Story Marti went to discover a part of the cosmos that hasn't been seen before. She was a photographer. She had a real camera and a tripod. She took hundreds of pictures -- some she thought were gorgeous, some showing minutest details, some broad shots of the rainbow, some ugly. She had them all on the iPod. She wanted to show them to her family, friends, clowns, and strangers. She didn't. She erased all photographs, all before and all after, each one of them, not one by one, but with one digital stroke. She has no photos to share. She is a photographer without photos. She needs no affirmation to know she is a photographer. Marti's Ruminations Marti knows what her coworkers will say. "They will be confused and furious. Some will talk about the funds that supported my expedition, arguing wastage. Photographers trample each other for funds, much like Black Friday's hooligans, as if money can buy creativity. Some seek grants to fight boredom. Some go on...
The film "Fitna" is an assault on the religion of Islam. It wounds deeply-held spiritual feelings of millions of Muslims around the world. It is a call for hatred and discrimination aginst Muslims in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe. Made by a race-supremacist Dutch parliamentarian, the film argues that the Quran incites violence. The Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and other UN experts, have condemned the film in the following words: "While on the one hand, freedom of expression is a fundamental human right that must be respected, it does not extend to include incitement to racial or religious hatred which is itself clearly a violation of human rights. Public expressions that paint adherents of a particular religion as a threat to peace or global stability are irresponsible." The European Union (EU), however, has drawn an opposite conclusion from that of the UN experts. While co...
Suffering from the lingering image of a money-laundering husband of a world-famous political icon, Benazir Bhutto, former president of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari is fast emerging as an intellectual patriarch of Pakistani politics. In a country where politicians are crude and petty, Zardari comes across as a statesman with a profound sense of reality mixed with intriguing idealism. For many Pakistanis, Zardari is still no more than a power-hungry widower of a murdered heroine. On a closer look, however, one finds that Zardari has been on the cutting edge of enlightenment in a conservative country sandwiched between militarism and Talibanization. During his term in office as the President of Pakistan (2008-2013), and more importantly as the Co-Chairman of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), a party he inherited much like property from his in-laws, Zardari promoted women at key posts. He selected a woman as the Speaker of the National Assembly, making her the first woman in...
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