By Eric Pfannier for The New York Times Many countries censor the Internet, but few spell out their intentions as explicitly as Pakistan. In an effort to tighten its control over the Internet, the government recently published a public tender for the “development, deployment and operation of a national-level URL filtering and blocking system.” Technology [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

As Reported by The Economic Times The reported move by the Pakistan government to phase out major restrictions on trade with India by switching to the negative list, and doing away with that too by the end of the year, is wholly welcome. Normalising trade relations with India will help establish a template of wider [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Huma Yusuf for The New York Times On Monday morning, Pakistanis awoke to news that their country had just won its first Oscar. Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and her co-director Daniel Junge received the award for best documentary in the short-subject category for “Saving Face.” The film chronicles the work of the British-Pakistani plastic surgeon Mohammad [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By George Packer for The New Yorker President Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religious freedom makes Rick Santorum “throw up.” “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of nonfaith can come into the public square and make their case?” Santorum says. It’s a central part of his campaign strategy to distort [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Manzer Munir for Pakistanis for Peace Pakistan won its first Oscar Sunday night when director Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s film, Saving Face, won at the 84th Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The film was directed by Daniel Junge and Pakistani born Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and won in its category for [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Mudassar Ali Khan for The Washington Times On 26th February 2012, the world will discover three different faces of Pakistan during the 84th Academy Awards, with the nomination of a Pakistani documentary ‘Saving Face’ for the best documentary (short subject). The first face is the Pakistani filmmaker who is contending for the Oscar, the [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Wajahat Ali for Salon.com Muslims worldwide groaned upon hearing the news that Oliver Stone’s son, Sean, converted to Islam while filming a documentary in Iran. Although we — the collective 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide — assume Sean Stone is a fine, upstanding man and sincerely wish him spiritual contentment, we earnestly ask Allah why [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Damayanti Datta for India Today On February 7, three Karnataka ministers were captured on television poring over a phone screen, watching a woman in a petticoat gyrating wildly. They lost their jobs for watching pornography in the sacred precincts of the Legislative Assembly. The incident is a high-profile sample of a definitive reality: porn [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Stephen Magagnini for The Sacremento Bee KARACHI, Pakistan — On a moonlit Thursday night in February, a television network executive hosted an elegant affair for journalists and diplomats at his villa above the Arabian Sea. Karachi’s privileged dined on lamb, shrimp, chicken, mutton and fettuccine in mushroom sauce, and were surprised by a quartet [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Reza Sayah for CNN Pakistani authorities vowed Tuesday to use the international police agency Interpol to arrest former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in connection with the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. “The government is moving for his (Musharraf’s) red notice,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, referring to the Interpol’s international arrest warrant. “We [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Aryn Baker for Time For a 3-year-old who has yet to master the use of the personal pronoun, Elmo is a whiz at foreign languages. Already fluent in Chinese, German, Hindi, Spanish and Arabic, among others, the fluffy red icon has just picked up Urdu, the most common language in Pakistan. At a time [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Chris Brummitt for The Associated Press Inside a high-security air force complex that builds jet fighters and weapons systems, Pakistan’s military is working on the latest addition to its sprawling commercial empire: a homegrown version of the iPad. It’s a venture that bundles together Pakistani engineering and Chinese hardware, and shines a light on [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Yaroslav Trofimov, Tom Wright and Adam Entous for The Wall Street Journal Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday met with Pakistan’s leaders, trying to gain Islamabad’s support for his peace outreach to the Taliban, as U.S. officials worked to keep expectations in check about the strategy’s prospects for yielding direct peace talks with the [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace

By Palash R Ghosh for International Business Times I am as excited and thrilled with the sudden meteoric climb of New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin as anyone else. I am completely immersed in ‘Linsanity’ and hope he becomes a dominant superstar in the NBA over a nice long career. Jeremy Lin is the [...]

Served By Pakistanis for Peace