Editorial

The wedding of Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton is described as the biggest media event in history. Lady Diana’s son tied the knot in style, no doubt. May the couple live happily ever after!

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Truth is the first casualty of a war. The proverbial saying stands true in the wake of ongoing uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. Any given journalist, producer and cameraman might do the best to reflect objectively on the developments taking place around him, it’s the headquarters deciding the budget and placement of the news. Mainstream international media outlets, print and electronic both, have rarely chosen to cover uprising from Tunisia and Algeria to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

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Not long ago in the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the niqab or burqa was mandatory from any girl aged 10 or above to foreigner females visiting or living in the war-torn country. The militia bagged the worst condemnations worldwide for oppressing women and violating basic fundamental rights. The practice continued until the US-led coalition troops marched on the streets of Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad to deliver equal human rights and freedom to practice one’s faith and way of life. While the Taliban are on the run, women still wear the burqa in the ‘liberated’ Afghanistan.

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Democracy bug is travelling fast in the extended Middle East. Within a short time has it reached Bahrain from the Mediterranean tip of North Africa. While public uprisings are changing the political landscape, forces of status quo have also spun into action to halt the healthy trend. As Iranian government bluntly spells out its conflicting positions about various uprisings in its Middle Eastern neighborhood, the Saudi troops have driven into Bahrain to silence predominantly Shiite population.

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Sophistication is a relative term. Graver become challenges of technology as we claim advancement. The case in point is the Richter scale 9 magnitude earthquake along the coast of Japan triggering a chain of disasters. Notwithstanding, the Japanese excellence in technological sophistication, the disaster response and recovery systems have fallen far short of the promised.

Japan’s preparedness for high magnitude earthquake did prove near-perfect from human and engineering perspectives but the nuclear reactors failed to withstand the seismic activity.

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Conditions are enticing enough for the world powers to abandon war-torn Afghanistan once more. It’s time for America to lead its western allies in Libya. Events following Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan diverted the attention of United States and other major powers to disintegrating Communist superpower and its orbit of influence in Eastern Europe. The Taliban-controlled Afghanistan returned to the world media headlines in 1998 with US warships firing Cruise Missile on suspected hideouts of Osama bin Laden.

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Undoubtedly, 2010 was the year of donor fatigue. It started off with mega-quake in January razing everything from the Haitian presidential palace to shanty towns. The human death toll soared to 0.2 million.

In February, Chilean earthquake did not cause much loss of lives but generated tsunami ringing alarm bells up to sun-kissed Hawaiian beaches.

The century’s worst flooding crippled life in Pakistan, affecting 20 million people. Meanwhile, the planet earth again shook terribly hard, sending deadly tremors to Christchurch in New Zealand.

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Though the Obama administration has retired the Bush-era phrase of Global War on Terrorism, yet a more urgent fight against stereotyping is yet to be launched.

"I want (Americans) to realize the extent to which Al-Qaeda is attempting to radicalize within the Muslim-American community," Peter King, the Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, told Congress as quoted by the Agence France-Presse.

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Dawn of January 1 was no different than dozens others since 1989 when the world witnessed revolts with disintegrating Soviet Union. The year 2011 was evidently predicted for newer signs of climatic disorders, economic tweaking within G-20 and status quo for occupied lands like Palestine, Iraq, Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Soon a tide was brewing in torpid political waters of Tunisia and Egypt. The world could hardly notice Mohammed Bouazizi's self-immolation in the central Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid that Ben Ali was unceremoniously air borne.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron thinks multi-culturalism is a failure. He goes on to explain connection between Islamic insurgency in the UK with freedom to enjoy a different culture. His premise that Muslim and Western cultures are incompatible is exactly what Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda stand for.

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