April 12, 1980: Terry Fox dips his artificial leg into the Atlantic Ocean in St. John's, Nfld. and his Marathon of Hope begins.
A police escort and a small crowd witness the departure of Terry and his van, which carries eight pairs of running shoes, three extra legs and various spare parts. He hopes to reach the Pacific Ocean in five or six months.

The night before his right leg was amputated, Terry Fox read about an amputee who ran the New York City Marathon. The article inspired Terry's Marathon of Hope, an incredible cross-Canada run on an artificial leg to raise money for cancer research. Terry was forced to end his run when his cancer returned. He died on June 28, 1981, but his legacy lives on in the annual Terry Fox Run.
CBC Canada Source

University of Michigan professor and blogger Juan Cole reviews recent news from the Middle East and discusses Hugo Chavez’s “devil” comment at the United Nations.

University of Michigan professor and blogger Juan Cole reviews recent news from the Middle East and discusses Hugo Chavez’s “devil” comment at the United Nations.
Juan Cole Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He runs an analytical website called "Informed Comment" where he provides a daily round-up of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world.

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...


AMY GOODMAN: Right now, we're going to turn back to an interview I did on Friday, when we stopped in Ann Arbor and we broadcast from the University of Michigan. There, we spoke to Juan Cole. He is professor of Middle Eastern history. I asked him about the situation in Iraq.
JUAN COLE: -- a United Nations report on Iraq, which was extremely disturbing. There was a 15% increase in deaths reported in Baghdad in July and August, nearly 7,000 dead between the two months, up from May and June, which were already horrible. 90% of these deaths seem to be death squad killings. People show up dead in the streets in the morning. The United Nations talked about torture. The bodies show signs of acid, chemicals, drills into joints, into the head. It's horrible. Read more

Canadian astronaut Steve MacLean is back on Earth after Atlantis landed in Florida.

Gandhi's 9/11

Avijit Ghosh
[ 9 Sep, 2006 2240hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

When Osama bin Laden's men slammed aeroplanes into New York's Twin Towers on September 11, the day's abbreviated form, 9/11, immediately became shorthand for violence. And five years down the line, it continues to be so.

Few remember that the same day — 9/11 — was actually synonymous with non-violence. Exactly 100 years ago — September 11, 1906, to be precise — this day also marked the birth of satyagraha, although the term itself was coined at a later date (see box)....Read More

Full name Mohammad Younis Khan
Born November 29, 1977, Mardan, North-West Frontier Province
Current age 28 years 293 days
Major teams Pakistan, Habib Bank Limited, Nottinghamshire, Peshawar Cricket Association
Batting style Right-hand bat
Bowling style Right-arm medium, Legbreak

The problem with democracy by Robert Fisk February 01, 2006 UK Independent

Saturday 28 January 2006 And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong party to power.

Oh no, not more democracy again! Didn't we award this to those Algerians on 1990? And didn't they reward us with that nice gift of an Islamist government - and then they so benevolently cancelled the second round of elections? Thank goodness for that!

True, the Afghans elected a round of representatives, albeit that they included some warlords and murderers. But then the Iraqis last year elected the Dawa party to power in Baghdad, which was responsible - let us not speak this in Washington - for most of the kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s, the car bombing of the (late) Emir and the US and French embassies in Kuwait.

And now, horror of horrors, the Palestinians have elected the wrong party to power. They were supposed to have given their support to the friendly, pro-Western, corrupt, absolutely pro-American Fatah, which had promised to "control" them, rather than to Hamas, which said they would represent them. And, bingo, they have chosen the wrong party again.

Result: 76 out of 132 seats. That just about does it. God damn that democracy. What are we to do with people who don't vote the way they should?

Way back in the 1930s, the British would lock up the Egyptians who turned against the government of King Farouk. Thus they began to set the structure of anti- democratic governance........ > Read more

Pope, Byzantine Emperor, ‘Educated Persian’ and Islam M.J. Akbar, mjakbar@asianage.com

An intriguing part of the conversation between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and “an educated Persian” now made world-famous by Pope Benedict XVI, is that the Persian seems to have no
name. There is no mention of it in the speech made by the Holy Father during his “Apostolic Journey” to the University of Regensburg on 9/12.

The Persian must have been an intellectual of some importance if he was good enough to merit an audience with an “erudite” emperor. Does his name exist in the original text, since it was “presumably the Emperor
himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402”?

Was the name mentioned in the version produced by professor Theodore Khoury, which the pope has read, and which he used in a speech on a critical aspect of a sensitive theme at a time of conflict, on the
Islamic doctrine of “holy war”? I ask because names lend greater credibility to text.

There are other uncertainties in the pope’s speech, in which he quotes Manuel’s ignorant, but, given the history of the early and medieval church’s continual diatribe against Islam and its Prophet, predictable
view. This discussion on “holy war” appeared in the seventh conversation and was “rather marginal to the dialogue as a whole”. It is interesting that Pope Benedict should select what was “rather marginal” for
emphasis and ignore the apparently more substantive issues that were discussed. What is genuinely disconcerting is that the Holy Father should accept Manuel’s taunting, erroneous and provocative depiction
of the Prophet’s message without any qualification. Pope Benedict is not at all disturbed by phrases as insulting as “evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. This is
utterly wrong, as even a cursory understanding of Islam would have made apparent.

I have a further question: Why didn’t the pope quote the Persian scholar’s answer to Manuel? Are we to believe that the Persian gave no answer, that he did not challenge such a rant? He could not have been much
of a scholar in that case. I am not erudite enough to have read the dialogue in the original Greek, or professor Khoury’s edited version of it. I can only go by the pope’s speech in Germany.

Some uncertainties can be explained by the distance of six centuries, as for instance the sentence that the conversation took place “perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara”. The fact that we are reading
Manuel’s record, rather than the Persian’s, also explains why it lays more stress on the emperor’s view of theology.

What is aggravating is that the pope has been free with assumptions, and liberal with its first cousin, innuendo. The peaceful piety of Manuel becomes an indictment of Islam, which is held to be violent in
preference and doctrine. The innuendo is cleverly expressed, indicating that some effort has been taken to be clever. The famous verse of the Qur’an, that “There is no compulsion in religion”, is juxtaposed
with the proposition that “According to the experts, this is one of the surahs of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat”. The implication is that when he was not under threat, he
drew out his sword and went on a rampage. This is the kind of propaganda that the church used to put out with abandon in the early days, adding gratuitously comments about believers and “infidels”. This is the
line that those who have made it their business to hate Muslims, use till today. But the Vatican had stopped such vilification, and it is unfortunate that Pope Benedict has revived it.

If he had consulted a few experts who understood Islam, he might have been better educated on “holy war”.

It is absolutely correct that no war verse was sent down to the Prophet during his Makkah phase. Despite the severest persecution, to the point where he almost lost his life, he never advocated violence. There are
innumerable verses in the Qur’an extolling the merits of peace, and a peaceful solution to life’s problems including a preference for peace over war. The Qur’an treats Christians and Jews as people of the Book,
despite the fact that they did not accept the Prophet’s message. It praises Jesus as “Ruh-Allah”, or one touched by the spirit of Allah (this is the best translation I can think of). Mary, mother of Jesus, is
accepted as virgin, although the Qur’an is equally clear that Jesus is a man, and not the son of God.

The war verses are sent to the Prophet only when he has been in Madinah for some time, and become not only a leader of the community but also head of a multifaith state. War, in other words, is permitted as
an exercise in statecraft, and not for personal reasons, including persecution.

Further, it is circumscribed with important conditions. Surely no one, including Pope Benedict, believes that a state cannot ever take recourse to war? Indeed, the history of the Vatican is filled with war. The Qur’an’s view of war, as an answer to injustice, certainly merits more understanding than censure.

Manuel’s view is better understood in the context of his times. He was monarch of a once-glorious but now dying empire. The Ottomans had been slicing off territory for centuries; the first Crusade had been
called by Pope Urban II three centuries before to save the Byzantines from Muslim Turks. The heart of the empire, Constantinople, was now under serious threat. If Tamerlane (another Muslim) had not suddenly
appeared from the east and decimated the Ottomans, Constantinople might have fallen during that siege which so depressed Manuel. It was hardly a moment when the Byzantine could have the most charitable view of an Islamic holy war. What is less understandable is why Pope Benedict should endorse a fallacy.

The present pope is not a successor to the great and wise John Paul II. He is heir to predecessors like Pope Nicholas V who issued “The Bull Romanus Pontifex” in January 1455. This was the philosophy that created the Inquisition in which Muslims and Jews were killed and driven out of Catholic kingdoms in Spain and Portugal after the Christian reconquests.


A suggestion to those who believe in an “international outcry”. Hyper reactions tend to suggest nervousness. Islam is not a weak doctrine; it is built on rock, not sand. Reason is a more effective weapon than anger.

Vande Mataram

Many people in India have objections on this song and consider it as Hindu religious song. Only first two stanza of this song are considered to be national song. BJP (A Hindu fundamentalist party) is forcing to sing this song, All India Congress party before partition did the same in 1935 when they formed Govt. during British occupation. All India Muslim League used it as an argument against united India. A full translation is by Shree Aurobindo.

Mother, I bow to thee!
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
bright with orchard gleams,
Cool with thy winds of delight,
Dark fields waving Mother of might,
Mother free.
Glory of moonlight dreams,
Over thy branches and lordly streams,
Clad in thy blossoming trees,
Mother, giver of ease
Laughing low and sweet!
Mother I kiss thy feet,
Speaker sweet and low!
Mother, to thee I bow.


Who hath said thou art weak in thy lands
When the sword flesh out in the seventy million hands
And seventy million voices roar
Thy dreadful name from shore to shore?
With many strengths who art mighty and stored,
To thee I call Mother and Lord!
Though who savest, arise and save!
To her I cry who ever her foeman drove
Back from plain and Sea
And shook herself free.


Thou art wisdom, thou art law,
Thou art heart, our soul, our breath
Though art love divine, the awe
In our hearts that conquers death.
Thine the strength that nervs the arm,
Thine the beauty, thine the charm.
Every image made divine
In our temples is but thine.



Thou art Durga, Lady and Queen,
With her hands that strike and her
swords of sheen,
Thou art Lakshmi lotus-throned,
And the Muse a hundred-toned,
Pure and perfect without peer,
Mother lend thine ear,
Rich with thy hurrying streams,
Bright with thy orchard gleems,
Dark of hue O candid-fair

In thy soul, with jewelled hair
And thy glorious smile divine,
Lovilest of all earthly lands,
Showering wealth from well-stored hands!
Mother, mother mine!
Mother sweet, I bow to thee,
Mother great and free!

Source : pakistaniat.com

Guest Post: Ishtiaq Ahmed & Inspector Jamshed

By Bilal Zuberi

Over dinner sometime last week, conversation turned to an apparent lack of reading culture in Pakistan. Participants questioned if anybody went to the bookstores any more, and why Urdu bazaars in large cities remained largely deserted until the school seasons came (though I was told Lahore now has some nice book stores). All the talk about developing reading habits in children reminded me of one of my favorite authors from childhood: Ishtiaq Ahmed......Read more

The Tumandar of the Bugtis

By Ardeshir Cowasjee
IT IS not possible to remain unmoved by the death of a man one has known for almost half one’s life — a man of violence who fittingly died a violent death. Difficult indeed he was, as he held one sole stern view of life and the world in which he lived, a view that was unshakeable, non-negotiable and non-discussable.The first time I met the arrogant and handsome Akbar Bugti, in the late 1960s in Karachi, he told me in his gruff normal tone of voice that he had heard about me and asked why I spelt my name wrongly. Did I not know how to spell my own name? That I did not react did not please him. He went on to tell me that we silly Parsis did not even know the correct name of their own prophet. He was Zardost and not Zarathustra as many of us ignoramuses were wont to refer to him. Read more>

Canada wins 2 medals at paralympic worlds

Michelle Stilwell of Nanoose Bay, B.C., raced to a silver medal in the wheelchair 100 metres Monday, while Dean Bergeron of Quebec City added a bronze in the 400 at the International Paralympic Committee world track and field championships.
The medals boosted Canada's total at the Assen, Netherlands, event to four after two days.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/sports/national/2006/09/04/track-paralympic-worlds.html

Before you criticize someone
Walk a mile in his shoes.
That way, when you criticize him,
You’re a mile away and
You have his shoes.

From Wisecracks
Everyday wit and wisdom by Tom Burns

Bulleh Shah translation by Kartar Singh Duggal

I know not who I am

I am neither a believer going to the mosque
Nor given to non-believing ways
Neither clean, nor unclean
Neither Moses not Pharoah
I know not who I am

I am neither among sinners nor among saints
Neither happy, nor unhappy
I belong neither to water not to earth
I am neither fire, not air
I know not who I am

Neither do I know the secret of religion
Nor am I born of Adam and Eve
I have given myself no name
I belong neither to those who squat and pray
Nor to those who have gone astray
I know not who I am

I was in the beginning, I’d be there in the end
I know not any one other than the One
Who could be wiser than Bulleh Shah
Whose Master is ever there to tend?
I know not who I am.

Source:http://pakistaniat.wordpress.com/2006/07/08/translation-rediscovering-bulleh-shah/