Faisal Chohan, a TED Fellow and an Islamabad-based innovator, initiated the application of the Ushahidi platform to coordinate Pakistan’s flood relief effort.

http://pakrelief.crowdmap.com/ will inform agencies of areas requiring emergency relief, and it will help prevent a duplication of relief efforts.

The way it works
A person on the ground texts 3441 and begins the text message with ‘FL’. The person then writes a DETAILED description of the needs of the area, and the location. Street names aren’t required, but a description of a place that can be found are, such as: ‘[name of area] by the main road near a tree that’s close to a gas station’.

The text is verified by a coordinator and, once approved, marked on the map.

Once on the map, agencies will be alerted to the need.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch and ask questions.

Contact: Imad (skype: imad2uahmed)

1. “A denier of veil is an infidel and an unveiled woman is lewd. Conditions of wearing veil”:
2. The veil must cover the whole body.
3. Women’s clothes must not be thin.
4. Women’s clothes must not be decorated and colourful.
5. Women’s clothes must not be narrow and tight to prevent the seditious limbs from being noticed. The veil must not be thin.
6. Women must not perfume themselves. If a perfumed woman passes by a crowd of men, she is considered to be an adulteress.
7. Women’s clothes must not resemble men’s clothes.
8. Muslim women’s clothes must not resemble non-Muslim women’s clothes.
9. Their foot ornaments must not produce sound.
10. They must not wear sound-producing garments.
11. They must not walk in the middle of streets.
12. They must not go out of their houses without their husband’s permission.
13. They must not talk to strange men.
14. If it is necessary to talk, they must talk in a low voice and without laughter.
15. They must not look at strangers.
16. They must not mix with strangers.”
17. All ground and first floor residential windows should be painted over or screened to prevent women being visible from the street. A Taliban representative explained that “the face of a woman is a source of corruption for men who are not related to them”.
18. The photographing or filming of women was banned as was displaying pictures of females in newspapers, books, shops or the home.
19. The modification of any place names that included the word “women.” For example, “women’s garden” was renamed “spring garden”.
20. Women were forbidden to appear on the balconies of their apartments or houses.
21. Ban on women’s presence on radio, television or at public gatherings of any kind.
22. Ban on women riding bicycles or motorcycles, even with their mahrams.
23. Women were forbidden from riding in a taxi without a mahram.
24. Segregated bus services introduced to prevent males and females traveling on the same bus.
25. Are forbidden to work outside the home. On September 30th 1996 the Taliban decreed that all women should be banned from employment. Some 25 percent of government employees were female. All lost their employment. Elementary education of children, not just girls, was shut down in Kabul, where virtually all of the elementary school teachers were women.
26. Are banned from studying in schools or universities.
27. Are not allowed to gather for any recreational purposes.
28. Are prohibited from practicing family planning.
29. Cannot be treated by male doctors.
30. Cannot be operated upon by a surgical team containing a male member.
31. Are banned from playing sports or entering a sport center or club.
32. Have no legal recourse. A woman cannot petition the court directly; her testimony is worth half a man’s testimony.
33. Are publicly stoned and sometimes executed if accused of having sex outside of marriage.
34. Are forbidden to deal with male shopkeepers or talk or shake hands with men outside their families.
35. Whipping, beating and verbal abuse of women not clothed in accordance with Taliban rules, or of women unaccompanied by a mahram.
36. Whipping of women in public for having non-covered ankles.
37. Public stoning of women accused of having sex outside marriage. (A number of lovers are stoned to death under this rule).
38. Ban on women washing clothes next to rivers or in a public place.
39. Ban on male tailors taking women’s measurements or sewing women’s clothes.
40. Ban on female public baths.
41. Ban on flared (wide) pant-legs, even under a burqa.
42. Banned the watching of movies, television and videos, for everyone.
43. Banned celebrating the traditional new year (Nowroz) on March 21. The Taliban has proclaimed the holiday un-Islamic.
44. Disavowed Labor Day (May 1st), because it is deemed a “communist” holiday.
45. Ordered that all people with non-Islamic names change them to Islamic ones.
46. Forced haircuts upon Afghan youth.
47. Ordered that men wear Islamic clothes and a cap.
48. Ordered that men not shave or trim their beards, which should grow long enough to protrude from a fist clasped at the point of the chin.
49. Ordered that all people attend prayers in mosques five times daily.
50. Banned the keeping of pigeons and playing with the birds, describing it as un-Islamic.
51. The violators will be imprisoned and the birds shall be killed. The kite flying has also been stopped.
52. Ordered all onlookers, while encouraging the sportsmen, to chant Allah-o-Akbar (God is great) and refrain from clapping.
53. Ban on certain games including kite flying which is “un-Islamic” according to Taliban.
54. Anyone who carries objectionable literature will be executed.
55. Anyone who converts from Islam to any other religion will be executed.
56. All boy students must wear turbans. They say “No turban, no education”.
57. Non-Muslim minorities must distinct badge or stitch a yellow cloth onto their dress to be differentiated from the majority Muslim population.
58. Banned the use of the internet by both ordinary Afghans and foreigners.

Examples of punishments by the Taliban:

1. In October 1996, a woman had the tip of her thumb cut off for wearing nail varnish.

2. In December 1996, Radio Shari’a announced that 225 Kabul women had been seized and punished for violating the sharia code of dress. The sentence was handed down by a tribunal and the women were lashed on their legs and backs for their misdemeanor.

3. In March 1997, a married woman, from Laghman Province, was caught attempting to flee the district with another man. The Islamic tribunal found her guilty of adultery and condemned both her and her lover to death by stoning.

4. In May 1997, 5 female CARE International employees with authorisation from the Ministry of the Interior to conduct research for an emergency feeding programme were forced from their vehicle by members of the religious police. The guards used a public address system to insult and harass the women before striking them with a metal and leather whip over 1.5 meters (almost 5 feet) in length.

5. In 1999, a mother of seven was executed in front of 30,000 spectators in Kabul’s Ghazi Sport stadium for the murder of her abusive husband. She was imprisoned for 3 years and extensively tortured prior to the execution.

6. When a Taliban raid discovered a woman running an informal school in her apartment, they beat the children; threw her down a flight of stairs causing her to break her leg; and then imprisoned her. They threatened to publicly stone her family if she didn’t sign a declaration of loyalty to the Taliban and its laws.

The legacy of nearly a decade of fundamentalist rule is as follows:

1. Up to now, nearly 79% of Afghan women cannot read nor write.

2. Maternal mortality rates stood at the highest in the world with nearly 1,900 deaths per 100,000 live births. It is the singular achievement of the Taliban that they managed to reach the highest rate of maternal deaths ever recorded in history in the province of Badakshan: 6,500 deaths per 100,000 births!

3. Up to 2004, UNICEF recorded more than 26 attacks against girl’s schools.

4. Enrollment as of 2004 still was at the dismal figure of 9% due to Taliban attacks, propaganda and assassinations of teachers.

5. 57% of women are married off before the age of 16

6. 72% do not know of any form of contraception, nor any way of delaying pregnancy.

7. Even during conducting the sham elections, registration of women voters recorded the lowest levels in the south of the country: Zabul (9%), Helmand (12%) and Kandahar (27%): precisely the areas that were, and now have again, fallen under Taliban control.

8. 97 percent of women surveyed show symptoms of major depression.

9. 3/4 of the women say their health had declined.

10. Opium is being taken by the women to ease the pain from inadequate health care.

1. Never put all eggs in one basket
2. Yesterday’s home run don’t win today’s matches – Babe Routh
3. You cant improve what you don’t understand
4. You cant manage what you cant measure
5. You are as good as your team
6. Hire for the attitude
7. Go for the kill
8. Don’t ask people to work, get people to the work
9. CEO = Chief Everything Officer
10. HAVE FUN

Wonder this time where she’s gone
Wonder if she’s gone to stay
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
And this house just ain’t no home
Anytime she goes away

And I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know, I know, I know
I know, I know

Hey I’ll leave the young thing alone
But ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
Only darkness everyday

Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone
And this house just ain’t no home
Anytime she goes away
Anytime she goes away
Anytime she goes away
Anytime she goes away

Feels like I am living my life with milestones. And that is freaking me out. The worst thing is the waiting game; the time you have to wait to reach a milestone. There is deperation, the agony, the pain inside. The contentment is still not there when you achieve, because there is still a long way to go.. and you somehow get the feeling that you’re late. Or maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. But it’s important to be there, just for the sake of it; you’ve longing for so long to be there. Just to be there… just to have that feeling of being there, whether it matter now or not, the feelings matters. Be there, please!

In the absence of PTI (whose educational reforms policy attracts me most), I think I would rather go with PML-N for their restoration of independent Judiciary. Although I sympathize with PPP but I have little faith in them since they have distanced themselves from socialism which I really don’t believe is their real face, in the first place.

• The standpoint of Mentology is nothing other than enabling an individual to reduce the contradictions and conflicts that he is facing today and increase his pleasures and happiness. This is the basic purpose of it. Any quantum consciousness and string theory I have done is for this purpose.
• If we take an overview of the contemporary state of human life we can see two levels of it. On the surface we see a lot of scientific and technological progress and its continuously emerging and growing fruits in the form of new inventions, etc, while on the other hand if we look inside through the other window we see stagnation in the happiness and pleasures systems of man and growing conflicts and contradictions in his internal life, which in turn impact upon his external life. At that level man is still going round and round in circles and trying to cope with the complexity that has emerged in the wake of his growing intelligence about the outside world and his unintelligence about his internal world.
• In this context my work is nothing other than to enable man to break free from this state and if not eradicate completely at least keep reducing the element of contradictions and unhappiness in his life and increasing the quantity and quality of pleasures and happiness.
• There are three steps I think which can enable a person to move in this direction. These steps I can clearly layout now after gaining a practical experience of applying them in the Institute.
• The first step is of pushing back your pre-existing ideas about yourself and the outside world; moving away from them and replacing them with new ones. The second step is to increase your understanding and corresponding capabilities in relation to your mental processes. And the third step is to do any work at a group level in which you pursue cutting edge quality.
• Now all these steps are actually processes and not an instant formula or magic. They are a continuous process of struggle whose results will manifest after you start proceeding in that direction.
• This is the manifesto of your time. Unlike the communist manifesto I am not saying that the ultimate goal is a communist society I am only saying that it will be a continuous struggle through which you will be able to reduce the conflicts and contradictions in your life and increase both the quantity and quality of happiness and pleasure. I am not spelling out what type of a society you will make because I know that after a certain stage of proceeding in this direction you will know what type of a society you want to make and there you will have the required wisdom and the capabilities to concretize it.