Canada – Train derails in bridge collapse over Calgary’s Bow River

Train derails on bridge over Calgary’s Bow River

By CBC News

Train could be carrying diesel fuel, official says, with bridge ‘continuing to drop’

A train carrying what emergency officials say could be diesel fuel has derailed on Calgary’s Bonnybrook Bridge over the Bow River.

“The bridge is continuing to drop as we speak,” said Bruce Burrell, Calgary Emergency Management Agency director, adding that it has dropped at least two feet since emergency crews came on scene.

Burrell said that the contents of the train cars could be diesel fuel, or something similar to it.

Some nearby areas have been evacuated.

“Being a flammable product, we wanted to make sure we had people out of the area in case something happened,” said Calgary’s deputy fire chief Cam Uzeloc.

Read more » CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/story/2013/06/27/calgary-flood-train-derailment-bonnybrook-bridge.html

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Train derails in bridge collapse near Sudbury, Ont.

CP says no risk to public after several cars topple into Wahnapitae River

By The Canadian Press

Canadian Pacific says there is no indication that a freight train derailment east of Sudbury on Sunday poses a danger to the public or the environment.

CP spokesman Ed Greenberg says one of the rail cars derailed and as a result struck a trestle bridge near the community of Wanup.

Images of the scene showed the bridge collapsed and a number of cars carrying containers fell into the Wahnapitae River.

Read more » CBC
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/06/02/ontario-sudbury-train-derailment-wanup.html

200 years Old temple of Hindu’s Demolished in Karachi

Don’t demolish 200-year-old Hindu temple: Pakistani court

Islamabad: A court in Pakistan has restrained authorities in the port city of Karachi from demolishing a Hindu temple believed to have been constructed 200 years ago, a media report said.

International Mother Language Day 21 February

By Zachary Latif

It seems the founding fathers of Pakistan never really imagined a place for a Bengali speaking, large Hindu minority province. This is because the TNT demanded a full divorce from all that was Hindu. Such was the force of the ideology, there was even an effort to make Bengali arabicized and de-sanskritized!!

Bengali muslims were at the forefront of the partition movement but giving up Bengali was a bridge too far for them.

In the course of the Pakistani government’s occupation of Bangladesh (is there a better word though there were benighted efforts to improve “East Pakistan” it seemed an occupation stroke colonisation) to “Arabify” & “DeSanskritise” Bangla or Bengali (I don’t know which is appropriate to refer to in the English language I prefer using Persian over Farsi, Gypsy over Romany, Eskimo over can’t remember what oh yes Inuit, etc etc) it inadvertently sparked off a global movement to preserve “mother languages” (the usage of the word mother language reminds of me of the elegant song ….

Read more » Brown Pundits

Why Imran Khan has decided not to go to Quetta with his so-called Tsunami

Graphic details: Killing of Brahumdagh Bugti’s sister and niece in Karachi on 31st January

Brahamdagh Bugti’s sister, and Mehran Baluch’s sister-in-law Zamur Bugti (34), and 13-year old daughter, Jaana Domki were visiting the house of Zamur’s maternal uncle after attending a wedding ceremony of a cousin at Carlton Hotel in D.H.A, Karachi. They were accompanied by their driver (Barkat Baloch) and a helper’s 12 year old daughter. They were travelling in a black Toyota sedan (Registration: ANR-353). The car also had an MPA Balochistan plate on it.

Between 1 and 1:30 AM on the 31st of January, shortly after leaving the uncle’s house, a black coloured car intercepted Bugti’s car near Gizri Bridge, Clifton. A man dressed in black shalwar kameez and wearing a black face mask jumped out of the car and shot the driver, Barkat Baloch, as they tried to get away. The driver was killed on the spot as a result of multiple bullet wounds to the head. Then the assailant opened the rear door at which point two bikes arrived at the scene and parked on the left and right side of the car. Upon opening the door, Zamur Bugti offered her jewellery, phone and valuables to the man, thinking that he was a robber. In response the killer told Zamur that he didn’t need her valuables and that he was there to kill her and her daughter, in urdu. Zamur Bugti told him to spare her daughter and that he could kill her. At this point the killer went to the daughter who was sitting on the front passenger seat and fired multiple shots at her, hitting her in the chest and neck.

Zamur Bugti was made to witness the brutal killing of her daughter. Zamur Bugti was then shot over a dozen times in the head, face and neck at point blank range and was left in a pool of blood. During this incident, the police were spectating from a distance.

We have gathered all this information from a first-hand witness who was a helper’s daughter. She was deliberately spared by the killer. The girl ran back to the house which they had just left and informed the family there of what had happened. The family members immediately rushed to the scene where they found the previously spectating policemen close to the victims’ bodies, trying to steal jewellery the victims were wearing. A family member who just arrived at the scene from the uncle’s house witnessed this and yelled at them and told them to get away, so they stepped back. No personal belongings were taken.

Sindhi Culture Day Bridges the U.S.-Pakistan Relationship

Information Officer Andie is in the latest issue of Khabr-o-Nazar magazine talking about Sindhi Culture Day! You can see other pictures and articles in previous issues now- go to http://islamabad.usembassy.gov/pakistan/khabr_o_nazar.html

News adopted from Facebook.

Life Bridge

Life Bridge is a registered nonprofit organization. Life Bridge Pakistan Trust, registered under the social welfare act of Pakistan. Life Bridge’s mission and message is one of peace and a brotherhood bound by humanity.

After having been raised in America, Dr. Geeta Chainani’s identity as a Sindhi brought her back to Pakistan in search of her family history. An unexpected twist of fate brought her face to face with what is now being termed as the “greatest natural disaster of our time” – the massive flooding that began on July 29, 2010.

After witnessing the great burden of disease whose victims mainly consisted of women and children Dr. Chainani decided to dedicate the rest of her trip to providing emergency medical care in two tent cities.

Confronted with the humanitarian crisis of “epic proportions” present following the floods and the Sindhi diaspora’s increasing interest in her work in Pakistan Dr. Chainani realized she was the only one to bridge this divide. Life Bridge was founded as that bridge, hence it’s name.

Since Sept 2, 2010, Dr. Chainani continues to provide life-saving services in the villages of rural Sindh. Together, Team Life Bridge US and Team Life Bridge Pakistan work to bridge the gaps in issues related to: Health, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Shelter, Food. For more visit » http://www.thelifebridge.us

OSHO: Making Love Is a Sacred Experience

All the religions have destroyed the sacredness of love. And the conditioning has gone so deep in the human mind that people are making love in such a hurry, as if they finish it as quickly as possible. Naturally if it is a sin it is better finished soon. Their hearts are guilt-ridden ……

Making love is vital to a romantic relationship. Making love is vital to a romantic relationship. He  is saying that everything is within you!!! Many thinks Osho is a bridge between Western and Eastern Philosophy.

– You Tube Link

Could GHQ tell us what happened to the inquiry into the alleged firing squad and beating videos which are even now doing the rounds in emails and on the Internet and bringing our country a bad name?

A matter of shame – By Kamran Shafi

I WAS much ashamed as a former soldier to read what ensued when a sessions court in Karachi cancelled the pre-arrest bail applications of certain serving and retired officials of the National Highway Authority (NHA) in the case of the collapse of Karachi`s Sher Shah Bridge.

The former chairman, Major General Raja Farrukh Javed, during whose tenure the bridge was built and which collapsed within weeks of its opening by none other than the Commando himself, ran away from the City Courts premises!

In the words of Paul Drake, the fictional private detective who helps Perry Mason solve his cases in Erle Stanley Gardner`s thrillers of yesteryear, the great general variously “took to his heels; vamoosed; went on the lam; broke his bond” etcetera, and made his escape from the court. It is pertinent to note that the news report also said that the major general “managed to escape from the court premises very easily”. I ask you! What absolutely disgraceful behaviour. patwaris havaldars

One should have thought that and police and others of their ilk did this sort of dishonourable and cowardly thing and not full-blown generals of our great army that has lorded it over us for more years than I care to remember and which is even now baring its fangs at the `bloody civilians`. If he had done nothing wrong, Maj-Gen Javed should have stood his ground and argued his case in court.

Although the Sindh High Court did a couple of days later grant Maj-Gen Javed and another person named on the FIR pre-arrest interim bail, some immediate questions nevertheless present themselves: Was his getaway facilitated? Where is he now? And, most fundamentally, why did he do what he did?

Be which as it may, and because these questions are now being asked by citizens of this poor country who cannot escape from the law “very easily” themselves as evidenced by letters to the editor, even of this newspaper of record, it falls upon the army administration to make its position clear in terms of bad conduct by retired officers. The army has been abused enough by fortune-seekers and carpet-baggers and petty Napoleons; it is time that the high command sent the message that it will not tolerate un-soldier-like behaviour, even by retired personnel, any longer.

And while it is at it, could GHQ tell us what happened to the inquiry into the alleged firing squad and beating videos which are even now doing the rounds in emails and on the Internet and bringing our country a bad name? As one has said before, those alleged happenings could well be the handiwork of Pakistan`s enemies, but it would help if we knew the truth. ….

Read more : DAWN

Sindhis as ‘an Indo-Pak bridge’

Across the Wagah : An Indian’s Sojourn in Pakistan

by Mohammad Ali Mahar, Austin, TX

… an interesting book, ‘Across the Wagah : An Indian’s Sojourn in Pakistan’. The author of the book, Maneesha Tikekar, a Marathi professor, spent almost all her time in Pakistan — which was not more than only a few months — in Islamabad. However, her study of the life in Pakistan is astounding, to say the least. Even though the book has other areas dealing with different parts of Pakistan, including Sindh, the following piece exclusively deals with Sindh.

“During the British rule, Sindh was reduced to the backyard of the Bombay Presidency. It remained poor and backward except for Karachi whose prominence increased after Sindh’s separation from Bombay. Sindh’s fortunes changed little after the creation of Pakistan for, it has been made to play the second fiddle to Punjab.

Contours of the Sindhi society have been shaped by three major forces; a handful of biradaris like Chandios, Jilanis, Talpurs, Khuhros and Bhuttos; powerful landlords, waderas, whose stories of exploitation of women and repression of the poor farm labour, haris abound in Sindh; and the Pirs of Hala and the most (in) famous Pir of Pagara. Urban Sindh has been dominated by mohajirs. Ethnic conflict in the southern province of Sindh between indigenous Sindhis and Urdu-speaking mohajirs, claimed hundreds of lives during the 1990s. Traditionally the Sindhi Muslim was poor, backward and uneducated and the middle class barely existed. At the time of independence Sindh ‘was beset with extremes of wealth and poverty. Since the creation of Pakistan Z.A. Bhutto was the only Sindhi leader who had stirred the masses so deeply that they rose above biradari links and voted for him and his party. The disciples of Pir of Pagara are reported to have said, sir Saeen da, vote Bhutto da meaning ‘our life is for the Pir but vote for Bhutto’.

Hindu-Muslim relations in Sindh were cordial and they have survived the trauma of the partition. It is the Sindhi Sufi tradition that bound the two together. Sufi poet saint Shah Abdul Latif is revered by both Muslims and Hindus alike. Despite the fact that Pakistani establishments kept the communal equation unsettled in Sindh, the bonds between the two communities have not been snapped altogether. If along with the Mumbai-Karachi ferry service, Munbao-Khokrapar (Rajasthan-Sindh) rail link is also revived as proposed by India in October 2003 as a part of the package of confidence building measures between the two countries, then it will be a double bonus to the Sindhi community living on either side of the border. Saeed Naqvi, a noted Indian journalist describes Sindhis as ‘an Indo-Pak bridge’.”

One may or may not agree with the observations made in the above piece, it is interesting to know how the world sees us, Sindhis.

August 20, 2010

The South Asian youth can become a bridge between North America & South Asia

WASHINGTON DIARY: Bridge-builders

by: Dr Manzur Ejaz, USA

Courtesy: Wichaar.com, July 28th, 2009

The South Asian youth can become a very strong bridge between North America and South Asia. But to achieve the status of honest arbitrators they need to stay away from diplomatic missions, religious outfits and professional groups who lobby for the governments in South Asia.