Welcome Folks,
No, OpinionFactory.Com is not merely a website or a blog. It is constructed on the basic principle that everyone has a right to have opinion. We are the advocates of absolute pluralism. We appreciate fully the right of one mind on another. What we cannot tolerate however is any condoning of any form of violence, terrorism or nefarious activities. For everything else you are most welcome.
I was going through a piece carried in the Washingon Post titled Father of Pakistan’s Bomb Stands Defiant that I was faced with an epistemological dilemma. How do you father a bomb? I am still working on the answer. However the interim answer can be a bit vulgar and hence readers’ discretion is advised. The folks at IAEA (sounds like a punjabi verb) should know that I am not a technical hand and hence what I am engaging in is pure guesswork. If by a stroke of misfortune I hit the nail at its head kindly do not consider me one of those proliferating the deadly technology. I am afraid that I already have a name which can easily indict me. Yes my middle name is Khan. (more…)
Twenty years ago, no one believed that individuals with injured spinal cords could ever recover and possibly even walk again. But indeed they are! Last month, you learned about Chase Ford, an adorable toddler whose innocent tumble from a sofa appeared to have left him completely paralyzed at age two. Thanks to his own determination and the specialized skills of the staff at one of the Reeve Foundation’s NeuroRecovery Network facilities, Frazier Rehabilitation Institute in Louisville, the now five-year old Chase was able to participate with Team Reeve in the Kentucky Derby miniMarathon on April 26 and actually walked the last 100 feet of the race under his own power! Reeve Foundation caught this amazing feat on video and are thrilled to be able to share it with you. Please take a couple of minutes to view this exciting video and share the encouraging news with others.
Although Chase’s rehabilitation must continue, you can see firsthand how much brighter and more promising his future will be because of breakthroughs in spinal cord research and the new treatment options that are available right now.
Helping adults as well as kids like Chase recover and hopefully walk again is what the Reeve Foundation is all about. The vital work that we do is made possible through the friendship and financial contributions of all of our compassionate supporters.
With adequate resources, dedicated, top-notch scientists and specialized treatment teams like those helping Chase, we can continue to dramatically improve the lives of people with injured spinal cords.
Reeves Foundation welcomes you to join Team Reeve with a tax deductible contribution. Every gift, large and small, is deeply appreciated.
Together, so much is possible. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Peter T. Wilderotter
President and CEO
Reeve Foundation
You can help find a cure for paralysis and help people like Chase walk again.On April 26, five-year-old Chase Ford will be participating in the Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon. But it’s not just Chase’s young age that will make this feat so amazing.
It was almost three years ago that Chase fell and hit his head on the arm of a couch. He damaged his spinal cord and lost all motor function from the neck down. The only things he could move were his eyes. Doctors told his mom, Renee, that her son would never walk again.
But thanks to caring friends like you, that’s not how this story ends.
Refusing to accept the doctors’ grim prognosis, Renee turned to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Chase began a cutting-edge rehabilitation program at our NeuroRecovery Network (NRN) site at Frazier Rehab Institute in Louisville, Kentucky. Soon he was regaining feeling and movement.
Chase is proving that nothing is beyond hope. The answers are just around the corner. And with your support for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, we will find them.
Chase’s progress is nothing short of miraculous. At our NeuroRecovery Network center at Frazier - one of seven NRN sites around the country - he began a revolutionary new locomotor training that repeats the motions of walking on a treadmill to stimulate muscles and nerves in the lower body. Never before had this type of treatment been tried with a child, especially one as young as Chase.
As Chase’s therapy continued, he began to slowly regain control of his trunk, muscles in his legs began to function, and he just started feeling better. All of these changes are the result of the nerves in his spinal cord reorganizing. Chase was literally being rebuilt.
Today, after putting in hundreds of hours of hard work, Chase can walk over 100 yards on his own and will soon lead TEAM REEVE in the Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarathon to raise much needed funds for our spinal cord injury research.
This is the fulfillment of Christopher Reeve’s bold vision: bringing groundbreaking spinal cord injury research from the laboratory to patients. Chase’s astounding recovery was paved by the work of the dedicated physicians, researchers and therapists supported by the Foundation. We have committed $77 million to advance the work of the most accomplished scientists in the world.
By donating online today, you can further this research that is making the “impossible” possible and help thousands of people like Chase who are living with these injuries improve their lives, their careers, and their dreams. Donating online is safe, easy, and secure and your contribution is tax-deductible.
This April, when Chase is participating in the miniMarathon - alongside his therapists, friends, and Foundation staffers - he’ll prove with each step that there is no limit to what we can achieve, together.
Peter T. Wilderotter
Peter T. Wilderotter
President and CEO
Mr Heinrich Buecker from Berlin very kindly drew my attention to the following cause one of these days. You are requested to visit the site and see if you can join the cause. I am for it.
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Please take a look at war-is-illegal.org an international declaration initiated by some shops and international artists in Berlin.
Thank you very much
Heinrich Buecker
COOP - Berlin - Rochstr.3
Against a background of escalating ecological crises, and the fact that large parts of the world´s population are being exposed to extreme poverty, inhuman working conditions and increasing social tensions, the annual global military expenditure has risen to more than 1000 billion dollars.
The military-industrial complex of just a few G8 countries is responsible for the overwhelming part of this spending, causing incalcuable social and ecological consequences.
Unequal distribution of global resources, increasingly controlled by large multinational companies, global debt policy and unfair international trading practices ultimately could not be maintained without military security. In many countries the military is used to repress critical opposition.
The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 are increasingly used to justify systematic surveillance and the dismantling of constitutional rights. Even European countries have helped to establish Guantanomo-like secret prisons, where torture in all probability takes place. (more…)
[Introduction: It cannot be denied that the heartrending events of September 11, 2001, changed all our lives. I saw the sad events on CNN and was really shocked. Could anything in the world really force anyone to perpetrate such brutal crimes? But again being a journalist/writer in his early career I was acquainted with the western researches on Al Qaeda. I had no hesitation in accepting that a group of mad zealots could in any case do it. But the entire operation was so effectively staged that I could not help but smell some wider conspiracy. Since then I have been reading and researching on the issue. The questions that occurred to me were simple. (more…)
Book reading these days is considered an onerous pastime. While it is an activity so important that we can hardly afford to call it a hobby, those who do and yet cannot spare time for it complain that there are so many books in the market that you cannot effectively sift from it. For those among such friends who trust my judgement, I am pointing out some good titles that I have read and liked or as in case of one voluminous book I am still reading.
The first book that I have more than once recommended is Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase. While all of Amrstrong’s writings are well written and engaging, I believe that our readers need to give importance to her life struggle too instead of getting singularly obsessed with her work on Islam. You cannot appreciate a person’s intellect unless you have known what it takes to be a legend personally. (more…)
An ex-CIA spymaster critiques
By Jeffrey Bartholet | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Mar 3, 2008 | Updated: 3:28 p.m. ET Mar 3, 2008
Henry “Hank” Crumpton has spent most of his career as a spy or spymaster for the Central Intelligence Agency. An expert on running covert operations in difficult regions of the world, he began tracking and battling Al Qaeda in 1998 and oversaw the CIA’s Afghan campaign to topple the Taliban after 9/11. Crumpton later served as the senior counterterrorism official in the U.S. State Department, a job he held until early 2007. He now runs the Crumpton Group, a private consulting firm in
NEWSWEEK: How plugged in are you now on Afghanistan and Pakistan?
Hank Crumpton: Very.
The last time we spoke, you were telling me about what you would do if you were going after Al Qaeda. You said the U.S. had to make deals with the tribes in Waziristan and the areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and turn them against the Arab foreigners in their midst.
Exactly. (more…)
Today I received an email from Manal Ahmad on behalf of American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)’s Frontline/world and Christian Science Monitor. The mail invited our readers to preview an investigative video report (See Part 1/ Part 2/ Interview of the reporter) on the Talbanization in Swat and Musharraf’s imposition of emergency (I call it martial law though). It is an excellent and thought provoking work and one should congratulate the reporter and the project team for undertaking and doing full justice to it. Since it features also Pakistani intellectual heavy weights like Aitzaz Ahsan and Ahmad Rashid, the report is highly recommended. You can reach it also through the project’s homepage.
Since I have also been asked to comment I want to clarify two points in the report. In the report Benazir’s assassination and Amir Zeb’s demise have been mentioned in quick succession. That is chronologically correct. However somehow it seems to the observer implying that Benazir Bhutto was also assassinated by the Taliban. Had that been a clear message one would have complained that the project team was taking side of a beleaguered regime on the issue. However that is not clearly the case and let me only limit myself to one clarification. While there is no gainsaying that terrorism and Talbanization pose the single most taxing challenge to the future of the nation, it is a bit premature to conclude that the Taliban were behind Benazir’s assassination. (more…)
There is a lot of talk going on regarding the fate of the war on terror expecially after the change of the tide in Pakistani politics. Most of these concerns are misplaced because the real partners, the legitimate ones in this war are now taking charge in Islamabad. Pakistan People’s Party the leading part in the alliance has lost its most dynamic leader in a terror attack and will surely work to stall the growth of the scourge regardless of who actually perpetrated the crime. Likewise the Awami National Party is also a perpetual victim of terrorism and extremism. During his tenure Nawaz Sharif also made it evident that he was no friend of the terrorists. If you remember it was during Nawaz’s tenure that the special terror courts were established. What the main parties need to do is to keep Nawaz league away from the splinters of the religious MMA like the Jamaat-e-Islami. PML-N in every aspect is a mainstream national party and its radicalization can really wreak havoc for there would be extremist agenda in the country then. For the time being however there is no imminent threat because the People’s Party is playing its role laudably. (more…)
