organisations. During the opening session on Nov. 14, a panel of four women set the scene for discussion and debate.

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Ghosheh was born in the Shoafat neighborhood of north Jerusalem 35 years ago. When she was in fifth grade, her family moved to the United States, but was unable to obtain a visa for her. They left her in Shoafat in the care of her older sister, who was already in her thirties. One day, when she came home from school, Ghosheh relates now with businesslike detachment, she encountered a group of people in the house.

“This is the man who is going to be your husband,” her sister told her, pointing to a man who was 32. “I was dumbfounded,” she recalls. “There was no one to protect me, so I waited for the next day, to tell my teachers - maybe they would protect me.”

But three days later her sister came to the school and said they were going to phone her mother in America from the post office. Instead, the girl was whisked to the sharia court, to register her marriage.

“My last chance was to try to protect myself with the help of the judge. I kissed his hand and said I did not want to get married. But the groom’s father gave him 60 dinars and the judge certified the marriage.” She was 13 years old.

On her wedding night she was taken to the Intercontinental Hotel (now the Seven Arches) on the Mount of Olives. “It was my last opportunity.” As her new husband was about to get into bed with her, she relates, she asked him to shower first. While he was in the shower she was going to jump out the window, perhaps to escape, perhaps to kill herself - but her husband caught her and flogged her with his belt. Even now, more than 20 years later, she can’t even say his name. She told him she hated him, and the rest of that night is a blank in her memory. “It was rape,” she says. “It was as though I had been [treated as] a woman and not a girl.”

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My male readers may shrug off this column as an old-fashioned story. No, it isn’t. It’s about the new US president and the kind of home environment he got when growing up. Would you not want to stop and think what ingredients went into making this black — half and half — waif into the most powerful man in the world today? It was his white grandma, dear male readers. We tend to put grannies on the backburner. That’s where these sweet old things belong, we argue, and we move on to more sexy stuff.

Moms too, especially the ‘over-the-hill’ types, get the same treatment of being passé and therefore mummified for family archives. How short- sighted? The macho in Pakistani men never lets them acknowledge in public that whatever success they achieve in life is because of their mothers and the sacrifices they made. Why are Pakistani men so boorish about praising their mothers in public? Rarely have I heard any guy who has made it to the top, stand up and say ‘Thank You’ to his mother before a crowd. American men are a different. They get all teary-eyed, maudlin and touchy-feely when they say that it’s their moms who are responsible for putting them where they stand on life’s pedestal today. Bravo!

Don’t wait for Mother’s Day. Go hug your mom and grandma. They are your heroines. And by the way, it’s okay for men to cry. Go ahead and cry when your tears well up.

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By Baithak.Net

I have often been involved in arguments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that focus on its history. Usually, the defender of current Israeli behavior urges the importance of appreciating all that Israel has been through and why it exists in the first place. I respond by reviewing the dispossession of 1948, terror attacks on Arab villages in the ’50s, Israeli provocations over the DMZ on the Golan Heights in the ’50s and ’60s, and on and on. Eventually and invariably, the defender of Israeli behavior insists that we not be so distracted by the history, that we need to focus on resolving the current conflict, not rehearsing the past. And thus we are struck by a larger question: is the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations important in our attempts to solve the present problem?

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In 1973, a moderately successful fiction writer set off from London on a train journey through Asia to Japan and back via Siberia; the trip was to be immortalized in The Great Railway Bazaar. Thirty-five years on and decorated in prizes, Paul Theroux is arguably even better known as a travel writer than as a novelist. His Asian train odyssey was followed by similar passages through China, Patagonia, Africa, the Pacific Islands and Britain. Perhaps he thought he’d seen it all: no less inquisitive, though considerably goutier, Theroux recently decided to take the trip again – to become a “spectre” in the scenes of his former life. This time around he has two distinct, if paradoxical, advantages: fame (along the way he looks up a variety of interesting friends) and invisibility (“the usual condition of the older traveller”). Wealth is another boon, though Theroux does his best to ignore this: “luxury is the enemy of observation”.

In 1973, Theroux had wanted to redefine the travelogue. “The travel book was a bore. A bore wrote it and bores read it”, he comments in his new introduction to the reissue of The Great Railway Bazaar. Notwithstanding the dishonour done by this attitude to his various illustrious predecessors (he does acknowledge Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Trollope as exceptions), Theroux has over the years brought to the genre an idiosyncratic brand of dry observation and honest complaint – an attention to the “delay” and “nuisance” intrinsic to the whole experience. Today, his approach seems pleasingly anachronistic. There are no gimmicks – no milk floats to ride or fridges to transport – no hare-brained schemes or impossibly hidden treasure. Instead, there are encounters, observations and, sometimes, wisdom. Paul Theroux is chiefly interested in the fluidity of human life, and one gets the feeling that he could write about the same journey for a third time and not be boring. He moves about, looks around him and tells us what he sees and feels. Few do it better.

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U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel apologized to an Arab-American group on Thursday for comments disparaging Arabs made by his father.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee sent a letter to Emanuel calling on him to distance himself from remarks made by the elder Emanuel in an interview with an Israeli newspaper following his son’s appointment last week.

In the interview, Benjamin Emanuel was reported as saying: “Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.”

“Today, Rep. Emanuel called Mary Rose Oakar, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, apologized on behalf of his family and offered to meet with representatives of the Arab-American community at an appropriate time in the future,” a statement from his office said.

The committee, in a statement on its website, said Emanuel told Oakar it was unacceptable to make such remarks against any ethnic or religious group.

“From the fullness of my heart, I personally apologize on behalf of my family and me. These are not the values upon which I was raised or those of my family,” the group quoted him as saying.

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