face 2 face with terrorism

Terrorism takes away lives, unfortunately counted in numbers ” 100 dead, 200 injured“. We all stop for a second to see the flashing “news alert” on tv and then move one with our lives.

No one cares that these were 100 living people who are no more alive and who bothers about their loved ones. Loved ones who are living but their life is taken away! Loved ones who are so suddenly snatched away from them! They are emotionally shaken and worries of an insecure future (for women) do not let them mourn in a poor country.

200 injured gives a little relief and we thank Allah that these precious lives are saved but in what condition are they? Without a limb? half blown up? injuried all over? which may take months and thousands of rupees to heal. Who will support their families in the mean time? Who will pay for their medical expenses?

People who come face to face with terrorism, either they have lost someone or are physically injured go through mental turmoil. I just read the feelings of a husband who lost his wife in suicide bombing in the United Nations World Food Program country office in Islamabad. I am speechless….

He writes….

Reality (by Tahir Wadood Malik)

the call called me out
and i ran.
a scene of chaos
before me i saw
no one familiar
no one known
pell-mell running feet
stopping all from going in.

a hand held my arm
i looked at a face
worn and sad
she is taken from here
to the medical centre
or the hospital
hurry sir
he said.

i turned and ran
the medical centre was near,
first there i thought
and walked briskly
a voice called out
i turned
the medical centre sir
she is taken there.

a hop and i was there
running to the steps up
when another voice called
sir here
turning i saw him pointing
he came close and said
be strong sir
and turned his face.

down the slope i went,
entering a small room,
packed full with people
smelling of antiseptic,
gurneys covered in white sheets
a doctor looked at me
i took your name.

she looked at me
sad and sorry
pointing to the nearest
white sheet, she walked to it.
i stood as if riveted to the floor
is she gone i asked
she nodded,
and held the corner of the sheet.

leaden feet one after the other
just three steps
to see your face
drained of life’s color
the smile gone
nothing to give me hope.
just an endless dark tunnel,
with no light at the end.

you had left the world
you had left me, who you said
was your world,
i was left
without a thought
without any idea of next.
looking at your white face
closed eyes, look at me i said.

did you smile?
did you know i was standing there?
did you feel the tear
that fell on your cheek?
did you feel my hand on your face?
could you feel my willing you to wake?
or was it all cold, all dark,
and finished for you?

i stood there,
suddenly tired and racked with sobs
no one to hold me
no one to console me
no one to say hush
all alone.
not even you to say i am here.
together we will overcome.

and then the haze
people coming and going
a leg lay on the table next to you
supposedly of the bomber
people came and looked at it
no one bothered about us
but that leg was it for all then.
and i was frozen in pain, anger and angst.

ormalities
ambulance ride
people gathering
crying.
wailing
intruding in my feelings
despair, grief, anger,
and a loss infinite.

rituals,
more people,
waiting for the inevitable
arrivals
more and more
but where in all this are you?
lying cold and unconcerned in a bed
draped in a white coffin

i looked at you
wanting you to smile
wanting you to open your eyes
desperation
wishing for the noise of the wails
beating chests and prayers
to wake you
from the depth of death.

but your face
serene, calm
without worries at last
fresh like the morning dew
not even lines of any hue
eyes closed,
even the white cloth,
pale against your skin.

and they came also
who had not come before
all standing
some silent
some crying
all sad
all lost
no words no actions enough.

and then it was time
picking you up
one on each of the four posts
reciting the oneness of god
who had taken you from me
so cruelly,
still being exalted and called to succor,
knowing i had but to suffer.

and then the prayers,
and a ride to the last resting place
a pit dark and dreary
i shuddered
you would hold my arm
even to step a step up
and this was so much down!
how could i hold you now?

and it was all over
dust to dust
prayers
consoling words
a dirge
another prayer
dispersal
how could i leave you?

but i did leave you
alone
in a pit covered with fresh dug soil
put on there with my own hands
my prayers mixed with the rest
a feel of death, a pain, a void,
in my heart
where you lived.

and food was served
people forgot death
food, the source of life
for the living was being taken
no one bothered to say
sorry
the food was important
my loss was reality and not.

and then they left
leaving me to my self
my thoughts
my feelings
my emptiness
my fight with my god
my forlornness
and my grief

and good too that was
for there was too much
going on in me
fears
feelings
remorse
thoughts
nostalgia

and the night passed
just as you had passed from this
to another world
just as i had passed
from a happy man
to a sad being
wondering why
this had come to pass?

but then life reared its head
wanting to extract its pound of flesh
not wanting to wait for the next
but wanting me not to rest
and i shrugged
and i looked
and i picked up the shackles of life
and i went to put my shoulder to the plough.

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Sasha Obama

Even if they live in White House, children are  innocent and independent!

Sasha taking a rare view of dad, working!

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hijab

The nation has heard plenty of debate over racial profiling. But there’s a form of religious profiling that some young Muslim women in America say they endure whenever they voluntarily wear the hijab. The hijab, also known as the veil, is the headscarf worn by Muslim women around the globe. It’s a simple piece of cloth, but it can place young Muslim women in Western countries in difficult situations.
She doesn’t want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she’s been degraded by her father. What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn’t wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive.
“It represents beauty to me,” says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey. “My mom says a girl is like a jewel,” Abdelaziz says. “When you have something precious, you usually hide it. You want to make sure you keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found.”
Some hijab-wearers say that strangers treat them as if they’re terrorists. Others ask them if they’re a nun — or even allergic to the sun. In some cases, their worst critics are not Americans, but fellow Muslim Americans. The pressure on Muslim teenagers in the U.S. who wear the hijab may be even more acute. Their challenge: How do I fit in when I wear something that makes me stand out?
Randa Abdel-Fattah, who has written two novels about this question, says wearing the hijab can “exhaust” some young Muslim women in the West. “You can sometimes feel like you’re in a zoo: locked in the cage of other people’s stereotypes, prejudices and judgments, on parade to be analyzed, deconstructed and reconstructed,” says Abdel-Fattah, a Muslim who has Palestinian and Egyptian parents but was born in Australia. Abdel-Fattah says people should not assume that Muslim women who wear the hijab are being controlled by men. She, too, struggled with the choice of wearing a hijab when she was a teenager.
“When it comes to the hijab — why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it — there is theology and then there is practice and there is huge diversity in both,” says Abdel-Fattah, author of “Does My Head Look Big in This?”
The surprising history behind the hijab
Some women say the hijab makes them feel like they’re locked in a cage. But others say it leads to personal freedom.
Sarah Hekmati first wore the hijab at age 15 growing up in Detroit, Michigan. She is the daughter of Iranian parents who left Iran in 1979 during the Islamic revolution. Hekmati says the hijab liberated her from some teenage angst: Does my hair look good? Am I cute enough? Should I lose weight? “It gave me a sense of identity,” she says. “I really liked the purpose behind the hijab — a woman covering herself so that a man should know her for her mind, not her body.”
That purpose can be traced back to the Quran, Islam’s holy text, which encourages women to dress modestly, says Faegheh Shirazi, author of “The Veil Unveiled.” Some Muslims take the Quran’s advice as a command for women to wear the hijab, while others disagree, she says. “The Quran is very ambiguous about whether you have to wear the veil or not,” Shirazi says.
The hijab, however, actually predates Islam, Shirazi explains. The first known reference to veiling (Shirazi uses the term hijab and veil interchangeably) was made in an Assyrian legal text in the 13th century B.C., Shirazi says.
In the Assyrian, and later, the Roman and Byzantine empires, the veil was a symbol of prestige and status, she says. By the 12th century, the veil had been imposed on women in the Muslim world to exclude them from public life, Shirazi says. “A sign of distinction had been transformed into a sign of exclusion,” she writes in her book. People are still debating the meaning of the hijab today.
In 2007, British Muslim groups protested when schools were given the right to ban students from wearing full-face veils. In 2008, Turkey’s top court upheld a ban on wearing Muslim headscarves at the country’s universities. That same year, a Muslim woman was briefly jailed at a suburban Atlanta, Georgia, courthouse after refusing to remove her hijab in court.
Some moms against hijab wearing
The debate over the hijab can literally hit home for some young Muslim women. Those that wear the hijab in the United States can befuddle their mothers, who often immigrated to the West so they could be free from wearing the hijab and other rules imposed on women.
That’s what happened to Hekmati, the Muslim-American from Detroit. Her mother, Behnaz, was puzzled by her daughter’s decision to wear the hijab. Behnaz Hekmati grew up in Iran, where she did not wear the hijab. Young women who attended college in Iran like she did generally didn’t wear the hijab, she says.
Behnaz Hekmati warned her daughter that wearing the hijab would arouse the suspicion of Americans. “I said Sarah, when you cover your head here the people think you are political — they see you differently,” Behnaz Hekmati says. Most of the trouble, though, came from Iranian-Americans, who came to the United States to escape the Islamic fundamentalists who seized power in 1979, she says.
“The Iranians here bother her more than Americans,” Behnaz Hekmati says. “They say, ‘We got rid of you guys. We came here because we didn’t want to see you guys anymore.’” Hekmati was more concerned as a teenager about more personal issues, like her relations with boys. The hijab made it more difficult, she says. Few asked her on dates. Guys always seemed to put her in the “friend category.” She wondered if she was attractive.
“I wondered at times: Am I always going to be a guy’s friend and nothing more.” Strangers in public saw her as something else — a subjugated woman. They looked at her with pity, she says. Some were just baffled. “One guy asked me if I was allergic to the sun,” Hekmati says.
Abdelaziz, the New Jersey high school senior, also had her tense public encounters: angry looks, people feeling sorry for her or assuming her father ordered her to wear the hijab. “It’s not oppression; it’s not that I’m accepting degradation — it’s about self-respect,” she says. But it’s more about faith as well. She says the hijab affirms “Islam in the most respectful and purified way.”
“When you actually wear it, it opens your eyes,” she says. “It makes you want to explore your religious faith.” At times, Abdelaziz says she wonders what it would be like to attend her prom, get a tan at the beach and have a boyfriend. But she says her decision to honor her faith is already paying off. “It really feels good,” she says. “It felt like I was missing something and now I’m complete. I finally understand my purpose.”

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ethopia famine

There are  iftar and dinner offers of various hotels and resturants all over Islamabad . These normally range from minimum Rs 400 to Rs 900 per head. Which means one person will eat one meal worth this much. We have so many poor people in our country and we all have had atleast a few chances to witness these iftar buffets. We know how much food is wasted and thrown away. People fill their plates and leave them and refill the next plate! Do they really think what they are doing? I know they have a logic that we paid so much, so we have a right to waste. I do not agree with them if they have paid that much still they should know how many hungry souls could be fed with that. We as muslims will be asked for our ignorance and selfishness.

Have a look at this Independent report and count your blessings. And by the way do not consume so much sugar. Less than half a tea spoon in one cup of tea is enough for me to survive in day. This sugar shortage has more to do with our food insecurity and personal hoarding by the people now. Anyway let me get back to this….

Millions facing famine in Ethiopia as rains fail
International aid agencies fear that the levels of death and starvation last seen 24 years ago, are set to return to the Horn of Africa. Paul Rodgers reports.

The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world’s pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country’s worst food crisis for decades.

Estimates of the number of people who need emergency food aid have risen steadily this year from 4.9 million in January to 5.3 million in May and 6.2 million in June. Another 7.5 million are getting aid in return for work on community projects, as part of the National Productive Safety Net Program for people whose food supplies are chronically insecure, bringing the total being fed to 13.7 million.

Donor countries provided sustenance to 12 million Ethiopians last year, more than half of it through the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP). Having passed that total only eight months into this year, and with the main harvest already in doubt, aid agencies fear the worst is still to come. “We’re extremely worried,” said Howard Taylor, who heads the Department for International Development’s office in Ethiopia. DfID has given £54m in aid to the country this year, and Britain has also contributed through the EU. “This is exactly the time when we shouldn’t turn away from the people in need,” he said. Read more

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Muntazar al-Zaidi

The Iraqi journalist jailed after hurling his shoes at former President George W. Bush, will be released next month after his sentence was reduced for good behaviour.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s act during Bush’s last visit to Iraq as President turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world, amid growing anger at the 2003 invasion. He did not use a weapon nor did he try to kill Mr Bush still he was sent to prison. He should get a hero’s welcome now. What he did was enough to show the frustration of the people and countries invaded by US.

He has been in custody since the outburst on December 14 last year during a Bush news conference. The President was forced to duck for cover as the journalist shouted in Arabic: ‘This is your farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.’

His lawyer, Karim al-Shujairi, said: ‘His release will be a victory for the free and honourable Iraqi media.’ Yes it is a vistory but I hope people of Iraq and Afghanistan get real freedom too. Freedom from the American chosen local leaders too. People of Pakistan are are equal victim of this war. Come and live in Pakistan now and compare it with post 9/11 Pakistan you will be amazed. Houses are gaurded, cantonments are locked, diplomats have forts and streets have blockages at every few meters. Who made life miserable for us in Pakistan???

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Siraj Bibi

I read about 119 year old Siraj Bibi( in Dawn) and thought we have our lives so complicated. She loves to work and tries to keep others happy. These two simple rules of life have kept her happy for all these years. And we strive for our own comfort and happiness. Can we get back to those simple times again. We can only dream of being 119 years old (Mashallah) and that too with an active life style. I wish and pray for Siraj Bibi’s life and health.

SIALKOT: Hard work and iron will are the secrets of the ‘successful life’ of Siraj Bibi, a 119-year-old resident of border-area Kingra village, who still loves to do her chores with her own hands.

‘The will to work instills energy in my body and I remain active even at this age,’ she told this correspondent. ‘I get up early in the morning, sweep the courtyard of my house, cut fodder for cattle and do many more things.’

All these chores, she said, had become an integral part of her life. ‘The idea of sitting idle even at this age seems like waiting for death,’ said Siraj Bibi who also serves meals to her family.

‘The secret of my happiness is that I have always tried to make others happy. After saying ‘Fajr’ prayers, I visit the only market in the village and kiss the foreheads of the shopkeepers as if they all are my sons — my dear ones.’

She has memories of the British Raj days which, according to her, were good in terms of safety. ‘Life and property of every one was safe in those days,’ she said.

Siraj Bibi was born in 1890 at the house of Laldin in the neighbouring Occupied Jammu & Kashmir’s Chimneywali village. She recalled the painful memories of her five brothers and their wives being killed by the Sikhs at the time of partition.

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Atiqa Odho

I would like to add one more beautiful and amazingly accoumplished lady of Pakistan to the list of  ”Beautiful, Ageless Women.”

Atiqa Odho:Actress/host

I remember her playing a stunning middle class wife in PTV play “Nijjaat”. She played the role impressivley. Now after so many years we  see her taking interviews of the top personalities of Pakistan. Her ability to ask the right question at he right time and that too in a lively manner made the show popular at Geo tv. The sparkle in her beautiful eyes and the glow on the pretty face hasn’t changed a bit. She is a successful enterprenuer and owns “Odho Cosmetics”.

Beautiful, Ageless Women

Ageing gracefully is one thing but the new age ‘ageing gracefully’ as far as women are concerned, is not ageing at all. Instep takes a look at five beautiful and stylish women around us who have managed to defy time. The candles on their birthday cake may sing another story, but there are no tell tale signs as far as their looks are concerned. They are an inspiration…

Zeba Bakhtiar

Zeba Bakhtiar: Actress

Who could have forgotten the rosy cheeked and youthful Zeba Bakhtiar from Randhir Kapoor’s Rishi Kapoor starrer Henna or the Syed Noor film and Adnan Sami starrer Sargam? She was vibrant and beautiful in all senses of the word. But if you have forgotten what she looked like back then, it’s not a problem because she looks exactly the same today. Zeba is just as ethereally pretty and her calm disposition reflects very well on her creaseless, ageless skin. Zeba has gone through personal ups and downs in her personal life – her marriage to Adnan Sami Khan, the long drawn out divorce and custody battle for their son Azaan that followed – but none of it shows as far as her looks are concerned. The Quetta born Baluchi beauty is certainly someone to look up to.

Reema

Reema: Actress

Reema’s come a long, long way since she stepped out in her debut film Bulandi as a fresh faced Lollywood actress to today, when she’s a director of two films, a Lux girl and a Pakistani icon in her own right. And while she’s committed some terrible, terrible fashion and style crimes along the way – most of which can be attributed to the inherently low budgets Bollywood films have – Reema now looks drop-dead gorgeous. At the Lux Style Awards last year, her flawless makeup and jewellery free look won her a definite ‘thumbs up’ from the style police (c’mon, there’s a mental style police officer in everyone’s head!). She looks the same in her current advertisement for Lux (styled by Nabila) and even in her appearances on television shows. She has finally fit into the part of a movie star and honestly, can you even guess now how old she is? It really is a remarkable 180-degree turn!

Babra

Babra Sharif: Actress

Everytime we look at images of Babra Sharif, we’re left astounded: how does this ‘80s icon look so very, very young?She is the ageless queen, whose versatility on the small and silver screen has never gone unnoticed. She knows how to carry herself, whether it is a sizzler performance at the Lux Style Awards (2005), countless style shoots that create fantastical memories or her rare but striking appearances.

Babra Sharif is no stranger to the spotlight but as her years have increased, she has gotten more stunning and that too without a hint of narcissism – a quality that never fails to impress. Unlike Lollywood divas, Babra tends to stay away and when she does return, it is always on a spectacular note. This woman can defy age like no other.

Maaheen Khan

Maheen Khan: Designer

Maheen Khan is a one-woman guide for how to dress in an age-appropriate yet alluring manner: except as the years have gone by, it’s been harder to tell just how old Maheen is! She still looks absolutely fantastic, and is always the epitome of understated elegance. In her signature black and white wardrobe and pixie haircut, Maheen Khan proves why growing older doesn’t have to equal to letting go of yourself and looking frumpy. She’s truly defying age and no one can deny it: which is why she walked away with the Best Dressed Woman nod at the recent TRC/Ensemble show. May we all age so very gracefully!

Samina Peerzada

Samina Peerzada: Actress/Director

Director, actress and a film star like no other, Samina Peerzada never fails to turn heads, whether via Rafi Peer festivals, her public voice on issues of women, her appearance and vocal support for Karafilm Festival or just her love for all things films and theatre. But that isn’t the only attractive quality about Samina. She is forthcoming and she carries a signature that suits her and is enchanting all the same. She has made films in an industry where survival is always a struggle but Samina has challenged and done the unpredictable. And for that unfaltering spirit, irrespective of the years, Samina Peerzada continues to be an age-defying icon.

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Shireen M Mazari

Obama is certainly stretching his global goodwill to its limits. After critiquing the US invasion of Iraq when out of power, he has upped the military ante with the surge in Afghanistan; refocused on the military centric approach in Pakistan with a massive increase in drone attacks against Pakistani civilians (just so much “collateral damage” for the US of course) on the one hand, and with the successful goading of the Pakistan military through the Zardari nexus into FATA where the quagmire is already unfolding in the terrible deaths of our soldiers and innocent civilians while the terrorism issue shows no signs of abating. Pakistan has come out the worst in Obama’s policies especially in terms of the growing intrusiveness the US is acquiring in our daily lives with US inspectors now promising to hover in all our bureaucracies to see that the “aid” they are giving is spent as they see fit not to mention the $.9 billion that will immediately go back to the US for the rebuilding of its embassy in a more imperial design.

However, it is not just Pakistan that is suffering from what is effectively a right-wing Obama agenda. Now Obama has teamed up with Russia to fool the world in terms of nuclear disarmament. The US and Russian leaders declared in a grand fashion that they have agreed to reduce their existing nuclear stockpiles but failed to tell the world that most of these reductions would be of redundant weapons which will create space for the new ones. After all, neither side avowed to stop adding to their arsenals!

An even more dangerous development has been the gradual taking over of critical international institutions by the US and its preferred personnel. We first saw the UN effectively become a tool in US hands with the Secretary-Generalship going to South Korea’s Ban Ki Moon a look at the UN record post the Moon takeover will be self-explanatory. Now we have seen the IAEA once again coming under the US and its allies’ control with the election of Japan’s Ambassador Yukiya Amano by the IAEA BoG followed by his formal appointment by the BoG. Now the General Conference will confirm this appointment later in September. This election of Amano is unfortunate since the strong positions taken by the present DG, El Baradei stand threatened as the Japanese have always gone along with US positions something Baradei did not do and therefore fell afoul of this super power. Competing with Amano was South Africa’s Abdul Samad Minty a respected and strong diplomat, which is why the US had nightmares. Till the last ballot, the stalemate persisted but in the end one vote changed it all and the Indian media has been agog with how their last minute reversal to an abstention allowed Amano to win. No one will ever know but having seen Minty in action two years ago, he would have been the more desirable strong man to follow Baradei and maintain IAEA’s independent positioning on issues like Iran.

So now the US has won back control of the UN and IAEA. Apparently, the US is already using the Japanese to wield pressure where it cannot do so itself too overtly. In this connection, recently a Japanese team visited Pakistan demanding access to Dr Khan but were not successful. Now with Amano at the helm at the IAEA, what sort of Japanese pressure will we see vis a vis Pakistan? Perhaps it is time we drew more attention to Japan’s massive civil nuclear programme and its controversial reprocessing agenda.

Nor is this all in terms of US seeking to implement its nuclear agenda globally. It has got things moving again at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on the Fissile Material Cut off Treaty (FMCT). Perhaps after what happened at the IAEA on the Indian safeguards agreement, we should not be surprised to find that our highly competent head diplomat in Geneva also buckled under (or was made to) and accepted the US-pushed programme of work for the CD. This does not specifically include the issue of existing nuclear stockpiles in relation to the FMCT so has Pakistan shifted its position to its permanent disadvantage under US pressure once again? Also, while the programme of work has identified four issues FMCT, Nuclear Disarmament, PAROS (Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space) and Negative Security Guarantees by delinking these issues the attempt is clearly to move on the FMCT without conditionalities relating to the other three issues. This is again a major shift because many states including China wanted linkages between the FMCT and PAROS for instance. Now it would appear that the US will again move on the FMCT as it did on the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the UN in the sixties. When states like Pakistan had raised issues of negative and positive security guarantees to be linked to the NPT, the US insisted that first the NPT should be approved and then the security guarantee issues could be dealt with. The result was that the Conference on the security guarantees followed the passage of the NPT and the US was not prepared to even provide negative security assurances in any form whatsoever to non-nuclear weapons states. For Pakistan all these issues, and none more so than the issue of reduction of existing stockpiles of fissile material, are very crucial in the context of the FMCT and even if we have to go it alone we should, because otherwise we will be at a permanent disadvantage. But the way things are unfolding it appears we may have made some fatal compromises already in this regard.

It is in this overall context of the US pushing its nuclear agenda globally that we must raise our voices of concern over what seems to have become a covert official US policy to allow Israel to deal with Iran’s nuclear facilities. Most recently Biden (New York Times) stated that the US would not “stand in Israel’s way” if it sought to take action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. It was amusing to hear Biden talk of Israel being a “sovereign” state taking its own decisions! Now when did the US ever respect any state’s sovereignty as we in Pakistan have continuously experienced and still do so! Be that as it may, the Biden statement was threatening because it came alongside a 5th July 2009 Sunday Times story that Israel’s Mossad chief had informed his prime minister of Saudi Arabia’s assurance to him that it would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over Saudi air space to conduct attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Early this year it had also been reported that the Mossad Chief, Dagan, had met Saudi officials.

So a new and threatening pattern is emerging even as Obama seeks to woo the world with what is now becoming his glibness rather than a serious intent to alter the course of US policies on security issues. Is it a mere coincidence that we are now seeing unprecedented violence breaking out in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi? We know that the East Turkmenistan Movement still has its offices in New York. So what is the US intent? To send a hostile message to China? What exactly is the Obama administration up to? Is it all a matter of old wine in new bottles rather than any major shift away from a neoimperialist mindset that has been the hallmark of US global policies for some time now?

Too bad. So many had expected so much from Obama the thinking, intelligent and more world-sensitive US president. But what we are seeing around our part of the world is more of the same with the new veneer eroding fast. More force; more aggression; more dictation. Just as our leaders crumble once again before the US demands, the US leadership offers little that will compel us to alter our perception of a neoimperial power set on a military-centric course for this part of the world. As before, this course will bring them to ruin but must we go down the same suicidal path? Courtesy The news

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Virtual life has some very interesting benefits like if you are talking to someone and you wish to discontinue then just close the window. And we all know the magic of “delete”. This is something I always wanted to have in real life to delete some decisions, some days of life, some words spoken which may have hurt others….but our words always stay in the memories of other people.

Now I know that it is not very easy to delete things from the internet too. In fact, it is said that there is no such thing as “delete” on internet!

User photographs can still be found on many social networking sites even after people have deleted them, Cambridge University researchers have said.

They put photos on 16 popular websites – noting the web addresses(URL) where the images were stored – and deleted them. The team said it was able to find them on seven sites – including

Facebook – using the direct addresses, even after the photos appeared to have gone. Facebook says deleted photos are removed from its servers “immediately”.

To perform their experiment, the researchers uploaded photos to each of the sites, then deleted them, but kept a note of direct URLs to the photos from the sites’ content delivery networks. When they checked 30 days later, these links continued to work for seven of the sites even though a typical user might think the photos had been removed.

Why do “deleted” photos stick around so long? The problem relates to the way data is stored on large websites: While your personal computer only keeps one copy of a file, large-scale services like Facebook rely on what are called content delivery networks to manage data and distribution. It’s a complex system wherein data is copied to multiple intermediate devices, usually to speed up access to files when millions of people are trying to access the service simultaneously. (Yahoo! Tech is served by dozens of servers, for example.) But because changes aren’t reflected across the CDN immediately, ghost copies of files tend to linger for days or weeks.
n the case of Facebook, the company says data may hang around until the URL in question is reused, which is usually “after a short period of time.” Though obviously that time can vary considerably.
Of course, once a photo escapes from the walled garden of a social network like Facebook, the chances of deleting it permanently fall even further. facebook defends

Google’s caching system is remarkably efficient at archiving copies of web content, long after it’s removed from the web. Anyone who’s ever used Google Image Search can likely tell you a story about clicking on a thumbnail image, only to find that the image has been deleted from the website in question — yet the thumbnail remains on Google for months. And then there are services like the Wayback Machine, which copy entire websites for posterity, archiving data and pictures forever.

Courtesy -Yahoo tech news

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Computers, Miscellaneous, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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