Since the Western-led war on drugs started four years ago, only two major drug smugglers have been arrested — Haji Baz Muhammad, who was extradited to the United States last October, and Bashir Noorzai, who was arrested in New York six months earlier. But the remainder are apparently untouchable.
As is so often the case with questions of this sort, a lot depends on what is meant by the terms. If the term evolution includes the strange ethics, suspect metaphysics and optimistic ideas about progress that some try to extract from science — in other words, a raft of extra–scientific accretions — then evolution is not a theory in the scientific sense.
After being reviled for more than 2 000 years as the embodiment of treachery, Judas Iscariot’s side of the story was finally published last week. Thanks to a newly discovered gospel in Judas’s name, we now know what his excuse was: Jesus made me do it.
China is about to adopt its 11th five-year plan, setting the stage for the continuation of probably the most remarkable economic transformation in history, while improving the wellbeing of almost a quarter of the world’s population. Never before has the world seen such sustained growth; never before has there been so much poverty reduction.
The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, says Israel’s plan to impose its final borders deep inside the occupied territories while expropriating large areas of Palestinian land for Jewish settlers will lead to another war in a decade. Speaking in Gaza City, Abbas said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would jeopardise the possibility of long-term peace if he refused to negotiate an agreement that ordinary Palestinians considered just.
In the end, it turned out better than he must have feared at times during Italy’s long, tense election night. Recently, Romano Prodi seemed assured of a majority in both houses of Parliament, though the fate of his next government could rest on a knife edge in the Senate. The outcome was not the clear victory promised by opinion.
How do we manifest our identity as Africans without reference to an African value system? Why are the ancestors no longer honoured? How do we ”respect those who have worked to build and develop our country” — to use a phrase from our Constitution — if we ignore the contribution of pre-colonial Africans under whose custodianship of land and culture the time-honoured philosophy of Ubuntu evolved?
Apart from the fact that they all call themselves Christian, what do the following people have in common? Right-wing, ultra-conservative Roman Catholic Mel Gibson and former bishop of Newark John Spong, who says: ”I do not believe that any propositional statement about God can be literally true.”
‘From woman is the beginning of sin and because of her all must die” (Ecclesiasticus 25:24 Apocrypha). This is one example of about 200 biblical verses that belittle and demean women. Throughout Abrahamic doctrine women are treated as weak, inferior, dependent and unclean.
According to the findings of a recent survey by local rights NGOs, women were treated better during the Saddam Hussein era — and their rights were more respected — than they are now. According to a recent survey, women’s basic rights under the Hussein regime were guaranteed in the Constitution and — more importantly — respected.