On this day, August 16th, in 2000, the Taliban ordered the closing of “widow’s bakeries” in Afghanistan.  Here is a summary of that day’s action from the Feminist Majority Foundation:

In yet another attempt to enforce its brutal system of gender apartheid, the Taliban militia ordered the United Nations to close down bakeries run by Afghan women in Afghanistan's capital city of Kabul. The bakeries employ a number of Afghan women and provide bread at subsidized prices for 7,000 of Kabul's poorest women and their families. When the Taliban militia took power in Kabul in 1996, they banned all women from working, forcing widows to rely on begging and charity in order to survive. Only a few women are allowed to work in the health and state sectors, and the UN had hoped that Kabul's bakeries would be exempt from a recent edict forbidding Afghan women from working for relief and aid organizations.

The closing of the bakeries will affect women who were employed in the bakeries, as well as widows who relied on the subsidized bread for survival. Currently, there are tens of thousands of widows in Kabul as a result of two decades of war, many of whom are not sure what they will do now that bread is no longer available. This new decree comes at a particularly difficult time as the drought in Afghanistan is causing many Afghans to face extreme hunger. Feminist Majority Foundation president Eleanor Smeal stated, "we condemn the Taliban's latest atrocity denying women their livelihood as well as denying food to a nation that is literally starving to death."

Since 1996, when the Taliban militia took control of Kabul, women in areas under Taliban rule have been oppressed by a strict system of gender apartheid, under which they have been stripped of their visibility, voice and mobility. The edicts imposed by the Taliban, which have been brutally enforced, banished most women from the work force, closed schools to girls in cities and expelled women from universities, and prohibited women from leaving their homes unless accompanied by a close male relative. The Feminist Majority Foundation's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan works to fully and permanently restore the human rights of Afghan women and girls.

The Taliban are among the most faithful followers of the teachings of the Qur’an.  Every action they take, including this one,  is consistent with mainstream Islam and sharia.   This contemporary article carefully avoids mention of Islam, Muslims, sharia, or the Qu’ran.  No, it is a “militia” that is imposing “gender apartheid”, drawing an analogy not with the Saudis or Pakistanis, but with the white male racist South African regime.  Feminists remain conspicuously silent about the treatment of women living under sharia.

In any event, under pressure from the powerful U.N., and feminists everywhere, the Taliban reversed their decision the next day, and allowed the bakeries to stay open.  And everyone in Afghanistan lived happily ever after.

Previous Days in the "Religion of Peace™":

Aug 9: Pseudo Coup in Mauritania
Aug 8: Fall of Mazar-i Sharif
Aug 7: Gallipoli: Chunuk Bair
Aug 6: Benazir Bhutto Resigns
Aug 5: Iran Rejects Nuclear Offer
 

"You Take the Highroad" but "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9W6Jwblm_M

Recently, to the embarrassment of Tory leader David Cameron, a Conservative think tank concluded that the north of England has no raison d’être, and northerners should move to the south.

As a northerner who did move to the south, I can see both sides. Lancastrians have never needed a raison d’être or anything else of a French and effeminate nature. Stick your raison d’être on your barm cake and munch it. A cup of tea and a bag of chips are worth all the raisons d’être in the world. That said, I am heading off up north for a short while, and feel it incumbent upon me to bring a touch of metropolitan sophistication into those bemerded northern lives. So I’ve packed a goody bag of fancy French frivol for distribution. It contains the following:

Raison d’être
Esprit d’escalier (I’ll go t’ top of our stairs.)
Nostalgie de la boue (boue bloody hoo)
Ostalgie de la boue (for the clever buggers)
Léger de main (thought I’d slip that one in)
Je ne sais quoi (God knows what that is)
Coup de grâce (a lawnmower)

My load’s getting bigger. At this rate I’ll need to hire a man with a van, or, as the French say, coq au vin.

Onyroad ooop (= be that as it may), very light posting for a bit. Back soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJuLp5oyhGc&feature=related

by Jerry Gordon

AFP (with thanks to Alan):

Turkey and Iran need more time to finalise a  major natural gas deal, President Abdullah Gul said Saturday, playing down reports that US pressure on Turkey to abandon the project is behind the delay.
   
"We would have liked to move ahead with the project" when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with Turkish leaders in Istanbul on Thursday and Friday, said Gul in televised remarks in the central city of Nevsehir.
   
"But we saw that the preparations are not yet sufficient and we instructed our energy ministries to carry out a more detailed work."
   
Ankara signed a preliminary deal with Tehran last year to carry natural gas from Iran and Turkmenistan to Europe and to develop three gas fields in Iran, but its intention to invest in the Islamic republic drew US criticism.
   
"Undoubtedly Turkey has allies... Undoubtedly Turkey differs with Iran on many issues... But we would regret it if some would think that we do things because someone tells us to do so," Gul said.
   
The Turkish press has reported that disagreements over pricing are also snagging the finalisation of the agreement.
   
Ahmadinejad, on a visit to Istanbul, expressed hope Friday that the deal would be concluded soon.
   
The preliminary deal, signed in July 2007, was criticised by Washington, which is pushing its allies -- including NATO member Turkey -- to cut business with Iran as the West threatens new sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme.
   
Iran and Russia are Turkey's main natural gas suppliers.
   
Turkey already buys Iranian gas via a pipeline between the two countries, launched in 2001 despite US discontent.
   
Ahmadinejad's trip to Turkey -- his first-ever bilateral visit to a NATO member country -- drew objections also from Israel, Turkey's main ally in the region.
   
Ankara, which had in the past accused Tehran of seeking to undermine Turkey's secular system, has notably improved ties with its eastern neighbour in the past several years....

From MEMRI: 

Woody Allen (Alan Konigsberg) is quoted in this essay by Lennard Davis (hat tip: Arts & Letters):

I think that had I been better educated, I could write poetry, because a writer of comedy has some of that equipment to begin with. You’re dealing with nuance and ear and meter, and one syllable off in something I write in a gag ruins the laugh. . . . In actual one-liners, there’s something succinct, you do something that you do in poetry. In a very compressed way you express a thought or feeling and it’s dependent on the balancing of words.

Konigsberg points to his famous joke: “I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Of it he notes, “In a compressed way it expresses something, and if you use one word more or less it’s not as good.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlp9RCgA8zo&feature=related

Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Democrat Barack Obama met with billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens today and said the two will address how the country can look past political differences to unify around a comprehensive energy policy.

(...)

Pickens, 80, unveiled a national energy plan last month that relies on domestically produced natural gas to cut U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The campaign for his plan has a $58 million dollar budget that includes cable and radio advertisements.

`Nonpartisan Campaign'

Pickens, in a statement released after today's meeting, said he ``assured Senator Obama that this is a nonpartisan campaign and that I will do everything in my power to work together with leaders who are willing to solve our immense energy problems.'

``Any credible domestic energy policy must reduce our dependence on foreign oil by at least 30 percent in the next 10 years,' Pickens said. Obama, he said, ``was very engaged' in their discussion and ``understands the issues and is interested and excited by the work we are doing.'

Illinois Senator Obama, campaigning in Reno, Nevada, after a week-long vacation, is holding a town-hall meeting today where he will focus on economic issues. He will also stress the economy as he campaigns this week in New Mexico, North Carolina and Florida.

``Everybody knows, if we keep on going on the same track that we're going and we are giving our wealth away, we're funding both sides of the war on terror,' Obama said before meeting with Pickens at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno. ``We're going to be over the long term putting enormous pressure on ordinary families here in America who just aren't going to be able to afford skyrocketing gasoline prices and home heating prices.'

On this day, August 17th, in 1947, Muslim troops and rioters continued their murderous rampage through the countryside surrounding Lahore, Pakistan.  Following the instructions of the holy, holy Qur’an, they killed the non-Muslims wherever they found them.

Here is a summary of the day’s attack by S. Gurbachan Singh Talib, from “Muslim League Attack On Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab” published in 1947 (h/t Gyan):

Apart from the City of Lahore, over the entire district the same tale of horror and destruction was repeated.  Kasur is an important town on the main line to Delhi which runs from Lahore via Ferozepore.

The countryside of Kasur was predominantly Sikh, though the town itself had a large Muslim majority in the population.  When on the 17th August it became known that Kasur was included in Pakistan, the Muslims fell upon non-Muslims.  The one way of escape for non-Muslims from Pakistan into India was closed with Kasur being disturbed.  There was a large massacre of non-Muslims at the Railway Station.  In the city, mohalla after mohalla of Hindus and Sikhs was attacked, and Hindus and Sikhs houses and business premises were set on fire.  Hundreds of Sikhs and Hindus were killed inside the city and its outskirts in two days.  It was possible for some non-Muslims to escape, as the Indian border of Amritsar district was only a few miles distant on Khem Karan side.  Very few could escape towards Ferozepore, as the bridge on the river Sutlej which was on the way, was held by Muslim troops, who shot dead all non-Muslims who approached it.  Huge looting of non-Muslim property occurred.  Schools, cinema houses, shops, factories, nothing was spared.  Curfew was imposed, but as at other places, it only facilitated the task of Muslim goondas.  The Hindus and Sikhs could not come out of their houses, and got murdered or surrounded in flames.

Raiwind, in the District of Lahore, is an important Railway junction, as it is the crossing-point of two main lines-the Lahore-Ferozepore-Delhi line and the Lahore-Multan-Karachi line.  This place was the point at which trains carrying Hindu-Sikh refugees from Lahore, Montgomery, Multan and Sind used to arrive.  Repeated attacks on trains occurred here.  Survivors state that when they arrived at Raiwind they saw hundreds of corpses of Sikhs lying all along the railway track.  Muslim goondas, police and military seldom let a train pass unattacked if it did not have a strong Hindu-Sikh escort.  Especially was this the case up till the middle of September.  It is estimated that after August 15, at least a dozen trains were attacked at Raiwind and thousands of Hindus and Sikhs killed.  No other Railway Station was the scene of so much carnage.  One such train was attacked on the 4th September, in which 300 Hindus and Sikhs were killed.

In the countryside of Lahore the policy, after the 17th August (Announcement of the Award of the Boundary Commission) was to hound out Sikhs and Hindus from their homes en masse.  In all these attacks on villages, the police or military or both would generally lead the attack.  Little quarter was given to such unfortunate people as got into the clutches of these assailants.  Burning of houses, looting of property, murder of men and abduction of women and children-this oft-reported tale was repeated in these village as well.  Men and women scurried for their lives like rats.  It was with the greatest good fortune that some people managed to escape, sometimes through the help of a personal Muslim friend or through such Indian Military as might have happened to reach the area under attack.

Due to the chaos attendant the Partition of India (between Muslim and non-Muslim), it is difficult to get accurate statistics on the number of deaths that occurred.  Estimates range from 500,000 to 1 million to 3.4 million.  Surely India has been one of the biggest, if not the biggest, victim of jihad-related violence, both during the Partition and in the preceding centuries under the rule of various Islamic Sultanates.  The 9/11 attack on NYC and the 7/7 attack on the London Tube, while horrible, pale in comparison to what India has suffered.

Previous Days in the "Religion of Peace™":

Aug 16: Taliban Bans Bakeries
Aug 9: Pseudo Coup in Mauritania
Aug 8: Fall of Mazar-i Sharif
Aug 7: Gallipoli: Chunuk Bair
Aug 6: Benazir Bhutto Resigns