Hulleye Comes By!

Musharraf’s legacy is a mixed one. Like many Pakistanis, I was appalled when he seized control of Pakistan in 1999. Pakistan had stagnated in the 1990s under the bickering and incompetent elected governments of Benazir Bhutto and her rival Nawaz Sharif. But I recalled the damage done by the oppressive dictatorship of General Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s and had no desire to see Pakistan revert to military rule.

I began to revise my opinion of Musharraf after 9/11. The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in response to terrorism, and the terrorist attack on its parliament later that year led India to threaten to do the same to Pakistan. Musharraf seemed to offer firm leadership in this time of crisis, managing to reverse Pakistan’s policy of support to the Taliban and embarking on a normalization process with India.

By the midpoint of Musharraf’s nine-year rule, a combination of sound economic policies and foreign aid had resulted in rapid growth for Pakistan. Optimism was in the air, and Pakistani friends of mine who had lived abroad for years — artists, bankers, architects, professors — were flocking back home.

Musharraf spoke in favor of tolerance, women’s rights and moderate interpretations of Islam. He liberalized the media, allowing dozens of private television channels to operate and freely criticize the government.

the art of sand castling. it rocks. people create the most awesome creations given the right tools and opportunity and time. clickety for more.

You may have read recently about the latest way you’re helping librarians around the world scan their archives into digital format, by solving their CAPTCHA’s.

well seems like there’s another easy buck to be made from CAPTCHA’s.

CAPTCHA’s are those little boxes you see asking you to type the letters in the image so they can verify you are human. This is to prevent programmers to write programs to automatically sign up for a million gmail addresses and use it for sending spam or storing data (6GB per account) without arousing any suspicion. CAPTCHA images keep getting smarter as do they programs written to break them but now all that might change.

Indians have started employing cheap labour who sit at the computer and break these all day long as a service to other companies (who post 1000s of ads on craigslist, send spam through gmail, do link farming etc). The Indian companies charge $2 per 1000 and claim to be able to break about 800 per hour or over 6000 per 8-hour day. That earns them $12 per day or ~15K indian rupees (27K PKR). That’s more than most people can get with a degree. This is an emerging industry. You can work from home for however long and whenever u want. A lot of data entry firms are branching in because of the no qualifications criteria. Bangladesh is getting in on it too. 27K PKR per month for typing letters in an image…

ever wonder what happened to the storm trooper outside the cantina?

so here’s my monthly linux plug of a post where i rant and rave about why people should be switching over. well here’s a dude who goes through all the myths behind linux. (have to admit that hey may not be all that accurate in his points), but has covered most of the major areas of concerns of 99% of users.

have fun and let me know why you haven’t switched yet and then i’ll explain to you why you should.

oh and in case you’re feeling lazy to click, he covers the points below.

1-Linux is More Secure Because it Has A Smaller User Base
2-Installing Applications on Linux is Hard
3-Linux is A Nightmare to Install
4-The Linux Interface is Ugly and Unattractive
5-There Are No Games on Linux
6-Linux Doesn’t Come Preinstalled Like Windows
7-There is No Support for Linux
8-Linux Doesn’t Have Good Hardware Support
9-There is No Office Software, or Software At All for Linux

Laces out, Dan! Laces out! It’s all Dan Marino’s fault that Lois Einhorn, I mean Ray Finkle, I mean Einhorn!

Map of the day from National Geographic has a really neat (and zoomable) fictional map of the Marvelous Land of Oz, illustrated by James E. Haff and Dick Martin for the International Wizard of Oz Club (apparently there is such a thing) based on L. Frank Baum’s books The Wizard of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz.
And did you know that when the movie version of The Wizard of Oz opened in 1939, the very first theater that screened it was in the small town of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin? Three days later, the movie premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

Explanation: Is that a black hole? Quite possibly. The Cygnus X-1 binary star system contains one of the best candidates for a black hole. The system was discovered because it is one of the brightest X-ray sources on the sky, shining so bright it was detected by the earliest rockets carrying cameras capable of seeing the previously unknown X-ray sky. The star’s very name indicates that it is the single brightest X-ray source in the constellation of the Swan Cygnus. Data indicate that a compact object there contains about nine times the mass of the Sun and changes its brightness continually on several time scales, at least down to milliseconds. Such behavior is expected for a black hole, and difficult to explain with other models. Pictured above is an artistic impression of the Cygnus X-1 system. On the left is the bright blue supergiant star designated HDE 226868, which is estimated as having about 30 times the mass of our Sun. Cygnus X-1 is depicted on the right, connected to its supergiant companion by a stream of gas, and surrounded by an impressive accretion disk. The bright star in the Cygnus X-1 system is visible with a small telescope. Strangely, the Cygnus X-1 black hole candidate appears to have formed without a bright supernova explosion.

Justice Navanethem Pillay, High Commissioner
Dr. Kyung-wha Kang, Deputy High Commissioner
Ms. Gay McDougall, Independent Expert on minority issues
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland
Subject: Humanitarian Crisis in Jammu and Kashmir
August 12, 2008

Dear Justice Pillay, Dr. Kang, Ms. McDougall:

We write to bring to your attention the profound humanitarian crisis continuing in the Kashmir Valley due to the ongoing blockade of the Srinagar-Jammu highway by religious nationalist groups from India. This has resulted in severe shortages in the Kashmir Valley of food and other vital provisions. We are reliably informed that petrol and essential medical rations, including blood, are in critically short supply, as well as newsprint, and that communication services and infrastructure are severely disrupted.

The situation in Jammu, where the Muslim minority is facing violence on a scale that can be described as ethnic cleansing, is alarming. The Government of India and the military and paramilitary forces have shown themselves unable and/or unwilling to take any effective action, either to end the blockade or to stop the violence against Muslims in Jammu. Meanwhile, military and paramilitary forces have opened fire on counter-demonstrators in Kashmir, using live bullets and mortar. A communiqué from the Kashmir Valley states that:

“The situation here on ground is that essential commodities have started getting dried up, diesel is already out of stock and petrol at its verge of end. The people here are very much concerned as if the same continues for next few days there will be nothing left to eat with the people of Kashmir. And on the other side the Army is supporting the mobs who have allegedly beaten up the drivers stranded on the national highway. The drivers who were beaten up reported that they asked Army to help them but all went in despair and the Army people in return handed them over to the mobs. The target is only the Kashmiri Muslims and some sources from Jammu say that it is the outsiders who have come to Jammu and are doing such attacks on the Muslims and it is quite evident that the Hindu fundamentalist groups viz. BJP, RSS VHP, etc., are all sponsoring the planned attacks onto the Kashmiris like it was done in Gujarat. Here in Kashmir we feel the history seems to be being repeated by the Hindu fundamentalists who had earlier in 1947 killed about 250,000 Muslims in Jammu.”

On August 11, 2008, approximately 100,000 Kashmiris, including fruit growers and others gravely affected by the blockade, marched toward the Line of Control toward Pakistan markets in protest. They were met with gunfire and tear gas from the military and paramilitary forces, and Sheik Abdul Aziz, an All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader, was shot dead, intensifying the situation. Police reports stated that three others were killed and over 200 injured, enervating health systems already low on supplies. Other sources we contacted stated that as many as 18 others may have been killed in Kashmir on August 11. By early evening of August 12, as we write you, reports stated that as many as twelve persons were killed in Kashmir on that day as armed forces fired on demonstrators. Other reports stated that civil society groups, students, and labor unions participating in non-violent civil disobedience and peaceful protests are being targeted by the forces, as curfew conditions prevail.

The Srinagar-Jammu highway is the only land route linking the Kashmir Valley to India and the sole conduit for essential supplies as well as for exporting horticultural goods, which are among the Valley’s chief products. News updates on the state of the blockade and situation can be found from leading Kashmiri newspapers, which are online at www.greaterkashmir.com; www.kashmirtimes.com; www.risingkashmir.com; www.etalaat.com/english/.

About 95-97 percent of the population of the Valley is Muslim, while Muslims are a minority in India. This has made Kashmir the target of increasingly aggressive campaigns by Hindu nationalist groups since 1947, despite guarantees of autonomy written into the Indian Constitution. The Government of India has failed to take measures to prevent these campaigns, consisting of marches and demonstrations, and culminating in the current blockade. Since 1989 there has been an armed pro-independence struggle in Kashmir, together with other and non-violent movements for self-determination. Indian counterinsurgency operations have resulted in grave abuses of human rights with social, economic, psychological, political, and environmental consequences, which meet the definition under international law of crimes against humanity. To a population suffering the effects of nineteen years of armed conflict, the economic crisis caused by the blockade comes as the last straw.

We urge that you respond expeditiously to this situation in accordance with the mandate to uphold human rights as enshrined in the charter of the United Nations.

Recommendations:

1. The Government of India should immediately end the economic blockade and ensure that goods and services, including emergency medical and food supplies, can move in both directions along the Srinagar-Jammu border.

2. The Government of India should open the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, a promise repeatedly reiterated by successive governments of India and Pakistan, though never implemented. This would ensure that the current crisis situation is not repeated as well as mark a concrete step forward in addressing injustices and the peace process.
3. Take immediate action to stop the violence against the Muslim minority in Jammu and bring those responsible to justice.

4. Put an end to ongoing human rights abuses by Indian forces and pro-India militias as repeatedly promised by the Indian Prime Minister and expected of democratic governments.

5. Take steps for a long-term resolution of the conflict by beginning talks with all sections of the Kashmiri leadership and civil society. 6. Take steps to hold the Indian state accountable under the provisions established by the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir, Constitution of India, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and International Laws and Conventions.

We, the undersigned, are academics, social activists, writers, filmmakers, artists, lawyers, and concerned citizens. Our work and conscience connects us to Kashmir and its people. We hold no political affiliations. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we may be of further use.

Contact persons:
Dr. Angana Chatterji, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies, Office: 001-415.575.6119, Mobile: 001-415.640.4013, E-mail: achatterji@ciis.edu.
Dr. Haley Duschinski, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio University, Office: 001-740.593.0823, E-mail:duschins@ohio.edu.
Dr. Shubh Mathur, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Office: 001-347.404.2238,
E-mail: Shubh.Mathur@stockton.edu.

Yours Sincerely,
Signed [Institutional information noted for affiliation purposes only]:

Dr. Angana Chatterji, Associate Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Dr. Haley Duschinski, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ohio University

Dr. Shubh Mathur, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Dr. Paola Bacchetta, Associate Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, and Director, Beatrice Bain Research Group, University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Srimati Basu, Associate Professor, Department of Gender and Women’s Studies (and Anthropology), University of Kentucky

Medea Benjamin, Cofounder, Global Exchange, San Francisco, and CODEPINK

Dr. Purnima Bose, Associate Professor, Department of English, Indiana University

Dr. Jeff Brody, Professor, College of Communications, California State University Fullerton

Adem Carroll, Chair, Muslim Consultative Network, New York Disaster Interfaith Services

Dr. Lubna Nazir Chaudhry, Assistant Professor, School of Education and Human Development, State University of New York, Binghamton

Huma Dar, Doctoral student, Department of South and South East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Geraldine Forbes, Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of History, State University of New York Oswego

Dr. Sidney L. Greenblatt, President, Central New York Fulbright Association

Dr. Sondra Hale, Professor, Department of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Lamia Karim, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon-Eugene

Professor Ali Kazimi, Department of Film, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University

Dr. Omar Khalidi, Aga Khan Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Rafique A. Khan, Community Development Planner, CRA, City of Los Angeles

Tasneem F. Khan, Kashmir Relief, Los Angeles

Dr. Amitava Kumar, Writer and Professor, Department of English, Vassar College

Rabbi Michael Lerner, Chair, The Network of Spiritual Progressives, Berkeley

Barbara Lubin, Executive Director, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Berkeley

Dr. Sunaina Maira, Associate Professor, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis

Dr. Lise McKean, Senior Research Specialist, Learning Sciences Research Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago

Dr. Abdul R. JanMohamed, Professor, Department of English, University California, Berkeley

Dr. Swapna Mukhopadhyay, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, Portland State University

Dr. Richa Nagar, Professor, Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota

Dr. Vijaya Nagarajan, Associate Professor, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Francisco

Annie Paradise, Doctoral student, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Dr. David Naguib Pellow, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota

Faisal Qadri, Human Rights Law Network

Dr. Mridu Rai, Associate Professor, Department of History and Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University

Dr. Cabeiri Robinson, Assistant Professor, International Studies & South Asian Studies, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle

Dr. Sabina Sawhney, Associate Professor, Department of English, Hofstra University

Dr. Simona Sawhney, Associate Professor, Department of Asian Languages and Literatures, University of Minnesota

Dr. Kalpana Rahita Seshadri, Associate Professor, Department of English, Boston College

Professor Richard Shapiro, Chair, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Murtaza Shibli, Editor, Kashmir Affairs, London

Dr. Magid Shihade, Visiting Scholar, Middle East/South Asia Studies, University of California, Davis

Snehal Shingavi, Doctoral student, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Ajay Skaria, Associate Professor, Department of History and Institute of Global Studies, University of Minnesota

Dr. Nancy Snow, Associate Professor, S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University

Dr. Rachel Sturman, Assistant Professor, Department of History & Asian Studies, Bowdoin College

Dr. Fouzieyha Towghi, Visiting Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Sandeep Vaidya, India Solidarity Group (Ireland)

Saiba Varma, Doctoral student, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University

Feroz Ahmed Wani, Social activist

David Wolfe, Human security and conflict resolution specialist

Pei Wu, Doctoral student, Department of Social and Cultural
Anthropology, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Cc:

Ms. Helene Flautre, Member, European Parliament
Chair of the European Parliament’s Sub-committee on Human Rights

Mr. Geoffrey Harris
Head of Human Rights Unit, European Parliament

Ambassador Richard A. Boucher, Assistant Secretary
Timothy Fitzgibbons, India Desk
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs United States Department of State

Mr. David J. Kramer
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor United States Department of State

Ms. Felice D. Gaer
Chair, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
______________________
Dr. Angana Chatterji
Associate Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94103
415.575.6119
achatterji@ciis.edu
–
Haley Duschinski
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Ohio University

Amid growing insecurity and economic crisis, Pakistan’s government decides to impeach the president

Pakistan is sliding. Taliban commanders are taking over more of the country’s ungoverned north-west by the day. From there they launch attacks into Afghanistan, killing NATO soldiers and countless Afghans. America, hitherto a remarkably forgiving ally, appears to think Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is assisting them. India certainly thinks so. Tensions between South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals are rising. After a suicide-bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul last month—which India blamed on the ISI—its national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan, warned that India might have to “retaliate in kind”.

The economy is hell-bound. Inflation is running at 25% a year. The stockmarket in Karachi has lost 35% of its value since April. During blackouts, Pakistani businessmen trade tales of capital flight. Foreign-exchange reserves—once emblematic of economic recovery—now barely cover three months of imports.

The government, a coalition led by the Pakistan People Party (PPP), has been paralysed since its formation in February. It has no plan for the north-west and appears to have given little thought to arresting the economy’s decline.

…

At least, as its budget deficit rises above 7%, Pakistan will have aid. On July 29th the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee voted to triple America’s non-military assistance, to $1.5 billion a year. Saudi Arabia is expected to defer payment on a $5.9 billion oil bill. But aid is not enough. After 18 months of political turmoil and worsening terrorism, Pakistan needs stability to restore the confidence of foreign investors. This will take a while.

From the Pushtun north-west, the news just gets worse. An unloved truce between the government and several Taliban commanders, including the most powerful, Baitullah Mehsud, has mostly broken down. In Swat, 250km (155 miles) from Islamabad, where a mini-jihad erupted last year, 150 people are reported to have been killed in a week’s fighting between soldiers and militants. On August 5th a spokesmen for Mr Mehsud threatened to bring the jihad to Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city and home to many poor Pushtuns.

The army operates more or less freely on the frontier but is reluctant to touch Mr Mehsud. With a forbidding fief in the never-conquered tribal area of South Waziristan, a well-armed militia and suicide-bombers at his disposal, he is a daunting foe. He also holds about 100 soldiers and civil servants hostage. But the army’s diffidence is increasingly being taken as evidence that, despite Mr Musharraf’s protestations to the contrary, Pakistan never abandoned its policy of harbouring terrorists at home and sponsoring them abroad. Afghanistan and India maintain this. America, which is reported to have traced the Indian embassy bombing to the ISI, might be tempted to concur.
Keep reading at The Economist.
It hardly matters. America appears to have no option but to pour cash into Pakistan, and hope some good comes of it. Afghanistan will not be stable while Pakistan is in chaos. Foreign intervention would be unthinkable. America’s Senate has recognised this. No doubt, so has the ISI.

Scientists study hearing in polar bears as the Arctic acoustic environment changes.  As global warming melts Arctic ice and pressure mounts for oil exploration, scientists worry that increasing noise might interfere with polar bear reproduction. In the frozen tundra on the northern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, solitary polar bears live in a world that is both bitterly cold and eerily quiet.  No leaves rustle in the breeze. No insects buzz through the sub-zero air.  The only sound is the hiss of the wind-blown snow, and when the wind fades, it is one of the quietest places on Earth.

Several years ago, San Diego-based research biologist Anne Bowles wondered what would happen if retreating ice sheets and intensified oil exploration and drilling changed the nature of this silent “acoustic environment” of the polar bears. The impact of increasing noise on how polar bears hunt and their other little-understood behaviors was a concern, she said. But perhaps the most crucial question was whether an increase in noise would affect mating habits and disturb female polar bears in their dens. Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay, where Bowles is focusing her work, is a prime area for female polar bears to construct their dens.  They spend five or six months in the dens before emerging in the spring, typically with one or two cubs. What kind of noise might be a problem for the bears? Will noise from human activity bother bears in the open, but not females in their dens? Should there be limits on noise allowed in the vicinity of the bears, and exactly what kind of noise would be a problem?  “If you want to mitigate noise, you first have to know what the bear can hear,” Bowles said.  “That’s step one.  That is disturbance ecology 101.”

So Bowles, of the Hubbs-Sea World Research Institute in San Diego, set out to test the hearing of polar bears.  Given the hostile environment, and equally hostile bears, trying to conduct hearing tests on bears in the wild was clearly impractical, she said.  Polar bears are perhaps the largest land carnivore, with males weighing a much as 1,400 pounds. Although females are much smaller, they still can top 500 pounds. And they are smart, dangerous and unpredictable, Bowles said.

Bowles began her hearing tests at the San Diego Zoo with two female polar bears who had been raised in captivity.  For the tests, the bears were trained to hold their noses against a button, or station, on the inside of a cage.  A tone of a certain frequency was played, and when the bear heard it, she would move her nose to another station and be rewarded with food, Bowles said. Before the testing could begin, the cage was insulated against outside sound with thick, lead-lined blankets.  Even with the heavy insulation, in the urban setting of San Diego it was impossible to make the cage quiet enough to test for extremely low frequencies, which may be a critical range of hearing for polar bears. “Low frequency sounds are a signal of power and size, so wild carnivores growl and rumble at low frequencies to maintain their territories, defend themselves, and threaten,” Bowles wrote recently in an article for the Polar Bear International organization, which funds some of her work. “Low-frequency sound is also important because it travels over long distances, so large, wide-ranging animals like whales and elephants often use it to communicate.” She also noted that there is usually more environmental noise at low frequencies, including noise from “human-made machinery.” Bowles conducted 4,000 hearing tests, first on the San Diego Zoo polar bears, and then on two polar bears at SeaWorld San Diego. Hearing thresholds were measured for 19 different frequencies, and the results suggest that hearing in polar bears is indeed shifted toward the lower frequencies.  How low remains uncertain, she said, because it was impossible to make the test facilities quiet enough to test below 14 kilohertz (humans typically can hear down to 20 kilohertz).

“As far down as you can measure, they can hear it,” Bowles said. “They got down below what a cat can hear.”  Conversely, she noted that Polar bears don’t hear well at high frequencies, with their sensitivity to the high tones being much less than that of  dogs and cats.

The sensitivity to low frequency sound, apparently at the expense of high frequencies, might merely be a result of size, Bowles said. Polar bears are big, and so are the structures in their ears.  In other large mammals, such as horses and cows, the upper limit to what frequencies the animals can hear that seems to be based on size.  “It could just be an outcome of scaling,” Bowles said. But the lack of high frequency hearing might be adaptive, because polar bears mostly eat seals, not small rodents that have high-frequency squeaks.  Bowles said she would like to do a comparison study of land-based brown and black bears that do eat small mammals to see if their hearing is attuned to higher frequencies than polar bears.

The concern with the polar bears, she said, is that as the Arctic ice melts, the bears will move onto land and encounter human civilization, which is noisy. “Just as for humans, there is noise you can deal with and noise you can’t, and we don’t know what that is for the bears. Our job is to find out what they can tolerate and what we are looking for is not ‘win-win,’ but ‘okay-okay’ for both bears and people.”

There is enormous political pressure for the oil industry to get into these areas, she said, and with the oil activities come people and more use of the land for recreation. From her time in the region, Bowles said, the oil industry workers are treating the bears and other wildlife well.  “You wouldn’t believe the care these guys are giving to the wildlife,” she said. “I wish we could get people in the cities to behave that way.”

After three years of testing the bears in San Diego, Bowles and her co-investigator, Megan Owen, a researcher with the zoo’s Conservation and Research for Endangered Species facility, are writing several scientific papers, including one for the Acoustical Society of America, about their results and looking toward what they hope is the next phase of their research.

In December or January, Bowles hopes to go to Prudhoe Bay and construct a polar bear den, then measure outside noise from the inside.  “We need to create a den to bear specifications, and have it accessible enough that we can have vehicles nearby so we can measure the sound,” she said.  “We have to get information on what they can hear inside the den, how much noise gets into the den.  If they can’t hear it, it isn’t an issue, but we have to make the measurements.”

There won’t be a real bear in the den, for as Bowles noted several times, polar bears are very dangerous.  Even the San Diego bears who have been raised around people remain unpredictable carnivores. “Most of the time they are sweet and glad to see you, and glad to have the food your bring them,” Bowles said of the bears. “Then there is the day when you are the food. They are very opportunistic predators.”

For images to go with this story, please go to:
http://www.aip.org/isns/reports/2008/028.html

According to the BBC Urdu, the FBI has conceded that Dr. Afia Siddiqi who had vanished from Karachi over five years ago in March 2003 along with her children is in the custody of American forces in Afghanistan but sadly in a horrid medical condition.

The information comes from BBC, when it received an email from lawyers based in the US hired by Dr. Afia?s brother to try and help influence the release of her sister who has been allegedly been in the custody of American forces. The lawyers claims that on Thursday an agent from the FBI came to Dr. Afia Siddiqui?s brothers house and admitted to the fact that Dr. Afia is indeed in solitary confinement within a prison in Afghanistan and in serious medical condition.

It may be recalled that over five years ago Dr. Afia suddenly disappeared from Karachi along with her three children never to be seen from again, both the Pakistani and American forces have never acknowledged her disappearance until probably now, five years after her kidnapping. The admittance may well be attributed to the immense media pressure created when a number of human rights organizations presented evidence of a certain prisoner-of-war known as Prisoner 650 who was in terrible medical condition within an American prison located in Afghanistan and they had reason to suspect that Prisoner 650 was Dr. Afia Siddiqui

BBC Urdu reports that since Thursday?s development family members have been running from pillar to post in an attempt to wrangle more information on the whereabouts of Prisoner 650, but authorities have been tight lipped about the issue.

In all the frantic developments over the past three days the family within Pakistan has been on the receiving end, of anonymous threatening phone calls to try and subdue them to remain quite on the entire international issue.

Hopefully, Pakistanis will unite to demand the release of all Pakistanis who were kidnapped in this way, and handed over to the US [FBI Wanted Report, hunting for Dr. Afia] and often kept in solitary confinement in secret detention centers and tortured.

Islam’s in the news a lot lately, but usually put in the context in a negative spotlight lately it seems. Even less do you ever hear it in the same context with science fiction. A friend has been quietly collecting and creating an anthology of islamic science fiction over the past few years and trying to gather as much information as possible. The project came together and became rather successful and of late, he along with Ahmed A. Khan has put together an Anthology of Islamic Science Fiction portrayed in a positive view. Everything is in place for the Islam Sci-Fi Anthology project, almost that is. They are short of $300 to give to the authors. If you would be interested in donating to this project leave a comment here or go to IslamSciFi directly and we shall try and get you in touch with the authors in the anthology directly to make the process transparent so that the money could be directly forwarded to them.

Why the anthology?

Islam is the most misrepresented religion in the media and literature. Science Fiction is the most popular genre that looks to the future. This anthology is an effort to use the medium of SF to raise the positive image of Islam in the West.

What is theme of the anthology?

The anthology features SF and fantasy stories that portray Islam and/or Muslims in a positive light.

Who are the writers featured in the anthology?

The anthology features stories from international writers. We were lucky to get the cooperation of well-known SF writers, like Lucius Shepard, Tom Ligon, Jetse de Vries, etc.

Editors:

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota. He has a long interest in underlying philosophical themes in Science Fiction. His website, islamscifi.com, is one of the best and most comprehensive resources about Islam and Muslims in science fiction literature, movies, comics and other media.

Ahmed A. Khan is a Canadian writer and editor whose works have been featured in Interzone, Science Today and several other venues. He has edited the anthology, “Fall and Rise”, featuring stories on the theme of survival ethics. He maintains a blog at ahmedakhan.livejournal.com.

Table of Contents

• Lucius Shepard:  A Walk in the Garden
• Tom Ligon:   For a Little Price
• Jetse De Vries:  Cultural Clashes in Cadiz
• Howard Jones:   Servent of Iblis
• Andrew Ferguson:  Organic Geometry
• Ahmed A. Khan:  Synchronicity
• Camille Alexa:  The Weight of Space and Metal
• G.W. Thomas:   The Emissary
• Kevin Miller:   A Straight Path Through the Stars
• Pamela Taylor:  Recompense
• Casey Wolf:   Miss Lonelygenes
• D.C. McMahon:  Squat

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September - and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years.

This month’s announcement of a back-room deal between ISPs (internet service providers) and the big record companies to spy on suspected copyright infringers and reduce the quality of their internet connections is just the latest paragraph in the record industry’s long, self-pitying suicide note, and it’s left me wishing they’d just pull the trigger already and stop beating their chests and telling us all how unfair it all is.

Under the new scheme, the rule of law is replaced by a cosy inter-industry deal. Whereas before, anyone who wanted your ISP to spy on your internet connection would have had to show evidence to a judge and get a court order, now any joker who claims to be an aggrieved copyright holder can do so.

And whereas actual criminals are punished by judges who make rulings that are proportional to the offence, and which are calculated to minimise external harm, the new scheme allows ISPs and their pals in the record industry to randomly shake up your connection like a snow-globe, dropping some or all of your services ? whether you’re using your VoIP phone to speak to your dying granny in Australia or downloading the latest hit single from the guy who did the “Crazy Frog Song”.

As night was falling across the Americas on Sunday, August 28, 1859, the phantom shapes of the auroras could already be seen overhead. From Maine to the tip of Florida, vivid curtains of light took the skies. Startled Cubans saw the auroras directly overhead; ships’ logs near the equator described crimson lights reaching halfway to the zenith. Many people thought their cities had caught fire. Scientific instruments around the world, patiently recording minute changes in Earth?s magnetism, suddenly shot off scale, and spurious electric currents surged into the world?s telegraph systems. In Baltimore telegraph operators labored from 8 p.m. until 10 a.m. the next day to transmit a mere 400-word press report.

Just before noon the following Thursday, September 1, English astronomer Richard C. Carrington was sketching a curious group of sunspots?curious on account of the dark areas? enormous size. At 11:18 a.m. he witnessed an intense white light flash from two locations within the sunspot group. He called out in vain to anyone in the observatory to come see the brief five-minute spectacle, but solitary astronomers seldom have an audience to share their excitement. Seventeen hours later in the Americas a second wave of auroras turned night to day as far south as Panama. People could read the newspaper by their crimson and green light. Gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up and ate breakfast at 1 a.m., thinking the sun had risen on a cloudy day. Telegraph systems became unusable across Europe and North America.

The news media of the day looked for researchers able to explain the phenomena, but at the time scientists scarcely understood auroral displays at all. Were they meteoritic matter from space, reflected light from polar icebergs or a high-altitude version of lightning? It was the Great Aurora of 1859 itself that ushered in a new paradigm. The October 15 issue of Scientific American noted that ??a connection between the northern lights and forces of electricity and magnetism is now fully established.? Work since then has established that auroral displays ultimately originate in violent events on the sun, which fire off huge clouds of plasma and momentarily disrupt our planet?s magnetic field.