MEMBER BLOG TAG: pakistan
| Friday, May 20, 2011 1:01PM | | | | Reality & hunt for Osama | Tags: George W. Bush, pundits, non-fact-based reality, Tea Party Nation, Judson Phillips, Dan Balz, Washington Post, CIA, Taliban, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Andy Card, Fox News, vigilance, Gen. Richard Myers, FAIR, USA Today, Pentagon, BIn Laden Unit, Michael F. Scheuer, New York Times, Counterterrorism Center, Government Accountability Office, McClatchy, John Yoo, Karl Rove, American Enterprise Institute, National Security Council, Tommy Vietor, Glenn L. Carle, KSM, National Security Archive, perception management, news media
| | | | It’s touching how diligently pundits and politicians of the non-fact-based reality persuasion try to rewrite the record of George W. Bush. For example: Tea Party Nation head Judson Phillips “said that the death of Osama bin Laden happened in spite of President Obama.” (Right Wing Watch 5/2/11) “Bush’s persistence was palpable and set the tone for the intelligence community tasked with bringing bin Laden to justice. (Dan Balz, Washington Post 5/2/11)
To make such statements one must ignore the opportunity before 9/11. “The Bush administration now had in its hands what one participant called ‘the holy grail’ of a three-year quest by the U.S. government – a tool that could kill bin Laden within minutes of finding him. The CIA planned and practiced the operation. But... | | | | | | | Sunday, May 3, 2009 9:21AM | | | | Same-Same, Different-Different | Tags: Nadeem Islam, Nam Le, Fuad Rifka, John Freeman, East-West, poet, translator, novels, short stories, Pakistan, Vietnam, Syria, Lebanon, international literature
| | | Pakistan: the world’s most dangerous country, read American papers.
America: the world’s most dangerous country, read Pakistani papers.
A Pakistani novelist, a Vietnamese short-story writer and a Syrian-born poet/translator spoke with eloquent hope about the idea that, scattered across the globe, we are more alike than we are different. But their conversation shined a spotlight on opposing worldviews that stem from varied cultural, historical and religious backgrounds.
Perhaps the clearest examples of those discordant views during the panel titled “East-West Storytelling” came from Nadeem Aslam, author most recently of The Wasted Vigil, set in Afghanistan, and also of Maps for Lost Lovers, about Pakistani emigrants living in England. He mentioned that he reads here in our newspapers about the most dangerous country... | | | | | | | Friday, May 1, 2009 8:02PM | | | | Tyrants, Bloodshed & A Good Story | Tags: Politics, Aslam, Gstrein, Jongman, Khet Mar, Starnone, novelists, Pakistan, war, Burma, censorship
| | | It’s an issue authors have wrestled with through the ages: what responsibility do they have to respond to the political struggles of their community, their country, their world? The answer suggested during Friday’s panel was: if you can even ask that question, you’re damn lucky.
Award-winning Pakistani-born author Nadeem Aslam (The Wasted Vigil, Maps for Lost Lovers) said for him, ignoring political issues would be impossible. “It is possible in a place like America to live a life with no interest in politics,” he said. “But in some parts of the world, politics is visceral; politics is real. Even if I wanted to, I could not separate my personal life from my political life in the place I come from.”
Even if Americans... | | | | | |
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