Taliban Says Malala ‘Has Done Nothing To Earn Prize’
Mr. Taliban, did you see Jon Stewarts interview with Malala? (See below) All she wants is an education. She wants an education for herself, but also for all children in Pakistan. Your children, too! She wants them to have that opportunity, that’s all. And she has paid the price for her courage speaking out, and she bravely continues to state the obvious – there is nothing in Islam against educating women.
MIRANSHAH, Pakistan: The Pakistani Taliban Thursday said teenage activist Malala Yousafzai had done “nothing” to deserve a prestigious EU rights award and vowed to try again to kill her.
The European Parliament awarded the Sakharov human rights prize to the 16-year-old, who has become a global ambassador for the right of all children to go to school since surviving a Taliban murder attempt.
Malala survived being shot in the head by a TTP gumnan on October 9 last year and is seen as a leading contender for the Nobel Peace prize, to be announced on Friday.
“She has done nothing. The enemies of Islam are awarding her because she has left Islam and has became secular,” Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Shahidullah Shahid told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.
“She is getting awards because she is working against Islam. Her struggle against Islam is the main reason of getting these awards.”
He repeated the TTP’s threat – made numerous times in recent months -try again to kill Malala, “even in America or the UK”.
Malala and moved to Britain in the wake of the shooting for treatment and to continue her education in safety.
Feted by world leaders and celebrities for her courage, Malala has addressed the UN, this week published an autobiography, and could become the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate on Friday.
Her autobiography “I am Malala”, written with journalist Christina Lamb, has gone on sale in Pakistan and Shahid warned the Taliban would target bookshops stocking it.
“Malala is the enemy of Islam and Taliban and she wrote this book against Islam and Taliban,” he said. (AFP)
Adventures in Chenega Bay
By the time we reach Chenega Bay, we are READY! The departure board tells us we only have a half an hour, but a half an hour is enough to hike to the top of the hill, see the church, take some photos and return. Actually, it took us more than half an hour. It didn’t matter. The ship needed to offload and onload, and the Chenega Bay residents needed their fix of hamburgers and ice cream.
As it turns out – and we should have known this by now – we really had a lot longer. It took a while to load the snow plow and all of its accessories 🙂
Chenega Bay was totally wiped out in a tsunami following an earthquake. Here is what their official site tells us:
Chenega IRA Council
PO Box 8079 * Chenega Bay, AK 99574 * 907-573-5132
The Chenega IRA Council is a federally recognized Indian Tribe that serves the Alutiiq people of Chenega Bay, Alaska. The Chenega IRA Council operates a variety of social, cultural and economic development programs designed to enhance the quality of life within Chenega Bay.
Chenega Bay – Description & Location
The village of Chenega Bay is located on Evans Island in Crab Bay, (42) miles Southwest of Whittier in the Prince William Sound. It is one hundred and four (104) air miles southeast of Anchorage. Until the March 27,1964 earthquake, Chenega was an Alutiiq Native tranquil fishing village located on the southern end of Chenega Island in western Prince William Sound. Founded before the Russian arrival in the late 1700s, Chenega was the longest occupied village in Prince William Sound at the time of the earthquake. Moments after the earthquake, a tsunami destroyed all of the buildings in Chenega village with the sole exception of a single home and the village school. Over a third of the village residents were killed and the survivors were taken initially to Cordova and then were later resettled in the village of Tatitlek by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
With the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the former residents of Chenega formed the Chenega Corporation that acquired the right to select 76,093 acres around the old Chenega Village Township. The Alutiiq Natives enrolled in the Chenega Corporation selected their new village site at Crab Bay on Evans Island in the Prince William Sound in March of 1977. This site was carefully chosen following extensive research as the site best able to meet the needs of the residents’ subsistence lifestyle. The Chenega Corporation and the Chenega IRA Council worked together to obtain funding for roads, a water and sewer system, electric generators, a boat and floatplane dock and a school. The new village named Chenega Bay was finally occupied in 1984 following the construction of 21 Housing and Urban Development homes.
Chenega Bay is an isolated community accessible only by air or water. Charter airlines provide the majority of the transportation and the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry System provides weekly ferry service year round.
Commercial fishing and subsistence activities are an important part of the lifestyle of the people of Chenega Bay. Commercial employment is primarily with the local school, the Tribal council, health clinic, and commercial fishing.
The primary business area of the village includes village council offices, a community center, the Russian Orthodox church, small boat harbor, the Alaska marine highway ferry terminal, and a future local display facility.
It felt so good to be able to get off and do some hiking. It was also a little overwhelming trying to imagine living in a village this small. Almost all the houses I saw looked exactly alike; maybe the tribe built them all. It is very very small and very isolated, the boat comes in once every week. There are no scheduled airlines, only charters.
The Russian Orthodox Church, The Nativity of Theodokos, is very new, and very beautiful. We wondered where people sit? Or maybe there are chairs hidded away that are brought out for services, or brought from across the street at the Indian Affairs office? I always check, I love it that so many of the ikons look native. 🙂
This last photo from the church is St. Herman of Alaska. Here is what Wikipedia says:
Saint Herman of Alaska (Russian: Преподобный Герман Аляскинский, c. 1750s – November 15, 1836) was a Russian Orthodox monk and missionary to Alaska, which was then part of Russian America. His gentle approach and ascetic life earned him the love and respect of both the native Alaskans and the Russian colonists. He is considered by many Orthodox Christians as the patron saint of North America.[1]
The patron saint of North America?! Who knew?!
The Johnny Totemoff Museum is sometimes open – not today – and also sells homemade jams made from salmonberry and high mountain cranberries. I would have loved to have some of that! Johnny Totemoff was a local fisherman who always knew where the fish were, and was always coming to the rescue of other in troubled times. I love it that they named the museum after him. (Don’t you wonder how I knew that? On board the ship, they have a notebook at the Purser’s office they put out before you reach each stop. I read about the Totmnoff Museum in the Purser’s book.:-) Now you know.)
We loved watching the kids play – two of them were waiting for their father to come off the ship with their ice cream. They reminded me of my mom telling me of all the times she wanted to kill me because I did unsafe things, but oh, what fun!
Local transportation:
This is not the Homer otter, this is the Chenega Bay otter, and totally by chance and not by talent, I caught him catching a fish!
Too soon, it is time to depart.
Worse Than Crack Cocaine? Growing up Poor
From AOL Daily Finance Poverty damages children more than being born to a crack addicted mother. Poverty keeps children from attaining their full potention, and hurts us all as a society as a huge waste of potential resource:
In the 1980s, the crack baby epidemic was hard to ignore. Television show after television show, article after article proclaimed that children born to addicts of the increasingly prevalent “crack” cocaine were all-but-guaranteed to have birth defects, including extremely low IQs and severe emotional problems. This “lost generation,” commentators emphasized, would be incapable of forming relationships or reaching full emotional maturity. They would be, in the words of Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, condemned to “a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority.”
A little over 20 years later, Krauthammer’s predictions have proven almost embarrassingly inaccurate. Last week, the findings of a 24-year-long study of crack babies revealed that parental use of the drug had little or no direct effect on the children. In the process of investigating the babies, however, researchers discovered another environmental problem that did, in fact, lead to problems with depression, anxiety, cognitive functioning, and a host of other issues: poverty.
In 1989, Dr. Hallam Hurt, chair of the neonatology department at Philadelphia’s Albert Einstein Medical Center, began tracking 224 near-term or full-term children who were born to crack addicts. In the ensuing years, her longitudinal study followed the children, finding that, overall, their IQs were about the same as a control group of children of non-addicted mothers. Further, the children in Hurt’s study had comparable outcomes when it came to educational and emotional development.
That having been said, Hurt’s study found that children raised in poverty — regardless of whether or not their mothers were addicted to crack — tended to have lower IQs and lower school readiness than those who weren’t raised in poverty. A big part of the problem, she argues, is environmental: Of the children in her study, “81 percent of the children had seen someone arrested; 74 percent had heard gunshots; 35 percent had seen someone get shot; and 19 percent had seen a dead body outside.” The children themselves acknowledged the effect of these events: “Those children who reported a high exposure to violence were likelier to show signs of depression and anxiety and to have lower self-esteem.”
In other words, while prenatal crack abuse may not have a major effect on children, the societal conditions in crack-ravaged communities most certainly do. As Hurt emphasized, “Given what we learned, we are invested in better understanding the effects of poverty. How can early effects be detected? Which developing systems are affected? And most important, how can findings inform interventions for our children?” Or, to put it another way, now that we understand that poverty is more dangerous for children than crack, what can we do to protect our children from its effects?
In Florida, the worst schools are those serving the poor. Many fell a full grade point in the Florida evaluations and would have fallen further if there were not a law – I am not kidding – that says they can only fall one grade point in a year. We are failing in the two most important areas that can help children pull themselves out of poverty – good health care, and good education.
Get a Clue, Filner!
“Oh, I’m so repentant, I’ll go to rehab for two weeks and never harass another woman again” LLLOOOLLLL. Puhhhh-leeeeeez, Mayor Finer, give it up. Go. Let someone younger, more enlighted . . . oh wait . . . Weiner . . . well, just go.
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner (D) said he won’t resign because of sexual harassment allegations made against him, but he does plan to attend a rehab center for 2 weeks.
Filner announced his plans in a press conference on Friday, apologizing for his actions.
“Beginning on August 5, I will be entering a behavior counseling clinic to undergo 2 weeks of intensive therapy,” Filner said.
“The behavior I have engaged in over many years is wrong,” Filner said during the press conference. “I apologize to my staff, I apologize to the citizens and staff members who have supported me over the years, I apologize to the people of San Diego, and most of all, I apologize to the women I have offended.”
Several women have made sexual harassment allegations against Filner in recent weeks. The city’s former chief operating officer Veronica “Ronne” Froman claimed Filner once blocked a doorway, ran a finger up her cheek and asked if she had a man in her life, and the mayor’s former press secretary Irene McCormack Jackson said Filner once asked her to “get naked” and kiss him.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department set up a hotline for those who have information about alleged sexual harassment by Filner.
Both the Democratic Party of San Diego and Democratic National Committee Chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) have called on Filner to resign. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said Filner needs to “get a clue.”
On Thursday, Filner was removed as the keynote speaker at an event on military sexual assault.
This story is developing and has been updated.
Pakistan’s Swat Valley Women Fight Back with Jirga
I love this. Women are using technology – and the traditional system – to persist in seeking justice for women who are often little more than slaves to their husband.
Tahira
Women in Pakistan’s Swat valley are making history, and perhaps some powerful enemies, by convening an all-female jirga, a forum for resolving disputes usually reserved for men. Some readers may find details of this report by the BBC’s Orla Guerin disturbing.
Tahira was denied justice in life, but she continues to plead for it in death – thanks to a grainy recording on a mobile phone.
As she lay dying last year the young Pakistan wife and mother made a statement for use in court.
In the shaky amateur video, she named her tormentors, and said they should burn like she did.
Tahira was married off at the age of 12 and died last year following a suspected acid attack
Tahira’s flesh was singed on 35% of her body, following a suspected acid attack. Her speech was laboured and her voice was hoarse, but she was determined to give her account of the attack, even as her flesh was falling off her bones.
“I told her you must speak up and tell us what happened,” her mother Jan Bano said, dabbed her tears with her white headscarf. “And she was talking until her last breath.”
Tahira’s husband, mother-in-law, and father-in-law were acquitted this month of attacking her with acid. Her mother plans to appeal against that verdict, with help from a new ally – Pakistan’s first female jirga.
Under the traditional – and controversial – jirga system, elders gather to settle disputes. Until now this parallel justice system has been men-only, and rulings have often discriminated against women. The new all-women jirga, which has about 25 members, aims to deliver its own brand of justice.
It has been established in an unlikely setting – the scenic but conservative Swat valley, formerly under the control of the Pakistan Taliban. We sat in on one of its sessions in a sparsely furnished front room. Women crowded in, sitting in a circle on the floor, many with children at their feet. Most wore headscarves, and a few were concealed in burqas.
Probing injustice
For more than an hour they discussed a land dispute, problems with the water supply, unpaid salaries, and murder. The only man in the room was a local lawyer, Suhail Sultan. He was giving legal advice to jirga members including Jan Bano who he represents.
“In your case the police is the bad guy,” he told her. “They are the biggest enemy. ” He claims the police were bribed by the accused, and were reluctant to investigate the case properly.
The jirga tackled land disputes, water supplies, and murder
The jirga is making history, and perhaps making enemies. In Swat, as in many parts of Pakistan, men make the key decisions – like whether or not their daughters go to school, when they marry, and who they marry. And oppression starts early. Tahira was married off at just 12 years old, to a middle-aged man.
“Our society is a male-dominated society, and our men treat our women like slaves,” said the jirga founder, Tabassum Adnan. “They don’t give them their rights and they consider them their property. Our society doesn’t think we have the right to live our own lives.”
This chatty social activist, and mother of four, knows that challenging culture and tradition comes with risks. “Maybe I could be killed,” she said, “anything could happen. But I have to fight. I am not going to stop.”
They glued [my daughter’s] mouth and eyes closed. Just her face was left, the rest was flesh and broken bones”
Taj Mehal
As we spoke in a sun-baked courtyard Tabassum got a disturbing phone call. “I have just been told that the body of another girl has been found, ” she said. ” Her husband shot her.” She plans to investigate the case, and push the authorities to act.
“Before my jirga women have always been ignored by the police and by justice, but not now. My jirga has done a lot for women,” she said.
There was agreement from Taj Mehal, a bereaved mother with a careworn face, sitting across the courtyard on a woven bed.
Her beloved daughter Nurina was tortured to death in May.
“They broke her arm in three places, and they strangled her,” she told me, putting her hands to her own throat to mimic the action. “They broke her collarbone. They glued her mouth and eyes closed. Just her face was left, the rest was flesh and broken bones.”
She speaks of her daughter’s suffering with a steady voice, but grief is wrapped around her, like a heavy shawl.
“When I looked at her, it was like a piece was pulled out of my heart,” she said. “I was turned to stone. I see her face in front of my eyes. I miss her laughter.”
Women are a rare sight on the streets of Mingora
Nurina’s husband, and his parents, have now been charged with her murder, but her mother says that initially the courts took no interest.
“Whenever we brought applications to the judge he would tear them up and throw them away,” she said. “Now our voice is being heard, because of the jirga. Now we will get justice. Before the jirga husbands could do whatever they wanted to their wives.”
Women are little seen or heard on the bustling streets of Mingora, the biggest city in Swat. Rickshaw taxis dart past small shops selling medicines, and hardware supplies.
There are stalls weighed down with mangoes, and vendors dropping dough into boiling oil to make sugar-laden treats. Most of the shoppers are men.
‘No justice’ at jirgas
When we asked some of the local men their views on the women’s jirga, the results were surprising. Most backed the women.
“It’s a very good thing,” said one fruit seller, “women should know about their rights like men do, and they should be given their rights.”
Another said: “The jirga is good because now finally women have someone to champion their cause.”
The response from the local male jirga was less surprising. They were dismissive, saying the women have no power to enforce their decisions.
Most local men who spoke to the BBC expressed support for the women’s initiative
That view was echoed by the prominent Pakistani human rights activist Tahira Abdullah. “I don’t see it as more than a gimmick,” she said. “Who is going to listen to these women? The men with the Kalashnikovs? The Taliban who are anti-women? The patriarchal culture that we have?”
Ms Abdullah wants jirgas stopped whether male or female. “The jirga system is totally illegal, and has been declared illegal by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. It can never be just. There are several extremely notorious cases where we have noticed that women do not get justice from jirgas, neither do non-Muslims.”
One of those cases took place last year in a remote region of northern Pakistan where a jirga allegedly ordered the killing of five women – and two men – for defying local customs by singing and dancing together at a wedding.
And there are regular reports of jirgas decreeing that women and young girls be handed over from one family to another to settle disputes.
But for some, like Jan Bano, the women’s jirga is bringing hope. Every day she climbs a steep hill to visit Tahira’s grave, and pray for the daughter whose voice has still not her heard. Her video recording was not played in court.
Justin Cronin: The Twelve
I had downloaded The Twelve to my iPad for a trip, but didn’t get to it, and sort of forgot it was there until my son mentioned he was listening to it on audio-books, and it was good, maybe even better than the first book in the trilogy, The Passage. He had loaned me The Passage several years ago when it came out, and as soon as I finished, I got on the list to download as soon as the next book came out – it was that good.
Cronin’s gift is an ability to create a future world entirely different from our own, with a devastating enemy – the virals – who, literally, are us, transformed. Cronin can make the enemy terrifying, destructive, truly horrifying – and can make them also captive to their repugnant nature and even pitiable. I think that is an amazing dance for an author to accomplish.
The setting is post-apocalyptic USA; the government had a sector working on a secret weapon which – of course – was not able to be contained, creating 12 super vampire-like creatures called Virals, who in turn create hordes of minions. This volume, The Twelve, is set more than 100 years later, but shifts back to earlier times to help us understand how this disaster occurred, and how characters relate back to the earliest times of the disaster. The populations live in fear of sudden attacks; one family, out on a picnic, are almost totally wiped out by an eclipse for which the Virals were prepared – and the families were not.
As I read his books, I find them very cinematic, but, as my son and I discussed, too complex for a movie; it would need a gritty HBO series like The Wire, or OZ, or Deadwood to capture the subtleties, the nuances that make this a best-selling series. The heroes and heroines are all make for the screen, their relationships – and inter-relationships – make them interesting, and then, as we learn more, interesting again. We never know enough to make a final judgement on any character; the characters are complex and the relationships obscure until the author chooses to reveal. It makes it fun to try to spot them before he tells us. I missed a couple!
Although it can be read as a great-adventure stand-alone, you’ll be happier if you read The Passage before you read The Twelve. If you have a problem with postponing gratification, you might want to wait until the third and conclusive volume of the trilogy is published – and that may be a year or so.
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