Chowraha

When I sat with Saba Hameed last summer, our meeting which was supposed to last an hour turned into a day’s event. Our conversation which ranged from poetry to politics, and wealth (or the lack of it) to education was more fruitful than many conversations I have engaged in with people I may meet every day of my life. The confidence in her face, the calmness in her smile and the glimmer in her eyes was stronger than that I had ever seen before and yet deep down I was not sure where fate would take her next. Given the limited opportunities she had being born in a farmer’s family in a small conservative village of Punjab , I could only wish that her intelligence and spark for life would meet its rewards. When a month later I learned of her results in grade 12 th , I had tears of joy, rather elation, in my eyes. My anxiety for her and the girls of her community had been turned wrong. Saba had secured third position in her board examinations all across Punjab . Saba had proved that her ...

In 2006, Israeli indiscriminate use of several million cluster bombs against Lebanese civilian population raised much outcry across the world. Most of these were fired in the last seventy two hours of the conflict. UN officials estimates claim that southern Lebanon is saturated with 1 million unexploded bomblets, far outnumbering the 650,000 people living in the impoverished region of Southern Lebanon . This devastation against humanity, which led to many Lebanese wounded, homeless or dead, galvanized much public and diplomatic opinion. Cluster bombs are volatile explosives dispersed in tens and hundreds of lethal bomblets over a wide area either via aircraft or in a land-based system via rockets. Many of these bomblets do not even explode on impact, hence remaining fatal for the civilian population, particularly for the children who may mistake these lethal explosives for innocent toys. Michael Slackman of International Herald Tribune, when speaking of the Israeli usage of cluste...

"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it -- at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice." Mumia Abu-Jamal

My freshman cousin made this video for her college in Washington DC - do watch it!