Some cool fashion in pakistan images:
Formal 2010 / Jalwa and PakMusic.Net
Image by Samad Jee ( www.pakmusic.net )
PakMusic.net T-shirts given away at Jalwa /Formal 2010
The Pakistani student association of several universities united last night to throw the biggest Pakistani event of the year. Every single person who left the building had only one thing one their mind, the anticipation for next years formal! As exam time approaches for most students they need a night to let it all go, and ‘Jalwa’ provides that opportunity to the youth and no one ever wants this night to end. After the success of many PSA formals in the past who bring to you popular artists from Pakistan, this year was definitely not indifferent. The night was full of beautiful Pakistanis in their best attire, bhangra dance performances, dance offs and even a fashion show, showing off the latest styles back home. After the delicious dinner was served, the dancing began to the tunes of Imran Khan, who sang all his best tunes as the crowd supported him with cheers, hooting and of course dance moves. The rest of the night continued as a dance party with DJ Kamran’s beats and proved to be a success. Overall, the organizers did an outstanding job and put a great event together and we all look forward to whats coming next. All this fun is captured in the pictures taken and can be seen through peoples expressions.
For complete pictures visit pakmusic gallery:
pakstop.com/pictures/showgallery.php?cat=649
India Divided
Image by Earthworm
India is a good way to see how colonialism and now globalism destroys local democratically run economies. As Vandana says, politics is about economics and we should not forget this because politics is often said to be controlled by the religious agenda of certain groups and the threat of terrorism.
India came under British control because of the manipulations of the British East India Company, the original transnational corporation. They divided the people into two cultures, that were largely a fiction created from so called "ancient laws" in the process disappearing 9 or so actual cultures and thousands more that were land-based. Having created this artificial apartheid, it was easy to divide the country into two fundamentalist groups, Hindus and Muslims. This dualistic approach was also used in Rwanda as I remember. Once divided it is easy to distract people with divisive issues until violence ensues. Then the Brits decided that the country had to be partitioned into two creating Pakistan to contain the Muslims. This partition in 1947 caused the death of 800,000 people or so in the turmoil. This dualism is the underlying friction that causes India so much trouble today she says.
She also describes how the British used India to jumpstart the British textile mills. The British did not have cotton clothing only wool. When Britain took over India they allowed imports of cotton clothing into Britain for only a short time longer. Then as British factories started weaving cotton, they restricted Indian imports to raw cotton only, in order to give the Brits a chance to get their mills going. (Those satanic mills whose looms toiled for the Spring and Fall fashions that made clothing obsolete so quickly; the first incidence of planned obsolescence.) Once India was no longer allowed to sell to the British market its textile industry collapsed. Revisionists claim that British technology simply outdid traditional Indian manufacturing practices. The example of Britain and India seems to be the model for globalization and industrialization today. (Naomi Klein says globalization is a euphemism for capitalism.)
The rest of the book is devoted to how corporate giants have manipulated their way into taking over India's bio-diversity through the monoculture of industrialized agriculture, indigenous seeds through patenting and GMOs, and finally water rights through the building of dams. At just 168 pages this treatise pretty much sums up how globalization does not bring democracy and prosperity to all, but rather creates fundamentalism and violence by forcing trade into higher technological vehicles thus only the elite of developing countries can participate. And when people suffer an economics of exclusion they are then attracted to a politics of identity ie: religious fundamentalism.
When I saw her speak, Vandana Shiva claimed that this is also why religious fundamentalism has risen in the US. I had a hard time understanding this because here the right wing Christians have enormous power. In this book she talks about how the neocons have married technology to right wing Christian ideology, creating a culture of hate which then covers up the inequities created by globalization. I think this is Vandana's main beef—that reality is constantly being covered up by stories of religious strife in order to hide the fleecing of the poor and the land base.
Galerie Vivienne - Paris
Image by Kathleen Tyler Conklin
The idea of providing protected shopping 'centers' is as old as trading : no one wants the goods to be ruined or the potential custommer deterred by weather conditions. The form may differ depending on the era and the country but such places always and everywhere exist(ed), be they souks, covered markets or shopping malls. While the wooden galeries du Palais Royal, built in 1786 and destroyed since, are considered as the parisian galeries prototype, the real expansion of the concept occured in the first half of the19th century. More than 30 passages or galeries have been built since and most of them still exist, each of them having its own personality: from the luxuous shops in Galerie Vivienne and Colbert to the simple passage way like Passage Dauphine, from the fashion designers haunt in Passage du Grand Cerf to the little Indian/Pakistan restaurants' collection in the shaddy Passage Brady; including the more 'classical' Passage Verdeau, Passage Jouffroy and Passage des Panoramas. After a quasi-disapearance during the 2nd empire (overshadowed by the new 'Grands Magasins'), they found a second youth at the end of the 20th century and continue to change : the Passage du Havre has been renovated and turned into a modern mini-mall, new passages have even been created like the marche Saint Honore (hosting furniture designers)... But they all have some things in common, the light and the sounds: due to their glass roofs, the natural light, even filtered through pebble-glass differs from any sort of man-made light, and they retain this incredible quality of peace due to muted sounds.
