Open Letter to O. B. Laden

Romair

``Now all Mushy needs to do is show his face for 10 minutes on a CNN, holding his dogs, and mentioning Ata-Turk a couple of times, in an interview with Larry King or someone. After that, any anti-Pakistan media offensive from India towards the US public will only have a negative effect on India. This is the disaster for India I was refering to. ``

I don`t think its a zero sum game. Yes Musahraf may become popular, and Pakistan may get economic incentives. Will it translate into military support for the Pakistan army? Don`t think so. Not this time. Secondly, the media is focusing on Pakistan with relation to Afghan issues. The Indo-Pak problem is Kashmir related, and while it may come up as a side issue, I don`t think it will become a focus at all.

A ``disaster for India`` would have been the case if Pakistan was already demonized a la Iraq, and this was a chance at redemption. Regardless of the downswing in US-Pak ties, Pakistan has never crossed the line vis a vis the US where it has been considered a ``Rogue State``. Yes, the Indians have tried to get the US to declare Pakistan as a terrorist nation, but have never succeeded in the past. Therefore, the potential for a disaster was never created.

The most important issue is to realize that whereas the US - Pak relation has been negative in nature (Cold War paradigm of the enemy`s enemy being a friend), India`s relationship is based on a positive paradigm. Mutual trade, investment etc. That is the relationship Pakistan should aspire for, otherwise, even this time history will repeat itself. Pakistan has again become a frontline state in an American war. This time they should make sure that the relationship does not remain limited to that.

With regards to another discussion we were having, you have brought up some valid points about the Afghan issue. The United States did display unconventional thinking when it helped rebuild the Axis powers after WW2. I don`t know if they do it in Afghanistan. I personally would like the US to make sure they get a moderate US friendly gov`t there, but in my heart I don`t think that will happen. You are right in saying that nobody is really talking about that aspect at all.

One thing though, regardless of what the Americans do, they can`t leave the ordinary Afghans in a situation worse than the one in which they are.

On September 11, Jihad as a concept lost ALL and ANY MORAL IMPERATIVE. The concept of Jihad is now as outdated as the concept of a Crusade.

Stuka #64: ``Why a disaster for India? How is India affected?``

The disaster I am refering to is related to the fact that India has slowly but quite successfully replaced Pakistan as the prime US ally in South Asia. It had also quite successfully started nudging the US to a neutral to somewhat anti-Pakistan stance. Now all of a sudden, everything will be forgotten, and Pakistan will be back in the US good books.

Also, Musharraf`s picture has started coming on CNN quite a bit, and he is being portrayed as a, ``good guy`` to Joe American. It is being stressed that he is helping the US at the cost of a threat from the Taliban. Of all the countries in the world, Powell has specifically only thanked Pakistan. If the coalition forces land in Pakistan, Pakistan will be on TV all over the world, and Musharraf`s stock and Pakistan`s stock will go up furthur. After that, I don`t think India will be able to portray Pakistan in a negative light in the US for another five to ten years. At the same time, his open support against, ``terrorists`` will give more weight to his statements regarding the freedom struggle of Kashmir.

Even anti-Army Pakistanis on this site, have stopped criticizing him and are rallying behind him. His decision has been swift and bold. Unlike, the wishy washy decision making of Pakistan during the Gulf War. I hope he got a good deal from the US on this to assist in handling the after effects of this decision on Pakistan.

Now all Mushy needs to do is show his face for 10 minutes on a CNN, holding his dogs, and mentioning Ata-Turk a couple of times, in an interview with Larry King or someone. After that, any anti-Pakistan media offensive from India towards the US public will only have a negative effect on India. This is the disaster for India I was refering to.

I really wonder what goes in Romair`s mind. He is not as virulent as some others in Chowk, he seems sensible enough, but where does he get his wonderful analyses? I rememebr only few months back he was supporting those Jihadis` role in Kashmir that how they can help Indian government bow down in its knees. Now few months later it is Pakistan which is choking in these people`s bile, and yet he thinks it is such a win in media war for Pakistan. I guess, negative publicity is also a publicity. America is choking in its own creation while Pakistan is suffering the same fate. Violence brings violence only.

Ali1: 0n Farzana Versey, I agree that I always deal Farzana with anger, but honestly I feel she is bit confused, nothing else. But I stand by condemning people like Immam Bukhari. Along with Safron Brigade, these people`s existance is solely on brewing hate and divison among people. Sooner we realise better it is.

Ali1, By the way, I used to love Oprah, but not any more.

Tahmed # 32...

[[``News Item from Dawn: ``Taliban may attack neighbours helping US strike``. Ha! Ha! I am shaking with fear``..]]

Shake not T sahib ....

Fear not the day you live ...... as no one can kill you ....

Fear not the day you die ....as you are destined to

[lol] but true .....

Now please make yourself a good cup of hot chocolate ! :)

love,

sa:)

All these tears make me uneasy

By Natasha Walter

15 September 2001

`Where have our three-minute silences been for the dead of Rwanda or

Srebrenica or Sierra Leone?`

You can`t get away from it; you don`t want to get away from it. Since

Tuesday lunchtime you`ve been putting on the television at times you`d

never usually watch it, you`ve been reading newspapers with the kind of

intensity that you`d usually reserve for a thriller, you`ve been talking to

people on buses and in shops about what you`ve heard and they`ve heard in

the latest news bulletins. And yes, of course it`s natural to do that when

there is a disaster of this magnitude – you feel involved, you feel shaken,

you need to talk about it and make sense of it.

But has there been any moment when a sense of unease has crept in? Maybe

you found tears filling your eyes the first time you heard some terrible

voice mail message left by a woman in a smoking building, or when you read

the words of the anguished phone call that a man made as he sat in an

aeroplane taken over by maniacs. But then you heard another similar

message, and you read another similar message, and you looked into the eyes

of a photograph of a child or a young man who are now dead, and you read

about the couple who had just got engaged, now sundered forever, or the man

who ran from the burning building not knowing that his own sister was on

the aeroplane that had crashed into it. And then, did you wonder – are we

beginning to play this horror to ourselves like some kind of gut-wrenching

movie?

I`m not saying that we are wrong to be shocked, to want to know, to want to

hear, to want to grieve. After such devastation it is right that the

newspapers, the radio, the television should expend energy trying to

describe and make sense of it all. It is understandable that we should weep

at so many thousands of lives cut short and find ourselves turning to our

own families when we contemplate those people whose daughters and husbands

and mothers have been lost to them.

And I have always argued that news is better if we hear the victims`

voices, that we can only understand the world if we understand how big

events affect little people. So why do I feel this unease at the

ever-growing detail and space being expended on uncovering the moment by

moment experiences of the victims in this disaster? I can`t stop myself

looking at those pictures time and again, even though I`m not sure what

this repeated viewing adds to my understanding of events. I can`t stop

myself reading those details, the details of the teenage girl holding up a

snap of her dad, saying ``I`m looking for my father. He wears a gold cross

around his neck and his nickname is the Kid``, or the woman who saw the

plane coming into the second tower on television as she was speaking to her

husband, who was in the tower, on the telephone. ``I screamed, `Robert,

there`s another plane coming. Get out of the building!`, but there was no

answer and the line went dead.``

Although we may think we are being sensitive by displaying and weeping over

strangers` grief, we are not always this sensitive. Would we be so

sensitive, for instance, if America was to do over the weekend what it is

threatening to do, and start launching attacks on the country that it

believes helped the terrorists to train and equip themselves? We wouldn`t

have access to the last words of the civilians caught up in those attacks,

but we might see pictures of their burning houses and the rubble under

which they were caught.

These civilians would include utterly innocent people whose lives have

already been torn and warped by war. Would we extend our tearful sympathy

to their loved ones, seeking them through the days and nights? Would we

desperately reconstruct their last hours in smoke-filled cellars or burning

buildings? Or would we, as Richard Littlejohn in the Sun yesterday put it,

see it as merely ``toasting a bunch of barbarians in a tent in Afghanistan``?

Look at that phrase again. Toasting. Barbarians. Aren`t they human? And

don`t they bleed too?

And have we been so sensitive in the past? Yesterday, millions of people of

people all over Europe observed a three-minute silence for those who died

in New York. It is a fine gesture that asks for silence, for simple

recognition of sadness, in the face of so much mass slaughter. The media

gladly dwelt on the sense of shared experience that brought Europeans to

mourn those who died on another continent. But where have been our

three-minute silences in recent years for the dead of Rwanda or Srebrenica

or Sierra Leone? It`s worrying to think that our sense of shared humanity

only extends so far, only as far as people who look like us and speak the

same language, only as far as attacks where British nationals are killed.

It would be terrible if our grief over this attack began to blind us to

everything else in the world. No other story seems to exist any more, as if

that burning building had sucked up all the oxygen that fans the news. That

may already be putting other lives at risk: when Israel moved tanks into

Jericho and killed Palestinians in Jenin earlier this week, did they do it

in the knowledge that at this time nobody would be looking, nobody would be

criticising?

Perhaps we don`t need to ask these questions of ourselves. It would be

natural not to, and to go on looking at the images that move us most and

listening to the stories that most engage us. To play the world like a

movie that suits our already-known scripts, and not to wonder about other

scripts that we might be missing.

But what if this movie now begins to cross genres, to encompass not only

this huge terrorist attack and thousands of personal tragedies, but also

the spectacle of war? It seems telling that the parts of the media that

have been the most eager to uncover every tiny, tearful detail of sthe

tragedy have also been the most vociferous in calling for all-out war –

even before any enemy has even been identified. The rhetoric of grief,

seemingly so natural and so sympathetic, somehow seems to be shading all

too easily into the rhetoric of revenge.

Maybe that sounds alarmist to you. After all, if you read this broadsheet

all week you will have been reading people urging measured and responsible

reactions. But in other parts of the media, where the tone is more fevered,

tales of tragedy and calls for blood are going hand in hand.

One tabloid newspaper that is lying across my desk as I write this – not

some eccentric rag, but a newspaper read by millions of people in Britain –

opens on a spread with photographs of mourners and bodybags. There are two

stories here. One is full of the gut-wrenching detail to which we have

become accustomed, a story of tapping still being heard under the rubble as

a woman – God knows how they know it is a woman – tries desperately to

communicate with rescuers. The other story is headlined ``Go get `em George``

and calls fiercely for cruise-missile strikes, special forces operations

and even all-out attack.

In such a climate, those urging caution are being made out to be

cold-hearted and inhuman. But it isn`t always inhuman to want to stop

crying, and start thinking.

If we believe ALL humans are created EQUAL

OPINION

Isn`t This Duplicity?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Is the spilled blood of Indian victims any less precious than that of victims in New York and Washington? When the US asks ``Are you with us?``, we have to ask them ``Are you with us?``



TUSHAR A. GANDHI







The barbaric acts of destruction in New York and Washington has rightly roused condemnation and revulsion amongst the right thinking people of the sane world.

The condemnation of the barbarians who have inflicted this tragedy on thousands of innocent victims and left psychological scars on millions of survivors and an entire nation cannot be too loud.

Our prayers are for the victims and we sympathies with the survivors and families of the victims as well as with the traumatized citizens of America and pray that god gives them strength to overcome this tragedy.

As a citizen of a country and specifically of a city which was similarly traumatized eight years ago in 1993 by a series of bomb blasts that ripped apart many civilian establishments across the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) I am bewildered at the duplicity of US administration and politicians.

For seven years India has been asking that Pakistan, who was involved in planning training and supplying the explosives to the perpetrators of the Bombay bomb blasts, be declared a terrorist state, yet its pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

The main accused in the Bombay Bomb blast, namely Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, are openly sheltered as favoured guests by Pakistan and yet the US does not question Pakistan.

But when similar acts are perpetrated against the US on US soil it immediately gives an ultimatum to the rest of the world ``Are you with us?`` and asks every one to support what ever retaliatory actions it takes, not only against the terrorist organization but also against the countries which shelter them.

Isn`t this duplicity?

Are Victims of Bombay Bomb Blast lesser than the Victims in New York and Washington?

Indians feel bewildered and hurt when they hear that the US is seeking assistance from Pakistan in its retaliatory actions, a country which is not a democracy and which openly sponsors terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and shelters the perpetrators of the 1993 Bomb Blasts in Bombay.

Is the spilled blood of Indian victims any less precious than that of victims in New York and Washington? When the US asks ``Are you with us?``, we have to ask them ``Are you with us?``



(Apart from being the Mahatma`s descendent, Tushar A. Gandhi, is also Managing Trustee, Mahatma Gandhi Foundation, Mumbai(Bombay), India)

Talibans are not supporting Bin Laden because he is taking advantage of their unwritten law. Talibans supporting him because Bin laden has money and followers. Talibans need him to be able to fight against the Northern Alliance.

This is a dangerous situation. Anybody on Chowk could be plotting for Usaman Bin Laden.

They Just Blended In

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38026-2001Sep15.html

Religion`s misguided missiles

Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster

Richard Dawkins

A guided missile corrects its trajectory as it flies, homing in, say, on the heat of a jet plane`s exhaust. A great improvement on a simple ballistic shell, it still cannot discriminate particular targets. It could not zero in on a designated New York skyscraper if launched from as far away as Boston.

That is precisely what a modern ``smart missile`` can do. Computer miniaturisation has advanced to the point where one of today`s smart missiles could be programmed with an image of the Manhattan skyline together with instructions to home in on the north tower of the World Trade Centre. Smart missiles of this sophistication are possessed by the United States, as we learned in the Gulf war, but they are economically beyond ordinary terrorists and scientifically beyond theocratic governments. Might there be a cheaper and easier alternative?

In the second world war, before electronics became cheap and miniature, the psychologist BF Skinner did some research on pigeon-guided missiles. The pigeon was to sit in a tiny cockpit, having previously been trained to peck keys in such a way as to keep a designated target in the centre of a screen. In the missile, the target would be for real.

The principle worked, although it was never put into practice by the US authorities. Even factoring in the costs of training them, pigeons are cheaper and lighter than computers of comparable effectiveness. Their feats in Skinner`s boxes suggest that a pigeon, after a regimen of training with colour slides, really could guide a missile to a distinctive landmark at the southern end of Manhattan island. The pigeon has no idea that it is guiding a missile. It just keeps on pecking at those two tall rectangles on the screen, from time to time a food reward drops out of the dispenser, and this goes on until... oblivion.

Pigeons may be cheap and disposable as on-board guidance systems, but there`s no escaping the cost of the missile itself. And no such missile large enough to do much damage could penetrate US air space without being intercepted. What is needed is a missile that is not recognised for what it is until too late. Something like a large civilian airliner, carrying the innocuous markings of a well-known carrier and a great deal of fuel. That`s the easy part. But how do you smuggle on board the necessary guidance system? You can hardly expect the pilots to surrender the left-hand seat to a pigeon or a computer.

How about using humans as on-board guidance systems, instead of pigeons? Humans are at least as numerous as pigeons, their brains are not significantly costlier than pigeon brains, and for many tasks they are actually superior. Humans have a proven track record in taking over planes by the use of threats, which work because the legitimate pilots value their own lives and those of their passengers.

The natural assumption that the hijacker ultimately values his own life too, and will act rationally to preserve it, leads air crews and ground staff to make calculated decisions that would not work with guidance modules lacking a sense of self-preservation. If your plane is being hijacked by an armed man who, though prepared to take risks, presumably wants to go on living, there is room for bargaining. A rational pilot complies with the hijacker`s wishes, gets the plane down on the ground, has hot food sent in for the passengers and leaves the negotiations to people trained to negotiate.

The problem with the human guidance system is precisely this. Unlike the pigeon version, it knows that a successful mission culminates in its own destruction. Could we develop a biological guidance system with the compliance and dispensability of a pigeon but with a man`s resourcefulness and ability to infiltrate plausibly? What we need, in a nutshell, is a human who doesn`t mind being blown up. He`d make the perfect on-board guidance system. But suicide enthusiasts are hard to find. Even terminal cancer patients might lose their nerve when the crash was actually looming.

Could we get some otherwise normal humans and somehow persuade them that they are not going to die as a consequence of flying a plane smack into a skyscraper? If only! Nobody is that stupid, but how about this - it`s a long shot, but it just might work. Given that they are certainly going to die, couldn`t we sucker them into believing that they are going to come to life again afterwards? Don`t be daft! No, listen, it might work. Offer them a fast track to a Great Oasis in the Sky, cooled by everlasting fountains. Harps and wings wouldn`t appeal to the sort of young men we need, so tell them there`s a special martyr`s reward of 72 virgin brides, guaranteed eager and exclusive.

Would they fall for it? Yes, testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next.

It`s a tall story, but worth a try. You`d have to get them young, though. Feed them a complete and self-consistent background mythology to make the big lie sound plausible when it comes. Give them a holy book and make them learn it by heart. Do you know, I really think it might work. As luck would have it, we have just the thing to hand: a ready-made system of mind-control which has been honed over centuries, handed down through generations. Millions of people have been brought up in it. It is called religion and, for reasons which one day we may understand, most people fall for it (nowhere more so than America itself, though the irony passes unnoticed). Now all we need is to round up a few of these faith-heads and give them flying lessons.

Facetious? Trivialising an unspeakable evil? That is the exact opposite of my intention, which is deadly serious and prompted by deep grief and fierce anger. I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don`t mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one`s own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.

If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr`s death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions?

There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger. It is comparable to a smart missile, and its guidance system is in many respects superior to the most sophisticated electronic brain that money can buy. Yet to a cynical government, organisation, or priesthood, it is very very cheap.

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. ``Mindless`` may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

It came from religion. Religion is also, of course, the underlying source of the divisiveness in the Middle East which motivated the use of this deadly weapon in the first place. But that is another story and not my concern here. My concern here is with the weapon itself. To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used.

React Response to Rdesikun#53

Dear sir : thanks u for remark. I hoped undustand

i am not happy with mr. laden at all.He is lufanga chor. he is problom muslim and not muslim mentaly.

he gave bad name to everybody. Plz do not attack thinking or you like mr. laden? I demand answer respectful sir.

Very well, Bijli, no fatwah, no effort to get

any. It is not my funeral.

-Arun Gupta

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Re: Field Marshall Romair`s Zero-Sum Strategic Analysis

There is no dearth of reasonable, sane interlocutors in Pakistan. The only trouble is that they are not in khaki, and thus have to kow-tow to geniuses like Romair in GHQ. If Romair, who is US-educated and has a `broad` outlook persists in self-defeating zero-sum calculus, I wonder what the geniuses in GHQ must be like. Below, fortunately, is an example of good sense being propounded by one sane person:

All unquiet on the western front

http://www.dawn.com/2001/09/15/op.htm#3

Romair

``f a multi-national force lands in Pakistan, and Pakistan is on worldwide television for even a few hours, what to talk of a few days or months, it will have finally gone beyond the US State Dept. and reached into the living rooms of America. This will be a public relations coup for Pakistan, and a disaster for India.``

Why a disaster for India? How is India affected?