Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

-
Since August 2008, nearly 60 drone strikes in tribal and other northern areas have massacred over 500 individuals belonging to a population that qualifies as indigenous people under international law. The majority of victims are poor and frightened men, women, and children. They have little to do with militants who are fighting the NATO occupation forces in Afghanistan. To escape future drone massacres of their families, thousands of residents living in target areas, have left their homes and businesses to seek asylum in other parts of Pakistan. Wretched stories of these internally displaced persons (IDPs) and their trail of tears have made little news in the international media. Read more

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shut Down the Planet Every Year for Two Weeks

-
Image
L. Ali Khan This planet belongs to all forms of life: plants, animals, birds, insects, humans, bacteria, and viruses. Humans have no inherent right to monopolize the earth to the exclusion of other life forms. Our theologies and our philosophies tell us that we are the center of creation, we are the best life form, and we are God’s exceptional handiwork. It is time to reconsider our fatuous egotism.   We are fragile. A microscopic virus, many times smaller than bacteria, both invisible, can kill us all. We have no chance to survive if viruses and bacteria combine their forces to wipe us out. That is the reality of our self-professed supremacy. Unfortunately, plants, animals, birds, and insects have fallen to our hegemony. Bacteria and viruses refuse to do so. Periodically, these microbes remind us, individually and as a species, that they can destroy us. We should be grateful that so far, they have not decided to bring about our extinction. They can, and they might. We
Read more

Islamic Perspective on Meltdown in American Markets

-
Call it the consequences of irresponsible American invasions, call it the irrational exuberance of short sellers, call it the catastrophe of subprime lending, call it the mismanagement of leveraged products, blame it as you may, American markets are facing unprecedented meltdown and doomsayers see little promise in the federal bailout package. Ironically, the Wall Street has noticed that Shariah-compliant investments--which avoid speculative risk and debt-ridden greed--have fared much better in these troubled markets. In the past few years, Shariah-compliant investments in Western markets have grown to more than half a trillion dollars. Islamic financing is attracting huge academic curiosity. Many experts participating in the 8th Harvard University Forum on Islamic Finance held this past April wondered if Islamic financing could have prevented the meltdown that American markets are facing primarily due to mortgage debt and mortgage-backed securities—now known as "toxic investments
Read more