Regarding the Stupid White Men

When questioned on the capabilities of IAF pilots, Col Greg Newbech, USAF Team Leader made the following remarks: -

- What we’ve seen in the last two weeks is, the IAF can stand toe-to-toe with best AF in the world.

- I pity the pilot who has to face the IAF and chances the day to underestimate him; because he won’t be going home.

- Indian hospitality from everyone has been truly overwhelming.

- The greatest compliment we heard from an IAF pilot – You American pilots are just like us, simply down to earth people.

- We depart India with great respect for the Indian Air Force. Your pilots, maint and support crew are exceptional professionals.

The Indian Air Force now looks forward to meeting the USAF in Alaska during Ex Cope Thunder-04.

Are Indian Fighter Pilots better than US Fighter Pilots?

Posted by vkthakur on 23 June 2004 (EST)

The first bilateral dissimilar air combat (DACT) exercise between the U.S. Air Force and the Indian air force in more than 40 years, Cope India 2004, took place at Gawalior, India in Feb this year. Did the IAF pilots out perform the USAF pilots during the exercise.
The first bilateral dissimilar air combat (DACT) exercise between the U.S. Air Force and the Indian air force in more than 40 years, Cope India 2004, took place at Gawalior, India in Feb this year. This blog had carried a report on the exercise.

Reportedly, the exercise found mention in the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee in March when Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper stated that the results of Cope India were ``very revealing``. He did not elaborate. Earlier, Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) said in a Feb. 26 House Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing that U.S. F-15Cs were defeated more than 90 percent of the time in direct combat exercises against the IAF!

These are startling assertions, to say the least! Are they true? is the question doing the rounds on Internet forums frequented by Fighter Flying enthusiasts.

I have no intention of attempting to answer that question. Instead, what I will do is attempt to put it in the right perspective. In doing so, my hope is to make the question irrelevant.

While the Internet is an excellent source of information, it is not always a reliable source of information. It is always a good idea to be skeptical about anything published on the internet that does not originate on an official website or does not refer to a verifiable source. And by that logic, what I say here should also be treated with due skepticism. For the purpose of this article I will assume that the congressional report being cited on internet forums is indeed authentic.


http://kuku.sawf.org/Articles/139.aspx

Are Indian pilots better that their USAF counterparts ?
By thomas on 19 August 2004 (EST)
Dear Mr. Thakur,

I read with much interest your views on the IAF pilots performance during Operation Cope Thunder.Personally I think you have analysed it in a very objective manner and have kept away the ``patriotic`` aspect that may probably have caused a bias in judgement.

When a leading newspaper came out with this article I was asked this same question by a few members of the ``Non Flying`` population.I think the ``patriotic`` aspect got the better of them and they felt that we could win any war under any circumstance - well why not look at India in the IT industry we are simply the best and we are much better than the Americans - I really didn`t want to comment at that point in time as I really didn`t have the facts and figures.

My personal view is that by being of a particular racial origin , one does not necessarily have to be a great pilot.It is the training and the individual aptitude that make one a good pilot.Despite our strong performance in the concerned exercise , we need to ask ourselves , what would it be like in a real war ? What would it be like to go into combat with a country which has far superior technology although limited in numbers ? It may be prudent for our strategic thinkers / planners to look beyond Pakistan and Southern China as areas of combat and possible threats and plan accordingly.

As for many people out there who think that our pilots are simply the best - along with the IT chaps - it would be a good idea to watch the aerobatic displays of the Blue Angels , Thunderbirds , Red Arrows , Anatoly Kvotchur , Viktor Pugachev and the likes.It doesn`t really leave much to the imagination.

Cheers
Thomas.
Reply to this Comment

ylh #383

{You people have never come up with a convincing argument...}

Sez who?

{I have always found some source or the other clearly pointing out the lies that you Indians love shoving down everyone`s throat}

What sources, and how reputable? How about `garbage in, garbage out`?

ylh # 384

{Oh so now the convoluted reply}

`Convoluted` because you don`t like the conclusions that it will force on you? Because you can`t answer it, or deal with it? Is it because you are a total innumerate and fear and hate numbers? If so, how did you manage to graduate from that distinguished Ivy League alma mater of yours? You ought to demand a tuition refund from Rutgers.

{comes down to an explanation of the `mind of the Bania`... how come you don`t fall in the same category}

I may very well, and I may be proud of it. I gather that `bania` is a pejorative term among the brainwashed India-hating youth of Pakistan - it may not be where I come from.

{Wonderful explaining away... typical indian style.. if all of this drivel is still `conservative` I would love to see how you guys exaggerate... wait.. wait.. we already know!}

`Exaggerate` or not, the plain, brutal truth, which you are forced to confront, is that Pakistan failed to achieve its objectives in the 1965 war, and suffered a humiliating (though richly deserved) defeat devoid of dignity in 1971, despite all the pathetic chest-thumping PR, before and after, of your all-conquering Shaheens.

Further, the world-renowned, `one of the best, most combat-ready` PAF was nowhere to be found in Kargil, in its grand old tradition of `let the army fend for itself`, while its opponents flew sortie after sortie to decimate Pakistani troops on the heights. Try to explain THAT away. I note that you produced no answer to #366 - given your known loquacity I can only infer that you HAVE NO ANSWER that you can stomach to the question why the PAF was absent at Kargil.

{You people lost over 100 planes in the past few years... at this rate in the next war PAF will not need to fight...}

Curiously, I don`t see any cockiness in statements of retired Air Chief Marshal Pervez Mehdi Qureshi when he whines about the yawning technological disparity between the IAF and the PAF. As for retired Air Marshal Ayaz Ahmed Khan, it`s a treat to watch the man fret in article after article in that august publication, Pakistan Defence Journal - begging for contemporary aircraft to be acquired to address the `imbalance`, fulminating about the non-supply of 71 F-16s, asking that the Chinese be urged to get cracking on the FC-1, begging for the acquisition of Mirage 2000-5s, even of 50 Su-27s! These gentlemen appear to have lost some of their capacity for self-delusion as they aged. Just hope and pray that you acquire the same wisdom some day.

Oh so now the convoluted reply comes down to an explanation of the `mind of the Bania`... how come you don`t fall in the same category

Wonderful explaining away... typical indian style.. if all of this drivel is still `conservative` I would love to see how you guys exaggerate... wait.. wait.. we already know!

You people lost over 100 planes in the past few years... at this rate in the next war PAF will not need to fight...

So whose asking you to debate with me?

You people have never come up with a convincing argument... I have always found some source or the other clearly pointing out the lies that you Indians love shoving down everyone`s throat.

ylh #369

{If after admitting that the Highest number of kills are attributed to Pakistani aces, Pakistani pilots have more air to air kills than Indians, and PAF has won all the classic air combat maneuvres...}

There you go again ... you are predictably obsessed with air-to-air combat as the be-all and end-all of an air force.

Let me start at the beginning and try to explain this from first principles.

War is not a game or a sporting contest. It is fought for deadly serious reasons, not for stupid bragging rights. The overriding aim is not to rack up some kind of score. It is not even to kill a larger number of the enemy or destroy more of his materiel, though killing and destruction in the course of war is usually a regrettable necessity. The point is to achieve your set political objective, at the lowest cost to yourself.

Therefore the overall measure of the performance of some instrument of war, a navy or an air force for example, has to be the EFFECTIVENESS WITH WHICH IT FURTHERED WAR AIMS. None of the activities of that war instrument make any sense outside this context. This overall judgement has to be qualitative for obvious reasons. In the case of a clearly won war (WON in the sense: POLITICAL OBJECTIVES WERE ACHIEVED, not in the sense of some sort of stupid score) the judgement has to be how the air force in question materially contributed to the victory. In the case of a lost war the question has to be how the air force in question obstructed the other side`s attainment of final victory. In the case of a stalemated war ... I hope you get the point. Please note that this judgement, which is what matters most at the end of the day, is not a comparison with the opposing air force (if any) for superiority/inferiority etc.

After that overall judgement, one can look at air force performance more closely, in quantitative fashion. Here the question has to be - the effort expended, the costs incurred, the results achieved. There are any number of numerical indices that make sense here to look at one part or other of the picture. Measure of effort might include the number of sorties flown, of various kinds; tonnage of bombs dropped on enemy targets, etc. One measure of cost would be the number of aircraft lost, to all causes. Measures of results achieved might include enemy tanks destroyed, enemy aircraft destroyed, airfields put out of commission, total economic damage inflicted, etc. Measures of efficiency might then include - the number of targets of various types destroyed per ground attack sortie, etc. measures of expensiveness might include the attrition rate (number of aircraft of each type lost per 100 sorties by that type). Once you have the numbers you can ask all kinds of questions, e.g what fraction of an air force`s effort was spent merely defending its own assets (e.g. through air defence sorties over its own air space), what fraction in neutralising the enemies air defences (radars, SAM batteries, etc.), what fraction in furthering a ground or sea war, etc. You can then also see whether your air defence sorties were in fact more cost effective than your SAMs in bringing down enemy aircraft; or whether a certain specialised ground attack aircraft was in fact effective against its designated targets. But of course all of these numbers occur in the context of a particular war, against a specific enemy, and don`t make sense outside that context.

Finally, you may want to focus on a specific kind of proficiency - say, in air-to-air combat (that famous Pakistani obsession). Here, if you really want a fair measure of pilot competence, you will have to factor out the differences in performance of dissimilar aircraft (for instance, the PAFs F-86 Sabres seemed to be more maneouvreable than the IAFs Hunters, but less so than the Gnats), and the different armanents involved (e.g. one side, such as the PAF in 1965 & 1971 - has a usable air-to-air-missile, the other doesn`t). So a `fair` test is only possible in exercises, not in the real world of the Indo-Pakistan wars. Further, some matchups are obviously skewed, in that one of the types involved is not primarily designed for air-to-air combat. [Thus the Canberra bombers (English and American) used by both sides were not air combat types at all; and the SU-7 was a dedicated ground-attack aircraft (like the Jaguar) with limited air combat capability.] The best that one can do is look at how comparable aircraft of different sides performed against each other. Even here, the performance is heavily influenced by mission. A dedicated air defence mission flown over one`s home air base is very different from a mission to attack a target in enemy territory while carrying munitions, drop tanks and limited self-defence capability and with tight fuel constraints. Air combat occuring under such circumstances is going to be skewed towards the `home` side.

The point of all the excruciating pedantry above is to indicate how one needs to approach the question of how an air force performed, and what disclaimers to keep in mind if your numbers and conclusions are to be worth anything at all. A statistic such as `highest number of kills` (verified or otherwise) may be useful for inflaming a population with patriotic sentiments; heroic achievements of some ace or the other can be relied upon to fill the heads of impressionable schoolboys with tales of derring-do. But it`s meaningless in the larger scheme of things. It isn`t going to make any difference to the unsentimental flint-hearted bania when he works out his profit-and-loss account after a war and decides whether that expensive supersonic flying club called the IAF paid for its exorbitant price tag; whether those air force types were justified in claiming some of their aircraft obselete and demanding that they be replaced with more modern types; etc.

Now, would you like to assess the overall performance of the two air forces in 1965, in 1971, in Kargil in light of the above? Can you comment on the breakup of Indian losses by type, with reference to the role(s) played by each type. And would you like to do a close reading of Jagan`s loss figures - broken up by aircraft type - to see how the IAFs Gnats performed against the PAFs F-86s in 1971, and how the PAFs F-104s did against the IAFs MiG-21s? Can you explain why I`ve focused on just these pairs? Would you care to assess - fairly, and with reasons - whether these matchups were evenly balanced?

{if Jagan Mohan doesn`t admit that PAF`s superiority... it just proves one thing: He is an Indian, hence he is unable to be fairminded.}

On the contrary, Jagan is probably too sharp to fall into the stupid trap of declaring one air force or the other `superior`. YLH, let me give you a little insight into the mentality of the bania. He is most conservative and ungenerous and merciless in assessing the performance of his own portfolio. That is what keeps him securely in the black. And that is what enabled the IAF to learn from its mistakes in 1965 and do what was required of it in 1971. Further, the bania whether by accident or design has refrained from sponsoring a major national cult around his armed forces. This enables him to use them when appropriate without losing face at the first setback - for instance, in Kargil in May 1999.

Whereas Pakistan through poor judgement and lack of foresight invested a tremendous amount of national pride in the image of the air force, inflating its real achievements in 1965 and investing it with an aura of invincibility. Thus critical analysis of its performance in 1971 is in short supply in Pakistan. Nor could the PAF be used in Kargil, because doing so would have damaged that make-believe image of `superiority`.

Ok Ylh, can you point to a single instance where you have even to the slightest extent modified your views based on what you read on Chowk. I dont recall any so what use is it debating with a person who is convinced he is always right?

Typical Indian way of admitting defeat..

Call your opponent a Nincumpoop... especially when you can`t beat him on the facts...

Im gonna take a pass on the ``who has the best air force`` debate.

However, please let me know when you guys begin discussing the intricacies of ``who`s daddy is the coolest`` or ``who has the hairiest next door neighbour.``

Im gonna take a pass on the ``who has the best air force`` debate.

However, please let me know when you guys begin discussing the intricacies of ``who`s daddy is the coolest`` or ``who has the hairiest next door neighbour.``

For MUSLIMS & Islam-lovers only

Rest: S C R O L L

__________________________________________________

ISLAM AND MODERNISM - II





In his view, Shariah embraces both law and religion. Religion is based upon spiritual experience; law is based upon the will of the community as expressed by its legislature, or any other law-making authority. Religion is unchangeable in its inermost kernel - the love of God for His own sake is sung by sufis and mystices throughout the world.28

Fyzee said that ``the separation of civil law from the moral or religious law can now no longer be delayed in Islam. We must in the first instance distinguish between the universal and particular moral rules. And then we must deal with the law. The first task is to separate logically the dogmas and doctrines of religion from the principles and rules of law. The essential faith of man is something different from the outward observance of rules; moral rules apply to the consience, but legal rules can be enforced by the state. The innter life of the spiriti, the ``Idea of the Holy,`` m ust be separated to some extent from the outward forms of social behaviour. The separation is not simple; it will even be considered un-Islamic. But the attempt at a rethinking of the Shariah can only begin with the acceptance of this principle.`` 29............

Continued............

www.ghazali.net

re:Reply #: 371

RSaxena,

Also interesting is the fact that commando units of US and India will be doing joint exercises in Agra against the backdrop of Taj Mahal. I learnt of joint commando exercises by US and Israel in the past. Why India? I think it has something to do with what happens if Mushy boy is eliminated by ISI or his own army brass and a fundoo takes over. The commandos will be expected to be ready for a doomsday scenario when the nuclear arsenal falls into wrong hands.

Sridhar

AlephNull #366

Yaar, aur kuch kaam-dhanda nahin hai? who are you wasting your time with this nicompoop.

PS : Check out this page by Jagan Mohan..

You will find a number of Gnats, Migs, and even a few SU 7s shot down by the PAF...

http://members.tripod.com/

More on Indian Mythology...

Hari Inder,

Your statement that the `Sabre was a frontline jet in the USAF` smacks of typical ignorance of the Indian variety... F 86 had been rendered obselete in the mid 1950s. By 1965 USAF didn`t even use the Aircraft... USAF had F 4 Phantoms as the frontline Plane... Infact IAF had the most superior aircraft in subcontinent the Mig 21...

Furthermore, PAF only had some 100 + aircrafts (mostly obselete F 86 Sabres and 10 F 104s).. you fellas had something in ball park of 500+...

-YLH

PS Ignorance is not a bliss!

Hari Inder,

What planes do you think PAF were using... Subsonic F 86 Sabres of Korean War of 1950... Vampires, Hunters, Mysteres, Caberras, Mig 21s etc were much more formidable team than PAF`s F 86s .. remember in 1965 Most of PAF`s kills were on Sabres and very few on the supersonic f 104... In 1971, the bulk of the PAF depended on again f 86 and Mig 19s ... the F 104s had been rendered useless due to the lack of spareparts... yet you guys had Mig 21s which better than any thing the PAF had...

Do you think we had F 16s or something back then? tsk tsk... You Indians just don`t wanna give credit where its due .. do you...

-YLH

PS No I don`t think there are others on these boards who know more than you...

they are just like you.

YLH

I am no expert in Air warfare and there seem to be a lot of people on the chowk, who know a lot more about the subject than me. However I was struck by one thing. while going thru your posts.

In all the encounters that you have quoted, the PAF kills were against IAF hunters and Vampires. Very few against Gnats or Mirages. As I understand the Hunters and Vampires are of WW II vintage. The Saber on the other hand was the frontline air fighter of the America air force, when it was delivered to the PAF.

As far as the MIGs are concerned, in terms of the price paid for them against what the PAF paid for its American planes, there is not comparison. Incidently, I read some where, that the americans claimed 1:14 kill ratio for their sabers aginst the MIG 15s in Korea.

I would say the IAF did pretty well considering, they were using much older or cheaper machines. Don`t you agree?

...any guesses why the US is training indian soliders in alaska?...s-i-a-c-h-e-n

{As part of the rapidly expanding Indo-US defence ties, paracommandos from an Indian Army brigade and special forces from the American Pacific Command will begin joint exercises in Agra in the next few days.

The exercise, code-named ``Balance Iroquois``, will be backed by transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force and the US Air Force. These exercises will be followed by Indo-US mountain manoeuvres currently in progress in Alaska in the US.

In addition to the joint exercises, defence ministry officials say the Indo-US Defence Policy Group (DPG) meeting, to be held in Washington from May 20 to 23, will explore ways to further expand strategic, security and defence cooperation between the two countries.

The recent $146 million deal with the US for the purchase of eight AN/TPQ-37 firefinder weapon-locating radars is just a precursor to other agreements in the offing.}}

Alephnull

USAF, RAF etc

Pakistan has one of the best, most combat ready airforces in the world….. For the Indian war planners, the Pakistan Air Force is their

worst fear. Pakistani pilots are respected throughout the world, ……because they know how to fly and fight.” - Lieutenant-General Charles Horner, USAF (retd.), the chief architect of, and the mastermind behind, the air campaign against Iraq during the Gulf War. Quoted from his biography, “Every Man A Tiger

Alephnull,

If after admitting that the Highest number of kills are attributed to Pakistani aces, Pakistani pilots have more air to air kills than Indians, and PAF has won all the classic air combat maneuvres... if Jagan Mohan doesn`t admit that PAF`s superiority... it just proves one thing: He is an Indian, hence he is unable to be fairminded.

-YLH

YLH, you say:

How dare you accuse me of not using `Numbers` I have

put up the entire Bharat Rhakshak website up here you

idiot... Its your fault for not reading the numbers etc...



Dear deluded one: all you have done is present records

of a few individual air combats. But I note that you

refuse the numbers that matter, those pertaining to

number of hours of flying vs. the number of crashes.

This is like writing about a few incidents of

hand-to-hand combat during the 71 (conveniently

choosing only those that show the Pak ghazis in a

favorable light) and concluding that the Indian Army

was not match for the ghazis...

Yes, a Subedar Wazir Khan may have overwhelmed a

Havildar Lekh Ram in hand to hand combat, but in the

end, IT DID NOT MATTER.

Tha fact is, you incompetent nincompoops allowed

yourself to be overrun in Bangladesh in 10 days. All you

had to do was to hang on for a month or so, to give

Nixon enough time to bail you out. Given enough time,

there is no doubt that the US would have successfully

pressured the India to cease fire and withdraw from

Bangladesh. That could not be done once the Pak

ghazis had surrenedered and a Bangladesh

government was in place.

Even in the western sector, where your ghazis were

supposed to grab enough territory from India to make

her sue for peace, you idiots did no better. While your

shaheens were circling above their officers messes and

winning imaginary dogfights, your ghazis in their iron

camels were being slaughtered by the ``incompetent ``

IAF!

ylh #338

{{According to Alephnull,

1) Indian statisticians are liars.

2) All American Air force generals are liars

3) Jane Defence Weekly lies

4) All International monitors are liars..

5) PAF is paying all of the above to create `Myths`.}}

ylh:

I have not said any of the above. Those are YOUR ATTEMPTED INFERENCES, provided without any reasoning, and are ill-founded. Have the BASIC HONESTY to not attribute your own concoctions to me.

If you ask me for my opinion on any of the above, I`ll gladly provide them subject to clarification of what exactly you mean by each statement. But that is another matter.

Some more malodorous tripe from you:

{{3) The contributor to Bharat Rhakshak, Mr.Jagan Mohan PVS, though a biased commentator, has been forced to admit PAF`s superiority.}}

FALSE. Again, an attempt to pull YOUR DESIRED CONCLUSION from somebody else`s data or statements like a rabbit out of a hat. You must learn to control this utterly dishonest habit of yours, or your name will be mud.

What Jagan Mohan has done is painstakingly assemble and collate all the data he could, in order to document the performance of two air forces in the various wars they have fought. In the case of items he has highlighted (such as aces) he has indicated his opinion of the veracity of claims. He appears to have been very conservative (from the Indian point of view).

For instance, he presents an `unofficial` list of IAF combat losses, which may be more comprehensive and complete than the official one. On the other hand, he presents the `official` PAF combat losses, which is most unlikely to be an overestimate. The PAF official figures will, for example, certainly not contain details of Jordanian F-104s loaned to the PAF that failed to return after the 1971 war. I recognise this scrupulous thoroughness and rectitude with figures as a common South Indian trait. So much for his `bias`. I suppose you think he`s biased because he won`t provide you with the numbers you want on a platter.

Jagan NOWHERE admits `PAF`s superiority`; nor does he assert the reverse. The notion of superiority is meaningless without specifying the measure of quality. Further, a proposed metric must make sense in connection with the phenomenon being studied. Otherwise it`s just a meaningless game played with numbers.

If you had one or more metrics in mind, tell me what they are, and I`ll most likely be able to take you apart.

{{The Bharat Rhakshak Records are as follows (and though they show PAF superiority, I dispute them because it is considerably reduced)}}

...

{{Again, these numbers show superiority of the PAF over IAF but I dispute them because the Indians have greatly reduced the numbers of their losses. The losses were in the ballpark of 110 ...}

Again, the same old bilge repeated again and again. I`ll bet you didn`t major in a quantitively or analytically rigorous field. Making sense of numbers doesn`t seem to be your strong point.

ylh #338

{You declare that PAF has had similar accidents.. yes one plane jettisoned fuel tanks a few years ago...}

Not so fast. The VERY NEXT YEAR an F-7 out of PAF Masroor plummeted on the heads of civilians in Orangi killing a number comparable to the Mirage drop tank case. It sounds like a dead ringer for the Jalandhar MiG-21 crash - similar aircraft, flameout at low level, etc. In this case pure good fortune prevented a much higher death toll in a densely populated area.

Masroor seems to be especially susceptible to such incidents, which cannot be concealed for fairly obvious reasons. There have been other cases as well. As far as overall PAF crashes go, they seem to have about 6 or 7 admitted crashes of fixed-wing combat aircraft per year for the years for which I have ready access. [I am specifically excluding non-combat trainers, transports such as C-130s, helicopters, PN Orions, and shootdowns.] I think the PAF should be complemented for keeping those ancient Mirages together with cannibalised parts, with only occasional disappearances into the Arabian Sea.

{ but for God`s sake... IAF has the POOREST safety record in the WORLD and PAF has been hailed as one of the safest... }

The IAF has a poor safety record in terms of combat aircraft accidents per 10, 000 flying hours - certainly, compared with Western air forces. There are various reasons why a comparison with Western air forces may not be quite fair, but we can go into that at another time.

Now ... I`m completely uninterested in whether the PAF has been HAILED as this or that by one or the other ill-informed nincompoop. I want NUMBERS on which such a conclusion can be based. You have already been provided with sources for these by glib. Please unearth the numbers and tell me what they signify. And also do a comparison with Western airforces, such as the RAF or the USAF .. show us how the PAF stacks up against them. Then we can see if that claim of yours is justified.

We all know how you self professed `Nazis` got Srinagar... as for Siachen... I can`t believe how ignorant one can be of War and War History...

Talk to a General of your Army about the successful expansion of India into `Siachen`... he will laugh his head off... Siachen is bleeding you dry... it was the biggest blunder your army made, and we will continue to make you re live it... your mythology aside!

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Rsaxena,

Yes you are right maharaj.. Sheikh Abdullah is indeed the Gospel of the truth...

Here is another Gospel of the truth for you...

Dr B R Ambedkar:

``Mr Gandhi is no exception to this rule. He presents himself to the world as a liberal but his liberalism is only a very thin veneer which sits very lightly on him as dust does on one`s boots. You scratch him and you will find that underneath his liberalism he is a blue blooded Tory. He stands for the cursed caste. He is a fanatic Hindu upholding the Hindu religion``

http://www.dr-ambedkar.com/writings/42.%20Mr.%20Gandhi%20and%20The%20Emancipation%20of%20The%20Untouchables.htm

Unlike your little quote which is sourceless and contextless, you are welcome to read the context.

But given that your countrymen like Alephnull have already shown the ugly face of Indian arguments... I doubt that you will ever learn to accept the truth.

YLH

Alephnull,

Indian kay Indian hee raho gay...

Kargil has already be explained in detail so please shut up about that.

FIRST OF ALL ..The `claim` is not mine, but of the Top Brass of the USAF, Jane`s Defence Weekly and Your own Statistician. Your explaining away just doesn`t work. I know Yeager`s testimony really burns you Indians ... but I am sorry those are the facts... why is it that your Russian friends never said something like that about your Airforce?

As for your `Prime Candidate` why is it that your own statistician, the guy who writes for Bharat Rhakshak doesn`t mention this on his website?

Let us review once more what he had to say:

http://members.tripod.com/

re: ylh

...and you admire this man?...sick...

Sheikh Abdullah in his autobiography quotes Jinnah`s reply to a Kashmiri activist`s question whether the people of Kashmir would decide its future as ``let the people go to hell``.

ylh #345

{5. Who is the top scoring PAF Pilot?

There are actually two of them. Sqn Ldr M M Alam with Four Hunters as kills from the 65 War, ....}

{6. Which are the best aircombat incidents that can be termed as classic fights?

In my view the following are the classic ``dogfights`` of the Indo-Pakistani Wars.

1965

....

d. The Second Hunter Raid on Sargodha of Five Hunters in which Two Hunters were downed by Sqn Ldr Alam.}

Yo YLH - I can`t believe that you`re letting Jagan Mohan`s slanders against Sqn Ldr Alam pass unchallenged. Don`t you know that according to official PAF claims he had NINE kills - including no less than FIVE Hunters shot down in a single sortie, four of them in the space of thirty seconds? Air Chief Marshal Romair (back in the days when he was Air Marshal Umairr) has attested to the veracity of this claim and explained how it could be done. Yes Sir, that`s right, ``thirty seconds over Sargodha``! A feat unrivalled in the annals of jet combat before or since! Who cares that the PAF never produced gun-camera footage! Or could it be that they were - shudder - making INFLATED AND UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS?

Now let me add my own prime candidate for inclusion under the heading ``short sharp encounters during the India-Pakistan air wars``

a. Aircombat over Boyra on 22nd November 1971 between 4 PAF Sabres and 4 IAF Gnats in which 3 Sabres were downed by the Gnats without loss.

Two of the PAF pilots ejected into Indian territory and were made POW. One of them was Flt. Lt. Pervez Mehdi Qureshi. That little encounter might have helped convince him of the fundamental competence of his adversaries. Which could have been why, 27 years later, as Air Chief Marshal Pervez Mehdi Qureshi, Chief of Staff of the PAF, he might have been less than eager to have his men thrown into the fray in Kargil.

ylh #various

Let us, for the sake of argument, accept your claims (I trust I am not misrepresenting them in paraphrase) that the PAF is one of the best and most combat-ready airforces in the world, that on the other hand the IAF is terminally incompetent, etc. etc.

If that is the case, I consider it INCREDIBLE that the PAF never showed up in Kargil. Your casual claim in ylh #326 that

{Anyone who has studied the Kargil operation knows that the operation didn`t require aircover}

I find frankly untenable. The IAF`s fixed wing aircraft flew about 580 strike missions (MiG-27s) over the course of 6 weeks during the Kargil operations. These were supported by 460 air defence missions (MiG-29s and MiG-21s) and 160 reconnaissance missions. The strike missions targeted both Pakistani troops up on ridges and peaks - for instance Tiger Hill, as well as the logistics supporting them - such as the supply camp in Muntho Dalo. That appears to have made the job of the Indian army much easier. Other things being equal, troops on the higher ground possess a tremendous advantage; Romair never tires of reminding us of this. The introduction of the IAF made things unequal, disrupted the Pakistani Army`s logistics, ended up leaving the Pakistani troops stranded, to the extent that some of their dead were reported to have starved and been forced to eat grass. There is no way that the logistic chain from the Pakistani side to the men on the heights could have been broken without air strikes against the supply camps. And accurate aerial reconnaissance was essential to the Indian Army`s operations.

So clearly the Indians appeared to derive considerable benefit from using their air force. It was therefore the duty of the PAF to disrupt the enemy air force`s operations and thus help out their beleaguered army brothers on the Kargil heights. It was not even necessary to directly increase the misery of hundreds of Indian troops trying to climb up mountainsides against hostile fire by bombing and rocketing and strafing them (maybe PAF Shaheens regards the job of ground attack as trivial and unglamorous - perhaps that is why they don`t seem to boast about it). In Kargil it would have sufficed to go after the MiG-29s flying top cover for the IAF`s strike missions. Air-to-air combat is supposed to be PAF`s forte - it`s particular claim to world-beating excellence. Had they taken on the Indians there and wiped them out, the IAFs entire Kargil air operations would have come unstuck. This in turn would have rung the death-knell to the Indian Army`s operations, left Pakistan in possession of the heights at the end of August/September, holding the whip hand, forcing Vajpayee and company to sue for terms, vacate Siachen, hand over the Valley and beg to be allowed to retain Ladakh, etc. etc. And it might have meant no coup in Pakistan, no subsequent mockery of franchise via farcical fraudulent referenda, etc. The whole course of recent history would have been so different with this decisive defeat of the Indians. A pleasant pipe-dream, is it not?

Can you therefore explain why the PAF Shaheens didn`t avail themselves of this splendid opportunity? I hate to think that they told the Army that they couldn`t provide air cover for the operation, as they did in 1971 when the Army requested cover for their thrust from Reti-Rahimyar Khan to Jaisalmer (the result - with the PAF nowhere in sight, IAF Hunters shot up the Pakistan Army`s tanks at Loganewala from sunrise to sunset, decisively crippling that operation). Could it have been that they thought that the `Army should fight its own battles`? Were they holding themselves in reserve for an epic future showdown with the Taliban Air Force? Did they plan to make the IAF pilots flying CAPs die of boredom? Or did they simply not fancy their chances against IAF MiG-29s armed with BVR missiles? Enquiring minds want to know.

Good Arjunm,

You accept that India is neo-nazi expansionist wannabe world power... That has been my point all along... The rise of Hindu Fascism, and the inverted swastika is here...

But for every Hitler.. there is a Churchill... for every Germany, there is an England.. and like Shias say: Every land is Karbala, every day is Ashur... We will be the England for you guys.. we will be your Hussains! And the Yazids will lose this time around!

Long Live Pakistan...

-YLH

Glib

You Idiot..

How dare you accuse me of not using `Numbers` I have put up the entire Bharat Rhakshak website up here you idiot... Its your fault for not reading the numbers etc...

I don`t believe this... Is lying a national vocation in india?

Glib

Your argument is convoluted.

Unlike you and your stupid compatriots I am the only one who has put up verifiable figures with verifiable sources...

Yet you chaps love to explain away everything... Typical Indian I suppose!

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Indian predilection to irrelevancy never ceases to amaze me...

Now that Arjunm sees clearly that on the argument of PAF vs IAF , I have clearly proved people wrong by Quoting Indian sources.. he is now trying to change the topic altogether...

Well done Indians... !

Arjunm,

These are the stupidest questions...

1) I agree Beating an outnumbered civil war ridden army is a great triumph for an army like India... I give you credit there...

2) Officially Pakistan wasn`t even involved. However, the casualty figures are well known for Kargil. Kargil has been described as tactically brilliant but strategically naive.

3) Pakistan doesn`t aim to take Siachen. That war is the war of costs ... and you are incurring a lot of it. As for Kashmir, Pakistan`s strategy has been debated on these boards many time. Go read.

I am glad that you have admitted that India is an aggressor and is unlawfully committing aggression in Kashmir and Siachen. That you are so proud of it shows the mentality of the Indian.. I suppose thousands of years of inferiority complex can not be reversed by a few years of power and mythical superiority of the almighty indian that your government strives to create.

Dear YLH:

We all know you detest numbers. But, do all of us here a big favor: show us the the benefit of your superior education by refuting the below:

Furthermore Air Marshal Khan writes that in a 19 month period from January 1997 (i.e. up to 31 July 1998) the PAF flew 110,000 hours and suffered 11 major accidents. An attrition rate of 1 per 10,000 hours.

...

While we do not know the exact number of flying hours for the IAF in that 19 month period we can use flying hours from the years 1997-1998 to 1998-1999 to come up a with a reasonable estimate. In 1997/98 the IAF logged 306,190 hours and in 1998/99 it logged 311,412 hours. For the sake of argument we can extrapolate that the IAF logged 181,657 hours during the first 7 months of 1998. Hence for the 19 month period beginning Jan 1997 the IAF logged a total 487,847 hours. During this period the IAF suffered 16 major accidents (7 in 1997 + 9 in first seven months of 1998). This translates into a loss rate of 0.32 per 10,000 hours. Thus as IAF, as a service, suffered an attrition rate that is less than a third of the Pakistan Air Force`s during 1997-1998.

...

This by the way is from a Bharat Rakshak Monitor article that you refuse to acknowledge. Note that the Monitor is an online journal, not a free-for-all forum.

According to the numbers I have given above, PAF logged in about 110,000 in a 19 month period between Jan 97 and Jul 98. That works out to about 69,000 hours a year. I am sure you know the approximate number of PAF fighter pilots (1,000-1,200) and can figure out how much flying time each is getting (60-70 hrs). Please let me know if my theory about Rooh Afza sipping Paki shaheens was off the mark?

For extra credit, try to figure out what kind of hours IAF pilots were logging.

P.S. Don`t bother us with random quotes. try to argue on the basis of numbers.

All the best and good luck!

Two Cheers for Colonialism

By DINESH D`SOUZA

Colonialism has gotten a bad name in recent decades. Anticolonialism was one



ALSO SEE:

Colloquy Live: Join a live, online discussion with Dinesh D`Souza about his essay in defense of colonialism on Thursday, May 9, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern time.





of the dominant political currents of the 20th century, as dozens of European colonies in Asia and Africa became free. Today we are still living with the aftermath of colonialism. Apologists for terrorism, including Osama bin Laden, argue that terrorist acts are an understandable attempt on the part of subjugated non-Western peoples to lash out against their longtime Western oppressors. Activists at last year`s World Conference on Racism, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have called on the West to pay reparations for slavery and colonialism to minorities and natives of the third world.

These justifications of violence, and calls for monetary compensation, rely on a large body of scholarship that has been produced in the Western academy. That scholarship, which goes by the name of anticolonial studies, postcolonial studies, or subaltern studies, is now an intellectual school in itself, and it exercises a powerful influence on the humanities and social sciences. Its leading Western scholars include Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Walter Rodney, and Samir Amin. Their arguments are supported by the ideas of third-world intellectuals like Wole Soyinka, Chinweizu, Ashis Nandy, and, perhaps most influential of all, Frantz Fanon.

The assault against colonialism and its legacy has many dimensions, but at its core it is a theory of oppression that relies on three premises: First, colonialism and imperialism are distinctively Western evils that were inflicted on the non-Western world. Second, as a consequence of colonialism, the West became rich and the colonies became impoverished; in short, the West succeeded at the expense of the colonies. Third, the descendants of colonialism are worse off than they would be had colonialism never occurred.

In a widely used text, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, the Marxist scholar Walter Rodney accuses European colonialism of ``draining African wealth and making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent.`` The African writer Chinweizu strikes a similar note in his influential book The West and the Rest of Us. He offers the following explanation for African poverty: ``White hordes have sallied forth from their Western homelands to assault, loot, occupy, rule, and exploit the world. Even now the fury of their expansionist assault on the rest of us has not abated.`` In his classic work The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon writes, ``European opulence has been founded on slavery. The well-being and progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and the dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians, and the yellow races.``

Those notions are pervasive and emotionally appealing. By suggesting that the West became dominant because it is oppressive, they provide an explanation for Western global dominance without encouraging white racial arrogance. They relieve the third world of blame for its wretchedness. Moreover, they imply politically egalitarian policy solutions: The West is in possession of the ``stolen goods`` of other cultures, and it has a moral and legal obligation to make some form of repayment. I was raised to believe in such things, and among most third-world intellectuals they are articles of faith. The only problem is that they are not true.

There is nothing uniquely Western about colonialism. My native country of India, for example, was ruled by the British for more than two centuries, and many of my fellow Indians are still smarting about that. What they often forget, however, is that before the British came, the Indians had been invaded and conquered by the Persians, the Afghans, Alexander the Great, the Mongols, the Arabs, and the Turks. Depending on how you count, the British were preceded by at least six colonial powers that invaded and occupied India since ancient times. Indeed, ancient India was itself settled by the Aryan people, who came from the north and subjugated the dark-skinned indigenous people.

Those who identify colonialism and empire only with the West either have no sense of history or have forgotten about the Egyptian empire, the Persian empire, the Macedonian empire, the Islamic empire, the Mongol empire, the Chinese empire, and the Aztec and Inca empires in the Americas. Shouldn`t the Arabs be paying reparations for their destruction of the Byzantine and Persian empires? Come to think of it, shouldn`t the Byzantine and Persian people be paying reparations to the descendants of the people they subjugated? And while we`re at it, shouldn`t the Muslims reimburse the Spaniards for their 700-year rule?

As the example of Islamic Spain suggests, the people of the West have participated in the game of conquest not only as the perpetrators, but also as the victims. Ancient Greece, for example, was conquered by Rome, and the Roman Empire itself was destroyed by invasions of Huns, Vandals, Lombards, and Visigoths from northern Europe. America, as we all know, was itself a colony of England before its war of independence; England, before that, had been subdued and ruled by Normans from France. Those of us living today are taking on a large project if we are going to settle on a rule of social justice based on figuring out whose ancestors did what to whom.

The West did not become rich and powerful through colonial oppression. It makes no sense to claim that the West grew rich and strong by conquering other countries and taking their stuff. How did the West manage to do that? In the late Middle Ages, say 1500, the West was by no means the world`s most affluent or most powerful civilization. Indeed, those of China and of the Arab-Islamic world exceeded the West in wealth, in knowledge, in exploration, in learning, and in military power. So how did the West gain so rapidly in economic, political, and military power that, by the 19th century, it was able to conquer virtually all of the other civilizations? That question demands to be answered, and the oppression theorists have never provided an adequate explanation.

Moreover, the West could not have reached its current stage of wealth and influence by stealing from other cultures, for the simple reason that there wasn`t very much to take. ``Oh yes there was,`` the retort often comes. ``The Europeans stole the raw material to build their civilization. They took rubber from Malaya, cocoa from West Africa, and tea from India.`` But as the economic historian P.T. Bauer points out, before British rule, there were no rubber trees in Malaya, no cocoa trees in West Africa, no tea in India. The British brought the rubber tree to Malaya from South America. They brought tea to India from China. And they taught the Africans to grow cocoa, a crop the native people had never heard of. None of this is to deny that when the colonialists could exploit native resources, they did. But that larceny cannot possibly account for the enormous gap in economic, political, and military power that opened up between the West and the rest of the world.

What, then, is the source of that power? The reason the West became so affluent and dominant in the modern era is that it invented three institutions: science, democracy, and capitalism. All those institutions are based on universal impulses and aspirations, but those aspirations were given a unique expression in Western civilization.

Consider science. It is based on a shared human trait: the desire to know. People in every culture have tried to learn about the world. Thus the Chinese recorded the eclipses, the Mayans developed a calendar, the Hindus discovered the number zero, and so on. But science -- which requires experiments, laboratories, induction, verification, and what one scholar has called ``the invention of invention,`` the scientific method -- that is a Western institution. Similarly, tribal participation is universal, but democracy -- which involves free elections, peaceful transitions of power, and separation of powers -- is a Western idea. Finally, the impulse to trade is universal, and there is nothing Western about the use of money, but capitalism -- which requires property rights, contracts, courts to enforce them, limited-liability corporations, stock exchanges, patents, insurance, double-entry bookkeeping -- this ensemble of practices was developed in the West.

It is the dynamic interaction among these three Western institutions -- science, democracy, and capitalism -- that has produced the great wealth, strength, and success of Western civilization. An example of this interaction is technology, which arises out of the marriage between science and capitalism. Science provides the knowledge that leads to invention, and capitalism supplies the mechanism by which the invention is transmitted to the larger society, as well as the economic incentive for inventors to continue to make new things.

Now we can understand better why the West was able, between the 16th and 19th centuries, to subdue the rest of the world and bend it to its will. Indian elephants and Zulu spears were no match for British rifles and cannonballs. Colonialism and imperialism are not the cause of the West`s success; they are the result of that success. The wealth and power of European nations made them arrogant and stimulated their appetite for global conquest. Colonial possessions added to the prestige, and to a much lesser degree the wealth, of Europe. But the primary cause of Western affluence and power is internal -- the institutions of science, democracy, and capitalism acting together. Consequently, it is simply wrong to maintain that the rest of the world is poor because the West is rich, or that the West grew rich off stolen goods from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The West created its own wealth, and still does.

The descendants of colonialism are better off than they would be if colonialism had never happened. I would like to illustrate this point through a personal example. While I was a young boy, growing up in India, I noticed that my grandfather, who had lived under British colonialism, was instinctively and habitually antiwhite. He wasn`t just against the English; he was generally against white people. I realized that I did not share his antiwhite animus. That puzzled me: Why did he and I feel so differently?

Only years later, after a great deal of reflection and a fair amount of study, did the answer finally hit me. The reason for our difference of perception was that colonialism had been pretty bad for him, but pretty good for me. Another way to put it was that colonialism had injured those who lived under it, but paradoxically it proved beneficial to their descendants. Much as it chagrins me to admit it -- and much as it will outrage many third-world intellectuals for me to say it -- my life would have been much worse had the British never ruled India.

How is that possible? Virtually everything that I am, what I do, and my deepest beliefs, all are the product of a worldview that was brought to India by colonialism. I am a writer, and I write in English. My ability to do this, and to reach a broad market, is entirely thanks to the British. My understanding of technology, which allows me, like so many Indians, to function successfully in the modern world, was largely the product of a Western education that came to India as a result of the British. So also my beliefs in freedom of expression, in self-government, in equality of rights under the law, and in the universal principle of human dignity -- they are all the products of Western civilization.

I am not suggesting that it was the intention of the colonialists to give all those wonderful gifts to the Indians. Colonialism was not based on philanthropy; it was a form of conquest and rule. The British came to India to govern, and they were not primarily interested in the development of the natives, whom they viewed as picturesque savages. It is impossible to measure, or overlook, the pain and humiliation that the British inflicted during their long period of occupation. Understandably, the Indians chafed under that yoke. Toward the end of the British reign in India, Mahatma Gandhi was asked, ``What do you think of Western civilization?`` He replied, ``I think it would be a good idea.``

Despite their suspect motives and bad behavior, however, the British needed a certain amount of infrastructure to effectively govern India. So they built roads, shipping docks, railway tracks, irrigation systems, and government buildings. Then they realized that they needed courts of law to adjudicate disputes that went beyond local systems of dispensing justice. And so the British legal system was introduced, with all its procedural novelties, like ``innocent until proven guilty.`` The British also had to educate the Indians, in order to communicate with them and to train them to be civil servants in the empire. Thus Indian children were exposed to Shakespeare, Dickens, Hobbes, and Locke. In that way the Indians began to encounter words and ideas that were unmentioned in their ancestral culture: ``liberty,`` ``sovereignty,`` ``rights,`` and so on.

That brings me to the greatest benefit that the British provided to the Indians: They taught them the language of freedom. Once again, it was not the objective of the colonial rulers to encourage rebellion. But by exposing Indians to the ideas of the West, they did. The Indian leaders were the product of Western civilization. Gandhi studied in England and South Africa; Nehru was a product of Harrow and Cambridge. That exposure was not entirely to the good; Nehru, for example, who became India`s first prime minister after independence, was highly influenced by Fabian socialism through the teachings of Harold Laski. The result was that India had a mismanaged socialist economy for a generation. But my broader point is that the champions of Indian independence acquired the principles, the language, and even the strategies of liberation from the civilization of their oppressors. This was true not just of India but also of other Asian and African countries that broke free of the European yoke.

My conclusion is that against their intentions, the colonialists brought things to India that have immeasurably enriched the lives of the descendants of colonialism. It is doubtful that non-Western countries would have acquired those good things by themselves. It was the British who, applying a universal notion of human rights, in the early 19th century abolished the ancient Indian institution of suttee -- the custom of tossing widows on their husbands` funeral pyres. There is no reason to believe that the Indians, who had practiced suttee for centuries, would have reached such a conclusion on their own. Imagine an African or Indian king encountering the works of Locke or Madison and saying, ``You know, I think those fellows have a good point. I should relinquish my power and let my people decide whether they want me or someone else to rule.`` Somehow, I don`t see that as likely.

Colonialism was the transmission belt that brought to Asia, Africa, and South America the blessings of Western civilization. Many of those cultures continue to have serious problems of tyranny, tribal and religious conflict, poverty, and underdevelopment, but that is not due to an excess of Western influence; rather, it is due to the fact that those countries are insufficiently Westernized. Sub-Saharan Africa, which is probably in the worst position, has been described by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as ``a cocktail of disasters.`` That is not because colonialism in Africa lasted so long, but because it lasted a mere half-century. It was too short a time to permit Western institutions to take firm root. Consequently, after their independence, most African nations have retreated into a kind of tribal barbarism that can be remedied only with more Western influence, not less. Africa needs more Western capital, more technology, more rule of law, and more individual freedom.

The academy needs to shed its irrational prejudice against colonialism. By providing a more balanced perspective, scholars can help to show the foolishness of policies like reparations as well as justifications of terrorism that are based on anticolonial myths. None of this is to say that colonialism by itself was a good thing, only that bad institutions sometimes produce good results. Colonialism, I freely acknowledge, was a harsh regime for those who lived under it. My grandfather would have a hard time giving even one cheer for colonialism. As for me, I cannot manage three, but I am quite willing to grant two. So here they are: two cheers for colonialism! Maybe you will now see why I am not going to be sending an invoice for reparations to Tony Blair.

Dinesh D`Souza is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of What`s So Great About America, to be published this month by Regnery.



http://chronicle.com

Section: The Chronicle Review

Page: B7

IS this the Utopia the liberal/secularist/commies with muslim names striving for?---and yet consider themselves muslims.No wonder they are considered the least educated in countries with 90% ``illiteracy``.Ignorance is not not-knowing but a professional expertise in Satanic agenda.Abu-Jehl was the most ``learned`` scholar of the kuffars....only blind to the TRUTH.Hence Abu-Jehl.

__________________________________________________

Are pedophiles criminals or victims?

Trend toward normalization of pedophilia mirrors psychiatry`s capitulation to the gay agenda

By Hymie Rubenstein

The Interim

The November 20, 2000 Globe and Mail contained a compassionate editorial arguing that convicted pedophiles should not be imprisoned. The essay was written by Dr. John Bradford, who holds two high-sounding psychiatric appointments (Clinical Director of the Forensic Programme and the Sexual Behaviours Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, and Head of Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa), in response to the re-arrest the week before of Peter Robert Whitmore, a three-time convicted pedophile who was found in a Toronto hotel room with a 13-year-old male runaway a month after his latest release from prison.

According to Dr. Bradford, people like Mr. Whitmore should not be incarcerated because, ``that is exorbitantly costly and ridiculously ineffective in curbing the risk to society. The fact is that the vast majority of pedophiles ... are not violent or life-threatening.`` Rather than being criminals, pedophiles are really hapless victims suffering ``a psychiatric disorder`` that is ``the product of a disordered but inescapable sex drive that targets children.``

Haven`t we heard this before? Starting some 40 years ago, many of Dr. Bradford`s peers, together with radical elements within the emerging homosexual lobby, made precisely the same argument when they called for the decriminalization of same-sex erotic behaviour. In 1969, their lobbying paid off when Pierre Trudeau removed the prohibition against buggery from the Criminal Code, arguing that, ``The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.`` Four years later, zealous homosexual activists bullied the influential American Psychiatric Association into taking the next step by re-defining homosexuality as ``a normal condition.``

Today, few battles remain in the war to regularize homosexuality. Four Western European countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Holland) have legalized homosexual marriage. So has the American State of Vermont. With several court challenges to the exclusivity of heterosexual marriage in the works, together with the activist efforts of a gay-friendly Supreme Court, there is no reason to believe that Canada will not soon follow the lead. Dr. Bradford`s editorial suggests that the regularizing of pedophila will not be far behind.

The similarity between homosexuality and pedophilia does not end with my appeal to slippery-slope theory. Dr. Bradford presents no good evidence for calling pedophilia a ``disordered but inescapable sex drive.`` To be sure, most people, myself included, consider pedophilia a heinous crime and unmitigated perversion, not the least because it represents the sexual exploitation of immature and vulnerable children by vile and degenerate people (mainly, but not exclusively, men). But this does not make it a mental disorder, especially when, as Dr. Bradford himself grudgingly acknowledges, most pedophiles do not seek or wish treatment, have no psychiatric ``affliction`` (his term) except a desire to engage in various sexual acts with young children, and otherwise lead happy and fulfilling lives. This is precisely the argument that homosexual activists employed when they fought to have same-sex coupling decriminalized and de-stigmatized.

Using Dr. Bradford`s own assertions, homosexuality and pedophilia present very similar syndromes: both ``afflict`` some three per cent of Canadians; there is no known cause for either orientation, though studies show that a large portion of both homosexuals and pedophiles were sexually molested at some point in their lives; neither ``disorder`` is now generally viewed as a deliberate choice freely made by individuals but rather an ``incurable`` personal ``affliction`` that may be genetically programmed; and unlike other ``psychiatric disorders,`` both homosexuals and pedophiles are typically rational and competent, able to function productively on a day-to-day basis in everything but their ``compulsive`` sexual urges.

Dr. Bradford asks us to accept pedophilia as a ``disorder`` which is ``an inevitable part of human existence.`` NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, whose motto is ``sex by eight or its too late,`` would only qualify Dr. Bradford`s position with the assertion that pedophilia is no disorder at all but a natural, normal, and healthy activity for those who engage in it.

The indifference of the state to same-sex relations between consenting adults as enacted in the 1969 legislation was partly based on the observation that because homosexuals are unable to control their feelings, then the erotic acts they engage in should not be criminalized. This is the argument that Dr. Bradford uses to attack the incarceration of convicted pedophiles. It is also the official position of NAMBLA, which says that when a 60-year-old man sodomizes a 14-year-old boy neither a criminal, nor an immoral, nor an unnatural act has taken place.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Bradford fails to mention the known adverse psychological sequelae of Canada`s age-of-sexual-consent codes. Neither does he relate pedophilia to homosexuality nor acknowledge that a disproportionately high number of homosexuals are also pedophiles. According to a comprehensive review of the scientific literature by William Gairdner (reported in his best-selling book, The War Against the Family, 1992, p. 388), although homosexuals represent no more than four per cent of the U.S. population, they commit between one-third and one-half of all pedophilic acts. Homosexuals and bisexuals are also 12 times more likely to molest children than are heterosexuals, and ``gay`` teachers perpetrate between 25 and 80 per cent of all pupil sexual assaults.

Indeed, Dr. Bradford makes no mention at all of homosexuality in his essay. Like most psychiatrists, he probably accepts that same-sex eroticism is a normal, natural, and healthy form of carnal release. Instead he relates pedophilia to illnesses like diabetes: ``Would we deny a patient with diabetes his insulin? Should we deny pedophiles their appropriate treatment by warehousing them in jail?``

Yet Dr. Bradford says that pedophilia has no known cause, cure, or effective treatment - except surgical or pharmacological castration. Accordingly, one might conclude that the most ``appropriate treatment`` for the condition must be to allow those ``afflicted`` by it to act out their desires - to permit them to engage in all manner of sexual acts with pre-pubescent children. Again, this is the official NAMBLA position.

Because he is preoccupied with the mental health of pedophiles, Dr. Bradford downplays the possible traumatic effects of pedophilia on the object of the pedophile`s desire, except to surmise that some of these children may also become pedophiles while others may find being anally or vaginally penetrated by an adult ``disturbing events.`` Of course, if Dr. Bradford were to admit that many of these abused children also suffer long-term or life-long psychological trauma, his argument against the incarceration of pedophiles would lose its authority.

Nor does Dr. Bradford entertain the possibility that just as there is a distinction in the scientific literature between voluntary and compulsory homosexuality, there are many pedophiles who voluntarily engage in sensual acts with minors because they lack the appropriate social skills or opportunity to attract adult partners or because they are titillated by the illegality or immorality of sex with young children. This is because he uncritically assumes that pedophiles (and presumably non-pedophiles as well) have no control over their sex drive - human nature and their genes make them do it.

This assumption has important moral and legal implications. If people have no control over their drives, sexual or otherwise, then free will does not exist. If free will does not exist, human beings cannot be held responsible for what they do. If people cannot be held responsible for what they do, collective morality and shared norms have little meaning or application. Since most laws, especially those relating to sexuality, represent the formalization of moral norms, then there should be no legal prohibition or punishment of pedophilia. Though this line of reasoning may seem absurd to some, it is still the way some psychiatrists try to explain away the behaviour of their ``disordered`` patients.

My point is this: if pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder, then so is homosexuality. If homosexuality is a natural, normal, and healthy part of the human condition, then so is pedophilia. If homosexuality has no victims, neither does pedophila. If both are inborn and psychologically unproblematic for their participants, then why is this not also true for other erotic activities such as incest, bestiality, and necrophilia?

Is there any hard psychiatric evidence to refute these assertions? Or is Dr. Bradford`s essay yet another example of the disordered nature of modern clinical psychiatry?

Hymie Rubenstein is a Professor of Anthropology at

the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.

Typical Indian way of arguing..

One will make a stupid baseless statement other will agree, then the third one will come and pat him on the back...

Rsidhar and Alephnull ladies and gentlemen.. a round of applause for them...

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http://www.defencejournal.com/feb-mar99/flight-safety.htm

Flight Saftey Vs Combat Readiness

With all the claims of combat readiness and a large fleet of varied origins such as the EX Soviet (Russian), the French and British origin, the aging fleet of the Indian Air Force (IAF) continues to remain a source of worry for the Indian military aviation planners and political leadership. Although the number of aircraft on the inventory of the IAF is awesome, the biting teeth or the cutting edge may not be there given the realities on the ground. Services Headquarters normally do not make public facts and figures pertaining to the detail of flight safety and serviceability rate of aircraft, military analyst and defence journalist do get to know things using their sources to reach meaningful conclusions. For example the details of a crash for any reason may never surface, but the crash itself cannot remain hidden and will be reported in the press. According to the figures appearing in the Indian Press, the IAF lost 63 pilots between 1991 and 1997 as a result of crashes. The number of aircraft lost was 147. Since 1997 till todate there have been another 25 crashes, the recent being on 27th November 1998. According to the analysts, this is a very grim situation and flight safety today is the number one problem of the IAF. Serviceability of the IAF fleet is a matter of serious concern.

The IAF planners see the threat from two sides. The first one according to the calculation, is from the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and the second one from the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (Air Force). Air Commodore (Retd) Jasjit Singh, Director, Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses writes that `This window of vulnerability needs to be urgently addressed`. The IAF, according to estimates provided in the Vayu Aerospace Review, plans to have a fleet of 450 modern state of the art aircraft by the year 2005 instead of 600 at present on its inventory. As per information available in Janes World Air Forces, the IAF has a number of varied weapon systems acquired at different intervals during the last 50 years. Starting with Gnats and Hunters, it turned to the Soviet Union in mid 60`s when MiG-21 were inducted. This was a modern interceptor aircraft which also has the distinction of the largest produced aircraft in the world by the Soviet Union. This weapon system remains the main stay of the IAF. This was followed by Jaguar, an Anglo-French deep penetration strike aircraft acquired in 1979. The next in the line were again the Soviet built MiG-23 and MiG-27 strike aircraft inducted in 1980. The Indians were not ready to take chances by depending only on one source. Then there was a question of technology also. Two more weapon systems i.e. Mirage 2000, the French manufactured air defence fighter and MiG-29, an extremely agile Soviet made interceptor were acquired in 1984 and 1986 respectively. The latest addition is the Sukhoi (Su-30) Russian made multi-role fighter. A total of 40 aircraft are planned to be inducted in the next two to three years time frame. Out of the number, eight have already reached India. Much against the wishes of a number of Indian strategic planners, more than two thirds of the fighter, transport and helicopters fleet of the IAF is of Soviet/Russian origin. This has a historical background which need not be mentioned in details. Basically it was a decision which suited the Indians most during the cold war era. These were made easily available without much preconditions, unlike the western sources, against long-term soft payment in rupees and aid along with the transfer of technology including the assembly and progressive manufacturing in the Hindustan Aeronautic Limited (HAL).

The main crunch for the IAF came in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This badly affected the supplies of spares required to keep the fleet going. It also hurt the production line at the HAL factories. It was after this debacle that flight safety in the IAF suffered serious setback. The mishap averaged 25 a year. This sent an uproar in the relevant quarters; IAF blaming HAL and HAL blaming the interruptions in the procurement of spares and technology from the Russian Federation. For the IAF leadership the question was what first. The Flight Safety or the Combat Readiness. The operational readiness demanded a minimum of 180 hours of flying training to its pilots. These were the general British and American standards. But could it be done? Were these standards achievable under the circumstance? The answer was a big `No`. Not more than a 100 hours flying training could be provided to an operational pilot. The situation had become so bad that Air Chief Marshal Sarren in 1995 issued the controversial order to give preference to flight safety on operational readiness. This did bring down the rate of accidents and crashes but certainly at the cost of the combat readiness of the IAF. The situation has not shown any significant improvement. The question whether the IAF would be able to sustain a 37 squadrons fleet authorized in 70`s is open to question. Air Chief Marshal S K Kaul a formal Chief of the IAF (1993-1995) has been very critical of the `make shift arrangements` for the IAF procurement programme. There have also been reports in the Indian press that the 40 Mirage-2000, were acquired in 1982 without any requirement by the IAF. The IAF was not a party to this decision. The original number was one hundred. But then the plans, later on, were shelved. The same, more or less, has been the case with MiG-29.

Air Chief Marshal A Y Tippins has to live with these problems. He has recently taken over as the new Air Chief. He can only hope and pray that the MiG and Sukhoi upgrade manufacture programme works and that the Russians play a more active and positive role in ensuring uninterrupted supplies of spares and technology. There is again a big question mark if this can be done given the political and economic condition with which the Russian Federation at present is faced with.

The IAF has also been facing another serious problem. This is the problem of the non-availability of an Advance Jet Trainer (AJT). One of the main reasons of a very large number of fatal crashes in the IAF has been the absence of and AJT. The IAF has been crying for this aircraft for the last 14 years. Nothing materialized since the demand was put to the Indian Government in 1982. The problem, however, does indicate that serious efforts are on for acquiring an AJT. There are three competitors at present. The British Hawk is one, followed by MiG - AT. The Czechs have also been jumping with their LI 59. However given the complexity of international arms market and procurement procedure including vested interests, nothing can be predicted in this regard with any amount of certainty. Although Mr George Fernandes, the Indian Defence Minister said at the Bangalore Air Show in 1998, that his ministry has `almost finalized the choice which will be made known in the very near future`, those who are concerned are skeptical as to what will be this `near future`, given 66 AJT priced at $ 12 to 16 million (Rs. 50 to 60 crore) each. The stakes are too high to reach an early decision. The deal involves an amount of $ 1.5 billion. Any decision by the Indian Government of side tracking MiG-AT will have serious repercussions for the IAF as a whole. This is not an easy decision for the Indian government. The Americans own 40 percent share in the Czech trainers. The Indians also have a twenty years old association with the British when Jaguars were purchased. Going for one, will certainly be at the annoyance of the other two parties. Let us see how things unfold.

The situation with which the IAF is faced with does provide a breathing space to the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). The PAF, inspite of an ageing fleet, is in an enviable position as far as its flight safety and combat readiness record till todate is concerned. However, the situation may not last long unless measures are taken on priority basis to replace the very ageing component of the fleet and induct a certain number of high tech fighter aircraft. This has been a long and outstanding issue with the PAF. There will be a point where the law of diminishing return will start applying. Let that point never come. Flight Safety and Combat Readiness cannot be separated. The two issues cannot be deliberated in isolation of each other. Whatever Air Chief Marshal Sareen thought about flight safety and combat readiness may not be the feelings and views of others.

I think this book will put the smack down on indian `superiority complex` while shutting up people like Alephnull...

The Indian Air Force : trends and prospects / George K. Tanhma & Marcy Agmon.

Publication info: Santa Monica, CA : Rand, 1995.

From Indian Statistician JaganPVS`s Website:

http://members.tripod.com/

Rsaxena

If 1965 was a victory for the Indians, I shudder to think what defeat must look like...

Now.. see I feel bad for the plane crashes in China and Tunisia as I did for the WTC crashes..

But jallunder.. and IAF.. no way!

Veeresh

``Just wondering, are you deriving some ghoulish joy out of the death of people after an airplane crashes into their home and/or office?``

Yes indeed, I love it. Now bend over.

alephnull`s stupid post has the same irony as Sadna`s `explaining away` of Ambedkar`s characterization of Gandhi as a Hindu fanatic.

fyi alephnull,

PAF also uses the same Mig 21 .. we don`t lose 10% of the planes you lose..

IAF has the WORST safety record in the World. PAF is considered to be one of the safest.

THERE IS NO COMPARISON...

``Pakistan has one of the best, most combat ready airforces in the world….. For the Indian war planners, the Pakistan Air Force is their

worst fear. Pakistani pilots are respected throughout the world, ……because they know how to fly and fight.” - Lieutenant-General Charles Horner, USAF (retd.), the chief architect of, and the mastermind behind, the air campaign against Iraq during the Gulf War. Quoted from his biography, “Every Man A Tiger

(I didn`t know he was on PAF`s payroll)

`Pakistan`s airforce is evenly matched with India`s given the superior skill of the Pakistani Pilots` General Don Shephard on CNN in the Hey day of Pakistan India conflict last year.

THE STUPID AND ARROGANT BASELESS SUPERIORITY COMPLEX OF THE INDIANS...

Alephnull,

How many times will you Indians twist the words around.. the US generals are wrong, Jane defence weekly is wrong.. all of this is a PAF myth... then tell me is the IAF`s statistician also wrong.. You Indians are frankly amazing.. Instead of admitting that you su-ck at it, you are making convoluted and stupid statements to seek something which is really not yours.

You declare that PAF has had similar accidents.. yes one plane jettisoned fuel tanks a few years ago... but for God`s sake... IAF has the POOREST safety record in the WORLD and PAF has been hailed as one of the safest... how would you deny that? Your post is the sort of arrogant drivel which will ultimately be the down fall of your nation. Unlike your pathetic airforce `our mythical shaheens` fought in the Soviet War and won..

Once again for the benefit of the others.. According to Alephnull,

1) Indian statisticians are liars.

2) All American Air force generals are liars

3) Jane Defence Weekly lies

4) All International monitors are liars..

5) PAF is paying all of the above to create `Myths`.

HERE ARE SOME FACTS AGAIN for the BENEFIT OF INDIAN LIARS WHO MAKE SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS and these are ALL FROM INDIAN STATISTICIANS:

1) Indians have not presented any sources for their claim that PAF planes are grounded. I know by personal experience that PAF is operating at full strength right now.

2) PAF logs in as many hours as the IAF given our Pilot to coc-kpit ratio which is roughly between 3 and 4 to 1. This is a known fact.

3) The contributor to Bharat Rhakshak, Mr.Jagan Mohan PVS, though a biased commentator, has been forced to admit PAF`s superiority.

He gives a comparison of Pakistani Pilots and Indian Pilots:

Pakistani Pilots

http://members.tripod.com/

re:Reply #: 335

AlephNull,

Thanks for your post. It makes sense, this thing about myth making. Reminds me of a news i read a few months ago when Mushy and other ``powers that be`` in the Paki establishment were urging Indian cricket team to visit Pakisthan. India had boycotted all sports links then. I read an editorial in a Pakistani paper(Dawn? The News?)that accused India of not playing because it was afraid of losing! Imagine the mindset. Why would one be afraid of losing a cricket match? In a game you win or lose. But then such a mindset seems to be common in the Paki intellegentia and establishment alike. In absence of reality, myth is all one can hold on to.

Sridhar

ylh

[I am sure Indians are an authority on `Winners` .. you know being experts at Precision landing on banks and stuff]

- I hope an aircraft crashes on your head so we can all laugh and joke about it.

-h-

ylh #316, #326, #332

Re civilians being killed on the ground in air force crashes, as in Jullundur, that is an unfortunate fact of life in our part of the world. Many airbases are near populated areas. It is very difficult for a single-engined aircraft to recover from a flameout at low level. An airforce which puts in as much training in difficult conditions as the IAF does is going to suffer such crashes.

I might add that the PAF has had its share of similar accidents, to which PAF Masroor near Karachi seems especially vulnerable. In the most notorious such incident a few years ago, a PAF Mirage 3 jettisoned 2 fuel-filled drop tanks on a heavily populated area in Karachi burning ten people to death.

So it`s a very bad idea to use tragedies of this sort to score propaganda points against the other side.

rshridhar #311

{But i always wondered why PAF never scrambled to help Paki soldiers in Kargil when the latter were getting pounded by IAF?

Of course, Rooh Afza theory may be a good starting point. Do you know of any other?}

There are a few possible explanation. Two favoured by defenders of the PAF are deniability of Pakistani armed forces involvement in Kargil, and unsuitability of the Kargil theatre to air operations. IMO both of these explanations are severely flawed and untenable.

The real reasons have to do ultimately with the difference between Pakistani state mythology and reality in regard to the PAF, and with the possibility of escalation. Briefly, the PAF and its personnel have been the focus of intensive myth-making over the last four decades; their deeds have been hyped and inflated out of all proportion to reality for the benefit of a gullible public. Most Indians probably do not adequately appreciate the extent to which the alleged exploits of these supposedly all-conquering Shaheens have been trumpeted in Pakistan. Meanwhile, the PAF has fallen severely behind its chief designated adversary in quantity and quality of weapon systems, and perhaps also in amount of flying training (and the PAF top brass certainly know this very well, even if they try not to broadcast this fact from the rooftops).

So, had the PAF tried to intervene in Kargil (an eventuality for which the IAF was prepared at all times), it would have gotten a bloody nose at the very least. For a `normal`, comparatively non-ideological country, like India, this would not matter so much - an air force is meant to be used if the occasion warrants, and loss of aircraft and pilots is then always on the cards. Preventing the Indians from using the IAF effectively in Kargil might well have made the difference between ultimate defeat and victory for Pakistan and might have been worth some material sacrifices from the PAF. But for a country given to uncontrolled myth-making, there is the severe additional risk of sacred myth being unravelled by a brush with reality, and this was probably deemed unacceptable to the interests of the Pakistan armed forces. Hence no PAF in Kargil.

As to undesirable outcome (from Pakistan`s POV) of conflict escalation if the PAF were used, there may be some truth to this, but eventually it too boils down to the inability of the PAF, or more generally Pakistan`s armed forces, to escalate a conflict on their own terms, and thus to the divergence between myth and reality.