This music video is called shame on censorship 18+ Every Bomb You Make-Sting.
From Associated Press:
Afghanistan moves to censor TV
By ALISA TANG Associated Press Writer
Article Launched: 03/31/2008 10:17:24 AM PDT
KABUL, Afghanistan—Afghanistan‘s lower house of Parliament passed a resolution Monday seeking to bar television programs from showing dancing and other practices deemed un-Islamic. …
The parliamentary resolution, drafted by a commission for cultural and religious affairs, said dancers should not be shown on television, and un-Islamic scenes should be cut from Indian TV series broadcast in Afghanistan, said Din Mohammad Azimi, a lawmaker and member of the commission. …
Last year gunmen entered the home of Zakia Zaki, the female owner of a radio station, and shot her to death in front of her 8-year-old son. Zaki had apparently criticized local warlords who warned her to change her station’s programming.
Shaima Rezayee, a popular host for an MTV-style music show, was shot dead in 2005 after clerics criticized her show as “anti-Islamic.” …
“It’s the re-Talibanization of Afghan society,” Mohseni said. “Every single week they come up with something new.”
While George W. Bush’s supporters rave and rant, branding all Muslims as “Islamofascist”, Bush’s Afghan puppets re-Talibanize Afghanistan. Which is not that surprising, considering earlier support by United States governments to Taliban and other ultra-religious Afghans. And Bush’s present support to the ultra-religious Badr Brigade paramilitaries in Iraq, killing gay people and random civilians of Basra …
No more dancing in Bush’s ‘new’ Iraq: here.
Canada: By stealth, Ottawa seeks to censor film and television production: here.
Dozens of tankers carrying oil for NATO forces were destroyed Sunday in a bomb blast targeting a Pakistani border crossing where they awaited clearance to enter Afghanistan, officials said: here.
Turkish gov’t, military split on dispatching troops to Afghanistan: here.
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US media, Bush responsible for war crimes, says David
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Iftikhar Alam Marwat
Islamabad
The US media, President Bush and his team is responsible for war crimes throughout the world, especially in Iran, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, said renowned US journalist David Barsamian on Monday.
He was delivering a lecture on the topic ‘Alternative media and propaganda’ at a local hotel here.David said that the role of media is to tell truth and expose lies. He said in USA there are two kinds of media, corporate media and alternative media, these days. The corporate media organisations like CNN, Fox TV, ABC, New York Times and Washington Post have played very negative role in the American society. He said that these organisations are tools in the hand of US think tank and they present things in a way, what the US government wants to say.
He said that they present thing after destroying facts and moulding them in their own way. He said that US media has destroyed even the true face of great scholars like Mark Luther King and the US people do not know the true face of Luther King.
David Barsamian said that propaganda is playing a vital role in today’s age and the western media, especially US media, proved it in war against Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that no one knew how many Afghans or Iraqis have been killed in the so-called war on terror, but everyone knew about Britney Spare and Michael Jackson just because of the fact that US media presents facts in its own way.
The famous radio broadcaster and writer said that media must not critique problems rather it should try and find out solutions to these problems.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=104272
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Ottawa stirs Afghan furor
JAMES MCCARTEN/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier talks to reporters April 14, 2008, on the final day of his Afghanistan visit.
MIRANJAN, Afghanistan–Taliban militants crept through groves of grapevines and pomegranate trees to launch a surprise assault yesterday, killing 11 police officers sleeping at a small police outpost 20 kilometres north of Kandahar city.
Of the 12 officers at the compound, 11 were killed and one was seriously wounded, said a police spokesperson.
The ambush was the latest in a string of recent attacks on police in the south.
Eight police officers were killed Saturday – four while destroying opium poppies in Kandahar and four who were manning a checkpoint in Helmand.
Associated Press
Foreign affairs minister first suggests Kandahar governor must go, then backtracks in a hurry
Apr 15, 2008 04:30 AM
Mitch Potter
in London
Bruce Campion-Smith
in Ottawa
Fresh political tremors are rattling Afghanistan’s volatile Kandahar province in the wake of a Canadian government bid to put a new Afghan face on the struggle against the Taliban.
In an unprecedented warning yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier signalled – and later recanted – Ottawa’s view that Kandahar Governor Asadullah Khalid may have to go over perceptions of political corruption.
According to an Afghan government source in Kandahar, the impact of Bernier’s public comments unleashed a political shock wave that will be difficult to roll back.
Bernier, on the final day of a tour of Canada’s embattled patch in southern Afghanistan, initially told reporters the status of the controversial governor was in doubt as Ottawa redoubles its efforts to persuade Afghan President Hamid Karzai to crack down on corruption.
“There’s the question to maybe have a new governor,” Bernier said when asked what Karzai could do about perceptions of corrupt rule in the province where Canadian forces are based.
“I think (Karzai) can work with us to be sure the (new) governor will be more powerful … (and) will do what he has to do to help us.”
Bernier’s office later added clarification, insisting Ottawa respects Afghan sovereignty and is “not calling for any changes to the Afghan government.”
Bernier is believed to have spoken candidly with Karzai on the subject of replacing Khalid during a weekend meeting in Kabul. According to one Afghan government source, Karzai pleaded with the Canadian foreign minister for “some weeks” to explore his options on appointing a new governor to the volatile province.
“By speaking publicly on this sensitive issue, the Canadian minister has put Karzai in a difficult position,” a highly placed Afghan source in Kandahar said last night.
“If he stays with this governor, Karzai will look like he is ignoring the Canadians. But if he makes a change, it will be obvious to Afghans where the real power lies. It will make Karzai look like Canada’s puppet.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper scrambled to Bernier’s defence even as he expressed regret that his government’s private concerns about Khalid had been so openly aired.
“Minister Bernier very quickly corrected a misimpression that I think had been left from some earlier comments,” Harper said.
“Obviously we have talked to the government of Afghanistan from time to time about performance of that government, and some of our concerns, and we’ll continue to express some of those concerns privately,” he told reporters during a visit to Winnipeg.
Asked point blank whether Bernier should be dumped, Harper said, “he’s clarified his comments, the answer is no.”
But Bernier’s public clarification appears to have come only after Afghan diplomats privately demanded their own explanation from the Conservative government for the comments.
Omar Samad, Afghanistan’s ambassador in Ottawa, pointedly noted that despite his country’s “special relationship” with Canada, there are “bounds.”
“We need to be mindful of that,” Samad said.
But he drove home the point that whatever complaints Ottawa has about Khalid, Afghanistan will make its own decisions about who serves as governor.
“What is important is that the Canadian government through Mr. Bernier made it clear as to their views about the Afghan government, that this is a sovereign government,” Samad said in an interview on CBC’s Politics show.
“Appointments are made by the Afghan government … that is not going to change. The president is going to decide who is going to be governor of which province or who is going to be minister or even ambassadors.”
In Ottawa, Bernier’s comments – and the department’s subsequent effort at damage control – had opposition MPs saying it was time for the foreign affairs minister to be dumped from the high-profile post.
“I think so but he should not have been appointed at the very beginning. He had no experience,” Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion told reporters. “The Prime Minister made a poor choice.
“Maybe the Prime Minister though, if I may say something for him, maybe he has not a lot of choices in his caucus and it’s why he chose Mr. Bernier,” Dion said.
Bernier’s comments came as a surprise to senior Western political sources in Kabul, where concern over local governance in Kandahar is just one in a litany of similar worries about corruption throughout Afghanistan.
“In terms of corruption, there are differing views about the governor of Kandahar, just as there are differing views of many other governors, ministers and senior Afghan officials,” a senior Western diplomat in Kabul told the Star.
“Khalid is not unusual, in that respect. But what is clear is that Kandahar is of particular importance to Canada. And someone appears to have convinced Bernier that this particular governor has crossed some red lines.”
In the past year alone, the diplomat said, Western officials have encouraged the Karzai government to replace more than 10 governors and “for the most part we traded up. So it is possible. But not easy.
“But we do try to embrace the principle” of having a successor lined up before initiating such a change in a country where local politics is paramount, the diplomat said.
“Otherwise, be careful what you wish for.
“You might just get it.”
Khalid, 38, was in Kabul yesterday where he declined repeated requests for comment. An aide to the Kandahar governor said he would not be available to discuss the matter.
It was unclear where the points of rupture lie in the Canadian-Afghan relationship in Kandahar. Khalid was last year accused of engaging in torture of detainees, allegations he has consistently denied.
Khalid, an ethnic Pashtun from Ghazni province, also has acquired a reputation for sometimes behaving with aloof indifference to the parade of dignitaries that frequent the Governor’s Palace in downtown Kandahar – an attitude some close observers suggest may have extended also to visiting Canadian officials.
Another possibility is that the efforts displayed during Khalid’s three years in power simply do not match up with the accelerated pace of development that Ottawa hopes to bring to Kandahar over the course of the next two years – before Canada’s mandate in the province expires in 2011.
With files from Tonda MacCharles
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New deadline for ban on Indian shows on Afghan television
23. April 2008, 13:10
By Sardar Ahmad, AFP
The Afghan government extended Wednesday a deadline for two private television stations to drop Indian serials it claims violate Islamic morals, but one of the stations vowed not to buckle.
The culture ministry said it was giving the nation’s leading private station, Tolo, and another network called Afghan TV until April 29 to stop the shows — two soap operas and a drama of Aladdin-like tales.
The ministry had set two previous deadlines, the latest on Tuesday. Two other private stations have complied, each dropping an Indian soap opera.
“Tolo and Afghan TV are informed for the last time to stop broadcasting certain serials as soon as possible,” it said in a statement. “Otherwise, they will be referred to legal and judicial authorities.”
It banned the five Indian serials saying it had received complaints from religious circles that they undermine Afghan culture and Islamic values.
But Tolo reiterated it would not pull its hit soaps “Tulsi”, an enormously popular drama nicknamed after its central character, and “Kasauti Zindagi Kay” (Tests of Life).
“We won’t ban our programmes,” a Tolo director, Jahid Mohseni, told AFP. “If there is more pressure from the government, we will seek legal advice,” he said.
In a statement, the station — which like others blurs out exposed female flesh from its shows — said the dramas were conservative and family-orientated and respected the values of an Islamic society.
“The ministry’s sudden interest in them, after years of broadcast, is more in line with hobbling the development of free media and debate in Afghanistan,” it said.
The ban was illegal, it said, accusing the culture ministry of bypassing the legal process by not referring matters of dispute to a media complaints commission.
In an open letter supporting Tolo, the leading Afghanistan National Journalists Union said the government was acting against the constitution, media law and free speech and its order had “no legal weight or authority.”
It also accused the state broadcaster, Radio Television Afghanistan, of making “inflammatory statements” against private stations and said it was afraid for the safety of its own members and Tolo staff.
The union has called for a meeting with President Hamid Karzai and religious leaders on the matter, but the president told reporters Monday broadcasting must “be in line with our culture, based on our society moral standards.”
There were also too many foreign programmes on television, he said.
The media boom is seen as one of the successes of Afghanistan’s push towards democracy since the 2001 fall of the extremist Taliban government, which banned television.
The tussle over Indian serials — and other government complaints about the media — has raised alarm among some of Afghanistan’s mostly Western allies.
“We are very concerned about where this is leading,” said a Western diplomat on condition of anonymity.
Mark Laity, a spokesman for NATO, which has 47,000 soldiers in Afghanistan to help the government, refused to comment about the TV serials ban but said media freedom was “fundamentally important to a developing democracy.”
http://www.afghannews.net/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=2768
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