It's Not about Islam & Judaism, It's About Anti-Colonialism, Territory, Liberation, and Lives, Down the rabbit hole,

A long wait for prisoners

Stories set in Pakistan win $20,000 prize
Court acquits Rehman Malik in corruption reference
VIEW: A lesson and a few reminders �Syed Talat Hussain




It's Not about Islam & Judaism, It's About Anti-Colonialism, Territory, Liberation, and Lives - On Sunday, February 28th the New York Times published an outrageous oped by Efraim Karsh full of lies, distortions and mistakes. Karsh describes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an urgent foreign policy matter for the United States.

It doesn't appear to be urgent. One more American administration has prostrated itself before Israeli arrogance and expansionism. Karsh mentions some sort of "100-year war between Arabs and Jews." There is no 100 year war between Arabs and Jews. There is a 100 year colonial struggle between Zionist Jews and the Palestinian people (and briefly the Lebanese as well).

Down the AfPak Rabbit Hole - Two months ago, the collection of mud-brick hovels known as Marjah might have been mistaken for a flyspeck on maps of Afghanistan. Today the media has nearly doubled its population from less than 50,000 to 80,000 -- the entire population of Nad Ali district, of which Nad Ali is the largest town, is approximately 99,000 -- and portrays the offensive there as the equivalent of the Normandy invasion, and the beginning of the end for the Taliban. In fact, however, the entire district of Nad Ali, which contains Marjah, represents about 2 percent of Regional Command (RC) South, the U.S. military's operational area that encompasses Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Zabul, Nimruz, and Daikundi provinces. RC South by itself is larger than all of South Vietnam, and the Taliban controls virtually all of it. This appears to have occurred to no one in the media. [thanks SR for the link]

Book review: A tale of Afghan women�s plight �by Miranda Husain

The Patience Stone By Atiq Rahimi Other Press; Pp 160
Afghanistan, a nation still
on fire, a nation still home to a centre-stage Taliban. An entity that still remains resoundingly more concrete than an outward manifestation of an inner descent into madness, despite its