Sarwar Reference, Beena Sarwar, Syed Saleem Shahzad - Endgame or Beginning? Brian Turner,

Thanks BS for this piece of history ~t

In celebrating the life of Dr Mohammad Sarwar, many of his friends and student and political activists have recorded their memories and experiences from the period of the early 1950s. As far as I can tell this is the first time that so many people from the Left have come together (physically or in their thoughts) to pool together their memories from that period – a period of hope and optimism – about the future of democratic politics in Pakistan. What could be a better tribute to Sarwar’s outstanding contribution to the student movement and democratic politics? Karachi communists in the early 1950s: a contribution to the ‘Sarwar Reference’ by Eric Rahim


"Let them stew in their own mess, we are better off without them." Sounds familiar? I heard such sentiments voiced recently on three instances - and it reminded me of the globally resented American tendency for self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement, never mind the rest of the world. The first instance was when I was on a 'phono' from Karachi to New Delhi for NewsX TV. Among the studio guests was G Parthasarthy, whose outlook towards Pakistan reminded me of Vir Sanghvi and Tavleen Singh: 'What's the point of talking to Pakistan?' 'We are not the same people...' - -Give the one-upmanship a rest - Beena Sarwar

Having begun the process of strangling the financial lifeblood of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Islamabad now feels it is in a position to go for the jugular with an all-out military offensive. In Pakistan's eyes, this battle will be the start of the endgame. The militants might view it differently, as just the beginning of a real war. Pakistan goes for militants' jugularBy Syed Saleem Shahzad

On September 17, in the midst of the publicity blitz for his cinematic takedown of the capitalist order, Moore talked with Nation columnist Naomi Klein by phone about the film, the roots of our economic crisis and the promise and peril of the present political moment. To listen to a podcast of the full conversation, click here. Following is an edited transcript of their conversation.- -The Editors - Naomi Klein and Michael Moore

Step by step, the Rome Statute is in motion, moving ahead. Even critics of the court are talking about ending impunity. Sometimes the process is painful and sometimes it is controversial, but it is changing international relations forever. Impunity No More

Imagine being given one year to travel outside North America. That’s exactly the situation I’m now in after being chosen as the 2010 Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholar. Out of the roughly 195 countries of the world, where would you go? The scholarship specifically stipulates that the following countries are off-limits: from Canada to Panama, including the Caribbean — any other place is fair game. Brian Turner

Most of the large-scale violence in the world will continue to occur within societies rather than between or among states, and the cruelties will be visited upon those least able to deter their attackers or defend themselves. Worse, the tormentors may frequently be their own governments. Norms; the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Convention; the war crimes tribunals and the ICC; NGOs documenting and publicizing abuses, and providing food, shelter, and medicine to victims; peacekeeping missions by the UN or regional organizations; multilateral interventions outside UN auspices, à la Kosovo; mediations aimed at averting civil conflicts—these have all in different ways prevented crises from becoming much worse than they in fact did. Yet, given the incidence and scale of mass killings and related atrocities, the international community still has not developed the ethical-legal consensus or the institutions required to manage this enormous and apparently unending problem. Rajan Menon