Fareena Alam flagged up this article — Afghanistan’s dirty little secret — which is about the Pashtun custom known as bacha bazi, in which boys dress as girls and dance for grown men who then take them home and sexually abuse them. According to the article, when US soldiers kept noticing local men walking with […]
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From the New York Times: Blood tests have confirmed that a mysterious series of cases of mass sickness at girls’ schools across the country over the last two years were caused by a powerful poison gas, an Afghan official said Tuesday. … The spokesman, Dr. Kargar Norughli, said his ministry and the World Health Organization […]
Continue reading about Afghan gas attacks weren’t hysteria after all
There is a letter in the Observer today in response to an article from last week’s paper from Nick Cohen, who said that the Chilcot inquiry won’t declare Blair a war criminal and disputed the claim that the war in Iraq was illegal. The letter reads: Having been shouted down by opponents in what passes […]
Continue reading about Opposition to the war wasn’t just about anti-Americanism
Ben Goldacre on a hilarious, but tragic, example of obvious bogus science and how the Iraqi police were taken in, to the tune of £19m ($32m): A British company called ATSC is selling a device which can detect guns, ammunition, bombs, drugs, contraband ivory – and truffles. The ADE651 uses “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction” and […]
Continue reading about Iraq police suckered by fake bomb detector
Out of Afghanistan, into a police state | Henry Porter | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Kim Howells had an article published in the Guardian today, in which he recommends that British forces are pulled out of Afghanistan and that the money saved by that should be ploughed into the police, border controls and security […]
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A guy called Shaaz Mahboob, one of the founder members of the so-called British Muslims for Secular Democracy (along with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Taj Hargey), has written a guest post on Pickled Politics accusing British Muslims of lacking compassion for British troops by failing to publically mourn or otherwise acknowledge the deaths of British soldiers […]
Continue reading about How many Muslims has Wootton Bassett?
There is a demonstration to call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan tonight at Downing Street, London at 5pm, organised by the Stop the War Coalition. There is also a public meeting at 7pm in the small hall at Friends’ House, Euston Road, London NW1 (see map here, near to Warren St., Euston Square and Euston […]
Continue reading about Demonstration and public meeting this evening
In the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed something startling appearing on the Muslim ‘net: conservative Muslims attacking the Pakistani Taliban. These include a series of posts from Abu Eesa ([1], [2] with links to four more) and the news that a great-grandson of Maulana Qasim Nanotwi, a founder of Darul-Uloom Deoband, has condemned the […]
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BBC NEWS Magazine: Clive James on feminism and democracy Clive James is arguing that the reason feminists are not loud on the issue of promoting democracy abroad when the alternatives are far worse for women is because this reminds them that there is an intractable difference between the genders after all: Democracy is the best […]
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