Link Roundup: The Next War in Pakistan

Pakistani villagers were killed earlier this September when US troops crossed the Afghanistan border into Pakistan. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry immediately condemned the attack calling it a "grave provocation."

This is only the latest round in increasingly aggressive talk regarding Pakistan. Already by mid 2007, Barack Obama had stated his policy on Pakistan saying "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." So much for national sovereignty.

The discussion has been getting narrower and with a charged US election approaching, the media has hardly done anything to expand the debate. In a recent Huffington Post, blogger Brandon Friedman uses the Pakistan issue to criticize McCain predicting that it will become McCain's next flipflop. According to Friedman, Obama had it right. Whither the anti-war liberals?

The limited grounds for debate have been prepared for at least a year now. First, Newsweek came out with an article titled "Pakistan The Most Dangerous?" The Economist followed suit putting it bluntly: "Pakistan The Most Dangerous Place" and finally the Washington Post: "Pakistan Still the World's Most Dangerous Country".

The US debate on Pakistan leaves Pakistanis wondering whether the US is capable of delivering anything other than bombs and bombast. The headlines, meanwhile, leave little doubt about what the conclusions of that debate will be.

Memorable Moment: Pakistan Snapshots

The US is keen to invade Pakistan with a single-minded view towards routing out Islamists in FATA. Meanwhile, Pakistanis are motivated by another cause –the fight to reinstate the Supreme Court judges that Musharraf deposed last year. This is the democracy movement in Pakistan today and many Pakistanis connect it with their own struggle for daily necessities. This isn't about votes and governments; it's about food, electricity, rights.

MEERWALA
She smiles easily. It would be hard to guess that Mukhtar Mai is a gang-rape survivor and activist for women's rights. She puts the issue bluntly. “If something can happen to the Chief Justice, then you can see what will happen to the rest of the public.” She sits up on her bed. It's late night and the darkness is heavy in the village where Mukhtar Mai makes her home, a spread of concrete, enclosed rooms and open terraces overlooking her school where 300 girls and another 300 boys come for a primary education.

At the moment, you can’t see any of it though because there's loadshedding, a term for a rolling blackout. These planned power outages happen upwards of 12 hours per day across Pakistan. One hour on. One hour off. On. Off. The heat pushes us all outside and I feel my way to a rough stone step. It's difficult to see how businesses, hospitals, daily life can function with this sort of instability.

Tractors roll in the distance harvesting wheat. Old songs float out from them into the dense black night. It’s a sweet sound in a country where the wheat crisis currently tops the list of problems.
I grab my cell phone for light. It flicks on. Amidst fields, in this tiny village that isn't even a dot on a map, I have a signal.

Peshawar, NWFP
At the smuggler’s bazaar on the border between Peshawar and Khyber Agency, DVDs calling for death to America and are available for purchase if you know how to ask for them. A vendor who sells them also hands out a bonus DVD to ensure repeat customers. It’s pornography and it may be the real seller.

The frustration with corrupt politicians is more palpable here. One man says, "Look at what happened with the judges” He grows impassioned. “This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship. They’ve deceived us. They’ve deceived the poor and tried to finish the poor.” He forcefully marks his point in the air. “They want to end the poor but the poor will fight. The poor will commit suicide bombings and the poor will make America flee from here and make him [Musharraf] run too.”

Links Round Up: Celebrity Gossip

Ellen Degeneres, the newly wed talk show host appealed to her fan to vote for the right of same sex marriage in a post on her official website.
Degeneres has also confirmed reports that she will be the new face for Cover Girl, the cosmetics giant. Here are some links:
http://ellen.warnerbros.com/2008/09/my_political_point_and_i_do_ha.php
http://www.feministing.com/archives/011135.html


Princess Diana’s private letters are soon to be auctioned. In a letter written to her nanny when she was 17, the princess expresses relief when plans to marry off her older sister to Prince Charles failed. In another letter she wrote when she was pregnant with her first child, the princess complains from pregnancy discomfort.
The Australian Melbourne Herald Sun has the story
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24393260-663,00.html



Keanu Reeves is in the clear. A California judge has dismissed allegations by a paparazzo that the actor was trying to hit him with his car deliberately. Check what the BCC has to say about the case http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7631135.stm


Victoria Beckham tells The Sun her busy schedule will keep her from having another child for at least the next couple of years.
Here is the article http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/article1721747.ece

Mini Profile: Long gone are the washing dishes days

Freddy Gonzales’ story is the perfect example of an immigrant success story. In just six months he was promoted from washing dishes in a restaurant and juice shop on Bay Ridge 5th Avenue, in Brooklyn to actually managing it.

It all happened in just six months. “It is all about working hard,” Gonzales said while preparing one of his famous protein shake. “It makes you move up as quickly as you can imagine.” When he to New York from a small village on the US-Mexican border, six years ago Gonzales enrolled in English and management classes. Impressed with the speed with which he was learning and improving, the owner of the restaurant promoted him to manager. It also helped that the former manager decided one day to quit without prior notice. “I do everything now,” Gonzales said with pride and a wide smile.

Memorable Moment: A not-so graceful priest

Coming soon: The Kingdom of God. It is not a movie. Neither a play. It is the actual moment when God will restore the nation of Israel to the land, as mentioned in the Tanakh. Or at least this is what the man who was preaching on the corner of West 34th Street in Manhattan on Monday evening was saying. His name was priest Sabach and he said he represents the House of Israel, a religious group who believe that the true Jews are the African-Americans and not "the ones who we see on CNN."
"Those Israelis we see on TV are not the true Jews, they are converts." And so, he said, this is why they are targeted by the Palestinians. "They had a car attack there today?" the priest asked the crowd of 10 gathered in front of him. "What the hell is a car attack?" Not a very graceful language coming from a priest, but what-the-heck. "It is called a suicide attack," he answered himself (interference seemed to be unacceptable.) He then burst into laughter clapping his hands as if to congratulate himself for the joke, or maybe the discovery. Not quite clear. Two policemen were keeping a watchful eye over him and his four companions.

Link Round-Up: The Changing Face of the Modeling Industry

Although the 2008 New York Fashion Week has come to an end, the event brought up many questions about the state of the today's modeling industry. While the top models of the 1990s were primarily Eastern European or South American women, the fashion industry is beginning to embrace more diverse models. A July 2008 U.S. Vogue article titled, "Is Fashion Racist?" examined the rising popularity of three new black models (Chanel Iman, Jourdan Dunn and Arlenis Sosa) while Italian Vogue's July 2008 all-black issue was its best-selling issue ever. An albino African-American walked in the men's shows this season. As for size, several media outlets noticed that the models this year looked a little bigger than in previous years.

Not only are changes occurring on the runways and in magazine spreads, but mainstream marketing is also in the process of redefining the modeling industry. The Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty," ads, in which average-sized, un-photoshopped women are shown using the company's products, has been very successful - the company's commercial, "Evolution" has had over 7.5 million views on youtube alone in the two years its been online. The changing face of modeling is creating an exciting new atmosphere in the fashion industry, and it will be interesting to see what the men and women walking next year's Fashion Week runway look like.

Profile: Living two lives

Krystal* graciously glided across the room to greet her two friends. Tall, slim, in a perfectly-fitted pencil dress and flawless make-up, she looked like she stepped out of pages of a fashion magazine.

Gender identity on Krystal’s identification card reads male. Now 21, she says she identified herself as a trans-woman since the age of 15, but had stayed “in the closet” until she was 18.

When her mum found out three years ago, the situation became so tense that Krystal decided to move out of their home. Their relationship is much better now, provided conditions mum has set are respected.

“When I go there, she don’t want me dressing flamboyant or anything. So I wear men’s clothes and don’t put on make-up,” said Krystal.

One of Krystal’s plans is to undergo hormonal therapy that would allow her to start the process of becoming a female. The fear that her mum and friends might completely reject her if she made a full transition prevents her, however, from starting the therapy.

“I wanna live my life as a female. That’s my greatest dream,” said Krystal. Until that dream starts coming true, she continues living two separate lives.


*Name of the individual has been changed to protect her privacy.