The reasons why many men pay for sex are revealed in the interviews that make up a major new piece of research Read the research project’s report on men who buy sex (pdf) Julie Bindel The Guardian, Seven hundred men were interviewed for the project, which aimed to find out why men buy sex. Photograph: Christina Griffiths/Getty Images/Flickr RM ‘I don’t get anything out of sex with prostitutes except for a bad feeling,” says Ben. An apparently average, thirtysomething, middle-class man, Ben had taken an extended lunchbreak from his job in advertising to talk about his experiences of buying sex. … Continue reading Why men use prostitutes

Hindu man takes open-air cremation battle to appeal court Davender Ghai campaigning for right to burn funeral pyres in accordance with religious beliefs Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent guardian.co.uk, Article history Davender Ghai, centre, is at the appeal court today to fight to have open-air cremations in the UK. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images A Hindu man will go to the court of appeal today as part of his ongoing fight to have open-air cremations in the UK. Davender Ghai, 71, from Tyneside, wants the right to burn funeral pyres in accordance with his religious and cultural beliefs. His court appearance, … Continue reading Open-air cremation should be allowed in the UK

Zeenia Satti The US-led occupation of Afghanistan brought a nuclear-armed Pakistan to its knees as a state. If the US follows the same policies in Yemen that it followed in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia will crack at its foundations. Just as the Pakistani nukes have no danger from Al Qaeda but plenty from Pentagon, the largest oil reserves in the world will be cited as dangerously vulnerable to Al Qaeda take-over, as the US positions to provide them security in return for purchasing oil at a discount that can be used in tough economic times. For this, all the US has … Continue reading US and the Yemeni mess

Praful Bidwai Two relatively young ministers of state (MoS) in the Manmohan Singh government have distinguished themselves by their contrarian stances and penchant for controversy. They are educated, intellectually capable, tech-savvy and articulate. They are also extremely opinionated, ambitious, narcissistic and exhibitionistic. They have tried to shape policies in their respective fields in a broadly pro-Western and pro-United States direction. These men are environment and forests MoS Jairam Ramesh and external affairs MoS Shashi Tharoor. Ramesh has executed many policy turns to end up with pro-corporate and pro-Western results. He is responsible, with Prime Minister Singh, for India’s signature of … Continue reading India’s non-aligned policy

Developing an exit strategy Talat Masood The United States continues to push Pakistan that it should widen the scope of its military operations against the insurgents to include North Waziristan. Our army has been resisting for good reason. First, it is already overstretched, then winter has set in and widening the operation further could galvanise all tribes to coalesce. There is a distinct possibility that a military operation in North Waziristan would trigger a fresh wave of suicide attacks throughout the country. These reservations aside, even if the Pakistan army does undertake this operation in the near future and granted … Continue reading Developing an exit strategy

Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain In a world where many wars — small and large — are going on and the threat of terrorism is an all pervasive fear, it does take a natural calamity of this magnitude to make us realise how insignificant and petty our national and local conniptions against each other are Haiti! How much more unfortunate can a country be? Just as I, like many others in Pakistan, were adding up our woes from the years gone by, along comes a devastating earthquake in a country that has already suffered incredibly over the last few decades. This … Continue reading Haiti: a call for a new Obama doctrine

Posted by Asif Akhtar Pakistan’s recent appearance in the infamous US ‘countries of interest’ list, which isn’t exactly the list of most favoured nations, has brought the country’s international reputation to an all-time low. A fun Google experiment has been going around the blogosphere lately to see what popular Google searches say about certain things. Apparently typing in “Pakistan is…” reveals exactly how bad our public image has been lately. The not-so-pleasant looking list of Google suggestions speaks for itself: When I tried the above query myself, I got marginally better results, with the most entertaining Google suggestion yet: “Pakistan … Continue reading Piyo Pepsi forever, free Pakistan from terror