Indian Soap Operas Outrage Certain Afghans

A culture clash that makes one wonder who has an irony deficiency and needs a freshly bloomed hypocrisy poppy. Indian soap operas are making specific Afghanis (more) nuts with the risque, the raunchy and the pseudo-reality. The spin is that the 5 private TV stations have children foregoing homework and their programs are the height of un-Islamic behavior which forces the government to save people from themselves before they burn in Hell on Earth or something more dire. Hence, banned foreign soap operas, Kum Kum or Life's Test are now all the rage.

Last year, certain Hindu fundamentalist Indians got their knickers stuck in permanent wedgies when Richard Gere did a sweeping public display of affection on the cheek of Bollywood co-star Shilpa Shetty, resulting in charges, apologies and high international melodrama during a press conference on HIV/AIDS. As Afghanistan hastens its return back to the Flintstone Age under Taliban culture crustaceans, it is amazing what happens to be verboten to the high ministers of mendacity versus what great returns certain Afghans make from their cut of selling the world's opiate of choice. Tolo TV is American Idol popular where television is accessible, especially Kabul. In March, during an awards ceremony mixed gender couples danced together on stage sending shivers of horror and the Victorian vapors through the country's über conservatives enough to have them invoke the Ulema Council. This is a group of legal scholars or Supreme Court of the land that arbitrate finality on Sharia law.

The ministry of culture ordered four TV stations to take five Indian soaps off the air by 14 April. Only Noorin TV suspended its soap, Waiting, so the ministry issued another deadline, which ended yesterday.

Ariana TV caved in, ending broadcasts of Kum Kum, a drama about a widow who is wooed by her childhood sweetheart but marries the brother of her late husband. The ministry is threatening legal action against the other networks, which have accused the government of trying to re-Talebanise Afghanistan.

"We think broadcasting Indian serials is in accordance with the law, so we will continue to broadcast them," said Saad Mohseni, the owner of Tolo TV. "Millions of people watch these shows every night."

The soaps have become prime-time favourites as private stations have flourished in the six years since the fall of the hardline Taleban regime, which had banned TV altogether.

(Reuters)

The official government of Afghanistan has set a deadline for compliance from private TV stations in India about the content saturating their airwaves in the form of the Indian version of soap operas. There is an order of magnitude much higher than the Indian soap opera. The Spanish language soap operas or novellas are the best and would not pass the Afghan TV test. The Resident Burqa Police, more commonly known as some emasculated Members of the Afghani parliament, are busy trying to build a coalition to strip personal freedoms from the People who can bear children by pontificating on the merits of banning jeans, long hair, chatting in public with a spouse and makeup with all due deliberate speed.

Haji Ahmad Shah Khan Achakzai, an MP in Kandahar province, said the law would boost moral and religious values for Afghan people. "Kabul has seen a wave of liberal, unwelcome influences of late," he said. "There are women dressed immodestly, prostitution can be found openly and even alcohol is available on the market. Our job is to protect the Afghan people from being exposed to this un-Islamic way of life and poor morals."

But more liberal MPs fear the loss of hard-fought freedoms. "I am worried there will be another Taliban era ahead of us. We have fought for many years to gain some freedom here and it is our responsibility not to let this happen again," said Najiba Sharif, deputy minister for women's affairs. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Hizzoner, The Mayor of Kabul, better known around the world as the president of Afghanistan, sides with the overzealous Burqua Inquisitors because an election is coming to an Afghan village near him in 2009. The government apparatus takes direction from the American educated and US backed head of state that is clearly siding with supporting the political regression taking place in Afghanistan.

The wonderfully written and hands on book by Deborah Rodriguez is all about restoring the esteem of women through sharing her gifts with others in Afghanistan. Kabul Beauty School: An American Goes Behind the Veil brings an American up close to Afghanistan. It earned its way as a New York Times bestseller and is deserving of lavish praise. Kiterunner and A Thousand Splendid Suns bring an Afghan point of view in excellent fiction from a doctor from Afghanistan.

Sliced Cables Spawn Conspiracies from Gulf to Asia

One accidental slice on Flag Telecom, leagues under the seas, could be construed as an unfortunate accident taking out the Middle East and crippling communication with Italy. Two, seems unlikely as the cable between Dubai and Oman severed communications. In a week, the third and fourth incidents occurred involving sliced/cut sea cables affecting the same regions, crushing web traffic to frozen molasses or ancient turtle speeds. While cut cable 1 and cut cable 2 are practically on top of each other, no one knows whether it was one giant slice at the same time or two separate incidents to cut off millions of users. The fourth received a hurried explanation as a power supply problem to the United Arab Emirates.

A supposed undersea cable caper brings out the latent conspiracy theorist in the young, old, Hindi, Muslim, seasoned technologists and casual users. Godzilla or Governments as the creepy cause are each popular theories in the Gulf Region and South Asia. The internet cable cut mystery - Who did it - How and Why? One note of caution is cables break, snap, come apart for a multitude of reasons; ships with anchors, friction or marine life with a hankering for copper dental floss. A dedicated group of ships or submarines exists to perform daily repairs just like the cable guy that schedules between 2 -4 pm at your house.

Only the first two cuts had any serious impact on the internet, says Beckert. Those cables near Alexandria, Egypt account for 76 percent of the capacity through the Suez canal -- connecting Europe with the Middle East, North Africa and the India sub-continent.

Once those failures sensitized a conspiracy-happy net, it was natural that other cable failures would be found to feed the frenzy, because they occur all the time.

Repairs to two key cables carrying 3/4 of the traffic between Europe and Asia are in full swing and so is the wired internet chattering class - well, those that can still easily get online. Egyptian repair crews decided to map a new sea route as they repair the cable. Built into the architecture of these cables is the ability to reroute traffic to distribute the load across other networks. Most of the time it is seamless and the end user happily clicks away without knowing. Cue music from Jaws, this time that did not happen. Cyberwarfare is not off the table in the conspiracy realm.

In the past five years, both fiction and nonfiction treat cyber warfare with more respect, as it is a major tool in sophisticated governments arsenal as well as those that use terrorist means. A good primer is useful. This one entitled Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber Terrorism allows the budding conspiracy theorist to get grounded in facts before spouting off on the recently repaired interweb.

A Few Nations Declare War on Books

Throughout the Ages, governments feared the written word not under their control. Today, Books still disappear and reappear as if by Custom's magic. Others have supreme court proclamations stating a book fair is a violation of human rights and causes pollution. Putting words together in a provocative manner has inspired and challenged authors from scribing in antiquity on precious papyrus to this current version of modernity where one reads on super cool electronic devices.

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting or The Unbearable Lightness of Being seems to have displeased critics in Egyptian officialdom. Seems literature geared toward women of the Gulf is what is making the hummus stick in the craw. Anything being confiscated from a government entity called the State Information Services is rich with irony.

Egypt is having the largest book fair, 40th Cairo International Book Fair in the Arab region. Egyptian customs agents took books hostage first, but later relented with a wide variety of books from Lebanese, Czech and Saudi Arabian writers arriving fashionably late for the opening of the book fair. The content of the books seem to be the issue as many of the authors do not shy away from tough subjects or strict rules that some would like to govern the publishing trade. Censorship and the tyranny of bungled bureaucracy plaguing weary writers rears its ugly head.

Germany's Al-Jamal publishers said the authorities had returned copies of Moroccan author Mohamed Choukri's "For Bread Alone," which contains references to teenage sex and drug use and is banned in several Arab countries.

Other publishers also said their books had been released from customs at Cairo airport.

Malaysia's Internal Security Ministry just outright decreed, then banned almost a dozen published books for misrepresenting Islam. The Quran Publications Control and Text Division made their findings in accordance to a 1984 law. Eight of the books came from the US publishers with the remainder published locally in the Malay language. Just under two thirds of Malaysia is Muslim. In Indonesia, the government or Administration of Central Jakarta is forcibly moving Senen's Kwitang book market that as resided in a slapdash manner since the 1960's to a more modern venue so they can tax the 300 vendors rather than unregulated the spirited bargaining and low prices for books that happens now.

In India, the venue for the 33rd Kolkata Book Fair was taken away by order of the Calcutta High Court for potential human rights violations and pollution after seven year court battle. Publishers from all over the world had shipped thousands of books, now with no certain place to display them for sale after the legal ruling. The Indian Army raised the biggest objections based on environmental concerns. The pseudo replacement fair was to be held in an urban setting amidst hospital and nearby university on the Park Circus Grounds called the Kolkata Maidan. The army is demanding the holes dug for structures be filled in - now.

With the fair this year cancelled at Park Circus ground, a symbolic fair was inaugurated by aggrieved intellectuals as city's literary patriarch Sunil Gangopadhyay hammered a gong and kicked start the event at the Maidan Wednesday, without any permission of the army.

Meanwhile, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, an avid book lover, and Transport Minister Subhas Chakraborty are making last-ditch efforts in finding an alternative site for the book fair.

"It is totally unauthorised and acceptable. No permission was taken from us for holding the symbolic fair on the Maidan," defence spokesman Group Captain R.K Das said told IANS.

"We have sent a letter to the police and Booksellers and Publishers' Guild, the organisers of the Kolkata Book Fair, not to hold the fair on the Maidan," Das said.

Books that upset various Bureaucratic Powers that be enough to be hidden, found and scorned. From some of the affected authors, Milan Kundera and Mohamed Choukri.

France's President is Going to the Chapel

Who would plan a first year in office like this? A bruising close election against Segolene Royal, inaugurated as president, Celia Sarkozy wife of eleven years as France's First Lady collects Bulgarian medic hostages from Libya, bitterly divorces wife, riots in the streets of Paris and petrol strikes, Moamer Qaddafi descends upon the French with a Bedouin tent to make a splashy head dictator visit, off to meet the Pope - model/songstress girlfriend gets a no Holy See, and now, announce he's going to marry his gal pal. Will she make an honest man of him?

France will have had two different first lady's inside of a year. The first marriage was said to be, um, rather combative with three children under the age of twelve. The French president, considered conservative, is playing by his own political rules as he takes Carla Bruni with him on his official trips. Christmas was spent amongst the ancient pyramids of Egypt, home to ancient civilization's first twisted mangled messes of mixing the political with affairs of the heart. Carla is not Cleopatra though.

An elegant brunette and heiress to a tyre fortune, with a reputation as a "man-eater," the former supermodel had a surprise hit with the release of her first pop album "Quelqu'un M'a Dit" (Someone Told Me) in 2004.

Bruni's mother Marisa Tedeschi Bruni -- who accompanied Sarkozy on a trip to the Vatican last month -- has been quoted in the Italian press saying the president had asked for her daughter's hand, and that she had gladly agreed.

While polls initially suggested a majority of voters saw Sarkozy's romance as a strictly private affair, there were growing signs the paparazzi fuelled coverage of his love life could be harming his confidence rating.

"The intense media coverage of the president's private life, touching on the image of the presidential function, appears to bother (his) traditional supporters," Rozes told Le Parisien.

Petra, Jordan is the latest presidential stop for the two lovers. February seems to be the month that his fiancée will become the new/latest/final? Mrs. Nicholas Sarkozy. President Sarkozy will become a stepfather to her young son, Aurelien Enthoven. Protocol offices around the world are wringing their hands at how to handle Carla when she visits as it creates quite a headache because of her lack of official something or other, but she sleeps in the bedroom with a head of state. Believe it or not, the blithe French are scandalized.

Invited by King Abdullah II to spend the weekend at his palace in the Red Sea resort of Aqaba, Mr Sarkozy and the singer were flown to Jordan by royal jet.

The couple's appearance in Egypt, giggling and whispering as they took in the tourist sites trailed by a swarm of paparazzi, provoked criticism in France that the President

was turning his private life into a circus. His latest romantic getaway to Jordan looked likely to trigger a similar reaction.

Indian authorities are struggling to find the right protocol should Ms Bruni accompany Mr Sarkozy on his first official trip to New Delhi later this month. In a country of conservative sexual mores, India's Foreign Ministry is reported to be in confusion after Paris said the President's girlfriend might accompany him, as she is not his spouse.

Gallic shrugs have given way to anger. The president seems to have a measure more hubris than even the French can tolerate. Viciously, but oh so salaciously for the tabloids, his rival, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, has called him Tom Cruise for the diminutive hieight of the president, the style of Top Gun aviator shades he prefers and the dilettante movie star lifestyle. The added subtle insult to Sarkozy was to compare him to a crass American.It just adds to the drama that though they were both rulers of France at two different times, Napoleon famously has the ownership title for short men trying to overcompensate. That would be to grand to compare him to a self-anointed Emperor. Reading Paris Match ought to be hilarious in the coming months. No one does trashy tabloid tarring and feathering quite like the Europeans. (Getty photo from Jordan)

Republic day is a big day for India and Sarkozy must not have understood the cultural reaction when Richard Gere went a peck-on-the-cheek-too-far with a Bollywood star on stage. A French president, with no seeming interest in world opinion, is thumbing his nose at traditional values. He was the conservative guy in the presidential race and seems to have morphed overnight. No worries, Americans know what its like to vote for compassionate conservatism and get totally incompetent.




The book the French are avidly reading filled with flaming vitriol is Des Hommes d'Etat (Men of State), but Dominique de Villepin proves he knows His French history with all of Napoleon's contributions in Les Cent-Jours: ou l'espirit de sacrifice.

Construction Destruction in Dubai

Dubai is a United Arab Emirate's city wonderland with a bustling commercial port, vast wealth defying the imagination and out of this world real estate ventures involving construction of the world's tallest skyscraper and expansive bridges. Yesterday, a bridge connecting developments in the Dubai Marina, collapsed killing at least 7 workers. Dubai relies heavily on procuring manual labor from other nations. Most of the Wade Adams Group workers that perished in this accident were from India. Fifteen other workers have light to severe injuries.

"We tried to put a huge piece of metal in a wall when it collapsed," said Muthu Raj, one of the workers interviewed by the media

"I saw colleagues trapped inside, but I managed to jump back and stepped on the road."

The bridge was being built over a small canal in the man-made marina complex, which is close to the showpiece Palm Jumeirah resort, a massive artificial palm-shaped island.

A spokesman for the Wade Adams Group, NM Naushad, told the Associated Press that the company would compensate the families of the dead with a total of 10 years wages each.

He estimated the workers earned on average 9,600 dirhams ($2,615; £1,240) a year.

Dubai's ongoing labor issues are causing project delays and cost overruns, even at the record setting Burj skyscraper. The government is ordering its own ministers and construction companies to review and adopt minimum wage guidelines and other safety measures for its laborers. South Asia is a popular recruiting region for low wage jobs in Dubai, the fastest growing city on earth. Strikes are becoming more prevalent and lasting longer as wages shrink and on the job safety risks expand.

The 40,000 Asian workers vowed not to leave the 26 labor camps scattered around seven semiautonomous Emirati states until their salaries are raised by at least $55 a month. The company pays unskilled workers $109 a month while skilled ones get $163.

The workers also complain of delayed salaries and randomly deductions from their pay for transportation, vacation or sick days.

"We are fed up with these conditions. We need an immediate pay raise," said Mohammed Aslam, 28-year-old worker from Bangladesh.

Dubai is built on the coast and surrounded by a blazing hot blowing desert sands with no natural body of fresh water. It is now an ultra chic Middle Eastern luxury resort fulfilling the needs for indoor skiing, manmade urban developments in the sea that are seen from space and outdoor air conditioned frolicking spots without peer in many developed nations. Tourists flock to the city to see the famous sailboat hotel and wealth on display in vast sums. Into that comes a desperate worker not understanding why the wealth is not shared with those who risk life and limb to do the work that makes Dubai possible.


Dubai's amazing architecture is on display on the cover and images contained in this excellent design and history book from daab entitled, Dubai: Architecture & Design. It captures the history of design in the Middle East. The cover is from the famous hotel buit in the form of a sailboat that is even more impressive in person - but have a megaton of cash with you. The indoor fish tank is well, spectacular.

Buddhist Monks on the March - Again

Nobody can call Burma's monks cowards. After a bloody massacre, untold missing and junta crackdown with countless arrests, monks take to the streets of central Burma again in defiance. Admittedly not in throngs of thousands, but 1oo brave monks protested. Their timing is exquisite and painful to the military strong man as the UN's liaison, Ibrahim Gambari, returns to ascertain progress by Saturday. The totalitarian government of Myanmar suffered an international rebuke from the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including their patron, China. Now the draft is in Burma with boy soldiers filling the ranks of the military.

To make sure that the junta got the message, the rang up a radio station to make sure their deed did not go unnoticed. Media savvy monks against the heavy-handed armed militia of a strongman is causing angst in international circles. A junta demanded large crowd cheering photo-op, staged by the government, was the catalyst to bring about further public dissension from the monks in Pakakou, the same place where it all began before. The economic crisis brought about by the governments ham-fisted mismanagement remains central to the resolution with inflated fuel costs continuing to rise.

Britain's ambassador to Burma, Mark Canning, said yesterday: "It's not a great surprise they have come back on to the streets because the underlying political and economic forces driving this have not gone away. The economic and political frustration that is within the population will manifest itself again in the coming months, but how and to what scale is unclear."

The protests came hours after the Burmese junta released seven members of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, who had been held for more than a month in Rangoon's notorious Insein jail.

Japan, deeply wounded by the killing on television of an unarmed journalist, has reflected upon its economic ties to the harsh Myanmar government they support. The government was able to keep India, China and Japan fairly removed before the monks protests became a global story. Burma is in crisis and external forces have investments they still want returns from that would be difficult to obtain if the government became democratized. The continued detainment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung Sang Suu Kyi remains contentious as the jaded junta leader, General Than Shwe, is being soundly beaten at the PR game by a tiny fragile women kept locked away in her house.

The UN Secretary-General is demanding substantive progress as his Special Envoy completes a tour of Burma's powerful Asian neighbors. As a show of responsiveness the junta is releasing handfuls of recently arrested political prisoners in drips and drabs from a hellish confinement to show the level of seriousness he's taking the UN. Monasteries have been shuttered and closed off from the public. New aggravations are the alleged abductions of children to swell the ranks of the military with the added benefit of keeping the thousands of worried parents under control. Than Shwe, tinpot dictator, is in no danger of being held in the high esteem as his country's most famous residents, the marching monks and Daw Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

One of the most famous films ever about Burma is the building of the Burma-Siam rail section by US and other prisoners of war. The 1957 famed film is Bridge on the Kwai starring William Holden and Alec Guinness.

US Spouts Peace, Sells Most Arms in the World

American cognitive dissonance suffers a massacre by peaceful ironies packing M-16s. The superpower nation that conceived of a United Nations, is selling arms throughout the developing world while sitting on the UN Security Council trash talking nations that use force to maintain their rule. Diplomacy via ammunition, guns and a half price sale on last year's plastiques - how American sold. A big recipient of the American arms trade is Pakistan, a nation originally supporting the Taliban, providing a potential serene vacation spot for Osama bin Laden, and home to a nuclear arsenal under the command of a president who took office at the end of a gun, in a military coup. India is aghast that Pakistan is one of the world's recent largest purchasers of the latest weapons goodies.

But anxieties over Iran's nuclear program may have put Moscow off significant new conventional arms deals with Iran in 2006, deals that could be viewed as overly provocative while the UN Security Council debates new sanctions on Iran.

The study also point out that the US has signed sales agreements with nations whose records on democracy and human rights are questionable.

The announcement of big new arms agreements with Pakistan last year renewed debate over whether the Bush Administration was elevating its counterterrorism priorities above its pledge to spread democracy around the world.

Pakistan was a major recipient of American arms in 2006.

US arms dealers have increased their take by more than $3.4 billion dollars since 2005. That has certainly spurred Britain, France and Russia to escalate their sales incentives to garner a bigger share. Russia signed da bomb of an arm deal with Iran, but feels a tad puckish about shooting the Iranians an official email saying their goods are in transit. Maybe its just me, but the permanent 5 nations with the only veto rights on the UN Security Council are also the top providers of the worlds guns and expect smaller nations to trot off to battle to do the world's peacekeeping with weapons sold by them. Amazing.

American weapons sales accounted for 42% of the global market, a total of nearly $17bn in sales, up $3.4bn from the previous year. The boom in US sales appears to have been partly fuelled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have made neighbouring countries nervous. Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia were the biggest buyers.

Russia is the world's second biggest dealer with sales of $8.7bn in 2006, nearly 22% of the market. Britain is third on list, with $3.1bn in sales. Those sales figures are almost certain to be boosted this year with Saudi Arabia's confirmation of a purchase of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighters, worth £4.3bn, part of a sales and maintenance package worth up to £20bn.

However the controversy around a previous Saudi order for Tornado aircraft, which is still the subject of a US justice department investigation into alleged bribery, may ultimately diminish the clout of the arms lobby.

Saudi Arabia has close ties with ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. india just signed a nuclear agreement with the US. Russia has a president who is seriously considering a new title of premier. The international arms race and trade are inextricable tied to national security and citizen safety, but not if arms deals are in jeopardy.


President Pervez Musharraf famously refused to answer a question while at a White House press conference because his book was coming out the next day and his publisher would not be amused. It is with appreciable irony, he entitled his book, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir.

UN Politely Applauds China's Wind Farms

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a major priority and anything the worst three polluters can contribute is a step towards making the planet eventually pass its physical. Right now, the Earth is rotating beneath a sky with gaping holes in its protective layer of ozone. The worst three polluters, China, United States and India, are accelerating global warming like a hulking fully loaded Hummer speeding on a steep downhill mountain of ice with no brakes. Scratch that we have the memo, the pictures and the proof Earth's glaciers are melting away due to Global Warming. From this head-on smoking Earth wreck between people and the environment, a concussed grudging China emerges with wind farms. India contributes by burning corn husks to demonstrate their growing commitment to reduce carbon emission to do their part to save the earth. A lot of folks believe in Karma.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will try to prod the U.S. and China, the world's top two polluters, to join the carbon- credit trading system at today's meeting in New York. Both countries have rejected mandatory emissions cuts as too restrictive.

``No nation can address this challenge on its own,'' Ban said today at the opening of the UN conference. ``We need to confront climate change within a global framework, one that guarantees the highest level of international cooperation.''

``The international negotiations are very much focused on the carbon market,'' Hartridge said. ``I would anticipate a post-2012 agreement which has the carbon market at its core.'' (Just picture him rubbing his hands together...) emphasis mine AFP & AP Photo

At the UN today, Nobel nominee Al Gore, will highlight where we are and how the Earth will suffer a catastrophic failure, toes up in hospital parlance, if we do not do more of the difficult changes needed to stave off rising seas erasing populated areas, killing of animals we actually take for granted (polar bears, seals), horrifying weather by baking the earth to death in some spots and drowning it in others, epidemic disease outbreaks and further degradation of our water supplies. US corporations, Morgan Stanley among them, are gleefully promoting their companies carbon credit trading products. Former Global Warming denier, George Bush, decided to skip the UN meeting with 80 other nations and hold his own separate climate change chit-chat fest with excellent cocktail weenies on Thursday in DC and meet UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for just a dinner with no Global Warming stuff that could turn his delicate gut. How's that for demonstrating world leadership? However, my movie star Governator saw fit to address the UN on Climate Change today. (AP photo)

An American National Treasure, Al Gore wrote the foreword to an amazing collection of resources, explanations and actions for the world to engage in and organizations to contact in World Changing: A Users Guide for the 21st Century by Alex Steffen. A book that heralded his advocacy at the highest level is a must have book for every environmentalist's library, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit. Al Gore worked for years to write it and it is the forerunner to the Academy Award-winning presentation of film, An Inconvenient Truth.