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Posts Tagged ' CNN '
Afridi Sentence Pushes U.S.-Pakistan Relations From Bad to Worse
As Compiled by Araminta Wordsworth for The National Post
Full Comment's Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: One country's freedom fighter is another nation's traitor, from Benedict Arnold on down.
That's the fate of Shakil Afridi. The Pakistani doctor is now behind bars, serving a 33-year sentence for treason and excoriated by fellow citizens.
His crime: helping the Americans track down the world's most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden.
The physician organized a fake vaccination drive in Abbottabad, a leafy town about an hour north of Islamabad where the al-Qaeda chief had been bunked down, apparently for years. Nurses went from house to house, taking DNA samples. Among the doors they knocked on was that of bin Laden.
The sentence has been greeted by outrage in Washington, where relations with Islamabad are going from bad to worse. Americans believe they should at least get co-operation for the $1-billion in aid they dish out to Pakistan each year.
Pakistanis meanwhile are affronted by perceived infringements of their sovereignty — chiefly the US Navy SEALs' raid that killed bin Laden, which was carried out without notifying Islamabad; but also U.S. drone attacks, a friendly fire accident that killed about 30 government troops, and the CIA's continuing clandestine operations.
Reporting from Islamabad for The Guardian, Jon Boone explains the Pakistani position.
For some Americans the Pakistani doctor who worked on a clandestine operation to track down one of the U.S.'s greatest enemies is a hero who should be given citizenship. But for Pakistan's security agencies Dr. Shakil Afridi, a 48-year-old physician who once led campaigns to vaccinate children against polio on the Afghan frontier, is a villain.
On Wednesday a representative of the country's main spy agency said Afridi had got what he deserved when he was sentenced to 33 years in prison for conspiring against the state, for his role in trying to help the CIA track Osama bin Laden to his hideout in the garrison town of Abbottabad.
American lawmakers quickly responded, hitting Pakistan in the pocketbook, writes David Rogers at Politico.
Angered by the prosecution of a Pakistani doctor for helping the CIA locate Osama bin Laden, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to cut another $33-million from an already much-reduced military aid package: $1-million for each of the physician's 33-year prison sentence.
The 30-0 roll call followed a brief but often bitter discussion that underscored the deteriorating relationship between Washington and the Islamabad government, which remains an important ally in the war in Afghanistan.
"We need Pakistan. Pakistan needs us," said Senator Lindsey Graham, who helped to craft the amendment. "But we don't need a Pakistan that is just double dealing." Judson Berger at Fox News believes the Obama administration was caught flat-footed by Afridi's conviction.
Former U.S. intelligence officers accused the Obama administration of dropping the ball … — with one openly challenging the State Department's claim that it pressed his case "regularly" with Islamabad.
Officials are now raising a slew of concerns with how the U.S. government has handled the case.
Peter Brookes, a former analyst and adviser with several intelligence agencies who is now a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News on Thursday that the U.S. should have had a plan to get him out of Pakistan immediately following the raid.
But CNN's national security contributor Fran Townsend told the program Starting Point Afridi probably thought he was "safe enough" in Pakistan and didn't want to leave, especially without his extended family.
The United States is working to secure Afridi's release, and Townsend confirms that [U.S. Secretary of ] State Hillary Clinton has intervened on the doctor's behalf. Although she believes that Afridi may face some jail time, Townsend says that she ultimately thinks he'll be released through negations between the U.S. and Pakistan.
"Pakistan will use it as a leverage point," Townsend explains. "They're going to want some concession, some commitment from the United States that there will be no use of Pakistani citizens inside their own territory by American intelligence."
Her view of Afridi as a bargaining chip is confirmed by the BBC's M. Ilyas Khan, who explains the significance of trying Afridi under Khyber Pakhtunkhwa tribal law .
A trial by a regular court could have gone on for months, involving a proper indictment, witnesses and lawyers, all under the glare of television cameras.
But the political officer in Khyber has made sure that it stays secret and swift … Analysts say the Pakistani establishment has done this not only to defy the Americans but also to send a message to all Pakistani contacts of American diplomatic missions to desist from repeating Dr Afridi's "mistake."
They also point to an enduring feeling in Pakistan that at some point it has to mend fences with its Western allies, in which case the release of r Afridi could be one of the bargaining chips.
As and when that happens, the governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province can legally order his release.
Pakistanis for Peace Editor's Note- The jailing of Dr Afridi is not only another stain in the US-Pakistani relations, such as the hiding of OBL, but rather it is another carriage of injustice in a nation that is guilty of it daily with its population. From the lack of providing rights and freedoms to many of its citizens to the downright shameful behavior towards its religious minorities and women, it regularly is guilty of miscarriage of justice.
Please don't even get us started on failing miserably to provide basics such as power, clean water, security from home grown terrorists or even a remotely functioning democracy. This action, as well as others in the last thirteen months illustrate, in our view, simply no reason other than, we are sad to say, that Pakistan has essentially told the Americans that we are not with you.
US-Pakistan Relations
DNA Samples
Dr Shakil Afridi
Fran Townsend
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
Senator Lindsey Graham
Shakil Afridi
State Hillary Clinton
How to Restore the American Dream
By Fareed Zakaria for Time
The American dream for me, growing up in India in the 1970s, looked something like the opening credits of Dallas. The blockbuster TV series began with a kaleidoscope of big, brassy, sexy images — tracts of open land, shiny skyscrapers, fancy cars, cowboy businessmen and the very dreamy Victoria Principal. We watched bootlegged copies of the show, passed around on old Betamax cassettes. America (certainly the CBS soap-opera version of America) seemed dazzling and larger than life, especially set against the stagnant backdrop of India in the 1970s. Everyone I knew was fascinated by the U.S., whether they admitted it or not. Politicians who denounced the country by day would go home in the evenings and plot to send their kids to college in "the States."
Of course, the 1970s were actually tough times in America — stagflation, malaise, the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate — but they were brutal in the rest of the world. Hyperinflation racked most third-world countries; coups and martial law were familiar occurrences, even affecting staunchly democratic India, where emergency rule was enforced from 1975 to 1977. Set against this atmosphere of despair, the U.S. looked like a shining city on a hill.
A few years later, when I got to America on a college scholarship, I realized that the real American Dream was somewhat different from Dallas. I visited college friends in their hometowns and was struck by the spacious suburban houses and the gleaming appliances — even when their parents had simple, modest jobs. The modern American Dream, for me, was this general prosperity and well-being for the average person. European civilization had produced the great cathedrals of the world. America had the two-car garage. And this middle-class contentment created a country of optimists. Compared with the fatalism and socialist lethargy that was pervasive in India those days, Americans had a sunny attitude toward life that was utterly refreshing.
But when I travel from America to India these days, as I did recently, it's as if the world has been turned upside down. Indians are brimming with hope and faith in the future. After centuries of stagnation, their economy is on the move, fueling animal spirits and ambition. The whole country feels as if it has been unlocked. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the mood is sour. Americans are glum, dispirited and angry. The middle class, in particular, feels under assault. In a Newsweek poll in September, 63% of Americans said they did not think they would be able to maintain their current standard of living. Perhaps most troubling, Americans are strikingly fatalistic about their prospects. The can-do country is convinced that it can't.
Americans have good reasons to worry. We have just gone through the worst recession since the Great Depression. The light at the end of the tunnel is dim at best. Sixteen months into the recovery, the unemployment rate is higher than it was in the depths of all but one of the postwar recessions. And as government spending is being pared back, the economy is showing new signs of weakness.
Some experts say that in every recession Americans get gloomy and then recover with the economy. This slump is worse than most; so is the mood. Once demand returns, they say, jobs will come back and, with them, optimism. But Americans are far more apprehensive than usual, and their worries seem to go beyond the short-term debate over stimulus vs. deficit reduction. They fear that we are in the midst of not a cyclical downturn but a structural shift, one that poses huge new challenges to the average American job, pressures the average American wage and endangers the average American Dream. The middle class, many Americans have come to believe, is being hollowed out. I think they are right.
For a picture of the global economy, look at America's great corporations, which are thriving. IBM, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel and Caterpillar are all doing well. And they share a strategy that is becoming standard for success. First, technology has produced massive efficiencies over the past decade. Jack Welch explained the process succinctly on CNBC last September. "Technology has changed the game in jobs," he said. "We had technology bumping around for years in the '80s and '90s, and [we were] trying to make it work. And now it's working … You couple the habits [of efficiency] from a deep recession [with] an exponential increase in technology, and you're not going to see jobs for a long, long time." Welch gave as an example a company owned by the private-equity firm with which he is affiliated. In 2007 the business had 26,000 employees and generated $12 billion in revenue. It will return to those revenue numbers by 2013 but with only 14,000 employees. "Companies have learned to do more with less," Welch said.
Next, companies have truly gone global. The companies on the S&P 500 generate 46% of their profits outside the U.S., and for many of the biggest American names, the proportion is much higher. You might think of Coca-Cola as the quintessentially American company. In fact it is a vast global enterprise, operating in 206 countries. "We have a factory in Ramallah that employs 2,000 people. We have a factory in Afghanistan. We have factories everywhere," explains Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coke. Nearly 80% of Coca-Cola's revenue comes from outside the U.S., and an even greater percentage of its employees are in foreign countries. "We are a global company that happens to be headquartered in Atlanta," says Kent.
America's great corporations access global markets, easy credit, new technologies and high-quality labor at a low price. Many have had to cut jobs at home, where demand is weak, and have added them in the emerging markets that are booming. They are not "outsourcing" jobs. That word makes little sense anymore. They simply invest in growth areas and cut back in places where the economy is weak. None of them will ever give up on the American market — it is too large, too profitable and too central to their businesses — but the marginal dollar is more likely to be invested abroad than in the U.S.
While businesses have a way to navigate this new world of technological change and globalization, the ordinary American worker does not. Capital and technology are mobile; labor isn't. American workers are located in America. And this is a country with one of the highest wages in the world, because it is one of the richest countries in the world. That makes it more difficult for the American middle-class worker to benefit from technology and global growth in the same way that companies do.
At this point, economists will protest. Historically, free trade has been beneficial to rich and poor. By forcing you out of industries in which you are inefficient, trade makes you strengthen those industries in which you are world-class. That's right in theory, and it has been right in practice. As countries have traded with one another over the past two centuries, they have prospered, and average living standards in those countries (primarily in the Western world) have soared. Those places that kept themselves protected (mostly communist and third-world nations) found that they had crappy industries, shoddy goods, massive corruption and slow growth.
And yet something feels different this time. Technology and globalization are working together at warp speed, creating a powerful new reality. Many more goods and services can now be produced anywhere on the globe. China and India have added literally hundreds of millions of new workers to the global labor pool, producing the same goods and services as Western workers at a fraction of the price. Far from being basket-case economies and banana republics, many developing economies are now stable and well managed, and companies can do business in them with ease. At some point, all these differences add up to mean that global competition is having quite a new impact on life in the U.S.
Two weeks ago, for example, I sat in a Nano, the revolutionary car being produced by Tata Motors in India. It's a nice, comfortable midgetmobile, much like Mercedes-Benz's Smart car, except that rather than costing $22,000, it costs about $2,400. Tata plans to bring it to the U.S. in two to three years. Properly equipped with air bags and other safety features, it will retail at $7,000. Leave aside the car itself, whose price will surely put a downward pressure on U.S. carmakers. Just think about car parts. Every part in the Nano is made to global standards but manufactured in India at about a tenth of what it would cost in America. When Ford orders its next set of car parts, will they be made in Michigan or Mumbai?
This is not a hypothetical. Steven Rattner, who helped restructure the automobile industry, tells the story of getting a new General Motors plant online in Michigan by bringing management and unions together. "The unions agreed to allow 40% of the new plant to operate at $14-an-hour wages," he says, "which is half of GM's normal wages. The management agreed to invest in this new plant. But here's the problem: workers at GM's Mexican operations make $7 an hour, and today they are as productive as American workers. And think of this: $14 an hour translates into about $35,000 a year. That's below the median family income. The whole experience left me frightened about the fate of the American worker."
Alan Blinder is also worried. A distinguished economist and Princeton professor, Blinder is a former vice chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. In a now famous essay in Foreign Affairs, he argues that while we recognize the pressures placed on manufacturing jobs by international competition, technology ensures that service jobs are now similarly exposed. Since the service sector is a much larger part of the economy, Blinder estimates that 28 million to 42 million jobs will be "susceptible" to being shipped offshore — jobs such as customer-service representative and stock analyst, which we tend to think of as local. Blinder understands the benefits of free trade but worries that the new wave of offshoring is so big and fast that Western societies will have difficulty adjusting. The crucial distinction for the future, he argues, might be not between highly educated and less educated workers but between those jobs that can be done abroad and those — such as nurse or pilot — that cannot.
You can divide the American workforce in many ways, but any way you slice it, you see the same trend. People who get paid a decent wage for skilled but routine work in manufacturing or services are getting squeezed by a pincer movement of technology and globalization. David Autor, an MIT economist, has done an important study on what he calls "the polarization of job opportunities" in America. Autor finds that job growth divides neatly into three categories. On one side are managerial, professional and technical occupations, held by highly educated workers who are comfortable in the global economy. Jobs have been plentiful in this segment for the past three decades. On the other end are service occupations, those that involve "helping, caring for or assisting others," such as security guard, cook and waiter. Most of these workers have no college education and get hourly wages that are on the low end of the scale. Jobs in this segment too have been growing robustly.
In between are the skilled manual workers and those in white collar operations like sales and office management. These jobs represent the beating heart of the middle class. Those in them make a decent living, usually above the median family income ($49,777), and they mostly did fine in the two decades before 2000. But since then, employment growth has lagged the economy in general. And in the Great Recession, it has been these middle-class folks who have been hammered. Why? Autor is cautious and tentative, but it would seem that technology, followed by global competition, has played the largest role in making less valuable the routine tasks that once epitomized middle-class work.
Recapturing the Dream
So what is the solution? It's easier to identify the wrong answer than the right one. It would be pointless and damaging to try to go down a protectionist route, though polls show a stunning drop of support for free trade, even among college-educated professionals, its usual cheerleaders. But technology is a much larger driver of the hollowing out than trade. You cannot shut down this new world. How would you stop people from sending one another e-mails, which is what a lot of offshoring comes down to these days? Nor can you help a modern economy by shielding industries from world-class competitors, which just encourages greater inefficiency. I grew up in an economy made up of those kinds of industries, all tightly protected from "foreign exploitation and domination." It added up to stagnation and backwardness.
There are solutions, but they are hard and involve painful changes — in companies, government programs and personal lifestyles. For more than a generation, Americans have been unwilling to make these adjustments. Instead, we found an easier way to goose the economy: expand consumption. During the early 1950s, personal consumer expenditures made up 60% to 65% of the U.S.'s GDP. But starting in the early 1980s, facing slower growth, we increased our personal spending substantially, giving rise to new economic activity in the country. Consumption grew to 70% of GDP by 2001 and has stayed there ever since. Unfortunately, this rise in consumption was not triggered by a rise in income. Wages have been largely stagnant. It was facilitated, rather, by an increase in credit, so that now the average American family has no fewer than 13 credit cards. Household debt rose from $680 billion in 1974 to $14 trillion in 2008. This pattern repeated itself in government, except on a much larger scale. People everywhere — from California to New Jersey — wanted less taxes but more government. Local, state and federal governments obliged, taking on massive debts. A generation's worth of economic growth has been generated by an unsustainable expansion of borrowing.
That is why the current economic debate between another stimulus and deficit reduction is frustrating. Right now, there is a strong case for government stimulus, since no one else is doing much spending. But then what? What happens after another year of federal spending? Consumers still might be cautious; do we really want them to spend like they did in the old days? Is the strategy simply to reinflate the housing bubble? In recent years, the left and the right in America have conspired in feeding consumption spending. The left expands government, much of which means more consumption (pensions, health care). The right focuses obsessively on tax cuts, which have a similar effect. The political system, pandering to today's constituents, encourages both tendencies. But when will we invest for our children's economy?
What We Need to Do Now
Ultimately American jobs are created from the bottom up by companies, not from the top down by government fiat. But there are measures we can take that will encourage the process. Here are the key ones:
Shift from consumption to investment. Fundamentally, America needs to move from consumption to investment. Everyone agrees that the best way to create good jobs in the U.S. is to create new industries and companies and to innovate within old ones. This means large investments in research, technology and development. As a society, this needs to become our strongest focus.
Despite substantial increases and important new projects under the Obama Administration, the federal government is still not spending as much on R&D as a percentage of GDP as it did in the 1950s. I would argue that it should be spending twice that level, which would be 6% of GDP. In the 1950s, the U.S. had a huge manufacturing base that could absorb millions of semiskilled workers. Today, manufacturing is a small part of the economy and faces intense global competition. The only good jobs that will stay in the U.S. are jobs related to knowledge and innovation. Additionally, in the 1950s, America was the only research lab in town, accounting for the vast majority of global scientific spending. Today, countries around the world are entering the arena. Two weeks ago, South Korea — a country of just 50 million people! — announced plans to invest $35 billion in renewable-energy projects. We should pay for this with a 5% national sales tax — call it an American innovation tax — which would be partly offset by a small reduction in income taxes. This would have the twin benefits of tamping down consumption and yielding some additional funds. All the proceeds from the tax should be focused on future generations, because we need to invest massively in growth.
The often overlooked aspect of investment is investment in people. America has been able to create the future in large measure because it has tapped into the energies and work of immigrants. It has managed to invest in human capital by taking smart, motivated people from around the globe, educating them in the planet's best higher-education system and then unleashing them in a dynamic economy. In this crucial realm, the U.S. is now disinvesting. After training the world's best and brightest — often at public expense — we don't find ways to make sure they stay here by giving them a green card but rather insist that they leave and take their knowledge to another country, where they will invent, inspire, build and pay taxes. Every year, we send tens of thousands of the smartest Indians and Chinese back home, which is a great investment — in the future of those countries.
Training and education. "Most jobs that will have good prospects in the future will be complicated," says Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of American Express and IBM. "They will involve being able to juggle data, symbols, computer programs in some way or the other, no matter what the task. To do this, workers will need to be educated and often retrained." We need more and better education at every level, especially job retraining. So far, most retraining efforts in the U.S. have not worked very well. But they have worked in countries that have been able to retain a manufacturing base, like Germany and parts of Northern Europe. There, some of the most successful programs are apprenticeships — which cover only 0.3% of the total U.S. workforce.
There are advantages to the U.S. system. We don't stream people too early in their lives, and we allow for more creative thinking. But the path to good jobs for the future is surely to expand apprenticeship programs substantially so industry can find the workers it needs. This would require a major initiative, a training triangle in which the government funds, the education system teaches and industry hires — though to have an effect, the program would have to be on the scale of the GI Bill.
Fiscal sanity. To pay for such initiatives, the government needs to get its house in order. The single most important aspect of this is getting health care costs under control, followed by other entitlement programs, especially pensions at the state level. Government today spends vast sums of money on current consumption — health care and pensions being a massive chunk of it — which leaves little money for anything else. We need a radical rebalancing of American government so it can free up resources to fund future growth.
Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark. There is now global competition for growth, which means the U.S. has to constantly ask itself what other countries are doing well and how it might adapt — looking, for example, at what other countries are doing with their corporate tax rates or their health care systems and asking why and where we fall short. Americans have long resisted such an approach, but if someone else is doing tax policy, tort litigation, health care or anything else better, we have to ask why.
There are things the U.S. does well. Most new jobs in America are created by start-ups and small companies, so the ease of doing business is crucial — and there's good news there. The World Bank has a ranking of countries measured by the "ease of doing business," and the U.S. is No. 4. That's very good, but there's a catch. Those rankings are divided into several categories. In most, like "starting a business," the U.S. does well. But in one category it's only 61st in the world, and that is "paying taxes."
The American tax code is a monstrosity, cumbersome and inefficient. It is 16,000 pages long and riddled with exemptions and loopholes, specific favors to special interests. As such, it represents the deep, institutionalized corruption at the heart of the American political process, in which it is now considered routine to buy a member of Congress's support for a particular, narrow provision that will be advantageous for your business.
My proposals are inherently difficult because they ask the left and right to come together, cut some spending, pare down entitlements, open up immigration for knowledge workers, rationalize the tax code — and then make large investments in education and training, research and technology, innovation and infrastructure. But the fact that it is a solution that crosses political borders should make it more palatable, not less. And time is crucial. The U.S. has considerable advantages, but every day other countries try to find ways to attract growth within their borders. People often note that America's political system is broken. Perhaps the truth is more awkward: America needs radical change, and it has an 18th century system determined to check and balance the absolute power of a monarchy. It is designed for gridlock at a moment when quick and large-scale action is our only hope.
When I left India, the marginal tax rate was 97.5%, corporate taxation was punitive, and business was stifled or went underground. Were I to move from New York City to Mumbai today, my personal tax rate would drop, as would every other rate, from corporate to capital-gains taxes. (The long-term capital-tax rate in India is zero.) Singapore now ranks as the No. 1 country for ease of doing business, with a top tax rate of 20%. I know permanent residents working in the U.S. who are thinking of giving up their green cards to move to Singapore. To an Indian of my generation, this would have been unthinkable. The green card was a passport to the American Dream. But for young Indians, there are many new dreams out there, and new passports.
But there are reasons for optimism. The U.S. faces huge challenges, but it also has enormous advantages. "I've always been bullish on America," says Coke's Kent. "It's the largest, richest market in the world. Look at the demographics alone. North America is the only part of the industrialized world that will be growing in people. It now has a higher birthrate than Mexico, for the first time in history." Or listen to Alcoa's German-born Klaus Kleinfeld, previously the head of Siemens: "I know the things that America has that are unique. The openness, the diversity, the dynamism — you don't have it anywhere else. If you keep all these things, build on them, I still believe in the American Dream."
The term American Dream was coined during the Great Depression. The historian James Truslow Adams published The Epic of America in 1931, in an atmosphere of even greater despair than today's. He wanted to call his book The American Dream, but his publishers objected. No one will pay $3.50 for a book about a "dream," they said. Still, Adams used the phrase so often that it entered the lexicon. The American Dream, he said, was of "a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world. That dream or hope has been present from the start. Ever since we became an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of ordinary Americans to save the American Dream from the forces which appear to be overwhelming it."
Today, those forces really do look overwhelming. But challenges like them have been beaten back before — and can be again.
Fareed Zakaria is a journalist, author and host of his show on CNN. His special Restoring the American Dream: A Fareed Zakaria GPS Special will air on CNN at 9 p.m. E.T. and P.T. on Saturday, Oct. 30, and at 10 a.m. E.T. and P.T. on Sunday, Oct. 31.
Fareed Zakaria
Great Recession
Why The Mosque Needs To Be Built At Ground Zero
This is already my third article on the NYC Mosque controversy. When I started my Facebook group and website Pakistanis for Peace by the same name nearly two years ago, I did it in response to the tragic and callous terrorist attacks in Mumbai India in 2008 and my desire to see peace in that region and beyond. As a firm believer in God, but not a particularly religious person, I never would have imagined that I would end up making a big part of my focus not just peace between India and Pakistan, but also peace and understanding between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds as well. Heaven knows I have my own questions and issues with certain Muslim laws and practices and I of all people am the least suitable to be one of its defenders. However, I am a strict constitutionalist and as mentioned in my previous articles on this subject, I have advocated the building of the mosque simply on First Amendment religious freedom grounds.
Now here I am in less than one month, I find myself already writing a third article on the mosque controversy. Much has been written already by others on this topic also, but I wanted to give a few more opinions from a rational, moderate and patriotic American Muslim perspective, one which is missing in the current dialogue.
We know that many people who are opposed to the building of the mosque in lower Manhattan simply ask "Why there?" "Why would "they" possibly want to build it there of all places? It is seen as an affront by them that Muslims should want to build an inter-faith mosque, community center and a planned outreach ministry in the heart of Manhattan two city blocks from the site of the World Trade Center and the attacks of September 11, nine year ago. In fact, last night, while watching CNN, I saw Rick Sanchez ask former Governor George Pataki of New York about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy and his views on the subject. "Why there of all places would you build a mosque?" asked Gov. Pataki. Why there? As if he had fully bought into a favorite point of right wing groups that "Muslims build mosques at places they conquer" and that this is somehow a celebration of their "victory" over us because of the deaths of so many of our fellow countrymen on 9/11. That statement is wrong on so many levels that normally I would not even waste energy answering a clearly misguided assumption, but I will make an exception to clear the air as that is precisely what this article aims to do.
First of all, the 9/11 attacks were not a result of the actions of mainstream Muslims or the collective billion plus adherents of the religion but instead by members of a terror group known as Al-Qaeda, whose leader, Osama Bin Laden, we were very familiar and friendly with during the Soviet Afghan War of the 1980's as he had assisted us in stopping the Red Army from conquering Afghanistan at the height of the Cold War between the two superpowers. Also a mosque is a place of worship. It is not a place where bombs are made and terrorists are trained either in ideology or practical training. To equate the building of a mosque to a direct link to terrorism or some other nefarious activity is in itself a deeply offensive argument to any Muslim, if one must speak of insensitivities.
So are we at war with Islam? This really is the only question we must ask ourselves to understand the debate over the mosque controversy. Debra Burlingame, the co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, issued a statement saying that "Building a 15-story mosque at Ground Zero is a deliberately provocative act." This is simply not true as it is not exclusively just a mosque, but rather a multi layered structure that will house an auditorium, restaurant, gymnasium, library, conference rooms and multi-faith prayer halls devoted to allowing non-Muslim visitors the chance to come explore the center and at the same time take time to meditate and pray according to their own customs.
The center, as its leader Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf pointed out recently, "will establish this community as the place where the moderate Muslim voice condemns terrorism and works for new, peaceful, and harmonious relationships with all New Yorkers and indeed all Americans." Just the fact that this center will have a restaurant, conference rooms, a library and multi-faith dialogue and prayer rooms, already makes this proposed building the most uniquely American mosque in the world. Nowhere else will one find a mosque so devoted to understanding and bridge building between Islam and other religions and no other place and location will it be more sorely needed in the years to come than in New York City! Too often, many non-Muslims complain about the self segregation practices of Muslims and indeed a characteristic of all minority communities to be in their own bubble and for not having a lot of interaction between other communities or faiths.
Many times my own non-Muslim friends have been curious and inquired on how Muslims pray and what they believe in and what exactly goes on in a typical mosque. But typically a small, regular mosque does not have the sort of access and resources to satisfy this curiosity and neither the infrastructure nor the logistics to handle curious visitors of other faiths. Primarily mosques in this country have been built with Muslims as its sole audience and occupants. This is the first time a mosque and cultural center is being proposed that will eliminate the barriers that many non-Muslims feel when it comes to understanding Islam and Muslims and actually takes into considerations its non-Muslim visitors when planning the structure. For many years to come, many Americans and indeed tourists from around the world will be coming to the proposed complex now under construction at the site of the World Trade Centers that will house the 9/11 Memorial. What better place will there be than a few blocks away from the 9/11 Memorial where visitors can be told about the Islam of the great boxer Muhammed Ali and hall of fame basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar and not that of evil individuals such as Mohammed Atta and Osama Bin Laden? Where else should they be told of the difference between the Islam that is practiced by comedian Dave Chappelle and Oprah's Dr Mehemt Oz versus the one practiced by the backward barbarian murderers known as the Taliban in the mountains of Afghanistan? Where else can they come to know of the type of Islam practiced by patriotic Bronze Star and Purple Heart decorated deceased US soldier Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan or the one practiced by the deranged Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the accused perpetrator of the Fort Hood Army base who sadly killed 13 fellow soldiers almost 1 year ago?
Now in order to satisfy the opponents and critics of the center, I also believe that all the funding needs to be transparent, there needs to be a multi-faith board of directors, and the Muslim leadership needs to be cognizant that this is indeed a very special place for all Americans and a place of national mourning. This mosque needs to therefore address the attacks of 9/11 and also needs to be a reminder not just to non-Muslims of the tragedy that was 9/11 but more importantly it needs to serve as a constant reminder to the rest of the Muslim world of the terrible actions some have committed in the name of Islam.
Why build it here of all places you may still ask? Why not here? What other place in America, nay, what other place in the world did Islam take the biggest blow to its reputation and image? It is Ground Zero and lower Manhattan itself where this religion of over a billion people got literally hijacked and its message of peace and tolerance got forever destroyed in the eyes of the world's non-Muslims by events of 9/11 and the actions of a handful of radical extremists who were terrorists and part of a network known as Al-Qaeda. So, why not build a monument to tolerance and understanding for the very religion that took the biggest hit to its global credibility by events that happened in this area? I believe that it is not out of any provocation or insensitivities that Muslims want to build a community center near Ground Zero, but rather because this is the one place in the world where truth about the religion needs to be told and the need to showcase the real Islam of the world's Muslims rather than allow the story of the hatred and violence perpetrated by the terrorists to be the only story one hears when discussing the religion of Islam. This center needs to be a part of the healing process we must go through as a nation and will be a testament for the rest of the Muslim world outside our shores of the grandeur of our nation and for our acceptance of Muslims and for not allowing the stereotyping of a religion of hundreds of millions of people over the actions of 19 evildoers.
Trust me, the terrorists will triumph if this mosque does not get built. We must not forget who we're fighting against, and what we are indeed fighting for. The Taliban, the terrorists and other radical Islamists do not respect religious freedom or tolerance. Their distorted and narrowly interpreted Wahhabi views of Islam leave no room for dissent, debate or disagreements. These terrorists are responsible for more deaths of dissenting and or differing Muslims than of any other religion at their hands. These terrorists are Islam's biggest enemy and threat and we must remember that this is not a war between us and the Muslim world. It is a war between us and Al-Qaeda. And to prevent moderate, peace seeking, bridge building, and patriotic American Muslims from building a structure that will help ease the pain and misunderstanding of the events of that dark day 9 years ago in September will only play into the hands of those who hate us for our freedoms. To have Muslim Americans potentially lose these very freedoms due to all the pressure, in this land built on freedom and liberty, will only strengthen the hands of the terrorists and bolster their claims that this is truly a war on Islam and that they are second class citizens who do not even have the fundamental rights to worship that is afforded to all Americans. This is a battle for Islam itself, one where the forces of evil are attempting to commandeer the entire religion towards their narrow minded interpretation of the sacred texts. We must hold steadfast to our principles and ideals and support moderate Islam in taking back the religion from the extremists and allowing this mosque to be built will go a long ways in turning the tide of radicalism, and ensuring that we stand for our time tested principles, no matter how unpopular they may be in the current climate.
-Manzer Munir, founder of Pakistanis for Peace, a proud Pakistani American and peace activist, is a freelance journalist that writes for PakistanisforPeace.com and other publications.
George Pataki
New York Governor
New Yorkers
NYC Mosque Controversy
Religious Tolerance
Officials: Pakistan Flood Deaths Top 1100
As Reported By CNN
The devastating floods in Pakistan have killed more 1,100 people, Pakistani government officials told CNN on Sunday. Another 30,000 people were stuck on their rooftops and in higher areas as they tried to escape rushing floodwaters, a United Nations official said Sunday.
"We've got the government sending boats and helicopters to try to reach people and bring them to safety at the same time as trying to deliver emergency relief," said Nicki Bennett, a senior humanitarian affairs officer for the U.N.
Damaged roads and bridges have made rescuing stranded residents difficult, she said, noting that even a U.N. warehouse where the organization stores food, blankets, soaps and bucks is partially underwater. "As we are trying to reach people, we have to battle with the ongoing access problems," she said. The rescue and recovery efforts of the Pakistan flooding could become more complicated as weather officials predict more monsoon rains starting Monday.
The Pakistan Meteorological Department said Sindh, Punjab, Kashmir, eastern parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and eastern parts of Balochistan would receive monsoon rains. Areas along the Indus River would be badly affected due to extremely high flood conditions.
The number reflects those killed only in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, previously known as the North West Frontier Province, said spokesman Mian Iftikhar Hussain. Flooding has also been reported in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Twenty-five deaths were recorded there Friday, Hussain said.
A Pakistani Red Crescent official told CNN that the number of people affected by the floods has risen to nearly 2.5 million people, with infrastructure receiving major damage. Rushing water also has washed away thousands of acres of crops, government buildings, businesses, schools, bridges and homes, officials said.
The United States will assist in relief efforts by bringing in 50,000 meals, rescue boats and helicopters, 12 pre-fabricated steel bridges and water filtration units, the embassy in Islamabad said.
According to Geo TV, 150 people are missing in a northwestern province, and 3,700 homes were swept away. Forty-seven bridges in Swat have been destroyed or damaged.
Geo TV also said 3,000 are in a camp in Nowshera and are without enough water and food. Displaced residents are unhappy with the government response, Geo TV said. Trains have also been delayed, frustrating commuters.
"They have made this a joke," a commuter told the network. "There are young children here, but there is no water, nor is there any seating. They have taken our ticket money. Yet after every few minutes they change the train timings. They are playing a game of lies and deceit."
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik visited Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Saturday and found tourists and local residents trapped because of the heavy floods, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
President Asif Ali Zardari said all available resources would be used to help those stranded by the waters, the APP reported.
Many of the victims died when flood waters swept away hundreds of mud houses in parts of Swat Valley and the districts of Shangla and Tank, according to Bashir Ahmed Bilour, a provincial minister in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Hussain said flooding has cut off the Swat Valley and the districts of Shangla and Peshawar. There is no way to get to these areas by road, he said.
The Pakistani Air Force has been helping with rescue efforts, spokesman Tariq Yazdanie said in an interview on Pakistani TV. The recent torrential rains have broken all previous records of rainfall in the country, he said.
The United Nations said there is a need for help in providing emergency shelter, food, drinking water and sanitation facilities. Its agencies are geared to help with these issues.
The European Commission is providing 30 million euros ($39 million) to help the people affected by the flooding.
U.S. Embassy officials in Pakistan said the United States has committed $10 million to support flood relief priorities, four inflatable rescue boats, two water filtration units that can fulfill the daily water requirements of up to 10,000 people, and 12 pre-fabricated steel bridges to temporarily replace damaged bridges.
U.S. officials have also provided more than 51,000 halal meals (military rations tailored for people of Islamic faith) and another 62,000 will arrive Sunday.
In addition, the U.S. provided helicopters to support the Ministry of Interior's rescue operations.
The same weather system is also responsible for flooding in bordering Afghanistan, where 65 people have died, and 61 were injured since Thursday, according to Abdul Matin Adrak, head of disaster management for Afghanistan.
The flooding started Thursday and continued for more than six hours. Rescue teams were able to access all the flooded villages using ministry of defense helicopters. Food and equipment was donated and transferred to the affected people by ISAF and Afghan Security forces.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Greg "Boomer" Roberts, adviser to the Afghan Air Force, told CNN Sunday morning that the Afghan air force rescued about 2,000 villagers who were stranded. Roberts accompanied the air force during their rescue mission in the Kunar province — a known insurgent stronghold.
"They knew they could accomplish their mission. When we came into the area and the Taliban made their presence known, they continued … and picked up 2,000 people who were definitely overcome by the floods. And they did it right there in full view of the Taliban.
"There's not a doubt in my mind that some of the folks we picked up are Taliban," he said, adding that most were probably looking for employment with the organization. He said the rescue mission is the type of move that could sway people away from the Taliban and toward the Afghan government.
Asif Ali Zardari
Geo Tv
North West Frontier Province
Pakistan Meteorological Department
Pakistani Air Force
Pakistani Red Crescent
Rehman Malik
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Greg "Boomer" Roberts
Church Plans Quran-Burning Event
By Lauren Russell for CNN
In protest of what it calls a religion "of the devil," a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn a Quran Day" on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, it invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at the church from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
"We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times," Pastor Terry Jones told CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this week.
Jones wrote a book titled "Islam is of the Devil," and the church sells coffee mugs and shirts featuring the phrase. Muslims and many other Christians — including some evangelicals — are fighting the initiative. The church launched a YouTube channel to disseminate its messages.
"I mean ask yourself, have you ever really seen a really happy Muslim? As they're on the way to Mecca? As they gather together in the mosque on the floor? Does it look like a real religion of joy?" Jones asks in one of his YouTube posts.
"No, to me it looks like a religion of the devil."
The Islamic advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Muslims and others to host "Share the Quran" dinners to educate the public during the month long fast of Ramadan beginning in August. In a news release, the group announced a campaign to give out 100,000 copies of the Quran to local, state and national leaders. "American Muslims and other people of conscience should support positive educational efforts to prevent the spread of Islamophobia," said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper in the release.
The National Association of Evangelicals, the nation's largest umbrella evangelical group, issued a statement urging the church to cancel the event, warning it could cause worldwide tension between the two religions. "The NAE calls on its members to cultivate relationships of trust and respect with our neighbors of other faiths. God created human beings in his image, and therefore all should be treated with dignity and respect," it said in the statement. Dove's Facebook page, set up for the September event, has more than 1,600 fans. "Eternal fire is the only destination the Quran can lead people to, so we want to put the Quran in it's [sic] place — the fire!" the page says.
But another Facebook group with more than 3,100 fans says it stands "against the disrespect and intolerance that these people have for the Muslim people" and encourages people to report Dove's page to Facebook. Targeting another group it calls "godless," the Dove center is also hosting a protest against Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe, who is openly gay, on Monday at Gainesville's City Hall. The group previously fought — unsuccessfully — to derail Lowe's election campaign.
"We protest sexual perversion because the Bible protests it. What is acceptable to today's leadership becomes acceptable to tomorrow's society," the church says in its blog entry about the event. Lowe and other government figures and media outlets received e-mails from the church about the event, The Gainesville Sun reported. Lowe isn't concerned with Monday's event.
"I've got other things to do," he said, The Sun reports.
On the outreach center's front lawn, alongside a sign reading "Aug. 2 Protest, No Homo Mayor, City Hall," stands not just one, but three signs bearing the slogan "Islam is of the Devil." One of the signs — one reading "Islam" on one side, "Devil" on the other — was vandalized. On its blog last week, the church said the sign will be replaced. "This is private property and vandalism is a crime here in America," the blog says. "In Islam, many actions that we consider to be crimes are encouraged, condoned or sheltered under Islamic teaching and practice, though. Another reason to burn a Quran."
British Muslims
British Pakistanis
US Commission on International Religious Freedom
International Burn a Quran Day
Mayor Craig Lowe
National Association of Evangelicals
Pastor Terry Jones
Quran Burining
The Dove World Outreach Center
Pakistan Rejects Allegations of Taliban Ties
Pakistani officials Sunday rejected allegations that their country's powerful intelligence agency still supports the Taliban and other Afghan insurgents after a paper from a Harvard academic accused the agency of continued links to the rebels.
The powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency does not "actually control the Afghan insurgency" and does not have "the ability to bring it to an end," Matt Waldman argues in a paper for the London School of Economics. But the ISI provides "sanctuary, and very substantial financial, military and logistical support to the insurgency," giving it "strong strategic and operational influence — reinforced by coercion," according to his report, which cites Taliban commanders among its sources.
The ISI is widely thought to have played a key role in creating the Afghan Taliban during the 1990s, but Pakistan officially denies supporting them now. Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani military, called the claim "rubbish" on Sunday and said Waldman's report "does not have a credible source or authenticity."
"At best, it is speculative and only gives open sources without naming [them]," Abbas told CNN. "So, therefore, this kind of report requires a treatment which it really deserves. We are not going to formally respond to this, but we reject these allegations and accusation. If there are hard evidence, we would like for them to be brought out and we would be able to respond accurately."
And Farahnaz Ispahani, a spokeswoman for President Asif Ali Zardari, called Waldman's report "one-sided" and dismissed what she called its "wild accusations."
"If Mr. Waldman had been a seasoned academic, he would have conducted interviews in Pakistan itself to balance his so-called research report," Ispahani said. "The Pakistani government and its military have been performing an outstanding service to the world community as well as the region in its fight against militancy and extremism, and we can count the dead we have sacrificed in the thousands."
Waldman's report is titled, "The Sun in the Sky: The relationship between Pakistan's ISI and Afghan insurgents." He based his conclusions on interviews with nine insurgent field commanders in three regions of Afghanistan, plus former Taliban officials, tribal leaders, politicians, experts and diplomats. The title comes from Taliban commanders' claims that their relationship with Pakistani intelligence is "as clear as the sun in the sky."
Waldman concluded that that Pakistan "continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies." But Abbas dismissed the unnamed sources, calling the report "rubbish."
"Has he named any Taliban commanders in this, has he named any officials?" Abbas said. "So, therefore, if it doesn't have any specific source, which is not willing to disclose a name, it just becomes one of those reports that keep appearing. It is a serious allegation, but unless it has a credible evidence to support it or substantiate the report, only then it warrants a serious consideration for response."
The ISI works not only with the Taliban, but also with the armed Haqqani network, led by Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, Waldman wrote. The Haqqani network sometimes cooperates with the Taliban and sometimes fights it.
The Taliban members interviewed believe that the ISI has a heavy influence on their leadership, which some of them said amounts to control, according to the report.
One of the southern commanders claimed: "If anyone rejects that the ISI backs or controls the Taliban, he has a mental problem … all our plans and strategy are made in Pakistan and step by step it is brought to us, for military operations or other activities," the report says.
And southern Taliban commanders all complained of heavy ISI involvement, which they blamed for some attacks on civilians.
"One southern commander described their predicament as follows: 'Another group of Taliban is directly supported by the ISI. They will never stop fighting in the country; they want to destroy the government and bring chaos. Behind all the attacks on … NGOs, schools, teachers, doctors, this is Pakistan. We cannot deny that it is Taliban; but there are Pakistan controlled groups among us. They want destabilisation …,' " the report says.
Waldman's report comes two months after a U.N. report on the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 — an attack blamed on Pakistani Taliban leaders — found that intelligence agencies hindered the subsequent investigation. The report concluded that the "pervasive reach" of Pakistan's intelligence agencies left police "unsure of how vigorously they ought to pursue actions, which they knew, as professionals, they should have taken," the report states.
Farahnaz Ispahani
Inter-Services Intelligence
President Asif Ali Zardari
Ex-president Musharraf Vows Return to Pakistan Politics
As reported on Cnn
Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf plans to return to Pakistan and to re-enter politics, he told CNN Thursday.
Musharraf declined to commit to seeking a particular office, telling CNN's Wolf Blitzer that "the question… of whether I am running for president or prime minister will be seen later."
But he strongly implied he wants to be prime minister.
"We run a parliamentary system there" Musharraf told Blitzer. "So you have to — your party has to win in the election. Then only do you decide to run."
"Basically, you are heading the party, you are running for the prime ministership," he said. "Because in Pakistan, the chief executive is the prime minister, not the president."
Musharraf, who resigned as president under pressure in 2008 and left the country about a year ago, said he's unsure about the exact timing of his return.
"It is related to the elections in Pakistan," he said. "I am very sure of one thing, that whether it's end-term elections or midterm elections, I will be there before those elections."
Midterm elections could come next year, Musharraf said.
Musharraf also said that security concerns were shaping his decision on when to announce his return.
"Maybe my wife and my family (are) more worried than I am," he said Thursday. "But there are security issues which one needs to take into consideration. And that is why I'm not laying down any dates for my return."
"But," he added, "I do intend launching and declaring my intentions formally sooner rather than later."
The former Pakistani president took issue with a United Nations report released last month that said Musharraf's government failed to protect former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before her 2007 assassination.
"It was me who warned her about the threat to her," Musharraf said. "It was I who stopped her from going to that venue once before, to which a lot of political aspersions were cast on me that her movements are being restricted. But she decided to go again."
"All the security, wherever possible… by the police was provided to her," he said.
Asked if he would do anything differently if he could relive the experience, Musharraf said, "I think the same would have been done."
Musharraf also criticized the reported use of unmanned aircraft by the U.S. against militants in Pakistan, saying the "indiscriminate use of the drones… is having a negative impact in the public because of the collateral damage."
He said the attacks could be radicalizing Pakistanis and referred to Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American charged with the failed Times Square bombing. "I wonder whether this Faisal Shahzad incident… has he been affected by indiscriminate bombing by the drones," he said.
Musharraf also expressed support for the Pakistani government's decision to block access to Facebook this week in response to an online group calling on people to draw the Prophet Mohammed.
"You cannot have photographs of the Prophet Mohammed — leave aside going for cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed," Musharraf said. "It's most unfortunate. We must understand, these are sensitive issues. And for the sake of independence of media, liberty of speech, we cannot hurt sensitivities of millions of people."
President Pervez Musharraf
Prophet Mohammed


The Company of Fools. Kate Doucette's trying to get her life together. She's working full time at Mike MacNab's bar, going to school, and she just kicked out her Do-Nothing boyfriend.... View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1988 CD release of Company Of Fools on Discogs.
Introduction to Teacher's Guide A Company of Fools is appropriate for most students in grades four to eight as a text for independent reading, literature circles or guided reading.
Get this from a library! A company of fools. [Deborah Ellis] -- Henri has been living within abbey walls all his life, first in the care of nuns, then as choirboy and scribe. When Micah arrives, his voice and presence bring a fresh breeze into dead places.
Original lyrics of Company Of Fools song by Great Big Sea. Explain your version of song meaning, find more of Great Big Sea lyrics. Watch official video, print or download text in PDF. Comment and share your favourite lyrics.


text:
Why Does Éowyn Want to Die?
August 1, 2016 August 5, 2016 / stephencwinter	/ 15 Comments
This week's blog post in the current series of guestblogs on Éowyn of Rohan comes from David Rowe. As with Jennifer Leonard's piece that was featured last week it ends with Éowyn's healing journeying first with her desire to die. 'David is the writer of 'The Proverbs of Middle-earth', soon to be published by Oloris Media. He tweets at @TolkienProverbs and @mrdavidrowe, and the following is an adaptation of a passage from his book.' I am delighted that he has offered this excerpt from his work for this platform.
If you have a piece on Éowyn that you would like to include here then please send it to me in Word format using my email address mail@stephenwinter.net. Please include some detail about yourself and any links to your work that you would like me to include.
'I do not desire healing… and I do not desire the speech of living men. 'I looked for death in battle… to ride to war like my brother Éomer, or better like Théoden the king, for he died.'
When first seen in her guise as Dernhelm, Merry shivers, perceiving in Éowyn 'the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.' Having disobeyed orders and ridden to war, rather than remaining in Rohan as the King's regent, she achieves what no man could: the killing of the Lord of the Nazgûl. In doing so she rises higher than any woman, at any time, in any kingdom of Men, and yet her emptiness remains utter.
Recovering in the Houses of Healing, Éowyn feels like a prisoner: she is jealous of the dead, jealous of the now-departed host of the West, even jealous of those with a better view from their windows. How did she reach this point?
Éowyn grew up as an orphan, adopted into the King's household but with neither mother nor adopted mother. Her lack of female role-models, alongside the restrictions that barred her from emulating the nation's heroes (virtually all of whom, according to the Appendices, were male), left Éowyn powerless: unable to give vent to the determination, steely character, and latent greatness within her. With a spirit and courage at least the match of Éomer's, but without the opportunity to fight for the fields of Rohan with a company of riders as he does, Éowyn lacks comradeship. She is left isolated and alone, an indomitable shieldmaiden reduced to 'dry-nursing' the declining King – a role she deemed 'more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.'
The arrival of Aragorn to Edoras both sparks Éowyn back to life and plunges her into despair. As Faramir correctly diagnoses, 'You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn… but when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle.' Having had her love and hope of high honour and nobility exposed as vain, Éowyn withers; seeking only the honour of a valiant end she goes 'in search of death.' Knowing that none have ever returned from the Paths of the Dead, she begs Aragorn to take her there with him, but is refused, and instead goes into disguise in order to ride to Minas Tirith with the host of the Eorlingas.
Where will wants not, a way opens, Éowyn declares as Dernhelm, Good will should not be denied. Although these words are spoken to and for Merry, a double meaning is also plain: Éowyn is using them to justify her own disobedience. While, by quoting traditional proverbs, Éowyn shows that she is still in touch with Rohan's philosophical tradition, she is actually being unfaithful to its wisdom. In place of the Rohirric devotion to duty is a different fearless determination: that of self-destruction. While Théoden, Éomer, and Rohan at large embody the belief that doing your duty is fundamental to moral goodness, Éowyn scorns such a perspective. 'Too often have I heard of duty,' she says. 'May I not now spend my life as I will?'
Disguised as Dernhelm, Éowyn becomes free at last, but the freedom she gains is the liberty to self-harm. She can ride with the host of the Rohirrim, but her motives are not theirs. A nihilism has taken over, arguing that life carries no intrinsic value or moral purpose, and therefore can be used (or disposed of) at the individual's whim. Éowyn has become a lonely, solitary death-seeker, surrounded by courageous, faithful men, riding bravely against hopeless odds. She is alien even to her own people; not part of a company, nor sharing in the national motivations. She derides compassion, and is a stranger to dutiful courage and the great virtues. It is therefore fitting that, when she subsequently fails in her quest for death, she meets her match in Faramir, in whom these traits are so prevalent.
Éowyn emerges from her nihilistic darkness not through being argued into submission, but by being loved. Perhaps because she recognises that Faramir is a man 'whom no Rider of the Mark would outmatch in battle', she is able to listen to him and he to command her respect. Faramir draws her out of despair with his company and kindness, saying Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, referring both to Aragorn's reaction to her and to his own love. And it is as this great warrior and leader willingly exposes his vulnerable core that 'the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it.' The darkness departs, and she determines to marry, to become a healer, and to 'love all things that grow'. Éowyn finally stops fighting, and Faramir is able to declare to the Warden:
'Here is the Lady Éowyn of Rohan, and now she is healed.'

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Using Microinvest software solutions, your customers will be able to order directly from the pay desk, to be served by a waiter, or to just use their phone and order directly from the table they are seated at. Software products allow different processes and features- taking an order from a waiter through a mobile device that sends the request directly to the kitchen or the bar; management of tables; kitchen monitors where the status of each order can be viewed; set different discounts and promotions; item visualization through images; group products; reduce losses by video monitoring. The system can operate at extremely high loads, providing at the same time a high-level data protection.
The products of Microinvest for fast-food restaurant management allow customers to make their orders in different ways: directly from the pay desk, via their mobile phone when they take a table; order prior to their arrival and take it from the restaurant; or request a home delivery. The software products offer full range of functionality including organization and current status of the tables in the hall, management and execution of phone orders, tracking of all orders in the kitchen through monitors that display the status of each request, receive an order from a waiter through a mobile device that sends the request directly to the kitchen and bar, set up of discounts and promotions, visualization of products and services through images, grouping of stocks, minimizing losses by video monitoring module. The system operates at very high loads, while providing a high level of data protection.
Increasing the number of clients and revenues from selling drinks are the most important goals for every bar, disco or night club owner. Preventing losses through a centralized system of access and accountability, and constant video monitoring synchronized with real time stocks management are the key benefits from using the Microinvest products. The Microinvest software solutions are designed to grow and expand along with you – you have the options to easily add new work positions and to increase the number of peripheral devices. The system operates at high level of loads, while providing a high level of data protection. Microinvest provides a wide range of functions – managing tables in the hall; receiving orders from a waiter via a mobile device that sends the request directly to the kitchen and bar; set up of discounts and promotions; levels of access and limitation of the number of allowed operations depending on the type of user; visualization of products and services through images; product grouping.


The "myMPlist" is a free business tool to collect, save, download and share product images and information. Create your personal product lists and share them with anyone involved in your project. Register to access extra features such as multiple and editable pinlists.
Browse through the website and pin the products of your favor to create your own list.
Create new list, named the list and give a description to help you and your partners to keep up with your project's needs.
Edit, delete at any point or send your selected lists to one or more contacts, so they can open, save, change and return the list.
Create and save multiple pinlists. Your saved pinlists can be edited at any moment.


text:
Home/World News/Middle East/Saudi Arabia says end to diplomatic rift with Qatar is 'within reach'
Saudi Arabia says end to diplomatic rift with Qatar is 'within reach'
WilliamDecember 5, 2020
Issued on: 05/12/2020 – 08:10
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Friday a resolution to a bitter dispute with Qatar seemed "within reach" after Kuwait announced progress towards ending a row that Washington says hampers a united Gulf front against Iran.
The United States and Kuwait have worked to end the dispute, during which Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt have imposed a diplomatic, trade and travel embargo on Qatar since mid-2017.
U.S. President Donald Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner had held talks in Doha on Wednesday following a visit to Saudi Arabia.
"We have made significant progress in the last few days thanks to the continuing efforts of Kuwait but also thanks to strong support from President Trump," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told a Rome conference via videolink.
"We hope this progress can lead to a final agreement which looks within reach and I can say I am somewhat optimistic that we are close to finalising an agreement between all the nations in the dispute."
Within the framework of the efforts that were led by the late Shaikh Sabah Alahmad Aljaber Alsabah, and the efforts currently exerted by HH Shaikh Nawaf Alahmad Aljaber Alsabah, the Emir of the State of Kuwait and HE President Donald J Trump, the President of the United States,
— د. أحمد ناصر المحمد الصباح (@anmas71) December 4, 2020
A source in Washington familiar with the discussions said a tentative deal had been reached by the parties and that it could be signed in a few weeks.
"They're working towards taking what's an agreement in principle and getting it actually signed," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Kuwait's Emir Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah on Friday welcomed the developments, state-run news agency KUNA said.
It quoted him as saying "this agreement has shown that all concerned parties are keen on retaining the pan-Gulf and the pan-Arab solidarity, unity, and stability."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking remotely at a Bahrain summit on Friday, said the United States was "very hopeful" that the dispute would be resolved.
All countries involved are U.S. allies. Qatar hosts the region's largest U.S. military base, Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE host U.S. troops.
Washington has been pushing for reopening Gulf airspace for Qatari aircraft as a first step, diplomats and sources have said.
The boycotting nations accuse Doha of supporting terrorism. Qatar denies the charges and says the embargo aims to undermine its sovereignty.
'An imperative step'
Kuwait's foreign minister, Sheikh Ahmad Nasser al-Sabah, said earlier on Friday that fruitful discussion had taken place recently "in which all sides expressed their keenness for Gulf and Arab unity and stability, and to reach a final agreement that realises lasting solidarity".
In a Twitter post, Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, welcomed the Kuwaiti statement as "an imperative step" towards resolving the rift.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is encouraged by the Kuwait statement and hopes all countries involved work together to formally resolve their differences, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a Twitter post said he hoped Gulf reconciliation "contributes to stability and political and economic development for all peoples of our region."
We welcome understandings in the Persian Gulf announced by Kuwait.
Iran's longstanding policy is diplomacy, good neighborly relations & regional dialogue.
We hope reconciliation contributes to stability and political & economic development for all peoples of our region.#HOPE
— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) December 4, 2020
The Qatari minister earlier told the Rome conference that Doha hoped "things will move in the right direction" but that any resolution should be based on mutual respect for sovereignty, including in foreign policy.
Doha had been set 13 demands, ranging from closing Al Jazeera television and shuttering a Turkish base to cutting links to the Muslim Brotherhood and downgrading ties with Iran, which shares a significant gas field with Qatar.
Arabia diplomatic jared kushner Middle East Qatar reach rift Saudi Saudi Arabia
Blasts and gunfire at Yemen's Aden airport as new unity govt arrives
Former US spy Pollard welcomed by Netanyahu as he arrives in Israel
Theatre troupe bring smiles and comic relief to war-weary Yemenis
Saudi women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul given five-year prison sentence


I grew up loving bhindi or okra but it wasn't one of those vegetables I could drop into my shopping trolley at the local supermarket.
When my mother was here last summer, she let out a high-pitched yelp on first sighting of okra or lady finger at the supermarket. My mother is prone to drama, as an Indian theatre actress. The skill I have sadly inherited is her drama queen antics and not her passion for the stage.
One evening I decided to try out my favourite home recipe for bhindi with the newly supermarket-acquired veggie. A quick search around the blogosphere warned me about the slime that pours out of them like superglue.
Chopping okra was a bit gooey, but it didn't bother me. What's a bit of edible glue when you've cried for onions and bled for garlic.
The recipe is very much quick and indian. We ate this with rice, as I had made dhal too. Eaten on its own, it's dry and a better match with rotis, parathas or simply bread.
Bhindi shrivels up and softens when cooked and can be deceptive when raw. Always use more than you think you'll need.
Wash chopped bhindi well and leave to dry. Heat oil in a frying pan, and when hot add the whole cumin.
As the cumin sizzles up, add the onion and cook until translucent.
Add the chopped bhindi and all the spices apart from the amchoor. Stir gently until the okra turns dark green and softens.
Finally add salt to taste and sprinkle amchoor before serving.
I always fry chopped Okra before adding them to any dish.Looks mouthwatering.Enjoy.
Oh I Love this stuff….I just posted a recipe for Bhindi too…mine's a bit different though!
Amchoor is a nice twist….
well thats the way I usually make okra, except that the washing process is reversed. Okras must be washed and wiped really dry before you attempt to cut them. You will hardly get any slime that way. Besides that the reason water is rarely added in any Indian Okra dish, before the okras are cooked.
I might need to give okra another shot (not a favorite veggie of mine yet). My response to your question about pesto was getting long so turned into a new post!
Thats the way my mom makes it and I love it with paranthas, dahi and pickled onion. Evergreen recipe Mallika!
Thanks so much for the tip ladies. My mother did ask me to wash and dry the okra first before cutting. But I didn't see the logic in wiping the outside to get rid of internal slime! So I just ignored her.
Basic lesson: always listen to your mother!!
can I use frozen okra ? How to handle this ?
Hi randi – just use frozen okra. It won't make a blind bit of difference. Only difference is that you will get the slime while you are pan frying it and also it'll be quite wet. So you have to keep stir frying until both the slime and the moisture go away.
My frozen okra packs come with "cook when defrosted" instructions. Worth checking yours just in case.
Made this tonight…top scores from my hubby! It was so good!
My supervisor and I thank you your brilliant viewpoint dealing with i Masala – Pan fried okra at Quick Indian Cooking. Your composition might be terribly important principally for voters of San Manuel-Linn !
In Bhindi, it is always adavisable to add Onions after putting the chopped Bhndi in the kardai.
question for jyoti….why is onion added only after adding bhindito the kadai?
I know this is an old post, but I just had to leave a comment. I'm from the southern United States and fried okra is a staple here, too. Granted we usually dredge it in cornmeal before frying, it is very similar. Since I am now allergic to corn, I was looking for another recipe for fried okra that didn't require my allergen (I don't care for it battered with wheat flour or boiled which are other common southern preparation methods). This looks great and I have all the spices except amchoor (I'll have to track this down). We can actually buy okra at all the farmers market around here, but rarely see it in grocery stores anywhere but the freezer section. Can't wait to try this!
four to five cashew grind ed paste added will give a rich taste to it.
Okra is truly delicious. Add aamchoor (dried mango powder) to prevent it going slimey if you want to make it more saucy. You can then add water to the dish or more tomatoes.


text:
layout: page
title: Gold Logistics Executive Retreat
date: 2016-05-24
author: Danielle Cooper
tags: weekly links, java
status: published
summary: Curabitur efficitur eget lectus id faucibus. Vivamus.
banner: images/banner/leisure-01.jpg
booking:
  startDate: 08/14/2018
  endDate: 08/16/2018
  ctyhocn: SHDVAHX
  groupCode: GLER
published: true
---
Morbi ullamcorper quis nibh non ornare. Pellentesque malesuada erat nec massa auctor, et molestie orci mattis. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam mauris diam, auctor vitae nibh sed, vestibulum vehicula nisl. Fusce ac facilisis ex. Etiam et nunc non enim malesuada semper ut eu neque. Maecenas id egestas arcu, at consequat tellus. Interdum et malesuada fames ac ante ipsum primis in faucibus. Duis sed nunc eleifend, mollis justo eget, cursus metus. Ut in ipsum quis elit efficitur luctus. Duis ex felis, laoreet sit amet pellentesque nec, venenatis in dui. Sed libero magna, varius sed lacus ut, hendrerit pellentesque ipsum.

* Sed ac arcu vitae nisi mattis volutpat in ac lacus
* Mauris vel augue ut dui porttitor commodo
* Vivamus venenatis massa sed enim rutrum rutrum
* Quisque tempor nulla sed ex facilisis porta
* Sed faucibus mi at tincidunt condimentum.

Pellentesque rhoncus, erat a tempus iaculis, sem est mollis enim, eu luctus diam enim at arcu. Sed sit amet urna id tortor rhoncus faucibus. Cras tristique nulla a nisl volutpat tincidunt. Cras orci erat, elementum et turpis sed, hendrerit rutrum risus. Ut ac lorem vitae turpis suscipit facilisis at id sem. Nulla sed ipsum sit amet erat bibendum vestibulum in non felis. Cras tristique orci vitae iaculis gravida. Donec maximus lectus tellus, eget placerat nunc tempor ut.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Beranda Berita Motor Ways to get essay crafting strategies for various kinds of essays?
Ways to get essay crafting strategies for various kinds of essays?
During your experiment, you're in a position to use because most tests as you need to come up with a choice. Usability testing is effective since you can watch prospective users of your product to find out what works well and what has fm871.com to be improved. It can be as simple as listening to people as they use a prototype of your app for a few minutes in a cafeteria. Because the lab is segregated from the web, the sample did not get the text file.
Results, however, will appear within the next section. You will observe various conclusions for various samples. Then there are the kinds of questions. The important question asked by a lot of people is the way to do a cover page. The dating of work also mercantilandina.calculistik.com counts on the dependability of the source which may be decided by the structure.
Artikulli paraprakWhat books need to I study to improve my essay crafting?


text:
David Thorburn: The William Corbett Poetry Series on Feb 28th @ 7pm
David Thorburn: The William Corbett Poetry Series
Comparative Media & Writing will be proudly hosting David Thorburn's poetry reading in the William Corbett Poetry Series on February 28, 2022 at 7:00pm. This is a virtual event and will broadcast live on Zoom: http://calendar.mit.edu/event/david_thorburn_the_william_corbett_poetry_series
David Thorburn has been a teacher of literature for 57 years, 46 of them at MIT where he is Professor of Literature and Comparative Media and Director Emeritus of the MIT Communications Forum. Generations of MIT undergraduates have taken his version of "The Film Experience," a lecture course that now reaches an international audience on YouTube. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in an old farmhouse in Randolph, New Jersey. In addition to a book on Joseph Conrad, he has written many essays and reviews on literature and media. Knots is his first book of poetry. To purchase on Amazon: amzn.to/2XkZsKi
For more information on David Thorburn: https://lit.mit.edu/people/dthorburn/
Praise for Knots
"Poetic form here is as supple as the poet's gaze: rhyme when it emerges is lightly shouldered, sweetly inplay with the vicissitudes of memory and the ceremonies of daily domesticity. Not a line goes slack, not a word is wasted." —Linda Gregerson
"Precision and ardor. The blunt grace of compression. These qualities give David Thorburn's Knots a distinctive authority. The title poem summons —and undoes— the intricate, oppressive, persistent and legendary bonds of patriarchal lore." —Robert Pinsky
Tweets by @LitatMIT


In the spirit of the World Cup (which I've barely watched, but it is all the talk lately, no?) and the upcoming Belgium vs USA game, I thought sharing this recipe was particularly timely! As many of you know, I was born in Belgium and while I've spent the majority of my life in the US, I'm still a Belgian citizen and think of it as my mother country, the US is definitely my home though.
I grew up eating many traditional Belgian foods, but waffles were never really one of them. My Mum never made them nor did my Nana and I don't remember eating them all that much when we visited. Ironically, my fondness for the Belgian waffle really developed in the US! For many years now, one of our favorite and first stops at the farmer's market on weekend mornings is the Taste of Belgium stand for one of their fresh, warm waffles. They are yeasty and dense with caramelized edges and a sweet, fluffy interior. They are known as Liege style waffles and are very different from the light, thin waffles, most of us are accustomed to eating. Apparently, this style is not the type of waffle made in my region of Belgium, even though you can still find them in stores. They are best eaten alone or topped with whipped cream and berries. No syrup needed! And the bonus is they keep really well, no soggy waffles here. Just place in an air tight container or cover with plastic wrap. I was intrigued to try recreate our favorite version at home and after testing several recipes, I've found a winner. (Voted on by my faithful recipe testers! Let's just say they LOVE when Mama is trying new recipes that involve lots of butter + sugar :)) I've made the dough and let it sit in the fridge over night and I've made the dough fresh in the morning, both ways produce great results. But it's nice to know you can do a lot of the prep, which is really more waiting than anything else, ahead of time if you so choose.
Fold the pearl sugar into the risen batter. Cover again and let rest for 15 minutes, while you heat up the waffle iron.
Using an ice cream sized scoop of batter for each, cook the waffles until they are golden and crisp; (brush the waffle iron with melted butter if needed, I do not find this necessary. Note that the butter will burn at higher temps, so be careful if you do use it to switch to a low enough heat on your waffle iron). Transfer the waffles to plates, then serve.
A few weeks ago Charlie graduated from preschool. Walking out of the building for the last time was such an emotional and symbolic moment for me. For 12 years I've had a little shadow each day during the week, it feels surreal that those days are behind me and both boys will be in school all day next year. I'm so grateful that his preschool years were such good ones, he made so many friends and many happy memories. I can only hope he loves Kindergarten just as much.
Friday was Andrew's last day of 5th grade. I'm now the mom of a 6th grader!! Thankfully, 6th grade is still elementary in our district so he will be able to watch out for his little brother next year. Andrew said a tearful goodbye to his favorite teacher, after she showered him with some of the greatest compliments you could ever hope to hear from a teacher. I was thankful I was wearing sunglasses because I couldn't help but tear up as my heart swelled with pride. There are many good teachers but every now and then you get a truly exceptional one that not only recognizes but appreciates and elevates your child's creativity and talents in a way that leaves a permanent impact.
are FULL of buds. They should be in full bloom in about a week.
The Little Limelights are in front, bordered by mini boxwoods and a row of white Impatiens. No flower buds on the Limelights yet, I believe they bloom later in the summer. Thankfully they aren't growing as high as the Incrediballs, so when sitting on the patio, I should be able the enjoy both.
I added a pair of rattan and bamboo chairs from Ikea to the table. I love mismatched chairs in dining rooms, so I'm not surprised how much I like the mismatched combo outside too! They are not meant to be left outside in uncovered areas all the time, so we typically bring them in at night if rain is predicted in the forecast. Our family room is right off the patio and they actually look fun and summery inside too, so I don't mind the small inconvenience. The striped salmon colored pillows are from Target (also, not weather resistant, but conveniently match our family room colors too).
I added a pair of grayish, weathered wood, planters flanking the back door. I filled them with boxwood, white Lobelia and white Impatiens. The Lobelia needs more sun than they are getting so they aren't flowering much anymore, just lots of green, but their leaves are pretty too and it still adds a little variety to the mix.
Some of my favorite memories with my children are those made at the end of the each day, snuggling beside them to read a story. I have always been a pretty avid reader and lover of great books and I'm thankful Andrew is the same. I like to think part of his joy of reading stems from the hours I've spent making stories come alive for him. I reread him all my favorites from when I was younger, almost every Judy Bloom and Beverly Clearly book (still as amazing now as they were then). Through books he was introduced to old classics like Kind Arthur, and modern classics like The Princess Bride. We've often discussed why characters chose the course they did or what we anticipate will happen next. We have laughed hysterically and cried a time or two as well. Reading to them is something I truly look forward to just as much as they do (unless it is reading don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus for the 100th time). Now that Andrew is 11, I don't read to him every night like I used to during the school year (I do still read to Charlie though!). With homework and swim practice and reading of his own, it gets to be too much to squeeze in and keep a reasonable bedtime. Besides, he likes to end his days reading on his own. But in the summer, it's game on. I read to him most nights and we try to tackle one meaty novel or classic or I try introduce him to a new series or genre that he otherwise might have over looked. I contemplated Charles Dickens this summer, thinking David Copperfield, but Dickens can be a bit dark and heavy (maybe best saved for High School English class), which I don't think summer is the best time for all that, so we choose to kick off our summer reading with The Giver instead.
I asked him to think back and name some of his all time favorite books that we've read together. We started reading Judy Bloom type books in first grade (I read him every single Fudge book and then he reread each of them on his own!) and C.S. Lewis by third grade. I can think of a many more that I would add to this list, The Princess Bride and James and The Giant Peach to name a couple, so we might need to publish a round two. We choose to read the entire Narnia series in the order they were written (not the chronological order, though we debated the merits of each way) in case you are curious, but there is nothing quite like reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for the first time! After reading the first Harry Potter book together, I couldn't keep up with him, he wanted to devour the rest at a pace faster than what we could read each night. I used to be worried he would trip walking into school because his nose would be in the book till the last second before he had to pay attention in class. Hope these spark some ideas for summer reading to the young boys in your life (or girls too, because I'm guessing many (most) of these would be equally loved by them!) There is a good mix on here for ages 6 to 12. What have been some of your favorites??


text:
namespace capnp_python {

void defineTextCodecTypes(void) {
  // NOTE: It is interesting that `~TextCodec` is declared as
  // noexcept(true), rather than noexcept(false); so no extra wrapping
  // for value type is needed.
  boost::python::class_<capnp::TextCodec>("TextCodec", boost::python::init<>())
      .def("setPrettyPrint", &capnp::TextCodec::setPrettyPrint)
      .def(
          "encode",
          static_cast<kj::String (capnp::TextCodec::*)(capnp::DynamicValue::Reader) const>(
              &capnp::TextCodec::encode))
      .def(
          "decode",
          static_cast<void (capnp::TextCodec::*)(kj::StringPtr, capnp::DynamicStruct::Builder)
                          const>(&capnp::TextCodec::decode));
}

}  // namespace capnp_python


There is a small percentage of post-op Bariatric surgery patients that will develop lactose intolerance. I love eating dairy products so I'm concerned about this if ever I will develop lactose intolerance after the surgery. What alternatives can replace dairy products?
There is a small percentage of post-op Bariatric surgery patients that will develop lactose intolerance. I love eating dairy products so I'm concerned about this if ever I will develop lactose intolerance after the surgery. What alternatives can replace dairy products?
Most of the major brands offer lactose-free cow's milk in addition to their standard line. Almond milk is lactose-free as well. Hopefully you won't have any problems and won't need to change.
Most of the major brands offer lactose-free cow's milk in addition to their standard line. Almond milk is lactose-free as well. Hopefully you won't have any problems and won't need to change.
Plant-based milk is a popular option. I don't have lactose intolerance, but I enjoy drinking the soy milk once in a while. Peanut milk and hazelnut milk are some other examples. I think there are yogurts and cheeses based on the soy milk. You may want to check the food for vegan for more options.
Plant-based milk is a popular option. I don't have lactose intolerance, but I enjoy drinking the soy milk once in a while. Peanut milk and hazelnut milk are some other examples. I think there are yogurts and cheeses based on the soy milk. You may want to check the food for vegan for more options.
I don't like to go vegan just because I will undergo Bariatric surgery. I know the taste of plant-based milk, but I'm not going to use them regularly. I'm interested in the yogurt and cheese made from soy. Is the taste similar to regular yogurt and cheese?
I don't like to go vegan just because I will undergo Bariatric surgery. I know the taste of plant-based milk, but I'm not going to use them regularly. I'm interested in the yogurt and cheese made from soy. Is the taste similar to regular yogurt and cheese?
There are a lot of options for lactose-free milk, but I'm not sure about cheese, yogurt, etc. I do know that they make lactose-free ice cream. I have a friend who is lactose intolerant, and he says the ice cream isn't too bad. Not that you should eat a lot of ice cream after the surgery, but if you want a little treat once in a while, it might be a good alternative.
There are a lot of options for lactose-free milk, but I'm not sure about cheese, yogurt, etc. I do know that they make lactose-free ice cream. I have a friend who is lactose intolerant, and he says the ice cream isn't too bad. Not that you should eat a lot of ice cream after the surgery, but if you want a little treat once in a while, it might be a good alternative.
I think there is no problem with eating dairy products as long as you don't eat too much of it. Better to refer this to your doctor because he or she will know better than we do.
As for suggestions, I heard that goat cheese is healthier than cow cheese.
I think there is no problem with eating dairy products as long as you don't eat too much of it. Better to refer this to your doctor because he or she will know better than we do.
Thanks all for the support and suggestions. I guess I will just have to try out all the alternative dairy products that were mentioned here and see how I like them.
2 To Tell Or Not To Tell?
4 Which workouts work for you?