Cashing in on APIs – Leveraging technology to boost your business 

Friday, 17 February 2017

Even if you’re not an excessively tech-savvy individual, you most likely would have used a mobile application in your mobile device via an internet connection, used a Gmail client, Twitter, Facebook, or mobile apps, or purchased something online. In a tech world, you’re already reaping the benefits of application programming interfaces (APIs).

The use of APIs is becoming even more popular today as service providers are scrambling to embrace the Internet of Things. With the availability of new tracking devices, smart homes, smart vehicles, mobile phones and tablets, consumers now have more options on how they consume applications.

Let’s take a step back and try to understand what this all means. An API is a term that’s used to denote a well-defined interface to access certain resources – in other words a service available to an end-user. If you haven’t worked with web APIs before, you may think it’s a type of service exposed over the internet to perform certain operations.

APIs are the foundation of today’s software engineering industry and enterprises are jumping on the bandwagon to reap the benefits of using them to integrate and automate to make their online services more appealing and user-friendly to end-users. Well-designed APIs will enable your business to expose content or services to internal and external audiences in a versatile manner. Today, most organisations use APIs to build their solutions internally and expose these services to the world at large. APIs will immensely benefit both service development teams as well as service consumers.

A good, yet simple example that illustrates this well is a weather update application that’s available on your mobile device. This application that typically runs on a device will not be able to provide weather forecasts of a specific area without connecting to an external service. However, it can call a GPS device on your mobile device or request the user to retrieve location coordinates of a specific area for which you want a forecast. Once you’ve defined your geographical location, the mobile application can simply call a weather service API and request the required information.

What’s important to note here is that you don’t need to perform any complicated tasks, do calculations, or run an analysis on the mobile device. You can simply push relevant parameters to an API and obtain the results you want.

If you view this same example from one level up, you’d see that there’s a client application and a service and both of these are connected by an API. That’s essentially what an API does; it can integrate your services, data, content, and processes with external parties in a very effective and efficient manner.

So, what’s the difference between services and APIs? Essentially, the functions of both are the same, but a slight differentiator would be that an API would generally have a well-defined interface to its services. That said, there’s a notable difference between managed and normal web APIs/services.

Managed APIs are often enriched with additional features on top of a standard API or service. These are referred to quality of services or QoS. Common QoSs include security, access control, throttling, and usage monitoring. Security forms the foundation any API infrastructure across the entire digital value chain. Malicious users can access your systems the same as legitimate users would, therefore it’s important to enable security at all points of engagement.

Usage monitoring helps enterprises to improve their APIs, attract the right app developers, troubleshoot problems and, ultimately, translate these to better business decision.

Boosting efficiency to become more competitive 

Enterprises too are seeing the potential benefits of APIs to propel business growth, irrespective of the size and nature of the business and the industry they operate in. The key is to get started now to be able to maintain a competitive edge.

A typical example is the extensive use of APIs in the hospitality industry; for instance, the owner of a restaurant or a small hotel would operate a simple website and some internal services. But at some point, when the business grows, they cannot maintain the same internal system and work with external parties. At this stage, business owners would need to think about consuming external services and exposing their services to the external world. And that’s when APIs and API management solutions come into play.

Large, global companies in the financial, transportation, logistics, and consumer sectors have already started to expose their systems and services to the outside world as APIs. The real benefit lies with being able to seamlessly integrate internal systems with those external ones to leverage benefits like creating properly structured services that are synced within the company, e.g. human resources department exposing non-sensitive employee data to other departments that need this information.

A typical example is an online retail business that would need a payment solution to integrate with its system. Such a solution would not need to be implemented from scratch, rather the business can expose APIs via already available payment solution providers like Stripe, Zuora, or PayPal.

To explain this further, let’s consider a restaurant owner who can expose menus and ordering services via APIs. This will enable external developers to consume these APIs with their apps and incorporate the restaurant’s menus and services into the travel applications they’re building. When exposing APIs, the restaurant owner would need to consider throttling, a process responsible for regulating the rate at which the application is processing, as well as the security aspect of exposing these APIs.

On top of these, a service provider may need some insights into the usage of these APIs – for instance, details about service consumers (like which apps have been invoked more), usage patterns (most popular food types), traffic patterns (peak order times), etc. in order to make certain business decisions and make the service more efficient. For this, you might need sort of analytics and usage monitoring capabilities as part of your overall API management solution.

Ultimately what you achieve in terms of business benefits is brand awareness by becoming a smart business. Moreover, in addition to profits gained from direct API consumption, users can earn additional revenue by charging users for API/service usage.

This concept is known as API monetisation and most API management solutions already have this feature in-built as an extension, enabling creative users to turn cool ideas into revenue generating APIs within minutes. And open source products have proved to be most useful to meet all your API management requirements as it’s cost effective and easy to deploy. 

[The writer is Technical Lead at WSO2. In his role, Sanjeewa has been providing consultancy to WSO2 customers, including Fortune 500 companies, on designing and building API management solutions across different verticals. He has also spoken in numerous global conferences and technical forums on API management. He holds a first class honours degree in Computer Science and Engineering from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He is a member of the Blackberry Developers Community, an Associate Member of the Institute of Engineers, Sri Lanka, and a member of the International Association of Computer Science and Information Technology. He is also a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). For comments/feedback on this article email sanjeewa@wso2.com.]

The Trump Presidency: RIP

by Paul Craig Roberts-Feb 16, 2017

( February 16, 2017, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) Has Donald Trump overestimated his presidential power? The answer is yes.

Is Steve Bannon, Trump’s main advisor, politically inexperienced? The answer is yes.

We can conclude from the answers to these two questions that Trump is in over his head and will pay a big price.

How large will the price be?

The New York Times reports that US “intelligence agencies…sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.”

Former National Security Agency (NSA) spy John Schindler tweeted on Twitter that a senior intelligence community colleague sent him an email stating that the deep state had declared nuclear war on Trump and that “He will die in jail.” https://sputniknews.com/us/201702151050723578-intelligence-community-war-trump/

It is possible that this will be the case.

At the end of World War II, the military/security complex decided that the flow of profits and power from war and threats of war were too great to be relinquished to an era of peace. This complex manipulated a weak and inexperienced President Truman into a gratuitous Cold War with the Soviet Union. The lie was created, and accepted by the gullible American people, that International Communism intended world conquest. This lie was transparant, because Stalin had purged and murdered Leon Trotsky and all communists who believed in world revolution. “Socialism in one country,” declared Stalin.

Academic experts, knowing where their bread was buttered, went along with and contributed to the deceit. By 1961 the overarching power of the military/security complex was apparent to President Eisenhower, a five star general in charge of the US invasion of German occupied Western Europe during the Second World War. The private power that the military/security complex (Eisenhower called it the military-industrial complex) exercised disturbed Ike so much that in his last address to the American people he said we must guard against its subversion of democracy:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Eisenhower’s warning was to the point. However, it relied on “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” which the US does not have. The American population is largely insoucient, and is heading, across the ideological spectrum from left to right, to self-destruction.

The print and TV media, which serve as propagandists for the ruling military/security complex and Wall Street elites, make certain that Americans have nothing but bogus orchestrated information. Every household and person who turns on TV or reads a newspaper is programed to live in a false orchestrated reality that serves the tiny few who comprise the ruling Establishment.

Trump challenged this Establishment without realizing that it is more powerful than a mere President of the United States.

This is what has happened: During Obama’s second term, Russia and its president were demonized by the military/security complex and the neoconservatives using the presstitute media. The demonization has facilitated the ability of the controlled presstitute media, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest, to associate contact with Russia and articles questioning the orchestrated tensions between the US and Russia with suspicious activity, possibly even treason. Trump and his advisors were too inexperienced to realize that the consequence of Flynn’s dismissal was to validate this orchestrated association of the Trump presidency with Russian intelligence.

Now we have the media whores and the political whores asking the question used to blacken President Nixon and to force his resignation: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Did Trump know that Gen. Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador weeks before Trump said he did? Did Flynn do the unspeakable—speak to a Russian—because Trump told him to do so?

The purveyors of fake news—the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the despicable liars are using irresponsible innuendo to entangle President Trump in a web of treason. Here is the New York Times headline: “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” What we are witnessing is a campaign by the deep state using their media whores to set up Trump for impeachment.

Those at work overturning the 2016 presidential election are so confident of their success that they publicly declare their preference for coup over democracy. The zionist neoconservative warmonger Bill Kristol has expressed his preference for a deep state coup over democratically elected President Trump. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/02/15/bill-kristol-backs-deep-state-president-trump-republican-government/

The liberal/progressive/left has aligned with the One Percent against the “racist, misogynist, homophobic” working class—the “Trump deplorables”—who elected Trump. Even the uninformed muscian, Moby, felt compelled to post ignorant nonsense on Facebook:
“1-the russian dossier on trump is real. 100% real. he’s being blackmailed by the russian government, not just for being peed on by russian hookers, but for much more nefarious things.
2-the trump administration is in collusion with the russian government, and has been since day one.” https://www.facebook.com/mobymusic/photos/a.126687636107.103603.6028461107/10155085110276108/?type=3&theater

Now that Trump has been tainted with “associations with Russian intelligence,” the idiot Republicans, according to Bloomberg, have “joined calls by Democrats for a deeper look at contacts between President Donald Trump’s team and Russian intelligence agents Wednesday [Feb. 15], indicating a growing sense of political peril within the party as new reports surfaced of extensive contacts between the two.” https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-14/flynn-s-ouster-sparks-new-gop-calls-for-wider-russia-probe?cmpid=BBD021517_BIZ
Of course, there is no evidence of such contacts, but facts are not part of the campaign to depose Trump.

Trump’s sacking of Flynn is being used as vindication by his opponents of their false charges that the President of the United States is compromised by Russian intelligence. Realizing the mistake, the White House has tried to counter its blunder by saying that Flynn was dismissed because Trump lost confidence in him, not because he did anything illegal or had connections to Russian intelligence. But none of Trump’s opponents are listening. And the CIA keeps feeding fake news to the presstitutes.

From the very beginning I warned that Trump lacked the experience and the knowledge to pick a government that would stand by him and serve his agenda. Trump has now fired the one person on whom he could have counted. The most obvious conclusion is that Trump is dead meat.

The effort of the American people to bring government back under their control via Trump has been defeated by the deep state.

Chris Hedges argument that revolution is the only way that Americans can reclaim their country continues to gain credibility.

The words that doomed Trump when he declared war before he had his army assembled:

“There is nothing the political establishment will not do, and no lie they will not tell, to hold on to their prestige and power at your expense. The Washington establishment, and the financial and media corporations that fund it, exists for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself. This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization that will determine whether or not We The People reclaim control over our government. The political establishment that is trying everything to stop us, is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign policies that have bled this country dry.

“The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs, as they flee to Mexico, China and other countries throughout the world. It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.”

Admit it: Trump is unfit to serve

President Trump on Feb. 15 faced renewed questions on whether his 2016 presidential campaign had contacts with Russian officials. Meanwhile, Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrew a day before his confirmation hearing. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

By E.J. Dionne Jr. Opinion writer February 15 at 7:30 PM

Let’s not mumble or whisper about the central issue facing our country: What is this democratic nation to do when the man serving as president of the United States plainly has no business being president of the United States?

The Michael Flynn fiasco was the entirely predictable product of the indiscipline, deceit, incompetence and moral indifference that characterize Donald Trump’s approach to leadership.

Even worse, Trump’s loyalties are now in doubt. Questions about his relationship with Vladimir Putin and Russia will not go away, even if congressional Republicans try to slow-walk a transparent investigation into what ties Trump has with Putin’s Russia — and who on his campaign did what, and when, with Russian intelligence officials and diplomats.

Party leaders should listen to those Republicans who are already pondering how history will judge their actions in this wrenching moment. Senators such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham seem to know it is only a matter of time before the GOP will have to confront Trump’s unfitness. They also sense that Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser for lying about the nature of his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the United States raises fundamental concerns about Trump himself.

[Why do smart people in the White House do stupid things? Because Trump tells them to.]

After first reporting the telephone contact between then national security advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak,The Washington Post’s David Ignatius highlights the questions that still remain surrounding his resignation. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

The immediate political controversy is over how Congress should investigate this. Republican leaders say attention from Congress’s intelligence committees is sufficient, and for now Democrats have agreed to this path. But many in their ranks, along with some Republicans, argue it would be better to form a bipartisan select committee that could cross jurisdictional lines and be far more open about its work.

Those pushing for the select committee have reason to fear that keeping things under wraps in the intelligence panels could be a way to bury the story for a while and buy Trump time. Letting Americans in on what went on here, and quickly, is the only way to bolster trust in this administration, if that is even possible. And let’s face the reality here: It could also hasten the end of a presidency that could do immense damage to the United States.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in the meantime, must immediately recuse himself from all decisions about all aspects of the Russia investigation by the FBI and the intelligence services. Sessions should step back not simply because he is an appointee of the president but, more importantly, because he was a central figure in the Trump campaign. He cannot possibly be a neutral arbiter, and his involvement would only heighten fears of a coverup.

In this dark moment, we can celebrate the vitality of the institutions of a free society that are pushing back against a president offering the country a remarkable combination of authoritarian inclinations and ineptitude. The courts, civil servants, citizens — collectively and individually — and, yes, an unfettered media have all checked Trump and forced inconvenient facts into the sunlight.

It is a sign of how beleaguered Trump is that his Twitter response on Wednesday morning was not to take responsibility but to assign blame. His villains are leakers and the press: “Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?). Just like Russia.”

It is notable that in acknowledging that the news reports are based on “information,” Trump effectively confirmed them. At the same time, he was characteristically wrong about Russia, whose government prevents transparency and punishes those who try to foster it. There’s also this: Kremlin agents stole information from a political party in a free country. That is very different from the actions of the media’s informants inside our government who are holding our own officials accountable for their false denials and fictitious claims.

[Where is the very first place anybody should have looked for a Russia-Trump connection?]

See what President Trump has been doing since taking office

It will be said that Trump was elected and thus deserves some benefit of the doubt. Isn’t it rash to declare him unfit after so little time?

The answer is no, because the Trump we are seeing now is fully consistent with the vindictive, self-involved and scattered man we saw during the 17 months of his campaign. In one of the primary debates, Jeb Bush said of Trump: “He’s a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president.” Rarely has a politician been so prophetic.

And this is why nearly 11 million more Americans voted against Trump than for him. His obligation was to earn the trust of the 60 percent of Americans who told exit pollsters on Election Day that they viewed him unfavorably. Instead, he has ratified their fears, and then some.

As a country, we now need to face the truth, however awkward and difficult it might be.

Read more from E.J. Dionne’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Congresswoman tells Netanyahu to end abuse of Palestinian children

Palestinian children protest to show solidarity with child prisoners in Israeli jails, Gaza city, January 2015.-Mohammed AsadAPA images

Nora Barrows-Friedman-15 February 2017

A member of Congress said she had “a clear message” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in Washington on Wednesday: he must respect the rights of Palestinian children.

As US President Donald Trump and the Israeli leader held a joint press conference at the White House, Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota challenged Israel’s systematic abuses of Palestinian children in a post on Facebook.

“Israel’s military detention system arrests, interrogates and prosecutes as many as 700 Palestinian children – as young as 11 years old – every year,” McCollum says. “Abuse is rampant and children often have no lawyer or parent present during detention and interrogation.”

“Israel must end the abusive military detention of Palestinian children,” she adds. “Israeli children, Palestinian children – all children – should be able to live free of systematic, state-sponsored human rights abuses! Respecting the human rights of children is the only path to peace and security in the Middle East.”

McCollum also took to Twitter to demand accountability from Netanyahu:

 Follow

Rep. Betty McCollum 

✔@BettyMcCollum04

As @netanyahu visits today, Israel must respect human rights & end abusive military detention of Palestinian children. #nowaytotreatachild

12:07 PM - 15 Feb 2017

 
•  462462 Retweets
 
•  614614 likes

Breaking silence

McCollum continues to break with the vast majority of US lawmakers who refuse to challenge Israeli policy.

In June 2015, the Democrat authored a letter, co-signed by 18 other members of Congress, demanding that the Obama adminstration push Israel to end its abuses of Palestinian children.

Two months later, the lawmaker called for sanctions on the Israeli Border Police unit responsible for killing Palestinian teenagers Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir on 15 May 2014.

The boys were shot in cold blood at a Nakba Day protest – their killings caught on video – near the Ofer military prison in the occupied West Bank village of Beitunia.

McCollum initiated another push in June 2016 urging Obama to appoint a special envoy to protect the rights of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation. Lawmakers who signed McCollum’s letter condemned Israel’s rampant use of administrative detention – incarceration without charge or trial – against Palestinian children in Israeli military jails.

Grassroots activists with the No Way to Treat a Child campaign – a joint initiative of Defense for Children International - Palestine and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) – have been working closely with lawmakers on the issue of Palestinian children in detention.

“Congresswoman McCollum’s leadership and integrity inspires us,” AFSC’s Jennifer Bing told The Electronic Intifada.

“Her voice is among a growing number of Congress members who are speaking up for the human rights of Palestinian children – children who face systematic oppression and denial of rights by the Israeli army,” Bing added.

Inspired by the No Way to Treat a Child campaign in the US, activists in Australia gathered the support of 49 members of Parliament last November on a letter calling for Israel to end its abuses of Palestinian children.

Senior Palestinian official admits no new plan to tackle Israeli settlements

Nasser al-Kidwa urges Palestinians to fight 'patiently and slowly' for rights and plays down calls for PA to take Israel to International Criminal Court

Nasser al-Kidwa said there was 'no panacea' for the Palestinians' plight (AFP)

Thursday 16 February 2017

A senior Palestinian official has admitted that the Palestinian Authority has no new plan to halt the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and to meaningfully address wavering support in Washington for a viable Palestinian state.

Reacting on Thursday to US President Donald Trump's comments suggesting he was not committed to a two-state solution, Nasser al-Kidwa, a former former foreign minister and UN representative for the PA, told Middle East Eye that Palestinians needed to mobilise against settler "colonisation" and campaign "patiently and slowly" for their rights.

But pressed to explain what concrete measures the PA planned to take in response to an acceleration of settlement construction in the West Bank, and deepening ties between the White House and Israel's government, Kidwa said there was no "panacea" for the Palestinians' plight.

Trump throws Palestinian future into doubt by wavering on two-state solution

"I understand I may disappoint you but let me tell you, we don't have in our means neither a panacea nor any potential step that would magically make us overcome Israeli actions or Israeli measures in the ground – there is no such thing," said Kidwa.

Kidwa, a member of Fatah's central committee, also appeared to play down calls for the PA to take Israel to the International Criminal Court over illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Although the option of going to the ICC should be considered seriously, Kidwa said that taking that path would be "complicated".

"Some people think it's an easy action that can be done in 24 hours and it will achieve results in the next 24 hours," he said.

"That's not true. It's a complex issue. The important thing is to have a clear position and to push for it seriously. But looking for something new, it's not a real thing."

Former US ambassadors call Trump nominee for Israel 'unqualified'

Kidwa said that Washington's policy towards the Middle East peace process was still unclear, despite vocal support expressed by Trump for Israel and rumoured preparations by his administration to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In a news conference with Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, Trump said of the peace process: "I'm looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I'm very happy with the one that both parties like.

"I can live with either one. I thought for a while it looked like the two-state, looked like it may be the easier of the two, but honestly if Bibi [Netanyahu] and the Palestinians and Israel are happy, I am happy with the one they like the best."

Questions over US policy towards Israel were raised further on Thursday when five former US ambassadors in Tel Aviv wrote to a Senate committee that they considered Trump's nomination for the post, David Friedman, to be unsuitable and unqualified.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and US President Donald Trump at a press conference on Wednesday (Reuters)

Kidwa said that comments made in the news conference could be interpreted in different ways.

"I believe no final policy has been adopted by the [US] administration," he said.

"What is important is to make our Palestinian position clear. In light of the absence of a clear [US] policy, we need a strong Palestinian position and an attempt to participate in formulating such a policy in the coming weeks."

Calling for Palestinians to "mobilise", Kidwa said: "I cannot accept the idea that Israel will create facts on the ground that would prevent or undermine the existence of our national state.

"Sooner or later, peacefully or otherwise, [the settlers] will go and that has to remain our position."

Trump throws down the gauntlet to the Palestinian Authority

But asked what measures the PA planned to take, Kidwa called for Palestinians to step up existing means of resistance to Israeli settlement-building, including through demonstrations, boycotting settlement products and refusing to work on the land they occupied.

"What we need to do is, patiently and slowly, step by step, to insist on the use of the tools we already have knowing that it will take time and effort. Knowing that there will not magically be a sudden change. And in the end we will have our rights."

Speaking at an earlier news conference in Ramallah, Kidwa said that the Palestinian people "will not disappear" and claimed that the Palestinians had the support of the "Arab and Islamic world".

Arab media reaction: 'The two-state solution was only a dream'

He said any negotiated settlement would have to meet the terms laid out in the Arab Peace Initiative, a 2002 proposal endorsed by the Arab League, which called for the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

"The tools we have are the just Palestinian cause, international law and Arab support. The Arab Peace Initiative is very clear, and there will be no relationship with Israel before ending the occupation," he said.

Suicide attack on Pakistani shrine kills 72, claimed by Islamic State

By Syed Raza Hassan | KARACHI, PAKISTAN- Fri Feb 17, 2017

A suicide bomber attacked a crowded Sufi shrine in southern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 72 people and wounding dozens more in the deadliest of a wave of bombings across the South Asian nation this week.

A spokesman for medical charity Edhi said the attacker appeared to have targeted the women's wing of the shrine, and around 30 children accompanying their mothers were dead.

Islamic State, the Middle East-based militant group which has a small but increasingly prominent presence in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group's affiliated news agency AMAQ reported.

Senior police officer Shabbir Sethar told Reuters from a local hospital that the death toll was likely to rise.

"At least 72 are dead and over 150 have been injured," Sethar said by telephone.

Television footage from the famous Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in the town of Sehwan Sharif showed army and paramilitary medical teams reaching the site and injured people being taken to nearby hospitals in ambulances and a military helicopter.

"We were there for the love of our saint, for the worship of Allah," a wailing woman told the Dawn News television channel outside the shrine, her headscarf streaked in blood. "Who would hurt us when we were there for devotion?"

The attack comes as the Pakistani Taliban and rival Islamist militant groups carry out their threats of a new offensive.

The violence has shattered a period of improving security, underscoring how militants still undermine stability in the nuclear-armed country of 190 million people.

The high death toll at the shrine makes it one of the worst attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

In August last year, at least 74 people, mostly lawyers, were killed in a suicide bombing of a hospital in the southwestern city of Quetta.

In November, an explosion claimed by Islamic State ripped through a Muslim shrine in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 52 people and wounding scores.

SINDH SUFIS

At a crossroads of historic trade routes, religions and cultures, the southern province of Sindh where the shrine is located has always been a poor but religiously tolerant region, helping to shield it from much of the Islamist violence more common in other parts of Pakistan.

The country's powerful military, which has cracked down on insurgent groups in recent years leading to a sharp drop in militant violence, vowed a swift, decisive response.

"Each drop of nation's blood shall be revenged, and revenged immediately. No more restraint for anyone," Army Chief Qamar Bajwa said in a statement.

Shortly after the blast, the army announced it was closing the border with Afghanistan with immediate effect for security reasons. Insurgents operate on either side of the neighbours' long and porous frontier.

Different militant groups, often trying to outdo each other, say they are responsible for the bombings.

In the case of the Quetta hospital blast, both a faction of the Pakistani Taliban - Jamaat-ur-Ahrar - and Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Jamaat also said it was responsible for a bombing in the eastern city of Lahore earlier this week that killed 13 people.

In a separate incident late on Thursday, gunmen on a motorbike killed three policemen and one civilian in the city of Dera Ismail Khan.

"STAND UNITED"

The bomber entered the shrine as crowds massed on Thursday, a statement from the Sindh police spokesman said.

Rescue officials said dozens of wounded people were being ferried in private cars to hospitals. The nearest major hospital was nearly an hour's drive away in Dadu district.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif quickly condemned the bombing, decrying the assault on the Sufi religious minority.

He vowed to fight Islamist militants, who target the government, judiciary and anyone who does not adhere to their strict interpretation of Sunni Islam.

"The past few days have been hard, and my heart is with the victims," Sharif said. "But we can't let these events divide us, or scare us. We must stand united in this struggle for the Pakistani identity, and universal humanity."

An ancient mystic branch of Islam, Sufism has been practised in Pakistan for centuries.

Lal Shahbaz Qalander is Pakistan's most revered Sufi shrine, dedicated to a 13th-century "saint" whose spirit is invoked by devotees in ecstatic daily dancing and singing rituals in Sehwan Sharif.

Thursdays are an especially important day for local Sufis, meaning that the shrine was packed at the time of the blast.

Most of Pakistan's myriad radical Sunni militant groups - including the Pakistani Taliban's various factions and Islamic State loyalists - despise Sufis, Shi'ite Muslims and other religious minorities as heretics.

(Additional reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik in ISLAMABAD, Haji Mujtaba in MIRAN SHAH and Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN; Writing by Kay Johnson; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Marx the Man: How A Young Drunker Became the World’s Most Critical Thinker?

How did Marx become an advocate of mass murder and dictatorship in place of liberal democracy and social peace?

Marx’s only real jobs during his lifetime were as occasional reporters for or editors of newspapers and journals most of which usually closed in a short period of time, either because of small readership and limited financial support or political censorship by the governments under which he was living.

by Richard M. Ebeling-Feb 16, 2017

Feb 16, 2017

(February 16, 2017, Boston, Sri Lanka Guardian) When Karl Marx died in March 1883, only about a dozen people attended his funeral at a cemetery in London, England, including family members. Yet, for more than a century after his death – and even until today – there have been few thinkers whose ideas have been as influential on various aspects of modern world history. Indeed, as some have said, no other faith or belief-system has had such a worldwide impact as Marxism, since the birth of Christianity and the rise of Islam.

Marx the Man.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Revolution and the Color Line

by RON JACOBS-FEBRUARY 10, 2017

No history of the twentieth century in the United States is complete without a discussion of the works and deeds of W. E. B. DuBois. Indeed, DuBois’ organizing of and writing about the African-American population in the United States remains both crucial and relevant. Of course, any human of this importance has had numerous biographies written about him. The most recent, written by Bill Mullen, is titled W.E.B. DuBois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line. Because he views DuBois’ life through a revolutionary left prism, Mullen’s text is different from most other biographies of DuBois. Mullen chronicles Dubois’ transition from what might be termed a liberal political viewpoint to a left-communist one through his writings and actions. Despite my statement that no history of the twentieth century is complete without mention (if not serious discussion) of DuBois and his influence, Mullen points out that that this is exactly what happened in the period following World War Two. W.E.B. DuBois was wiped from US history in the media, scholarly conversation and studies. Mullen attributes this erasure to DuBois’ increasing interest in communism and its analysis of world events during an intensely anti-communist time.

Given the political intent of the author, this biography is somewhat lacking in personal details of DuBois’ life. His marriages are briefly mentioned, as are his children (one of whom died at a young age, leaving a tragic mark on DuBois and the child’s mother. However, W.E.B. DuBois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line makes up for that lack of personal biography with its discussions of DuBois’ political development and the forces at play in that development. Like many other intellectuals and workers alive in the early twentieth century, DuBois watched the revolutionary upsurge in Europe and Russia with great interest. Not only did he lend his support to the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, DuBois also studied the relationship between the wave of revolutionary activity, its Marxist underpinnings and its relationship to the fate of African and other non-white peoples around the world, especially those living in colonized lands. Indeed, his study of this relationship became crucial to later understandings of imperialism and race; they are arguably part of the foundation of Malcolm X’s politics and those of the Black Panther Party, among others.

At the same time, DuBois had serious issues with certain worker and socialist organizations, especially in the United States. In large part, this was due to the racism found in these groups. It was a racism endemic to the United States that was manipulated by the ruling powers in a manner quite obvious to Black Americans but somehow not obvious to their white-skinned brethren. This actuality kept DuBois from pursuing alliances with trade unions; he considered them to be racist organizations, which is historically not far from the truth. For an African-American leftist, the pervasive racism of the United States was and is a constant challenge. DuBois straddled a line between communism and Pan-Africanism most of his intellectual life. It was this struggle that inspired a fair amount his writing and work.

The worldwide communist movement split into two main factions after the rise to power of Josef Stalin. Simply stated, the resulting split between those who supported Stalin and those who supported Leon Trotsky has never been resolved. Indeed, the immediate effects are still being studied and discussed; and Left political strategies are made according to where one situates themselves in the debate. (If there is one fault in the text, it is that the author interjects his positions favoring Trotskyism, which are clearly part of the fallout from the dispute, without explaining the doctrinal reason for those opinions). DuBois placed himself in the group siding with the Communist International and Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. Like others who agreed with Stalin, DuBois found himself explaining certain actions that he probably was not too comfortable explaining. However, the wave of anti-Communist hysteria fomented by the US right wing and fanned by the liberal elites in the United States left him little room to maneuver. He was accused of Soviet and communist sympathies and was made to pay for those sympathies. Unlike several others accused of such sympathies (whether true or not), DuBois did not waver under the challenges to his belief in Black liberation and social justice. His US passport was revoked. When he got it back, he traveled to the newly independent nation of Ghana. Eventually, he was asked to help the government and left the United States for good. He died on August 27, 1963, the day before the massive March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC.

DuBois was first and foremost an anti-racist warrior. His anti-racist understanding is why he was also antiwar, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist. His life’s constant was challenging the status quo of racism and war; this introduced him to numerous philosophies and people, some of which became his guiding principles. Bill Mullen provides a comprehensive timeline and discussion of DuBois’ intellectual and activist journey in this slender text. It is an accessible and valuable work, especially for those interested in the politics of DuBois’ intellectual and activist legacy.

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