Ascent of Conflict and the Death of Resolutionby Wasif Rizvi

It seems ironically befitting to elaborate on the theme of "conflict resolution" in the closing months of the 20th century — which happens to be by far the most violent and the bloodiest in human history. More than 80 million people have been killed in direct warfare in this century, which roughly amounts to about 2200 violent deaths every single day for the last 100 years. More than 3/4 ...

   Book review: A book for all —by Samia Saleem

Reviled by her critics and applauded by her admirers, Karen Armstrong has revealed her story-telling skills, brilliant perception and painstaking research yet another time in Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time. Written expressly with the purpose of removing misunderstandings about Islam in the West in the aftermath of 9/11, the book goes beyond simply highlighting the to...

Ivan Illich

THE SHADOW THAT THE FUTURE THROWS

Text based on a conversation between Nathan Gardels and Ivan Illich in 1989

Gardels: Because of your radical critique of industrial society fifteen and twenty years ago in such books as Energy and Equity, Medical Nemesis, and Towards A History of Needs, you are widely regarded as a founding thinker of the environmental movement.

Now, many of your concepts have entered into the vocabulary of the established institutions of indus...

A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in the year 1619:

Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide in from the sea. She was a strange ship, indeed, by all accounts, a frigh...

WASHINGTON DIARY: Education in mother tongue —Dr Manzur Ejaz

Courtesy to "Daily Times" 

Research has shown that the students proficient in their mother tongue are better equipped to learn other languages. Furthermore, it is apparent that the countries that used mother tongues as medium of education were better in augmenting and creating knowledge

It was the International Mother Tongue Day three days ago (February 21). I want my fellow Punjabis to be tolerant of other religions/sect...

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is in for criticism for inefficiency and indiscipline. It has failed on all fronts: collection targets, widening of tax base, countering tax evasion and avoidance, recovery of arrears, voluntary compliance, reform process and what not.

At the end of the five-year Tax Administration Reform Project (TARP), the t...

Taliban and science – An interview with Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy

Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (b. 1950) is one of South Asia’s leading nuclear physicists and perhaps Pakistan’s preeminent intellectual. Bearer of a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , he is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad where, as a high-energy physicist, h...

Lawyers’ struggle: another view by Kaiser Bengali

Whether this conclusion turns out to be an illusion or reality will be tested in due course of time. In the meantime, however, an examination of the composition of the movement rai...

Back towards tolerance in Pakistani society – by Charles Ferndale and Kamila Hayat

Here are two articles highlighting the importance of re-discovering and re-inculcating the seeds of tolerance in Pakistani society and the region in general.Courtesy to "www.criticalppp.org"

The path to freedom

                       Charles Ferndale

The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism in Pakistan – by Hamza Alvi

Courtesy to "Hamza Alavi Internet Archive"

Religious fundamentalism has become a powerful and dangerous force in Pakistan, due mainly to the opportunism of successive political leadership that has pandered to it. Militant sectarian religious groups and parties, led by half-educated and bigoted mullahs,many of them armed to the teeth, are holding our civil society and the state to ransom.

They threaten the very...

Sufi chants and revolutions — by Dr Manzur Ejaz

If one reads Punjabi classical poetry, with no presumption of Sufism, it is just good poetry of a certain period that has withstood the test of time. I do not know anybody who would claim that just reading and singing of this poetry would bring social change

One of our reputable progressive historians asserted in one of his recently published column that chanting Sufi songs cannot change the situation: one needs a modern theor...

However, before you put this down to yet another example of Western immorality, just remember that all th...

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF

HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT

Introduction

by Karl Marx

Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher_

February, 1844

For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism. The profane existence of error is compromised as soon as its heavenly oratio pro aris et focis ["speech for the altars and hearths"] has been refuted. Man, who has found only the reflection of...

Capitalist Globalism In Crisis

Part One: Boom and Bust

By Robin Hahnel

[This essay is part of the ZNet Classics series. Three times a week we will re-post an article that we think is of timeless importance. This one was first published December 1, 1998.]

This is the first article in a three part series on the current global economic Crisis.

Among economic systems capitalism is the manic-depressive patie...

The Bane of Madrasas

By: Naseeb Ullah Shakhail

MSc Pakistan Studies QAU Islamabad

Email: Naseeb.shakhail@gmail.com

Seminaries in Muslim world are popularly known as "Madrasas" which impart Islamic religious learning. These madrasas created by religious establishment exert tremendous influence over religious and secular people alike. The madressas have been existing in our society from centuries. Their role in the past was to provide moral guidance to the society besides providing prayer lea...

VIEW: Pakistani Taliban apologists —Gulmina Bilal Ahmad

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

It is baffling to note how anyone can support and justify the TTP while at the same time proclaim to be champions of democracy, rule of law, equality before the law and most of all justice. Or do they mean justice TTP-style?

One has always believed that
confusion is good as it breeds creativity. This is not merely a position that is propagated by pop psychology quizzes and agony aunts of newspapers. In fact...

Swat is once again abuzz with activity. The traditional looks of Mingawara seem to be coming back in the once restive valley. As I stepped down from the van in Mingawara I found the city open with its archetypal cheers. Of course, the recent normalcy has infused, once more, confidence and the spirit...

Education In Pakistan

From Numbers to Learning by WASIF RIZVI

Courtesy to "EDucate"

The issues of educational access like the rural schools or girls education, have been the focus of a fairly extensive public debate in Pakistan. Since the issues of access are essentially quantitative, so the bulk of the discourse is on the statistical analysis of the situation with politicians and policy-makers gasping in horror on the appallingly low numbers of enrollment and literacy. Surprisin...

It is a matter of seeing again, if not a return to 0, for emergence to reoccur. These powers of return, however fluid, are structured at every level, are matters of power and negotiation. We are supposed to know, from Internet porn to a U.S. presidential candidate singing “bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran “ to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann,” that size matters. But that’s not enough. It is not enough to lab...

The Taliban and Salarzais – Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

I was in Pakistan in August and had the opportunity to meet the leaders of the anti-Taliban lashkar (volunteer army) of Bajaur’s Salarzai tribe. I am honoured that upon my request they travelled from Bajaur to meet me in Nowshehra and shared with me information about their anti-Taliban struggle. I am not mentioning their names for reasons of their security.

The area of the Salarzai tribe is on the border with Afghanistan. The...

    Knowing Freire by Peter McLaren

“On May 2, 1997, Paulo Freire died of heart failure. His death unveiled the hidden ideology that informs the conservative corporate empirical focus that shapes the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which reasserted itself when the school concealed the seminar on liberation pedagogy. Rather than affirming Freire's...

analysis: Zaid Hamid and strategic depth —Farhat Taj

What are we first of all: Muslim or Pakistani? Is our ultimate commitment with Pakistani citizenship or a global Muslim brotherhood? What kind of Pakistan should we aim at: a progressive multi-ethnic social democracy or some kind of medieval caliphate?

FATA continues to be
used and abused as a strategic space by the security establishment of Pakistan in violent pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan. In short, strategic depth means ...

The Truth About US Justice

By Yvonne Ridley
Courtesy to "Tehran Times"

Many of us are still in a state of shock over the guilty verdict returned on Dr Aafia Siddiqui.

The response from the people of Pakistan was predictable and overwhelming and I salute their spontaneous actions.

From Peshawar to Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore and beyond they marched in their thousands demanding the ret...

ANALYSIS: Drone attacks and US reputation —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

In terms of the drone attacks, the US must not make any distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban. They both have internalised a global ideology that is anti-civilisation and anti-human

There is news coming up in the media that al Qaeda in Waziristan may run away to Yemen in the face of growing drone attacks. The people of Waziristan have expressed deep concern at this news. They do not want al Qaeda to run...

Militarizing Latin America
Noam Chomsky

The United States was founded as an "infant empire," in George Washington's words. The conquest of the national territory was a grand imperial venture, much like the vast expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. From the earliest days, control over the hemisphere was a critical goal. Ambitions expanded during World War II, as the US displaced Britain and lesser imperial powers. High-level planners concluded that the...

What has been lost in this narrative is that the Fakir of Ipi first took up arms against the Raj not to fight against their presence but because the colonial administration decided to forcibly return a girl to her family after she had run away and married a man of her choice

In the debate on militancy in the tribal areas, most of the happily-ever-after formulas resort to arguments of cultural relativism, pulsing wi...

I Have a Dream - Address at March on Washington

August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. [Applause]

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the fla...

PURPLE PATCH: Whither our children —Friedrich Engels

The great mortality among children of the working class, and especially among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome conditions under which they pass their first years. These influences are at work, of course, among the children who survive, but not quite so powerfully as upon those who succumb. The result in the most favourable case is a tendency to disease, or some check in development, and consequent les...

ANALYSIS: Clash of institutions —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

A clash among the state institutions can dismantle the current democratic process and create a more difficult situation for the military and the judiciary than the present predicament. There may not be a solution of the resultant crisis within the framework of the constitution

There are two types of politics in Pakistan. The elite or high politics focuses on the partisan and narrow interests of political lead...

ANALYSIS: Anti-Baloch clique? — II —Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

Courtesy to "The News"

The rulers should understand that lip service does not soothe the wounds caused by decades of injuries and injustices. Difficult decisions are needed to solve the problems and win the hearts of the justifiably alienated Baloch

The Kalat state’s forced merger with Pakistan ended 300 years of independent and semi-independent Baloch state. The sovereignty and will of the people of Balochistan was temporari...

analysis: Dangerous abyss of perceptions —Farhat Taj

Courtesy to "Daily Times"

The Pakistan Army is engaged in ‘friendly fire’ with the jihadi gangs in which the civilians, poor soldiers of the security forces, especially FC soldiers, policemen and foot soldiers of the Taliban are killed. This, according to the Pakhtun perception, is in line with the scheme of things of the military-militant leadership

I have been writing in these pages that there is a remarkable difference in the per...

A scholar that was

By Rafi Ullah

Courtesy to "The News"

Students of ancient South Asian history often encounter names such as Panini and Kautilya. It was due to the rich culture of learning and research that ancient Pakistan attracted students from all over the world to its centres of scholarship with Taxila being one of the most advanced universities of the time. In modern Pakistan, it abundantly goes to the credit of the late Dr Ahmad Hassan Dani who has in large part dug out the...