Hot Kashmir - Latest News Updates From Kashmir

THOSE who believe on either side of the India-Pakistan equation that Kashmir is a Muslim entity are sadly missing out on the contribution of Kashmiri Pandits to the limitless enrichment of the subcontinent’s secular culture, chiefly of the Urdu language and the aadaab-i-majaalis, social etiquette, that came with it.

By Thomas L. Friedman on April 14, 2011

When I was in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising, I wanted to change hotels one day to be closer to the action and called the Marriott to see if it had any openings. The young-sounding Egyptian woman who spoke with me from the reservations department offered me a room and then asked: “Do you have a corporate rate?” I said, “I don’t know. I work for the New York Times”. There was a silence on the phone for a few moments, and then she said: “Can I ask you something?” “Sure.” “Are we going to be OK? I’m worried.”

The U.S. government has prevented more than 350 people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups from boarding U.S.-bound commercial flights since the end of 2009, The Associated Press has learned.

The target of 230 had appeared a possible banana skin on a slow pitch offering some turn, but Watson made such light work of it, that his unbeaten185 from 96 balls now stands as the highest ODI score by an Australian, overtaking Matthew Hayden's 181 against New Zealand in 2007.

A Kashmiri photojournalist, working with an international news agency, has won the prestigious World Press Photo award 2010 for 'People in the News singles' category.

FAHEEM ASLAM

Srinagar, Feb 12: Ouster of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of continued struggle by the people seems to have generated a lot of interest in Kashmir, with the political circles in Jammu and Kashmir, both mainstream and separatists, having their own take on Friday’s development.

Military Pledges Civilian Handover

Cairo, Feb 12: Egypt’s military leaders say they are committed to eventually handing over power to an elected civilian administration that will abide by its international agreements.

Sana’a, Feb 12: Thousands of protesters gathered in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, Saturday, calling for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down a day after Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak resigned.

Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. He spent some of his childhood years in the mountains of the valley where his father worked in tourism and at home near the Dal Lake where his family continues to live. As a teenager, he closely witnessed the peak years of the separatist militant uprising and the brutal military crackdown in Kashmir. During one of the many curfew-bound seasons in Srinagar in the early 1990s, when everyone was restricted indoors by the security forces, he learnt the rudiments of Kashmiri papier-mache art from his grandfather, father and uncle. He earned his first income hand-painting a hundred decorative Easter eggs meant for export to Western markets.

It's pretty common now for supporters of the Palestinians and Palestinian leaders themselves to say, "Well, we have to abandon hope in the two-state solution." As one of the Palestinian leaders said, "We should give Israel the key and let them take over the entire West Bank. It will be one state, we'll then carry out a civil rights struggle. We can win that one, like South Africa." But this view overlooks a simple point of logic. Those are not the two options. There is a third option, namely that the U.S. and Israel continue doing exactly what they are doing. They're not going to take control of the West Bank. They don't want it. They don't want the Palestinians. So the analogy to South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle is pretty misleading. South Africa needed its black population. They were its workforce. They couldn't get rid of them. They were 85 percent of the population doing the work of the country. So, as under slavery, they had to take care of them. Bantustans were bad enough, but they were intended to be more or less viable because it was necessary to reproduce the workforce. That's not true for Israel and the Palestinians. Israel doesn't want to take responsibility for them, rather it wants them to get out. It's like the United States and the indigenous population. There's no sense in taking care of them, just exterminate that "hapless race" of Native Americans.

(Reuters) - India's annual food price inflation eased in early October but remained stubbornly high, keeping pressure on the central bank to raise policy rates by 25 basis points at its review on Nov. 2. While high food prices are largely beyond the scope of monetary policy, they feed into rising inflation expectations and make government targets to bring headline inflation down to 6 percent by the end of December increasingly challenging.

Is there any scope for comparison between an individual like Noor Muhammed Bhat and a state that by definition is infinitely more powerful than the individuals it is supposed to represent? If there is an element of protest and dissent in Bhat's conduct, there is also a background of the reality of Kashmir's unending suppression

The WikiLeaks report on widespread torture employed by the Indian army and paramilitary forces in Kashmir may have come as a surprise to some people for it raises serious questions about the institutional integrity of the ‘largest democracy in the world’. However, in Kashmir the leak was simply digested as a mere attestation of what has been going on for decades. This lack of any enthusiasm at the revelations may be due to the near total cynicism among Kashmiris as the world has forgotten their sufferings.

by David Hudson

Shocking and terrible news from Tehran today. Farideh Gheirat, a lawyer representing several of the politicians, journalists and artists detained during the protests that immediately followed the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential election, has told the ISNA news agency (as reported by Reuters and the AFP) that Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to six years in jail and that his "social rights," including "making movies, writing scripts, foreign travel and giving interviews to domestic and foreign media, have been taken away for 20 years."

Syed Ali Shah Geelani  New Delhi, Dec. 12: Arrangements for a dynastic succession are brewing in another Kashmiri political clan. The ageing and ailing patriarch of the Hurriyat’s hardliners, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, is mulling handing over the secession baton to elder son Syed Naeem Geelani, who was allowed to return home last month by the government after more than a decade in Pakistan.