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Sunday,
February 16, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Global anti-war protests held
Dolly’s death warning on human cloning Death edict on Rushdie renewed WINDOW ON PAKISTAN |
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Global anti-war protests held
London, February 15 The first demonstrations began in Asia but the biggest were expected to take place in Britain, Germany, Italy and France. Several thousand people demonstrated in the Middle East in support of Iraq after Muslim prayers on Friday, setting the scene for the weekend protests worldwide. The protests follow yesterday’s crucial meeting of the 15-nation United Nations Security Council, at which only Britain and Spain supported the US assertion that Iraq was continuing to defy demands to disarm and should face war. New Zealand kicked off the global protests with around 14,000 demonstrators protesting in Wellington and Auckland. Another 3,000 persons took to the streets of Canberra in one of the biggest rallies ever seen in the capital of Australia, the only country apart from Britain to have sent forces to the Gulf to join the US military build-up in preparation for war against Iraq. More than 100,000 persons protested in Melbourne yesterday and an even larger gathering is expected to take place in Sydney tomorrow which organisers predict will be the largest seen in Australia since the early 1970s. More than 20 anti-war groups were expected to protest in Tokyo, amid fears the Japanese government would change the country’s post-World War II constitution, which bans the use of force in settling international disputes. Several hundred people demonstrated in Hong Kong and rallies were also due to be held in many other major Asian cities, including Tokyo, Dhaka, Taiwan and Nepal. In Iraq itself, two massive anti-war demonstrations filed the streets of Baghdad, with many protesters carrying guns. Official figures put the number of protesters at one million. Reporters estimated the turnout at several hundred thousand. Further anti-war protests in the Middle East were due to take place in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the Palestinian Territories and Israel. Thousands of South Africans, including three government ministers, lined the streets of Cape Town today, one of four protests planned across the country. Protesters carried placards saying "Bombs kill babies" and "There’s a terrorist behind every Bush". In Europe, people were gathering for mass anti-war demonstrations today in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, Greece, Croatia and Iraq’s neighbour, Turkey. British anti-war activists were expecting more than 500,000 persons to turn out for a London march which they hoped would be the country’s largest protest in recent times. French organisers of a rally in Paris, were expecting to attract hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. German unions, rights groups and political associations were gearing up for what was expected the biggest peace rally in Berlin since the 1980s, when the USA deployed missiles in Germany aimed at the then Soviet Union. In the Russian capital Moscow, several hundred Communists protested in front of the US Embassy, brandishing banners saying: "Bush, don’t touch Iraq and "Bush go away, you are Hitler today".
AFP |
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Dolly’s death warning on human cloning Washington, February 15 Dolly, aged six, was put to sleep by veterinarians yesterday after they failed to cure her of a severe lung infection, her creators said. Dolly’s birth in July 1996 was kept secret for months while her creators at the Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics Plc., a tiny biotech company in Edinburgh, Scotland, carefully checked her lineage. The announcement of her birth, in February 1997, sent shockwaves around the world. Now cloning of farm animals has become almost routine and headlines were made this week when the offspring of some cloned pigs made it to the market. Cloned animals are being bred to produce human proteins for medicine, and for meat. But no one would have dreamed of slaughtering Dolly, or any of her lambs. Dolly was a breed called a Finn Dorset, with a white face and cream-coloured curly wool. Dolly, all would agree, was a trooper. PARIS: The heated debate over the ethics of cloning a human being — a challenge towards which maverick scientists around he world continue to race - has only become more intense. Dolly’s creator, Dr Ian Wilmut, is himself one of the fiercest critics of human cloning. He and other scientists say that in all likelihood the life of a cloned human baby would be brutally short or burdened with grim handicaps. This is reflected in the extremely high number of miscarriages — as many as five out of six implanted cloned animal foetuses end in spontaneous abortion. In the case of the world's first cat, a creature called Cc who was born in February 2002, researchers made 188 cloning attempts, which created 82 embryos but led to only one successful pregnancy. Many cloned offspring die within the first 24 hours of birth from malformed heart, lungs and kidneys. Others, apparently healthy at birth, survive longer but then die suddenly. And some evidence, including the circumstances of Dolly’s death, suggests clones may age prematurely because their DNA source is older.
Reuters, AFP |
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Death edict on Rushdie renewed Dubai, February 15 The hardline Revolutionary Guards, directly answerable to Iran’s current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the “fatwa” issued in 1989 following the publication of Rushdie’s controversial novel “The Satanic Verses” was still valid. “The decree on Salman Rushdie is irrevocable and nothing can change it,” said a statement by the military organisation, published yesterday to pay tribute to the Iranian people for their massive participation in the demonstration to mark the 24th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. In the statement quoted by the official Iranian news agency IRNA, the hardline organisation said the late Khomeini had well seized the threats posed to the Islamic revolution and it was based on his divine missions that he issued the edict against Rushdie.
PTI |
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WINDOW ON PAKISTAN During the Basant festival this year, the folk culture squarely beat the religious fanatics in Lahore, the cultural hub of Pakistan and in other cities and towns of Punjab. Many mullahs showing extra zeal had declared the Basant festival as part of the infidel culture and asked people not to celebrate it. “It is not our festival. Why should we celebrate which is
unislamic?” declared the religious preachers some of whom were interviewed by some TV networks. No one really cared the way it happens in Mumbai on the calls of the Shiv
Sainiks. People in large number celebrated Basant with enthusiasm and for the entire week, Lahore had just kites of all colours and sizes dotting the sky. Thousands of tourists descended to watch the kite festival some had come from as far as Karachi and even from London and Toronto. Traders had a roaring business. Daily News edited by Njam Sethi, a respected moderate voice in the Pakistani media, had an interesting comment to offer: “As this year’s Basant was celebrated with unprecedented enthusiasm, voices were raised about its ideological inappropriateness. Certain TV channels went on to say that Islam didn’t allow this kind of entertainment, the only one allowed being horse racing and archery called some
ulema. Indeed, one maulana actually linked the festival of Basant to a historic massacre of Muslims representing the joy expressed by Hindu and Sikh communities after the event. But in the first fortnight of February as Lahore and other Punjab cities gave themselves up to enjoyment, some major events of ideological high-seriousness were eclipsed, like the Indian expulsion of Pakistani diplomats and the Kashmir Day of Solidarity, February 5. The kite flyers seem to have even swamped the buying of sacrificial animals for the coming
Ed-al-Azha. The other side of the coin is that at least Lahore’s economy was given a leg-up by the money that poured into it from internal and external tourism. Kite-making as a cottage industry pulled in innumerable peoples living below the poverty line. While a Hindu priest came on TV to inform us that Basant had nothing to do with Hinduism and that kite flying was not such a rage in India, the people busy doing paicha in the city seemed inured to the crises that state policies sought to perpetuate.” There were indeed lessons for the ruling class and the die-hard ulemas that dogma could not be applied to the economy and that lack of joy should not be embraced as ideology. The folk culture clearly beat the fundamentalists and exposed the chicanery of the government. Journalist and writer Khaled Ahmed urged for rationality on the part of the policy makers and religious zealots. He wrote: “As a part of decades-long state indoctrination, the average Pakistani is convinced that even marginal issues under Islam are subject to inflexible clerical judgement and that any effort at adaptation to circumstances is heresy. Such things as kites and cable TV come within the ambit of religious judgement.” |
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ST VALENTINE’S SKULL PIECE BACK IN CHURCH 31 COUPLES ENTER WEDLOCK IN THE BUFF ARMENIAN WINS WORLD PRESS PHOTO AWARD COUPLES AIM TO KISS FOR 33 HOURS |
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