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By M K Bhadrakumar The humanitarian situation resulting from the unprecedented floods in Pakistan has been turned into a playground of regional geopolitics. The responsibility for this primarily lies with the United States, which fashioned its response to the crisis in a needlessly competitive spirit. The needs of Pakistan are of stupendous proportions. Even cold statistics bring this out. One fifth of the landmass of Pakistan is inundated and the lives of 20 million people have been affected. Nothing further needs to be said about the enormity of the human sorrow. The fact that the  United Nations  launched an initial appeal for US$460 million for the immediate relief underscores the magnitude of the crisis – although, according to the Pakistani foreign minister, that amount "will only cater to about 6 to 8 million people for 90 days only". Yet, Pakistan's crisis presents itself as a theater of public diplomacy for the United States to burnish its image among Pakistani p...

There are a lot of things to dislike on Facebook: status updates about weird online games and those that parrot the already-discredited lies of politicians, to name two. So the ability to vote against this content by clicking a "Dislike" button must be mighty appealing -- or so you'd have to conclude from the popularity of the latest "Dislike" button scam. The whole thing came and went yesterday. My first tip-off came when a friend who usually writes crisp, clear sentences posted an update that morning bragging that she could now "dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!" Not long after, I came across a post on the site of security-software vendor Sophos. That explained that I had seen  yet another scam preying on the distracted and the unwary . Falling for any of these scams (which promise some lurid or eye-popping or exclusive content) typically trick you into giving a rogue Facebook application permission to access your profile, posting spam messages fr...

· Indian company controls dam on Kabul River, tens of dams control flow of Kashmir water into Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan · Flood gates of Afghan Sarobi Dam, Indian Baglihar Dam were opened to drown Pakistani plains · Two US allies, the puppet regime in Kabul and the 'strategic ally' in New Delhi, declare water war on Pakistan · The tragedy one again raises question marks on the US double game against Pakistan in the region · Melting glaciers have nothing to do with this tragedy; it also doesn't explain why Kabul river surged It's not as if the clouds dodged borders and focused on Pakistan only. Pakistan's water flows from Indian-occupied Kashmir and from US-occupied Afghanistan. A natural deluge should have shown some spillover effect into Indian and Afghan regions adjoining Pakistan. It is interesting that a second and a third wave of floods is expected in Pakistan when there's no rain to justify it. Wher...

ROUTING – PAKISTANI RUPEE All branches of ASKARI COMMERCIAL BANK IN PAKISTAN Army Flood Relief Fund A/C # 0028010121825-8, Askari Bank Ltd., GHQ Branch, Rawalpindi, Pakistan         ACCOUNT NUMBER 0028010121825-8 ROUTING – US DOLLAR Please remit proceeds to  JP MORGAN CILASE BANK,NEW YORK USA.SWIFT BIC CODE:CHASU33  for the credit of Askari Bank Limited, Karachi Branch,  Account number: 001-1-1678273 SWIFT BIC CODE : ASCMPKKA  for onward credit to Askari Bank Limited, GHQ Branch, Rawalpindi, Pakistan     A/C # 28-FAVOURING  ROUTING – POUND STERLING Please remit proceeds to :  STANDARD CHARTERED BANK , 37 GRACE CHURCH STREET ,LONDON, EC3V ORX , U.K. VIA SWIFT BIC CODE : SDBLGB2L  for credit ofAskari Bank Limited , Karachi Branch Pound Sterling    Account number :01-249443401 SWIFT BIC CODE : ASCMPKKA  for onward credit to Askari Bank Limited , GHQ Branch , Rawalpindi , Pakistan        A/C # 28- ROUNTING – EURO Please remit proceeds...

Donate for Flood affectees in Army's A/C : Army Relief Fund for IDPs, A/C 0028-01-012-1825-8 , Askari Bank, GHQ, Rawalpindi. Pakistan     To donate from Abroad, BIC code is ASCMPKKA

By Matthew Rothschild, August 13, 2010 It's impossible to look at the images coming out of Pakistan and not shake your head at the brutality of Mother Nature. But is it Mother Nature's fault—or our own? Is this just a freak occurrence, or the result of global warming? I was speaking with Brian Tokar this morning. He's the director of the Institute for Social Ecology and the author of "Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and Social Change," and he believes that the flood, along with recent freak weather like Russia's drought and fires, can be traced back to our destruction of the environment. "The weather is noticeably more chaotic," he writes in his book, "corresponding rather closely to climate scientists' longstanding predictions." In one of those predictions from 2007, the IPCC said global warming will cause "increased deaths, disease, and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms, fire, and drought." And while pinning any on...

By Kevin Drum August 13, 2010 " Mother Jones " -- Last  week the  Wall Street Journal  ran a terrific series of stories called  "What They Know."  The general subject was personal privacy—or the lack of it—in the digital world, and the first article in the series explained how websites routinely track your movements on the web and collect a genuinely astonishing amount of personal information about you in the process. The  Journal  examined 50 sites using a test computer and discovered that these sites collectively installed a total of 3,180 tracking files— an average of 63 tracking files per site: The state of the art is growing increasingly intrusive, the  Journal  found. Some tracking files can record a person's keystrokes online and then transmit the text to a data-gathering company that analyzes it for content, tone and clues to a person's social connections. Other tracking files can re-spawn trackers that a person may have deleted. ....Some of th...