The irrelevance of the Jinnah-Nehru-Gandhi debate By Jawed Naqvi,Academic Corruption: Germany Rocked By Allegations of Ph.D. Bribes, The Long Struggle

Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan was in her teens when the communist party dispatched her on her bicycle to convey to Jinnah its message of support for Pakistan. ‘He offered me tea and said he was happy the communists had taken a sensible decision,’ she told me from Islamabad the other day. ‘He offered the hope that I could continue to see my party comrades from Amritsar and Delhi, and that he too was planning to be visiting Bombay fairly regularly.’

For 60 years, in fact more, India’s oppressed Dalits in Uttar Pradesh and indeed in other key regions have shown scant interest in either Jinnah and Gandhi, or even Nehru. Their hero remains Bhimrao Ambedkar who, like Jinnah, had major differences with Gandhi, but did not think much of the evolving religious separatism of the Quaid. For Ambedkar, Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru represented efforts for a horizontal unity (or disunity) of India, which he saw as of little use to his campaign for the emancipation of the downtrodden. It was the vertical integration of the country that was a priority for Ambedkar, where and when possible, by the state’s open support for inter-caste marriages. The irrelevance of the Jinnah-Nehru-Gandhi debate By Jawed Naqvi

Investigators in Cologne are looking into whether a company bribed dozens of professors to advance the academic careers of its clients. A number of Ph.D. holders might soon lose their titles, and academics are worried the scandal will put a dent in the reputation of German universities. Academic Corruption: Germany Rocked By Allegations of Ph.D. Bribes

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenger in the federal election, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says it's time to think about a timeframe for withdrawing the country's troops from Afghanistan, where the Bundeswehr has been deployed since 2002. Afghanistan Mission: Germany's Steinmeier Calls for Withdrawal Plan

Nations and organizations reward success. They elect and re-elect leaders who deliver and advance the interests of their constituency and they terminate the tenure of the failure, the incompetent and the corrupt. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had to step down when he was investigated for alleged corruption, and for his mishandling of the war against Hizbullah. In February 2001, the Israelis booted Ehud Barak out of office because of his failure to deal with the Palestinians and replaced him with Ariel Sharon by the widest margin in Israeli history. President Jimmy Carter, who later was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, negotiated the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel but he lost the second term election to Ronald Reagan for his failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. President George H.W. Bush won the Gulf War but he lost the election to Bill Clinton for reneging on a campaign promise not to raise taxes. Tony Blair resigned both his leadership of the Labour Party and as Prime Minister for the low approval of his role in the Iraqi war. Abbas Failed To Do the Honorable Thing
By Hasan Afif El-Hasan

The walls have been freshly plastered and painted white, the sculpted stone window frames are filled with frosted glass and the builders are hanging spotlights from the ceiling.
The municipality of Beersheva, the capital of southern Israel, is racing to put the finishing touches to repairs of the city’s long-neglected and unused Great Mosque, built more than 100 years ago by the Ottoman rulers of what was then Palestine.
But, over the protests of Beersheva’s thousands-strong community of Muslims, the Jewish-run municipality is not planning to restore the city’s only mosque to its former glory as a place of worship. It wants to convert it into a museum. The Long Struggle to Reclaim Beersheva's Great Mosque By Jonathan Cook in Beersheva