Tag Archives: Social

International, News

Al Qaeda using Facebook to enlist ‘Friends’

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By Jana Winter

EXCLUSIVE: If you’re on Facebook, Al Qaeda wants to friend you.

Terrorist groups are using Facebook to share operational information and to target, recruit and radicalize members of the general public, according to a Department of Homeland Security report obtained by FoxNews.com.

The DHS report, “Terrorist Use of Social Networking Sites: Facebook Case Study,” notes while terrorists have been using social networking sites for quite some time, their strategies for exploiting Facebook have evolved and that they have learned “the inherent value in exploiting a non-ideological medium.”

According to the November report, terrorists and jihadists use Facebook as:

— a way to share operational and tactical information, including bomb recipes and weapons maintenance;

— a gateway to extremist forums;

— a media outlet for propaganda;

— a source of remote reconnaissance for targeting purposes.

“Every person who connects to the Internet with a computer needs to take this issue seriously,” says Steve Graham, senior director for EC Council, a cybersecurity certification membership organization. “Reports like this show we are figuratively sitting next to terrorists. So are our friends, our kids and anyone else who types http://www.” …

Read more: Fox News

Politics

Every consciousness is indeed incomplete without political consciousness.

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“Political Gene” – Jameel Hussain Junejo.

Every consciousness is indeed incomplete without political consciousness. A man of cultural, social, and economic consciousness can not, without political consciousness, accurately comprehend the genuine problems of his or her nation and offer rights solutions. Political consciousness among the masses is equivalent to backbone of mainly oppressed and enslaved nations.

Continue reading Every consciousness is indeed incomplete without political consciousness. →

International, Politics

We: Arundhati Roy

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Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of colored cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent- thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the Nation, it’s time for all of us to sit up and worry. …

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Economy, Pakistan, Politics

Collective Volunteerism: An Approach that May Work to Rebuild Pakistan

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by K. Ashraf

Social, cultural, economic and political problems are growing in leaps and bounds in Pakistan on daily basis. The situation is so fluid no one can really predict the events of next moment. Is there going to be a suicide bombing, or sniper attack, or some other devastating accident, no one really knows. Fear, desperation, and helpless are the real rulers of Pakistan.

The other day the world press simultaneously broadcasted two news: One out of Mogadishu Somalia and the other from Swat Pakistan. A suicide bomber killed 20 people offering prayers in a mosque in Mogadishu . Another suicide bomber killed 11 people in Swat in Pakistan.

Is Pakistan any better than Somalia ? Perhaps, it is. Somalia does not have a government where as Pakistan does. However, Pakistani government is not any better than non-existent government in Somalia.

Like there is no government in Somalia to control the things there is a government in Pakistan but like Somalia it does not control anything. Pakistani government is nothing, but a herd of incompetent individuals who know how to boast but do not know how to deliver. There incompetence, or lack of desire to deliver, is further complicating the matters.

Pakistan is a country of one hundred and seventy million people. With several large size cities with completely broken life supporting systems, Pakistan is worse than Somalia . One can see horrible scenes across the country every second and feel sorry for the people, but without any effect or impact on its purblind rulers.

President and Prime minister look more sort of jackasses not up to the job they are holding. They are creating more problems in the country through inappropriate actions instead of helping the country move out of shadows of miseries, death and destruction. They spend more time on blaming others than spending half the time on fixing Pakistan’s problems.

There is a parliament in the country. Common Pakistani folks describe it as a rubber stamp or the debating club of thieves and thugs which is not interested in solving peoples’ problems. Within last two years, they have not taken up any issue faced by the people of Pakistan.

Is there a way out for the people of Pakistan? What should they do to resolve their problems? How should they compensate government inadequacies? We suggest they should develop the habit of collective volunteerism. They should form committees at street and city levels to deal with their day to day problems. If they develop the mechanism of collective volunteerism in all communities throughout the country they may start solving their trivial problems. They can help each other fix their broken systems and improve the quality of life in their communities. If they become really organized they can do miracles.

In many countries, the common folks have done these miracles. The people of Pakistan are not any lesser than any other people. They can also rebuild the broken social, cultural, economic and political systems in their communities through collective volunteerism.

Pakistanis are great charity givers. They should erect system to pool in their charities to rebuild the broken systems.

With every thing falling apart, may be collective volunteerism is the approach that may help Pakistanis to rebuild their communities and improve their lives.

Courtesy: CRDP, May 2, 2010

Culture, Pakistan, Sindh, Sindhi

Sindh & Sindhis

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Sindh and Sindhis- The modern literature in anthropology, sociology and linguistics

Ibn Khuldun: The Annihilations of Nations and Sindhis

by Gul Agha

To understand the on going social, cultural and linguistic decline among Sindhis, one can look at the modern literature in anthropology, sociology and linguistics to see how nations perish. But the causes have been long understood — the new twist is that the rates can be more precisely measured (each rapid shifts in vocabulary and grammatical forms). A classic work of Ibn Khuldun, *The Muqaddimma, *provides great insight and is a recommended read for any serious student. Ibn Khuldun, a giant of his time, understood how nations perish, and it is instructive to read him and then look at Sindhi society today. Fortunately, Sindhis were able to overthrown other invaders after short periods of time and never had a large scale invasion, at least after the Aryans, until 1947 when Sindh lost 20% of its native population to diaspora, and the remaining nation was linguistically, socially and culturally subjugated by millions of migrants. Here is Ibn Khuldun’s speculation:

*Book I: Kitab al `Ibar (on the nature of civilization) Chapter 2:23. A nation that has been defeated and has come under the rule of another nation will quickly perish.

**The reason for this may possibly lie in the apathy that comes over people when they lose control of their own affairs and, through enslavement, become the instrument of others and dependent upon them. Hope diminishes and weakens. Now, propagation and an increase in civilization takes place only as a result of strong hope and the energy that hope creates in the animal powers (of man). When hope and the things and it stimulates are gone through apathy, and when group feeling has disappeared under the impact of defeat, civilization decreases and business and other activities stop. With their strength dwindling under the impact of defeat, people become unable to defend themselves. They become victims of anyone who tries to dominate them, and a prey to anyone who has the appetite. * (translated by F. Rosenthal)

Another insight Ibn Khuldun provides is how society’s with greater diversity of ideas, sects and beliefs are better able to resist invaders (because, says Ibn Khuldun, they are not prone to conforming with the dominant ideology imposed by invaders, instead they are used to confronting ideas and beliefs, so if you suppress one sect, others dissidents arise). No doubt the deparature of 20% of Sindhi population seriously weaked the Sindhi nation because of the concomittant loss of diversity, but the continued breadth of Sindhi ways remains their strength, their culture of resistance to adopting a single dominant ideology (fundamentalism) and respect for different religious and anti-religious thinking, provides an immense source of residual strength to this day.

We will have to see if the current processes reach their final completion in the perishing of Sindhi nation (*dharnii panaah dde) *or, Sindhis rise to attain their cultural, linguistic, political and social freedom. There is no other stable equilibrium condition in which a nation can survive for long..