I've been really bad at this blogging thing, but I'm going to start up again insha'Allah.
BTW if you want to take a trip to Pakistan to view the madness first hand, let me know. There is a delegation heading there next week; I'll forward you the 411.
At a November 15th press conference, politicians, community members, and clergy came out in support of LAX Hilton housekeepers who filed a complaint and won a citation against the hotel from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health for violating the Repetitive Motion Injury (RMI) standard.
Totaling $14,425 in proposed fines, this is the first time that CalOSHA has cited a hotel for violating the RMI standard. It cited the privately-owned LAX Hilton on October 30th for failure to control exposures causing such injuries and failing to train workers on injury symptoms, prevention and reporting. Additional violations included electrical, chemical and eye protection hazards and a failure to adequately complete accident investigation forms under the Injury and Illness Prevention Program Standard.
California is the only state in the United States that has a workplace repetitive motion injury standard. According to the LA Times, CalOSHA Director Len Welsh said the LAX Hilton "did not follow policies that other Hilton hotels followed." In the same article, Adela Barrientos, one of the LAX Hilton housekeepers who filed the complaint along with the Southern California Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health, stated that "they keep putting more things in the room."
The LAX Hilton, located on Century Boulevard just outside the Los Angeles International Airport, is under a national boycott. Housekeepers there held a "Day of the Dead Tired" march through Los Angeles along Century Boulevard, drawing attention to work-related injuries and the need for health care.
The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "O God, grant me life as a poor man, cause me to die as a poor man and resurrect me in the company of the poor." His wife asked him why he said that, and he replied: "Because (the poor) will enter Paradise (before) the rich. Do not turn away a poor man. . .even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you. . .God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection."
This is the same idiot who suggested bombing Mecca a couple of years ago.
Want to keep the hate mongering off your local television networks? Sign the petition NOW!
For Immediate Release
November 26, 2007
Al-Awda Statement On Annapolis Conference
With the upcoming US-sponsored international conference in Annapolis MD, Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, reiterates once again that a just and lasting peace can only be achieved with the return of all Palestinians to their original homes, towns, and villages, with full restitution of all of their confiscated and destroyed property, and compensation. The Palestinian Arab people, regardless of their religious affiliation, are indigenous to Palestine. Therefore, they are entitled to live anywhere in their homeland Palestine which encompasses present-day [apartheid] "Israel", the West Bank and Gaza Strip. No agreement, negotiations or parties which purport to trade away these rights or any other inalienable rights can have any legal basis and cannot bind or compel the Palestinian
people to end the struggle for the fulfillment of all of their rights.
The definition of [apartheid] Israel as a "Jewish state", granting exclusive rights to citizenship and land to any Jew from anywhere in the world, while denying the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine their fundamental rights, is part and parcel of the racism inherent in the colonialist Zionist ideology which underlies the policies and laws of the settler state of [apartheid] "Israel". Any sacrifice of any part of our land and culture will represent a blow to the entire Arab peoples and the lands of West Asia and Africa.
The US government subsidizes [apartheid] Israel's injustices with billions of dollars annually. Any Palestinian and other Arab participating in accommodation with
the Zionist and US regimes in order to promote normalization and put an end to the Palestinian liberation struggle, stand exposed naked before the world as traitors to our people.
Until all Palestinians exercise their right to return and self determination, Al-Awda calls on all its members and supporters to redouble their efforts, working for and demanding:
1. An end to all US political, military and economic aid to [apartheid] "Israel"
2. The divestment of all public and private entities from all Zionist corporations, and American corporations with subsidiaries operating within [apartheid] "Israel"
3. An end to the investment of Labor Union members' pension funds in[apartheid] "Israel"
4. The boycott of all [apartheid] "Israeli" products
The 60 year commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba will take place in May 2008. Al-Awda's 6th Annual International Convention will take place in Anaheim, California, May 16-18, 2008. The convention will be dedicated to renewing our struggle to return and to reclaim our land no matter what deals are made in Annapolis.
Until Return
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW: http://al-awda.org
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is the largest network of grassroots activists and students dedicated to Palestinian human rights. We are a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America. Under IRS guidelines, your donations to PRRC are tax-deductible. To make a donation, please go to http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html
Most Americans have sex on the third date. I married my husband after meeting him for the third time. I'm Indian, and having an arranged marriage is something that my ancient culture still thinks is a great idea.
Since the day I was born, my parents had been planning this occasion. When I was 20, they presented me with my first proposal. I found him overbearing, and I desperately hoped there would be more suitors. There were. But I passed on every Raj, Arun, and Sanjay — too fat, too boring, too short.
By age 26, after attending more than 150 weddings, I was fast approaching my "expiration date." So my parents put pressure on our community — not to mention my relatives — to find The One. They urged me to be more flexible, and I had no reason to argue. Being a spinster in Indian society is considered an embarrassment, a burden on the family. I was raised to think a smiling groom, approved and blessed by my parents, was the ultimate achievement. While Western teenagers spent summers working the cash register at the mall, I spent mine learning to sew and cook so that I could someday be a successful wife.
. . .
That's when I started to realize that I just might have the best of both worlds. I marinated my Indian marriage in the flavors of Manhattan. I kept the sari and bought the Jimmy Choos. I made fabulous curries, seasoned with spices from Dean & Deluca. And after months of enjoying decidedly non-Indian experiences of seders, Saks, and sake, I felt confident enough to direct Indian guests to a hotel, occasionally throwing in a MetroCard.
As Indian women gain financial independence, it is inevitable that we will see fewer arranged marriages — and maybe that's too bad. I firmly believe that our marriage works because it is blessed and supported by our families. The strength we get from their advice (solicited and unsolicited) helps us overcome difficult times. Had I found my own mate, I'm sure my parents would have come around, but I'd have to live knowing that they wouldn't be truly emotionally invested in the success of the marriage.
I've come to believe it's not so much how you get hitched but what you do with your relationship that matters. Although my husband doesn't always agree with his opinionated and selectively liberated wife, he openly expresses his love. Back home, couples don't even hold hands on the street. Here, well, couples do a lot more than that. India may have found me a husband, but America showed me how much fun it is to be his wife. Power to my parents for arranging this union.
(In case you need a break from the LAPD stuff. . . )
After almost 10 YEARS of waiting, the Higher Education Act is finally on the move!
The Higher Education Act was originally introduced in 1965 to help "strengthen educational resources of our colleges and universities and to provide financial assistance for students in postsecondary and higher education." It is the single most comprehensive bill dealing with higher education access on the federal level. HEA is supposed to be renewed every 5-7 years, but hasn't been reauthorized since 1998!
On Friday, the House Education & Labor Committee introduced the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 (Higher Education Act Reauthorization). The committee will make changes to the bill this week and the full House will vote on the bill soon.
Today, you have the chance to make sure college is affordable and accessible for generations to come.
Passage of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 will:
* Simplify the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) application by allowing the Department of Education to use IRS information already available
* Expand higher education access for low income and underrepresented students by making the Pell Grant available year round, strengthening early intervention & outreach programs such as GEAR UP & TRIO, and expanding funding for graduate students at historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and other minority serving schools.
* Restore the integrity and accountability of student loan programs by requiring schools to adopt codes of conduct, providing student borrowers with full information about their federal and private loan options, and protects students from aggressive marketing practices by lenders
Congress needs to hear from students and their families about the need to make higher education more affordable and accessible!
Flood your Representatives' phone lines WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY and urge them to make higher education a right!
Click here for a sample call-in script!
For more information on the Higher Education Act, visit www.usstudents.org or email us at ussa@usstudents.org.
This is how it all starts: the LAPD is "mapping" the Muslim community! I'm not sure what I'm more distraught about: the mapping or the complicity and submission by certain Muslims involved in all of this. Check out the nitty-gritty here!
San Francisco, November 8, 2007 -- The South Asian Bar Association of Northern California (SABA) condemns the "state of emergency" declared in Pakistan on November 3rd, 2007 by President General Pervez Musharraf, his suspension of civil rights, and the ensuing state violence against the Pakistani judiciary, bar, pro-democracy activists, human rights organizations and independent media.
In recent days, the Pakistani military state has beaten and jailed a staggering number of lawyers and judges for supporting an independent judiciary and for opposing military dictatorship. Victims include Muneer Malik, past President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association, whom SABA recently honored at a joint event with the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers. In fact, a majority of the Supreme Court justices and their families have been put under house arrest for refusing to give their imprimatur to President Musharraf's overthrow of constitutional governance.
We stand in solidarity with fellow lawyers who are fending off bayonets, batons and bullets in the streets of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and other Pakistani cities to defend the rule of law. This military crackdown violates international law and threatens the freedom and liberty of all Pakistanis.
SABA calls on President Musharraf immediately to end the "state of emergency," to restore the judiciary, and to release all lawyers imprisoned for opposing the military state. As South Asian attorneys, we add our voices to the chorus of: "Qanoon ki baladasti, zindabad! Long live the rule of law!" We call on all lawyers to support the sacrifice of our colleagues in Pakistan and work towards their immediate release.
Media Contact: Supriya Sundarrajan
Well according to Dilbert, everybody should convert because:
Osama and his gang want to form a giant caliphate, essentially a world government run by Islamic law with an Islamic leader. But if 300 million Americans become Islamic, he’s not going to want us in the group because we’d be too influential with our relatively moderate ways. We’d be unsuitable as either an enemy or an ally. His best strategy would be to ignore us.BUT would you be happy as a Muslim?
And it’s irrational to believe you would not be happy as a Muslim when you see plenty of practicing Muslims in this country who are perfectly happy with their choice. You would be happy with any religion after you got used to it, especially if all your friends joined in.
To get on the ballot, a candidate must demonstrate two requirements: that he or she is viable nationally and has spent time campaigning in the state.
Carol Fowler, chairwoman of the state Democratic Party and a member of the executive council, suggested Wednesday that Colbert did not meet the standard of national viability.
. . .
Meanwhile, long shots Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel did make the cut.
"I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health," Kucinich, a quirky, long-shot candidate in the race for his party's presidential nomination in the November, 2008 election. "There's something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact."
"Everyone knows factories in Shahpur Jat use child labor — it's an open secret," says Puja Sahu, owner of a fashionable boutique in the area where the Observer reporter allegedly found the sweatshop. Shahpur Jat lies in the southern part of Delhi and houses grimy, dimly lit sweatshops behind plush, high-end boutiques. On Monday, there were no children working in the unit that had reportedly been making clothes for Gap, but several children were seen embroidering clothes in a number of other factories. Sahu says trained embroiderers and tailors are paid between $110 and $150 a month, whereas "children can be employed for less than half of this, sometimes for no money at all if their parents have sold them off."
The Indian government tried to downplay the issue and none of the ministries in whose domain it has arisen has commented. It was left to Commerce Minister Kamal Nath to react to the report. According to the Times of India, Nath said the allegations would be probed, while warning developed countries against using allegations of child labor as a pretext for taking protectionist tariff measures. Children's rights activists, however, see the latest allegations as typical of the problems associated with India's economic rise, where growth is prioritized over social equity. Pradeep Narayan of the non-profit Child Rights and You says, "Policies on liberalization, privatization, trade, export-import, et cetera get implemented very fast and very effectively. But the policies on the social sector, like health or child labor, never do."
You knew it had to happen.
The moment firefighters began to get an edge on the fires, pundits, bloggers and other gasbags couldn't wait to proclaim San Diego's superiority over New Orleans in government response to disaster.
A writer on the conservative Red State website said the difference, of course, was firm Republican leadership in San Diego.
"New Orleans, on the other hand," said the writer, "was a city on the federal dole dominated by Democrats, racial politics, and the legacy of Huey Long's populist-socialist dreams."
Everybody got that?
Republicans are better at evacuations than Democrats. This seems to be particularly true when the Republicans in question can flee down the highway in Yukons while Democrats wait for buses trapped under water.
. . .
"It's phenomenally better," Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said of the difference in federal response, "because we have been planning and preparing and training together for the last 2 1/2 years."
There you go.
You'd think San Diego's staunch defenders would be thanking New Orleans for making these improvements possible, rather than all but calling the recovering bayou city a jungle filled with savages who got what they deserved.
But we have different classes of people.
9) Muslim Student Association
Call me crazy, but as a Jew, I am very nervous about organizations that would like to see death to Israel. It’s just a personal preference of mine that Israel be left to… I don’t know… survive? That is why the Muslim Student Association (MSA) made the list.
. . .
MSA is a group that supports radical Islam that calls for the death of Jews, the wiping out of the United States, raises money for Hamas, and has many other ties to terrorist organizations.
. . .
2) Universities and Colleges
Anyone familiar with my column at Family Security Matters knows my thoughts on the Left’s stranglehold on American colleges and universities. Unfortunately, many professors use the various organizations on this list as a part of their curriculum, often selectively ignoring facts that don’t support their far-Left agenda.
Full Story: Family Security Matters
(Hijab tip: Rose Mishaan)
The Kleptocrat in an Hermes Headscarf
Counter Punch
October 22, 2007
By JEMIMA KHAN
She's back. Hurrah! She's a woman. She's brave. She's a moderate. She speaks good English. She's Oxford-educated, no less. And she's not bad looking either.
I admit I'm biased. I don't like Benazir Bhutto. She called me names during her election campaign in 1996 and it left a bitter taste. Petty personal grievances aside, I still find jubilant reports of her return to Pakistan depressing. Let's be clear about this before she's turned into a martyr.
This is no Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her repeated insistence that she's "fighting for democracy", or even more incredibly, "fighting for Pakistan's poor".
This is the woman who was twice dismissed on corruption charges. She went into self-imposed exile while investigations continued into millions she had allegedly stashed away into Swiss bank accounts ($1.5 billion by the reckoning of Musharraf's own "National Accountability Bureau").
She has only been able to return because Musharraf, that megalomaniac, knows that his future depends on the grassroots diehard supporters inherited from her father's party, the PPP.
As a result, Musharraf, who in his first months in power declared it his express intention to wipe out corruption, has dropped all charges against her and granted her immunity from prosecution. Forever.
Notably, he did not do the same for his other political rival, Nawaz Sharif, who was recently deported after attempting his own spectacular return to Pakistan.
But the difference is that Benazir is a pro at playing to the West. And that's what counts. She talks about women and extremism and the West applauds. And then conspires.
The Americans and the British are acutely aware that their strategy in the region is failing and that Musharraf's hold on power is ever more tenuous. They have pressed hard for Benazir and the General to cut a deal that would allow them to share power for the next five years in a "liberal forces government".
It's all totally bogus. Benazir may speak the language of liberalism and look good on Larry King's sofa, but both her terms in office were marked by incompetence, extra-judicial killings and brazen looting of the treasury, with the help of her husband--famously known in Pakistan as Mr 10 Per Cent.
In a country that tops the international corruption league, she was its most self-enriching leader.
Benazir has always cynically used her gender to manipulate: I loved her answer to David Frost when he asked her how many millions she had in her Swiss bank accounts. "David, I think that's a very sexist question."
A non sequitur (does loot have a gender?) but one that brought the uncomfortable line of questioning to a swift end.
Of all Pakistan's elected leaders she conspicuously did the least to help the cause of women. She never, for example, repealed the Hudood Ordinances, Pakistan's controversial laws that made no distinction between rape and adultery.
She preferred instead to kowtow to the mullahs in order to cling to power, forming an expedient alliance with Pakistan's Religious Coalition Party and leaving Pakistan's women as powerless as she found them.
The problem is that the West never seems to learn; playing favourites in a complicated nation's politics always backfires. Imposing Benazir on Pakistan is the opposite of democratic and doubtless will cause more chaos in an already unstable country.
Make no mistake, Benazir may look the part, but she's as ruthless and conniving as they come--a kleptocrat in a Hermes headscarf.
Jemima Khan is an ambassador to Unicef.
(Hijab tip: Huda Shaka)
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