Egypt Court Sentences Badge of Honor

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said that the verdicts in Egypt against the freedom fighters who were offering support to the resistance in the Gaza Strip are politicized and unfair.

Speaking to the Kuwaiti Al-Rai television to be broadcast Thursday, Sayyed Nasrallah said that “when those brothers were arrested in Egypt, we stressed – and I’ve said this personally – that those are honest resistance fighters, not outlaws, criminals, and terrorists as the judge described them. They are honest people and their only crime is that they were supporting their brothers in Gaza and giving help to the legitimate Palestinian resistance which should be embraced by everybody. Those men were fulfilling their duty and everything beside this are mere fabrications to cover the measures that were taken against them.”

After France, its Belgium now...

Another Burqa madness in Europe. France started this discussion but French never went to Parliament. Sometimes I thank to Allah Almighty for being in a muslim country where my izzat is safe.

Belgium's lower house of parliament has voted for a law that would ban women from wearing the full Islamic face veil in public. The law would ban any clothing that obscures the identity of the wearer in places like parks and on the street. No-one voted against it.

The law now goes to the Senate, which is also expected to approve it. It would then become law by June or July. The ban would be the first move of its kind in Europe.

Parliament fight in Ukraine.

Fighting broke out on Tuesday and smoke bombs were thrown during a session in Ukraine's parliament over a deal with Russia extending the lease of a key naval base, an AFP correspondent reported. It has also been reported that thousands of people have protested outside the Ukrainean parliament building over a Russia fleet accord.

Scuffles inside the building broke out after eggs were thrown at the speaker, Volodymr Lytvyn, who then took cover behind two black umbrellas.

A smoke bomb was then thrown from an unknown source and the chamber filled with smoke, making it difficult to watch proceedings. Some deputies covered their noses as alarms sounded. A second smoke bomb was thrown shortly afterwards, filling the chamber with more smoke as deputies nonetheless continued their rancorous debate.

The deputies in the notoriously fractious parliament were takingn part in a session that was to debate a controversial deal last week to extend the lease on Russia's Black Sea Fleet naval base in Ukraine until 2042. It has been reported that the deal has been ratified in the last few moments.

Earning bad name for Kabirwala

Internet is a free place and people are using YouTube to wash up some dirt. Why they will do it? Has anyone got answers? 2 comments here though don't use the right language but they make the point.

zayedcold First Of all good comment made by mister cocain , who the hell is that beared asshole son of a 33 pound mac d chicken zinger burgers salad with spice in his anal , hay man one give u one suggestion why cant u upload your moms and sisters naked videos fucked by your dad youtube ...........u better shave your beared dirty cunt

cocaininmybrain first thing who ever uploaded this video is a mother fu**** ass hole son of a whore....and second thing look at the man with a bear mother fu****....p***** face faggot sharam kar itni bari dari raki hai aur ye kaam...aur b****** hai wo jiss ny ye video upload ke hai...mother fu**** go fu** ur self 6 months ago

Sain Zahoor interview

Sharafat - Punjabi poetry

Asaan safrain...

Joan Eliya

On existence of aliens

The eminent scientist warns that if there is life out there, we probably don't want it messing with us.

It would appear so, as his opinion of whether we should make contact with any alien life forms we discover in the future has suddenly hardened. According to a new documentary series he has made for the Discovery Channel : "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

Hawking believes we would be well-advised to keep the volume down on our intergalactic chatter and do all we can to prevent any "nomadic" aliens moseying our way to take a look-see. Should they find us here tucked away in the inner reaches of the solar system, chances are they'd zap us all and pillage any resources they could get their hands on. Our own history, says Hawking, proves that first encounters very rarely begin: "Do take a seat. I'll pop the kettle on. Milk? Sugar?"

"Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," says the theoretical physicist in Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Any alien who manages to reach Earth is, by definition, going to be far more advanced than us. Contrary to the claims of our own alien abductees, Hawking thinks it unlikely aliens will come all this way just to prod and poke us, take some samples, and pop back home in time for Show and Tell. Logic dictates that we will be the Stoke to their Chelsea.

It's all well and good Hawking warning us now, but couldn't he have told us to be more careful a few decades ago? After all, we've been pumping out our musings for all to see and hear since the very first radio telecommunications were broadcast a century ago. Any alien with their antennae pointed in our direction would already have quite a good sense of our intellectual capabilities. All they need do is take their pick from any of our cultural offerings being broadcast into the ether. (Let's just hope they didn't tune in when Battlefield Earth was showing, as that paints us in a poor light on so many levels.)

It's good to see that, since the last time I discussed this subject here on Cif, no more "Cosmic Calls" have been transmitted into space by people such as Professor Alexander Zaitsev, the chief scientist at the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, who is a keen promoter of METI (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).

And there's also not been any update or addition to "Principle 8" of the International Astronomical Union's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams, which states:

However, Nasa did beam the Beatles' Across the Universe towards the vicinity of Polaris in 2008, in the hope that an alien would take a sympathetic view of John Lennon's rather hopeful lyric that "Nothing's gonna change my world." (Personally, if I was an alien in possession of a pimped-up laser, I would set it to "destroy" upon hearing a song with the opening line: "Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup.")

Floppy disk finally killed off by Sony

By Harry Wallop
Consumer Affairs Editor
Published: 2:37PM BST
26 Apr 2010

The Japanese electronics manufacturer, which last year sold well over 12 million of the devices, has announced it will stop making floppy disks next year, leaving no serious manufacturer in the market place.

The decision is the final nail in the coffin for floppies, which since they were first developed in 1971 have helped consumers store documents, pictures and data on an easy to use format.

There were 12 million sold in Japan last year. Though this amounts one for every four households in Japan, the combined storage capacity of all these disks, most of which had not much more than 1MB capacity, totalled just 17 terabytes of data.

By 1996, there were an estimated 5 billion floppy disks in use thanks to the fact that most computer programmes up to this point were installed and backed up on these devices.

Maj-Gen Nadeem Ejaz: in the dock for many crimes

Hamid Mir
Monday,
April 26, 2010

For the first time in the history of Pakistan, political leaders from the Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have united against a serving Army officer. They want the government to start investigations against the said Army officer not only on one count but also on many others.

The dubious role of former DG Military Intelligence Major General Nadeem Ejaz was an important unifying factor behind a large consensus between the PPP, the PML-N, the PML-Q and other parties on the 18th Amendment. Nadeem Ejaz was responsible of victimising not only the PPP and the PML-N but also abused his unlimited and unchecked powers against some important leaders of the PML-Q as the DG MI. At one stage in April 2008, he wanted Musharraf to replace General Kayani because Kayani was not ready to involve the Army in safeguarding the political interests of Musharraf but this effort failed.

The former DG MI is accused of kidnapping many political activists not only in Balochistan but also in the Punjab. Nadeem Ejaz once kidnapped not only the security guards of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain but also picked up the brother of a sitting MPA of the PML-Q for settling his personal scores with the then chief minister of the Punjab. Background interactions with leaders of these political parties revealed that notorious Nadeem Ejaz had become a monster in the last days of the Musharraf regime and even after the retirement of Musharraf as Army chief, Nadeem Ejaz was directly reporting to him bypassing new Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

A UN Commission has recently claimed that after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, the crime scene was hosed down actually on the orders of the then DG MI Major General Nadeem Ejaz. The government has constituted a three-member committee to pinpoint the responsibility for hosing down the crime scene on December 27, 2007. Political circles in Islamabad are of the view that the role of Nadeem Ejaz was not limited just in the hosing down the crime scene on December 27. He should be investigated thoroughly because he was directly or indirectly related to many other important events like the assassination of Akbar Bugti in August 2006 and massacre in Karachi on May 12, 2007.

Very few people know that Nadeem Ejaz started his political role in December 1999 when he was a colonel posted in Lahore. He forced many Nawaz Sharif loyalists to leave the PML-N. He blackmailed many PPP leaders to extend their support to the Musharraf regime. A businessman associated with the PPP, Mian Arshad, was grilled and tortured to give information about the secret accounts of Jahangir Badar. Nadeem Ejaz called Mian Arshad many times and asked him to cooperate. When there was no positive result, Main Arshad was arrested and tortured. Late Benazir Bhutto tried her level best to rescue Mian Arshad by writing letters to human rights organisations but Mian Arshad lost his life due to torture in the custody of Army officials.

Nadeem Ejaz personally met PML-N leader Khawaja Saad Rafique in December 1999 and told him to leave Nawaz Sharif. After exchanging hot words with Saad, he contacted his brother Salman Rafique and gave him a warning. When Rafique brothers refused to oblige him, he arrested Saad Rafique along with Javaid Hashmi, Khawaja Hasaan and Aftab Asghar Dar through the Lahore police and ordered that they be tortured. Saad Rafique still remembers that police officials in Model Town police station, Lahore, told him that they were beating him on the orders of Nadeem Ejaz.

One day, Nadeem Ejaz summoned PML-N leader Tehmina Daultana and her late husband Zahid Wahla in camp jail, Lahore, and asked them to stop supporting Begum Kulsoom Nawaz. This meeting was taking place in the office of jail chief. When Javaid Hashmi came back to jail after appearing in an accountability court, he heard Nadeem Ejaz shouting at Tehmina Daultana. Javaid Hashmi was told that this meeting was going on for many hours. He crashed the door of the jail chief’s office and tried to grab Nadeem Ejaz by his neck. According to Javaid Hashmi, “The brave Nadeem Ejaz locked himself in the bathroom of the jail chief and the same night I was blindfolded, my hands were cuffed behind my back and I faced torture for the whole night.”

Another victim of Nadeem Ejaz was Senator Pervez Rashid. This soft-spoken politician was tortured at Sarwar Road police station. Pervez Rashid told this correspondent, “I have no doubt that Nadeem Ejaz was the person behind the worst ever torture I faced in my political life.”

According to police sources, one day Nadeem Ejaz recorded the cries of Pervez Rashid during torture on a small tape recorder and gave lot of money to an Army Subedar as reward who had tortured the senator. Pervez Rashid is sure that Nadeem Ejaz recorded his screams for Musharraf.

For the next few years, he remained posted in Lahore and was promoted as a brigadier there. He became DG of MI in February 2005. He was given the task to win the local bodies elections for the Musharraf loyalists. During the local bodies election of 2005, he developed differences with CM Punjab Pervaiz Elahi. Nadeem Ejaz was supporting Sardar Aqil Umar in one town of Lahore while Pervaiz Elahi was supporting Sardar Kamil Umar. Ultimately, Kamil Umar won the election and Nadeem Ejaz became an enemy of the CM Punjab. One day, the MI kidnapped the real brother of MPA Ilyas Gujar from Kasur, who was very close to Pervez Elahi. Brother of the MPA was released after five days when CM Punjab directly approached Pervez Musharraf for help. That was not the end. After a few days, the MI kidnapped the security guards of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain when they were coming back from the Lahore Airport after dropping Salik Hussain and Moonis Elahi. A military vehicle collided with the jeep of Salik Hussain, who was not present inside. Some of the guards were arrested and tortured. CM Punjab called Nadeem Ejaz and requested to release his people but there was no mercy. Nadeem Ejaz refused to release them and said that they were gangsters and CM’s son Moonis Elahi was the leader of these gangsters. Again it was Musharraf who ordered Nadeem Ejaz to release the security guards of Shujaat.

Mohsin Naqvi

Shahkir Mehrvi

Shakir Mehrvi - I have seen him after 14 year

On reflection

On reflection, I have realized that there are few things which helped me in shaping my current perona…next week; I will share some of those…

Watch this space Kabirwala...

Qamar Raza Shehzad

Qamar Raza Shehzad on Abdul Qadir Qadri Late, he is after 7:00 minutes

Corruption adds extra spice to the IPL

Gethin Chamberlain in Navi Mumbai
The Observer
Sunday 25 April 2010

At 11.20pm last Thursday on a hot night in the DY Patil cricket stadium, all hell was breaking loose. The Deccan Chargers' last batsman had just swept the ball straight into the hands of the Chennai Super Kings' deadliest bowler and the ground erupted.

As the cacophony of sound cranked up another notch, fireworks exploded in the sky above the stadium, across the waters of Thane Creek from Mumbai. The international cricketing superstars hired to represent what used to be Madras were heading for the final of the Indian Premier League and the chance to call themselves champions of what is rapidly becoming the world's most controversial league.

Just another high-octane night in the IPL, now among India's most glamorous, intense spectacles, and a brand worth an estimated £2.7bn.

For Indians the IPL is the Champions League, FA Cup and Premier League title race rolled into one, uniting and dividing hundreds of millions of fans gathered wherever a television can be found, from the depths of the jungles to the highest mountain passes.

But it is becoming increasingly obvious that there is a dark underside to the glamour. Ever more popular, the IPL has fallen prey to the whims of politicians and the vast corporations benefiting from India's rapid transformation into an economic superpower: the plaything of a world riddled with financial skulduggery, allegations of match-fixing and rigged betting, and a unhealthy dose of political revenge.

Even as the last four teams slugged it out over the past week, the IPL threatened to implode after a spectacular row over the bidding for two new franchises cost one of the country's brightest politicians, Shashi Tharoor, his job and then engulfed its own boss, Lalit Modi.

Tharoor, junior foreign minister, an MP for a Kerala constituency and a cricket fan, had been brought in to advise a consortium bidding for one of two new franchises for next season. The London-born former UN diplomat had already racked up an impressive string of gaffes, largely through his fondness for the social networking site Twitter ("Flying cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!" is a typical offering). His western style has made him enemies. And when his consortium secured a 10-year franchise for £216m and deprived some very rich people of the chance of becoming much richer, he became a marked man.

It was Modi, the public face of the IPL, who set the pack on Tharoor. It seems that Modi wanted the franchise to go to another bidder. He started to tweet, naming members of the winning consortium. Among them was Sunanda Pushkar, a Dubai-based businesswoman and reportedly Tharoor's girlfriend, who appeared to have been gifted a £10m stake. However much Tharoor denied it, it looked like a pay-off for securing the deal. He was forced to quit the government.

Modi barely had a moment to savour his victory before he was caught in the backlash. No one reaches ministerial level in India without having powerful friends. With opposition parties claiming the IPL was merely a front for money-laundering and illegal betting, Modi suddenly found the tax authorities breathing down his own neck. They let it be known that they were interested in how a man with a history of failed ventures could suddenly fund a private jet, a yacht and a fleet of Mercedes and BMW cars.

Modi's offices were raided and rumours started to circulate about a cocaine possession charge from his student days, and a South African model. Tomorrow – when the IPL's owner, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, meets to tackle the crisis – he faces the axe, although he has denied all allegations.

Jey pata honda

Jin ko guman tha

Poet: Ali Zaryion
Created by: Urdu Artist

Hon pandh hiati

The Ghost Writer

Last night, I watched The Ghost Writer.

A revealing tale of ghost writer who has been tasked with writing biography of ex-premier has striking resemblances with Tony Blair, and CIA’s influence on global politics. My favorite film in 2010.

The Ghost Writer, Film Review

Hussain Parhna - Hussain Likhna

Hussain Pahna - Hussain Likhna
Late Rahat Hussain Rahat - Kabirwala

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it ...
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,
(For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ...
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man….
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Mark Antony on Julius Ceaser

Depression

Tulambah blog

I am glad to see a blog from Tulambah - Kabirwala

Keep up with the good work:)

Shia ulema council asks govt to step down

QUETTA - Leader of Shia Ulema Council Pakistan Balochistan chapter Allama Ghulam Mehdi Najafi while strongly condemning suicide blast at Civil Hospital Quetta has said that if govt was unable to ensure safety of people than it should step down.

Addressing a Press conference here on Saturday flanked by other religious leaders demanded for immediate probe into the suicide blast through a high-level committee that had claimed life of a journalist and several other innocent people. He said that people had highly appreciated the suo moto notice against incidents of target killings by Chief Justice of Balochistan High Court.

‘We hope that perpetrators of deadly suicide blast would be arrested and brought to justice’, he added.

Ghulam Mehdi Najafi alleged that Quetta was confronted with a grave situation due to terrorist acts while govt had failed to curb the incidents of terrorism. ‘It is the responsibility of the govt to provide protection to its people, otherwise it has no justification to remain in power’, Najafi remarked.

Can anyone tell them that this current regime is impotent and can not save their lives? do they not know that sitting president doesn't want to reveal the names of murderers of his wife? Do they not have the information, that decisions of stepping down are not made in castle of Islam (Pakistan) and are done by our "guardian" of Islam (America)?

They should know that...

Beggars of Kabirwala

I gave him 10 rupees and his shoes were better than mine.
We give them thousands of votes and they spend a better life.

Who is winner in the end?

Us (Common People)
Beggars (as they are)
or Buggers (politicians of Kabirwala)

Mobile telephones more common than toilets in India, UN report finds

More people in India, the world’s second most crowded country, have access to a mobile telephone than to a toilet, according to a set of recommendations released today by United Nations University (UNU) on how to cut the number of people with inadequate sanitation.

“It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, about half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,” said Zafar Adeel, Director of United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health (IWEH), and chair of UN-Water, a coordinating body for water-related work at 27 UN agencies and their partners.

India has some 545 million cell phones, enough to serve about 45 per cent of the population, but only about 366 million people or 31 per cent of the population had access to improved sanitation in 2008.

Read report on UN website

Ullu kay pathay, it’s the president

Zardari has this attitude of insulting and deriding workers as well as the top leaders, sometimes publicly. He runs the presidential affairs as if it was some cricket club or his family-owned Bambino Cinema. He has this habit of calling world leaders and local functionaries directly, something that almost caused the war with India over the alleged call from their foreign minister. Recently, trying to call a minister, Zardari somehow got connected to his PA to whom he said “Ullu kay pathay, it’s the president.”

“The president cannot be so obnoxious; please learn some manners,” responded the PA only to learn later that it was really the president.

PPP Story

Pir Mohsin Qureshi protesting against chaos in Kabirwala

No would question the current chaos due to load-shedding. Here is how Pir Mohsin Qureshi protested on it...

Please follow the link to see the image

Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel Prize winner was born in Kabirwala

According to wikipedia...

Khorana was born in Raipur, (now in Kabirwala Tehsil, Khanewal District), a village in Punjab, British India (now Pakistan).

 Profile at Nobel Prize website
 Khorana's profile at MIT

Kabirwala's Medical Officer among five named and shamed

Fake medical certificates are bing business, and our respected doctors earn a lot of money through this "mean". I was gutted when I heard that a best in health culprit was on medical leave. Give our masiha's 700-1000 rupees and you will get MC. Any "hatta katta" LUNATIC can take bed rest.

According to news Dr. Ashar Masood has been transferred from THQ Hospital Kabirwala and posted at DHQ Hospital Nanankana Sahib. The newspaper says that....

The Health Department, on the report of Enquiry Committee constituted by the Chief Secretary Punjab, has initiated action under disciplinary rules against five medical officers, involved in issuance of illegal medico legal certificates, and immediately transferred them from their present place of posting.

The concerned EDOs (H) have been directed that not to allow these doctors to work on medico legal or forensic science related cases.

Continue reading at

Kabirwala on Facebook

Kabirwala has two groups on Facebook

1st Group is Kabirwala and has 31 members, here they are located at Kabirwala on Facebook

2nd group is also called Kabirwala and has 17 members as of today. Interestingly, the guys have copied images from this blog but have not given any reference. Amazing, See the Kabirwala Group

Back to reality: giving up the internet

Mark Hooper
The Observer

Could you survive for a week without checking your email or looking at the internet? How about no mobile phone and making it two weeks?

So, I called someone up the other day. An acquaintance, of sorts. Someone I've spoken to by email countless times over the past two years, discussing work. Halfway through the conversation, it became obvious that we'd never actually spoken before.

"We must have spoken at some point," I say, a little awkwardly.

"Yes," she says, meaning no. "Maybe, a year ago?" Meaning never.

There's nothing shocking in that. I'm sure you've experienced much the same situation yourself. But surely the fact that it isn't shocking is something we should be shocked by? Why is it acceptable to not actually speak to the people we deal with on a daily basis? Why do we prefer faceless anonymity? Is it cowardice, or mere laziness?

Of course, the stock defence is efficiency. We're so busy, the line goes, that we don't have time for idle chitchat. We live – as we're constantly told – in super-accelerated times. But no one seems to have decided what to do with all this extra speed in our lives, apart from emailing each other amusing YouTube videos. We're so intent on consuming the new that we don't give ourselves the time to properly absorb it, let alone reflect upon it.

Ironically enough, this is something I've been reflecting on a fair bit recently. For a variety of reasons, top of which was an almost perfect alignment of stress-inducing greatest hits (trying to move house while my wife was pregnant, and having to deal with the worry of unexpected complications) I felt the need to slow down a little. And there doesn't seem to be an app for that.

I'm not just being facetious: more and more people appear to be thinking the same thing. Mobile phones have made us permanently contactable; remote emails mean that the work week stretches into the evenings, the weekends and even holidays. Under the barrage of tweets, Facebook invitations and instant messages, it has become almost impossible to switch off. The idealised version of social media is that it is like a river – you can just dip your toe in or you can dive in and get fully and joyously swept along with the current. Increasingly, I felt like I was drowning.

Already, as I discovered while wasting time on the internet, a report by Leeds University has claimed a link between increased internet use and stress. Recent research by Microsoft reveals that 99% of men use the internet every day, 80% would feel lost without it and 18% checked social networks on their phone before they had even got out of bed. Cosmopolitan even found that three out of four teenagers claim to feel stressed if they're not online.

But the internet isn't the problem: it's the people on it. In other words, me. I spend so much time on my laptop that my wife's taken to calling it my "square-headed girlfriend".

So I decided to do something about it. And in true self-help style, my road to redemption began with a single step: I quit Twitter. I'd already been worrying about how easily I let myself get swept up in predictable online flashmobs of moral outrage. For a nanosecond, joining a campaign against a Daily Mail columnist might have seemed like a worthy thing to do. But step away from the stampede of indignation and you realise you're just another one of the dumb cattle they've successfully prodded. And I'm not convinced by the supposed innate liberalism of Twitter – not if a vigilante campaign to out Jamie Bulger killer Jon Venables can become a tweeting trend.

But the tipping point came when someone who I thought I admired started announcing to me in 140 characters or less that Marvin Gaye was overrated. Pathetic, I know, but the mere fact I'd allowed myself to get annoyed by something so petty only hardened my conviction. It was obvious that I was the only one making myself angry. So I decided the best option was not to look, and cancelled my account. And then I just kept going. This need to wipe the slate clean, to de-clutter – or at least de-complicate – my life, took over. I needed a holiday from the world of stuff. So I decided on a very literal form of regressive therapy: I was going to go offline, to see if I could last a week without looking at a website or checking my email; to somehow re-connect by disconnecting.

Symbolically, my iPhone was the next thing to go (partly thanks to a friend's disdainful description of it: "Are those the things I see men stroking like little pets on the tube?"). My constant, portable window to the internet was too much of a temptation to carry round with me if I was to seriously attempt life offline, so I "de-simmed" it. (This is not an easy exercise in itself – you need a paperclip to get the sim card out and, as I discovered, paperclips aren't as abundant as they used to be in pre-digital days.)

If quitting Twitter and ditching the iPhone was relatively easy, Facebook made it as hard as possible, tugging on all the virtual heartstrings they could dredge up from their data. Having selected "deactivate account" from my settings, I was faced with a gallery of family and friends who I was told would miss me. Fortunately, as someone had tagged the contents of a barbecue grill with my friends' names, this was less of an emotional strain than was intended ("Andrew will miss you," pleaded a photo of a forlorn and slightly singed chicken drumstick). To alleviate my worries, I was given a final reminder: "Remember, you can reactivate at any time…" But by then the deed was done.

Next came the hard bit. For this to really work, I shouldn't tell anyone what I was doing. But then again, one of the great things about setting yourself an arbitrary task is that you get to decide on the ground rules, set the parameters and cheat accordingly. So I emailed a friend to explain why he wouldn't be getting any more emails from me for a while. His reply was to the point: "How on earth will you do any work?"

It was a fair question.

So I decided I'd wean myself off. On the first day, I allowed myself to look at my inbox, but not to send any replies. To start off, it was a doddle. I walked around the office and talked to people. I delegated. I rang people up. The first person I called – honestly – rang off with the words, "Thank you so much for calling me." See? Being offline was making me a nicer person already. And it's amazing how quickly misunderstandings can be defused when you put a voice to an anonymous email. For a start, there's no sarcasm font on email, and typing "ha ha!" does have the tendency to make you look a little unhinged.

But I won't pretend it wasn't without its difficulties. As time went by and I got into the habit of checking in with the people I needed to talk to, hopefully pre-empting any electronic conversations, I found ever more subtle pitfalls lying in wait. For instance, I'd never before considered the implied rudeness of talking to someone when you've clearly avoided reading their last email. I soon learned to brazen it out by saying, "Oh sorry, I've not opened my inbox yet."

It wasn't long before another one of those acquaintances-I've-never-met asked, "Don't you have it on in the background all the time?"

"Er, no, I find it easier to just check it occasionally –  otherwise I never get any work done."

"That's a really good idea," they said.

Come to think of it, it is a good idea.

Phantoms that haunt the people return

Neal Ascherson
The Observer
Sunday 11 April 2010

The air crash at Smolensk is more than a tragedy of lives lost, And it is more than a national disaster: the death of a president with his wife and all his retinue. It is also a test of nerve, for all Poles the world over. They are asking themselves: have we truly escaped from the nightmares of Poland's past? Or have the demons returned to surround us once again, those giant bloodstained phantoms who came out of the forest to destroy every Polish generation for two centuries?

For 20 years, since the fall of communism, Poland has lived at peace with its neighbours and the Poles have enjoyed a rising prosperity. At last Poland was becoming the "normal country" it never was before, in the times when its fate was to be invaded by Russian and German armies, and its hope lay in suicidally brave but vain uprisings. That old Poland lived in cycles, a hermetic history of repression, betrayal, resistance and rebellion. Everyone knew a list of dates and places – tragedies, resurrections, noble "Polish January" or piteous "Polish September" – which meant nothing to a foreigner.

So the joy of normality was that all those dates and all their haunting code could at last be forgotten.

But now this. On the way to the mass grave in Katyn forest, where Stalin murdered the military and civil elite of Poland in April 1940, the president of a free Poland dies as his Russian plane crashes into the trees a few miles from Katyn itself. He and his wife and the military, religious and political leaders who came with them intended to honour the Polish dead who lie in that piece of Russian earth. Now they have joined those dead men and become part of that tragedy, precisely 70 years on.

A people whose collective memory has relied so much on mystical coincidence, the sense of a providence sometimes loving but often malign, will be tempted for a moment to think that Katyn will never be over, that Lech Kaczynski and his companions are not just part of the tragedy but part of the crime.

Millions of Poles, hearing this news, will have caught themselves thinking "Gibraltar!" – then made themselves suppress the thought. On 4 July 1943, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, head of the free Polish government in exile, was killed when his plane crashed at Gibraltar. The British said it was an accident. Many Poles, then and now, didn't and don't believe them.

They point out that the crash took place only three months after the Germans discovered the mass graves at Katyn; when Sikorski accused the Soviet Union of the crime, Stalin endangered the whole anti-Hitler alliance by breaking off relations with free Poland. Wasn't it obvious that the British and the Soviets had a common interest in getting rid of Sikorski? And doesn't Vladimir Putin hate and fear outspoken Polish leaders as much as Tsar Nicholas or Stalin had done? And wasn't that what the ex-president, Lech Walesa, meant when he exclaimed yesterday that "this is the second Katyn tragedy; the first time, they tried to cut our head off and now again the elite of our country has perished"?

But it's paranoid nonsense which any Pole can be excused for entertaining for an awful moment – but which then blows away in the fresh air. Smolensk is not Gibraltar. The Russian-built plane was the president's own, not a cunning loan from Moscow. Putin, who uneasily visited Katyn with the Polish prime minister on Wednesday, dislikes Polish aspirations but does not murder foreign heads of state.

Poland today is not cursed by destiny but by a brutal share of bad luck. This weekend it proved it was "a normal country" as the constitutional provisions for electing a new president went smoothly into action.

I knew and liked some of the people who died at Smolensk yesterday. They would not have denied that phantoms still lurk in the forest of Polish imaginations. But they wanted them to stay hidden among the trees.

Polish President killed in plane crash

Saddened schocked with this morning's plane crash in Russia.

The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and his wife were among around 100 people killed when their plane crashed in thick fog on its approach to a regional airport in Russia early this morning. Russia's foreign ministry confirmed the cause of the air catastrophe was bad weather.

"According to provisional information the crash happened because the plane failed to land at the military airport near Smolensk in conditions of severe fog,' one official said. The governor of the west Russian town of Smolensk confirmed there were no survivors from the Tupulov Tu-154 plane, which came down at 11am (7am GMT) about a mile (1.5km) from Smolensk airport.

Lech Kaczynski was elected as Poland's president in 2005 as candidate of the Law and Justice Party. As mayor of Warsaw, he twice banned gay parades and spoke in support of reintroducing the death penalty.

Read full story at
The Guardian
Lech Kaczynski  profile at BBC
Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash wikipedia

Sanath Jayasuriya enters Sri Lakan Parliamnet

According to AFP...

Veteran cricketer Sanath Jayasuriya and Sri Lanka's 1996 World Cup winning skipper Arjuna Ranatunga have won seats in parliament, a local official said Friday.

Jayasuriya contested Thursday's polls for President Mahinda Rajapakse's United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) and left the island a day before voting to play at an Indian tournament.

The 40-year-old batsman and political novice was given special permission to cast his ballot on Wednesday, a day ahead of the nationwide election.

Jayasuriya garnered 74,352 votes to win his seat in the southern district of Matara, an official with the local election commission told AFP.

Jayasuriya retired from Test matches in 2007 to prolong his career in the shorter forms of the game. He has been included in Sri Lanka's squad for the World Twenty20 tournament in the Caribbean from April 30-May 16.

Ranatunga represented the opposition Democratic National Alliance and secured 27,792 votes to enter parliament. He joined politics after retiring from cricket.

If you don't feel like going there, don't go; but do not insult them...

Bush wiping his hand on Clinton's shirt after meeting poor people from Haiti

Before Jannatul Baqi was demolished....

MQM Kabirwala 2

See who is there? and tell me how many of them will stay loyal to Altaf Bhai.

Mosques in firing range

Ever wondered, why Muslims integration in western countries is major issue. It’s due to the imbalance and subtle efforts made by the governments to disappoint and discourage Muslim communities. Sitting in Kabirwala, it wouldn’t look us a big deal but it matters to those directly affected. Developed world educates its population by movies (well, its theory and worth investigating); Take the example of popular American Series 24 where Jack Bauer uses torture and brutal interrogation techniques and somehow they work (or they show us it worked).

News that bothers me is use of replica mosques in firing range in UK. So what they want to convey by doing this? They want to train their troops, yes I know this. But what they really want to achieve? Let’s go to Waziristan, and tribal areas. Mosques were targeted and kids were killed mercilessly. You may ask why they will do it. Answer is simple, if you’re trained on hatred, and by hitting a religious place (replica) doesn’t matter to you, let’s embrace it as you wouldn’t expect anything different from these tyrants. According to BBC...

The chairman of the Bradford Council for Mosques (BCM) said the structures at Catterick should be taken down immediately. The Ministry of Defence said it had "no intention" of causing offence.

Saleem Khan, the chief executive of the BCM, called for the Army to apologise. "The first thing they need to do is remove this straight away," he said. "They do owe apologies to the Muslim community and it is the mind set which needs changing."

There are seven of the structures on the range at Bellerby, which have green domed roofs. Ishtiaq Ahmed of the BCM said that they were undoubtedly meant to resemble mosques.

"The shape of the structures, the colour of the dome - the green dome - symbolizes an Islamic place of worship," he said.

Watch Video at BBC website

Bebo.com goes down

Bebo.com goes down, and here is what went wrong according to The Guardian

The announcement that AOL is likely to close or sell off the social networking site Bebo comes as no surprise to industry watchers, marking the latest in a string of acquisitions that seem to have become the kiss of death for web startups.

Two years after an $850m (£748m) cash deal that surprised even the most optimistic pundits, AOL has said it can no longer fund the social media service and yesterday told employees it would sell the site or close it completely this year.

Bebo's popularity peaked in 2008, at about the time of the sale, but steadily declined as Facebook aggressively expanded its international user base, particularly in the UK.

According to figures from ComScore, Bebo's global unique visitors in February totalled 12.8 million, which was down 45% on February 2009. Facebook had 462 million visitors, MySpace nearly 110 million, and Twitter 69.5 million.

One source close to the company said Bebo had suffered from AOL's strategic changes and a lack of funding that made it impossible for the site to compete with Facebook, which now dominates the social networking market.

The source described Bebo's demise as the inevitable outcome when digital media startups are bought by more established companies. "You set out with a certain strategy and aim for a certain user experience, and they change it," the source said. "They get rid of staff and cut costs, and it still doesn't work. Years go by and the business declines. And it's not unique to Bebo – look at Friends Reunited, Skype, MySpace ..."

Another source described the lack of funding by AOL as critical to Bebo's struggle since it was bought. "Bebo needed investment and engineers. At one point, we had 40 engineers when Facebook had something like 2,000. You can't produce a good product fast enough at that scale. In fact you can't even keep the site running properly."

A dog thinks

Yesterday, On Facebook my friend's status update said...

A dog thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... They must be Gods!

Hamid Karzai accused of drug abuse

The war of words between the former deputy head of the UN mission to Afghanistan and the country's president escalated last night when Peter Galbraith suggested that Hamid Karzai's "mental stability" was in question and that he has a substance abuse problem.

Galbraith, the US diplomat who worked for the UN in Kabul until last year, made his remarks live on US television. His comments come as the White House considers withdrawing an invitation for Karzai to meet Barack Obama in Washington next month.

Galbraith, the former UN deputy special representative in Afghanistan, was responding to allegations first made by Karzai last Thursday that the international community and Galbraith in particular had been responsible for "massive fraud" during last year's disastrous presidential election.

"He's prone to tirades, he can be very emotional, act impulsively," Galbraith said on MSNBC television. "In fact some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan's most profitable exports."

When asked whether he was saying Karzai had a substance abuse problem, Galbraith said there were "reports to that effect".

"This continued tirade raises questions about his mental stability and frankly this has been of concern to diplomats in Kabul."

Read full story at The Guardian

MQM Kabirwala office

Kabirwala now has MQM office. Will this be a fresh start for many seasoned workers or is it another short-term pledge by few turn coats?

I can’t say for sure because local business has always been family affair. Having said that I am intrigued by the effort! Good luck

Indian Maoist Rebels

India's bloody Maoist insurgency began in the remote forests of the state of West Bengal in the late 1960s.

Decades later Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described it as India's "greatest internal security challenge".

Maoists are also known as "Naxalites" because of the violent left-wing uprising in 1967, which began in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari.

Although this was eventually quashed by police, over the years India's Maoists have regrouped and asserted control over vast swathes of land in central and eastern India, establishing a so-called "red corridor".

This spans the states of Jharkand, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh and also reaches into Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka.

The Maoists and affiliated groups are thought to control more than one third of India's 600-odd districts.

And more than 6,000 people have died in the rebels' long fight for communist rule in these states.

Maoist aims

The Maoists' military leader is Koteshwar Rao, otherwise known as Kishenji.

Thousands of rebels are said to swell his guerrilla ranks - estimates vary from 10,000 to 20,000 armed fighters. They are said to get most of their weapons by raiding police bases.

Analysts say the longevity of the Maoist rebellion is partly due to the local support they receive.

The rebels say they are fighting for the rights of indigenous tribespeople and the rural poor who they say have been neglected by governments for decades.

Maoists claim to represent local concerns over land ownership and equitable distribution of resources.

Ultimately they say they want to establish a "communist society" by overthrowing India's "semi-colonial, semi-feudal" form of rule through armed struggle.

Maoist Rebels Profile

Collateral Murder

WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff. Reuters has been trying to obtain the video through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-site, clearly shows the unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded. For further information please visit the special project website www.collateralmurder.com.

Shah Rukh Khan wth Fareed Zakaria

'Diana effect' blamed for war weariness

A "pervasive and resilient culture of pessimism" about the Afghan war back home in Britain is severely undermining troops on the front line, a senior army officer serving in Helmand has warned.

The negativity, reinforced by a maudlin “post-Diana reaction to fatalities”, with public focus on the numbers of British dead, is hindering an “objective analysis of the campaign” and falsely painting an alarmist and defeatist picture, he says. The sight of crowds turning out to see the return of soldiers’ bodies at Wootton Bassett has become a feature of the Afghan conflict. 

There is frustration in the military that there is a lack of appreciation back home about what UK forces are achieving about what UK forces are achieving at great personal risk and in extremely tough circumstances, Lieutenant Colonel Matt Bazeley told The Independent.

The End of the Party

I am reading, "The End of the Party", by Andrew Rawnsley. I am enjoying it; a lot to share from the book, but here is one line which stood out. Just imagine you're in the middle of big launch, campaign and planning & red-tape stops your way.

The military didn't like Gordon Brown's presence there. "When you're fighting a war, you don't want the bean counter sitting in the corner telling you what you can't spend,"said one senior military officer.

The Kandahar warlord who has presidential protection

To the inhabitants of Kandahar City, Ahmed Wali Karzai is a symbol of everything wrong with their home, an emblem of the murky nexus of warlords and criminal syndicates controlling southern Afghanistan's largest city.

In the words of some residents, the half-brother of Afghanistan's president is accused of being a "warlord, a terrorist", a narcotics trafficker, and a contract monopolist. Others won't even mention his name. "I can't tell you anything about this. I'm too scared. Someone might kill me," one resident said.

Pressure on President Hamid Karzai to sack his brother from the provincial council he chairs has led nowhere. Now, as military operations get under way in Kandahar's rural districts – the "cornerstone" of Nato's counterinsurgency campaign – Nato officials hope that they can co-opt Ahmed Wali and the handful of powerbrokers dominating the political landscape here.

"It's very difficult to untangle but what's really fuelling the insurgency is groups being disenfranchised, feeling oppressed by the institutions of state and criminal syndicates," said Mark Sedwill, Nato's top civilian official in Afghanistan. The message was repeated in more than a dozen interviews with Afghan and Nato officials, private citizens, analysts and local journalists. The biggest problem is not the Taliban, it's the gangster oligarchs in charge. Or as Sedwill put it: "I'm not sure whether I'm watching Godfather part 2 or Godfather part 3."

Forget the Corleones, Kandahar's political order revolves around two families: the Sherzai and the Karzai. An uneasy rivalry exists between them, symbolic of a wider tribal jostling between Sherzai's Barakzai tribe and the Popalzai group to which the Karzai family belong.

Both families are allegedly linked to the narco-mafia, criminal gangs and government corruption, although Nato has been unable to provide President Karzai with hard evidence of his brother's alleged involvement in illegal rackets. "Like any mafia organisation the guys who really matter are not the ones you have any evidence against," Mr Sedwill said. Mr Ahmed Wali Karzai denies accusations of corruption

The absence of evidence has done nothing to assuage Ahmed Wali's reputation for squashing opponents and accumulating power. Allegations resurfaced in the New York Times this week, with Western officials claiming he was involved in a host of criminal activities, including money laundering, racketeering and electoral fraud. They also claimed he paid insurgents not to attack his business interests.

Other sources said he oversees a number of armed groups. Residents say that these private armies may be behind the assassinations of provincial officials such as Sitara Achekzai and Yunus Hosseini, whose deaths have been blamed on the Taliban. And as thousands of US troops pour into Kandahar, Ahmed Wali has apparently been seizing land he thinks Nato may want to rent. He already rents a compound outside the city to the CIA and US Special Forces, and helps the agency run a paramilitary strike force. Gul Agha Sherzai, meanwhile, is a former governor of the province. His brother, General Abdul Razziq Sherzai, is one of the two main beneficiaries of contracts on Kandahar airfield, one of Nato's mega-bases. Shunted out of office because of Western concerns about his involvement in the narcotics trade, he has emerged as one of Afghanistan's most important power-brokers.

In his office behind rows of blast barriers, the provincial attorney general, Mohammas Ismael Zia, told The Independent that he often has to drop cases under pressure from members of Kandahar's ruling elite. "Many people call me from parliament, from the governor's office, from the provincial council office, saying 'Release this man, drop that case,'" he said. "I am a weak man. If I don't accept their demands maybe I will get killed. They are threatening me."

"In Kandahar every criminal has a supporter and the supporter wants him released from custody," he said. "There are many warlords in Kandahar City. Don't write their names. If I don't accept their demands, they can make many problems for me. They could kill me or remove me from this job. So sometimes I ignore the rules."

Also complicit in the problem are the police. Tales of policemen springing kidnaps, selling arms to the insurgents and preying on civilians are commonplace. One interviewee told the story of a man who refused to hand over his dog to a police commander, at which point the officers threw him in jail on suspicion of being an insurgent. "The worst people, the addicts, the thieves, the drunkards are in the police," Haji Abdul Karim, a tribal elder said. "The best way for bad men to make money is to join the police." This collapse of the rule of law is one factor driving people towards the Taliban, with their reputation for impartial albeit brutal justice. Balanced against the reputations of the warlord rulers in Kandahar City are those of Taliban commanders like Kaka Abdul Khaliq, who operates in the village of Pashmul, about 25 miles west. Residents said he was well liked and respected. "He treats villagers well because he understands them," said Haji Mohammad Zahir, who knows him.

As gun battles rage in the outlying districts this summer, Nato wants to wage a political campaign in Kandahar City to remove the culture of impunity and provide jobs and security; it's not the Taliban but the power-brokers and crime syndicates there who are to blame for this situation.

Story is published in The Independent

Saleem Akhtar Saleemi

Saleem Akhter Saleemi late was from Tulamba, Kabirwala.

Badial Haideri Picture

Internet is a strange place, browsing around few hours ago; I found Baidal Haideri's picture. No doubt, Baidal was the best poet of Kabirwala.

May Allah Almighty give him peace and forgive him on the day of Judgement, Amen!

Songs of Blood and Sword & My Grumpy old friend

5 hours ago, I mentioned about Fatima Bhutto’s latest book. Early morning as it was, I had one unexpected visitor. Was this Fatima herself, no it was not her. Just go away and fancy her you lunatics She is in India promoting her book.

It was my grumpy old friend who travelled all the way long (i.e. just two streets away from house) to honor me of hosting him a breakfast. He made few points and without any comment, I am sharing them but I will get back to you after I have read the book. I have spent Rs.1395 after all, expansive isn’t it?

Raja Anwar gave a detailed brief about his time with Murtaza Bhutto and mentioned how badly he was treated by the comrade. No body has ever denied his claims; is this attempt to clean Murtaza’s dirt?

Fatima is true heir of Bhutto destiny, and she had the opportunity to lead from the front after Benazir’s demise. Has she (or her mother) done anything to mobilize Jialas? Many of those who had hopes from them feel betrayed. They could have started national movement and many could have followed them.

The book is written in English, Is this for local audience? Where many are poor, most of them can’t read national language. May be she wants to get international fame, and it’s supported by the fact that she is on international tour promoting her book. Her schedule means that she will not be back soon, is this her way of minting money and obviously opportunity to square her accounts with Zardari’s as well?

Fatima Bhutto is an Afghan born Pakistani poetess and writer. She studied at Columbia University, and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. She currently writes columns for The Daily Beast, New Statesman and other publications. What does this introduction tell us, international credentials to lure world market?

Will she be coming back to her own people and make any difference? Or has she chosen her own path? She should have travelled in Pakistan for her book launch, before going abroad. Will Fatima Bhutto come to Kabirwala for her book launch, or she is also about big towns and large ceremonies.

Catholic church seeks forgiveness for sex abuse by priests

Senior Catholic officials today apologised and asked for forgiveness as they sought to repair the damage caused by the sex abuse scandal engulfing the church.

In Austria and Switzerland archbishops and bishops marked the start of Easter by appealing to parishioners to come forward with their allegations, and admitting to past mistakes when dealing with claims.

A spokesman for Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that the international scandal over sex abuse by priests is a "test for him and the church", but the papal response mingled contrition with forthright defiance.

Vatican officials have become increasingly outspoken in their defence of the pope and the Catholic hierarchy's behaviour towards victims and offenders.

Pope asks for forgiveness

Faisal Hashmi

this was captured using mobile phone, the guys could have done better but atleast you have your own poet in his own voice. Enjoy:)

Songs of Blood and Sword

Fatima Bhutto has written a new book, "Songs of Blood and Sword ". According to publisher...

In September 1996, a fourteen-year-old Fatima Bhutto hid in a windowless dressing room, shielding her baby brother while shots rang out in the streets outside the family home in Karachi. This was the evening that her father Murtaza was murdered, along with six of his associates. In December 2007, Benazir Bhutto, Fatima's aunt, and the woman she had publicly accused of ordering her father's murder, was assassinated in Rawalpindi. It was the latest in a long line of tragedies for one of the world's best known political dynasties. "Songs of Blood and Sword" tells the story of a family of rich feudal landlords - the proud descendents of a warrior caste - who became powerbrokers in the newly created state of Pakistan. It is an epic tale full of the romance and legend of feudal life, the glamour and licence of the international political elite and ultimately, the tragedy of four generations of a family defined by a political idealism that would destroy them. The history of this extraordinary family mirrors the tumultuous events of Pakistan itself, and the quest to find the truth behind her father's murder has led Fatima to the heart of her country's volatile political establishment. It is the history of a nation from Partition through the struggle with India over Kashmir, the Cold War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan up to the post 9/11 'War on Terror'. It is also a book about a daughter's love for her father and her search to uncover, and to understand, the truth of his life and death. It is a book about a family and nation riven by murder, corruption, conspiracy and division, written by one who has lived it, in the heart of the storm. "Songs of Blood and Sword" is a book of international significance by a young woman who has already established herself as a brave and passionate campaigner. 

I have ordered my copy; It will be interesting to read Fatima's take on her father's martyrdom:) Shaheed, do I believe in it, lets leave this debate....But wait for my review:(

Binyamin Netanyahu's efforts to heal rift marred as Barack Obama branded 'disaster for Israel'

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, tried to smooth over a breach in relations with the US today, speaking out against unnamed confidants who described Barack Obama as pro-Palestinian and Israel's "greatest disaster".

Netanyahu made his first public comments after a fraught visit to Washington last week, where he held a long but low-key meeting with Obama that ended with significant disagreement.

Israeli reports said the US was pressing Israel to freeze settlement construction in East Jerusalem and to extend a temporary, partial curb on West Bank settlement building. But so far Netanyahu has shown no sign that he will bow to pressure from Washington. One of his most senior cabinet ministers was reported today as saying the US demands were unacceptable and there would be no compromise.

The Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, sparked the premier's anger when it quoted unnamed Netanyahu confidants delivering extraordinary criticisms of the US administration. One said Obama and Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, had "adopted a patently Palestinian line".

"We're talking about something that is diseased and insane," the confidant told the paper. "The situation is catastrophic. We have a problem with a very, very hostile administration. There's never been anything like this before. This president wants to establish the Palestinian state and he wants to give them Jerusalem … You could say Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel, a strategic disaster."

Netanyahu admitted to his cabinet this morning that after his meetings with Obama, although there were some agreements, "there are matters that we have yet to agree on". But he singled out the comments in the Yedioth as "anonymous, unworthy remarks". "Relations between Israel and the US are those between allies and friends and reflect long-standing tradition," Netanyahu said.

In the US, there was a similar effort to ease the rift. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, said the US had a "deep, abiding interest in Israel's security". Despite the low-key nature of the meeting with Netanyahu which ended without a joint statement or customary photographed handshake, Axelrod told CNN: "There was no snub intended. This was a working meeting among friends."

Washington spent much of last year trying to persuade Netanyahu to halt all settlement construction as a prelude to restarting peace talks with the Palestinians for the first time since Israel's war in Gaza. However, Netanyahu agreed only to a partial, 10-month curb of settlement building in the West Bank. That brought initial US praise, but the dispute erupted again earlier this month when Israeli officials approved 1,600 new settler homes in East Jerusalem during a visit by the US vice-president, Joe Biden. That scuppered a programme of indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians that Washington had spent months arranging.Insult that will be remembered...

CIA given details of British Muslim students

By Syma Mohammed and Robert Verkaik

Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Detroit bomb scare.

The disclosure has outraged Muslim groups and students who are not involved in extremism but have been targeted by police and now fear that their names will appear on international terrorist watch lists. So far, the homes of more than 50 of the students have been visited by police officers, but nobody has been arrested. The case has raised concerns about how the police use the data of innocent people and calls into question the heavy-handed treatment of Muslim students by UK security agencies.

Shamefully true, please read the full news