Common Back and Leg Pain Treatment May Not Help Much, Study Says

A widely used method of treating a common cause of back and leg pain — steroid injections for spinal stenosis — may provide little benefit for many patients, according to a new study that experts said should make doctors and patients think twice about the treatment.

Hundreds of thousands of injections are given for stenosis each year in the United States, experts say, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Obama, Go Big on Immigration

This week, President Obama finally declared his independence from a suffocating debate over immigration reform that Republicans in Congress had never seriously joined. After waiting too long for the obstructionists to move, Mr. Obama has freed himself to do what he can to fix the broken-down system.

Flashback: A slight diversion

With friend, Guereni, and Sainisar, members of her Birir family.

“Pakistan! You’re joking! Why on earth go to Pakistan?” And this was 1980… In those days, Pakistan was off the tourist map; for the staid elderly tourist, it was somewhere in never never land, and the backpackers had not yet discovered its great potential; they only knew the hippie trail in Afghanistan.

“I thought you were going to travel across North Africa and then down to South Africa,” my friend continued in that same incredulous voice.

Embrace of the Kalasha

“The Kalasha are not all being lost to conversions, that’s a story,” Maureen Lines says.

A well-known conservationist, author, a ‘barefoot doctor’ and photographer, Lines has seen it all, from up-close. She is an adopted member of the Kalasha – Pakistan’s, and perhaps one of the world’s, most intriguing tribes.

A north Londoner, Lines, who was granted Pakistani citizenship in 2004, candidly says it’s not the Taliban that are going to “kill off” the Kalasha, rather development in the “name of progress”.

In other words, ‘tourism not terrorism’ is the biggest threat to the Kalasha.

Conflict in Fata

By Sikander Ahmed Shah

OPERATION Zarb-i-Azb against the TTP and its associated forces is in full swing. While the operation appears to enjoy public support, one must understand the nature of the conflict and its significance for Pakistan.

For years, the categorisation of the conflict in Fata has been contested. Recent legislation concerning Fata — including the Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulation 2011 (AACP) — suggests that the federation has started recognising the conflict in Fata as a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) under international law.

Anti-system, pro-system

IT is too early to state that Dr Tahirul Qadri has showed the government all his cards. The multi-party conference held by his Pakistan Awami Tehreek in Lahore on Sunday only hinted at what shape an anti-government alliance pioneered by him could eventually take. But even in its formative phase it was sufficient for a whole battery of government ministers and sundry PML-N members to cry foul. Typically, the PML-N dubbed the gathering a collection of old Pervez Musharraf allies, which is consistent with the theory that all the noise being created by some opposition parties in the country is directly linked to the Musharraf trial. The problem for the government, however, is that, regardless of its reason and origin, the initiative to forge unity in the ranks of the opposition could in time develop into a real threat for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. It is not something that can be wished away. Nor can it be drowned out in a chorus of angry counter statements. The challenge in the making will require deft handling. The conference was in focus not so much for its declarations as for the names on its attendance roll. Apart from known PAT sympathisers such as the MQM, PML-Q and the PTI, one other important party which added value to the effort with its participation was the Jamaat-i-Islami. It was, by the Jamaat’s standards, a quiet cameo appearance that should have been enough to worry those wary of a grand alliance.

The endless race

Since the advent of the nuclear age in South Asia, the region faces the terrifying prospect of a future nuclear holocaust resulting from a full-scale war between Pakistan and India. 

The international community, led by the United States, remains on edge over the possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear war between the two de facto nuclear-armed neighbours. The current approach of the Indian nuclear establishment aimed at asserting its regional leadership role is likely to trigger a mad nuclear arms race in the region. 

Rejecting globalisation

                                        Babar Ayaz  

The writer is the author of What’s Wrong With Pakistan?


When progressive writers formulate terms like ‘design of global cultural hegemony and the writers’ role in the defence of heritage, culture and peace”, as they did recently at a conference in Islamabad it honestly sounds – to me – like a right-wing proposition.

It is, therefore, important at the very outset to understand what ‘globalisation’ is, and then analyse the positive and negative influences it has on society and its values. That is important because rejecting globalisation via sweeping statements is fashionable.

So first a re-reading of the Communist Manifesto is perhaps in order when we discuss globalisation and its influences on our society. Interestingly, Marx and Engels had forecast the inevitable rise of globalisation in 1848: 

“Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguished the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify... The need of a constantly expanding market for its production chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, and establish connections everywhere.” (Read globalisation).