Snakes And Ladders

``... A ``White Name`` May Help Out ....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134615634_name15.html

//...Islam is a religion and not a profession. Terrorism on the other hand has become a profession but is not a religion. Let us keep the two separated. ...//

Too late!! Islam has been used and abused for far too long for all kinds of political games by all kinds of actors - superpowers, kings and kingdoms, armies, petty dictators, self-proclaimed freedom fighters, thugs, mafioso, fake visionaries, self-absorbed intellectuals and elites. It has been used to fight communism, to keep kings and armies in power, to validate naked territorial ambition, to divide people, to partition lands, to validate killiings, looting and plunder.

Terrorism is only the latest show in the open theatre of Islam. Osama is only the latest desperado, by no means the last, to hijack Islam for his own satanic agenda. Rest assured - this show will run its course. Islam and its ``ordinary`` adherents are just too weak and unwilling to do anything about it.

Ras: I do not share your view that post 9/11 america has made life unduly hard for brown-skinned types. Indeed, given the horrific nature of the 9/11 attacks, and given the continuing threat to security after that, I think we as muslims should be trying to make the job of the government agencies easier by cooperating with their procedures rather than more difficult by crying ``wolf`` at every step.

Ras:
What is the difference between religion and militancy? They both `terrorise` people into belief systems/ideologies, and its practitioners do feel committed to them with similar fervour. Just as we do not brush all religions under the carpet for the fashion in which they are interpreted, we need to look at terrorism as an offshoot of the failure of a System. No terrorist thinks he is a professional. But many have made religion their vocation.

The fact that innocents are being seen as suspects reveals that terrorism is not your regular daytime job with unpaid overtime.

Regards,
Farzana

too bad this ended. abdul`s parents would have felt much better had they seen this.

U.S. Suspends TV Ad Campaign
Aimed at Winning Over Muslims

By VANESSA O`CONNELL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


The U.S. government is abandoning a high-profile television campaign, backed by President Bush and aimed at winning the hearts and minds of the world`s Muslim and Arab populations, after meeting stiff resistance from some crucial allied nations.

The much-ballyhooed advertising drive, known as ``Shared Values,`` was developed by Charlotte Beers, a Madison Avenue veteran who is now a State Department official, and was the most controversial element of an effort to promote a positive image of the U.S. in parts of the globe where American interests and culture are frequently under attack.

The initial series of television spots had its debut in October and was broadcast for five weeks in several countries, including Indonesia, the world`s largest Muslim nation. They feature five Muslims who live in the U.S.: a baker, a journalism student, a schoolteacher, a paramedic and a public official. In documentary-style footage created by McCann-Erickson Worldgroup, a unit of Interpublic Group, each describes a social tolerance of his or her background and faith. ``I have co-workers who are Jewish, who are Christian, Catholic, Hindu even,`` says Farooq Muhammad, clad in his New York paramedic uniform, in one spot. ``I have never gotten disrespect because I am a Muslim.``

The effort immediately sparked controversy. Egypt informally warned U.S. officials that it wouldn`t put messages from other governments on its airwaves. Cairo`s ambassador didn`t return calls seeking comment Wednesday. The Lebanese ambassador to the U.S., Farid Abboud, said, ``We shouldn`t run messages on behalf of other governments.`` A spokesman for the Jordanian embassy said the spots didn`t run in Jordan, which has three channels, all government-owned.

The U.S. also focused on getting play for the ads on private and government media in other nations, such as Pakistan, Malaysia and Kuwait, and via pan-Arab broadcasters such as the Middle East Broadcasting Centre, an Arabic satellite-TV station based in Dubai. The spots went on the air starting Oct. 28 in most countries and ran through Dec. 10, to coincide with Ramadan, a Muslim holy period.

Explaining the decision to suspend the ads, State Department officials said the U.S. recently decided to emphasize public relations rather than TV and print ads in Muslim countries with substantial anti-American sentiment. ``The television, print and radio spots are down right now,`` one official said. ``We are looking at where we are going next with the effort.``

Calls to Ms. Beers`s office were referred to the State Department press office.

The U.S. budgeted about $15 million for the entire effort, spearheaded by Ms. Beers, who is currently undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Thus far, the U.S. has spent about $7.5 million. About $5 million of that sum was used to buy media time for the ``Shared Values`` spots. The commercials were one and two minutes long.

The State Department tied the initial batch of ads to Ramadan in the hopes of striking a chord with the people in the Arab nations it hoped to reach. The U.S. hasn`t specified an end date for its overall effort and continues to work with the McCann-Erickson agency, though there currently aren`t any new spots in the works.

State Department officials noted that the campaign can in theory continue until the funds run out. But department officials are currently working with McCann-Erickson to determine what impact -- if any -- the campaign may have had and to figure out what form the future efforts will take. One idea is to begin moving the ads into other countries where there are large numbers of Muslims, including the Philippines, Morocco and some of the former Soviet republics. Already, some elements of the initial campaign have appeared outside of the target market, airing in some African nations and in certain parts of Europe.

In addition to the criticism leveled by some Muslim nations, the spots were faulted at home, too. ``The ads were extremely poor,`` says Youssef Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank based in New York. ``It was like this was the 1930s and the government was running commercials showing happy blacks in America. It is the policy itself we have to explain. You have to grab the bull by the horn, and the bull is `Hey, here`s our policy and there are good reasons for it,` instead of saying, `Gee, there are a lot of happy Muslim people here.` ``

``The real question on the `Shared Values` campaign is whether it does more good than harm,`` says Steve Hayden, vice chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, a McCann rival and unit of WPP Group PLC. ``My premise was that any effort to address ordinary people that have been ignored too long is worthy. But Islamic opinion is influenced more by what the U.S. does than anything it can say.``

Those involved with the ads respond that the idea behind them was simply to show there isn`t an anti-Muslim movement by the American public. ``These ads were intended to reach the masses and go to everyday people,`` a State Department official said.

Officials at the department originally floated the idea of buying time on al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arabic satellite news channel, but ultimately decided it was too expensive. The network sells a one-minute commercial during prime time for about $10,000. That`s considerably less than the rate charged by U.S. TV networks, where one 30-second commercial on a popular program such as ``Friends,`` on General Electric Co.`s NBC, costs about $400,000.

Abdul-Raouf Hammuda, a Toledo, Ohio, bakery owner, who appeared in some spots, said he was paid for his role in the campaign. Cameramen followed him and his family for 10 days to come up with the footage for the TV spots. More recently, he and his wife visited Lebanon on a four-day speaking tour at U.S. expense. ``The reaction varied from those who were supportive to the idea of building this campaign to others who were suspicious and skeptical that life for Muslims in America was really all that good,`` said Mr. Hammuda, who is 45 years old.

Officials at the State Department say that while they are rethinking the television strategy, they will continue to use the Internet to reach Muslims overseas through opendialogue.org (www.opendialogue.org), a site created by the U.S. to support the effort. Thus far, visitors to the site have ordered 5,000 copies of ``Muslim Life in America,`` a marketing booklet created for the ``Shared Values`` effort, according to a spokeswoman for the State Department.

``You try to develop a multidimensional approach to this, and TV is one part of that,`` Philip Reeker, the deputy spokesman of the State Department said. ``This particular phase started in a certain group of countries. The paid run is now over.``

The move to get the U.S. messages on television airwaves in the Muslim and Arab world comes just as Arab nations are gearing up their own spin. Though none have yet broadcast high-profile political commercials on U.S. television, information ministers of several Arab nations are working to launch an English-language channel that could be seen in the U.S.

In Indonesia, the U.S. television spots ran for five weeks on five leading private stations, according to a U.S. embassy spokesperson in Jakarta. Complementary radio commercials aired on 50 stations nationwide, and a print advertising campaign ran in both mainstream and Islam-oriented magazines. ``Indonesia is a moderate, open society and there`s a thirst for information,`` says Ralph Boyce, the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, who helped to launch the campaign. He adds that Indonesians were particularly interested in a television commercial that featured an Indonesian journalism student at the University of Missouri.

tahmed32 sahib:

is it all right for the ins to arrest those people whose green card applications are pending probably because of ins` own inefficiencies? is all right for ins to lock up people because background checks cannot be completed in time? do you trust the ins agent to be the judge, jury and executioner? what if a person i work with does not like me? what if he goes on yahoo, creates a false i.d, sends me incriminatory email and then goes and rats on me to the local police? will i have access to a lawyer when my butt gets throw in jail? what about an illegal paki immigrant who drives a cab for 18 hrs a day to support sick parents back home? should he be made to pay for the actions of citizens of states that are uncle sam`s biggest allies? how many many pakis belong to al-qaeda in comparison to kuwaitis, saudia and jordanians?

Re: Ras

Ras, Islam has a very lethal ``image problem`` and this seems to be ignored by most Muslims. Islam, its projections regardless of the arguments, is based on a militant view of its practioners and a view point that is nihilistic in its outward manifestations. Islam`s perception in the United States is a caveat to the problem, because the real problem is not to over come the negative ``imaging`` of Islam in the west, but to realize and understand that the basic flaws, within Islam, lies with the Muslims themselves. Muslims have shown an inability to grapple with this reality and as a balm for some sort of pyschological denial, have resorted to equate their misfortunes with a glorfied sense of victimization.

This is not to suggest that Muslims are not suffering, but the question still remains valid: why do the Muslims find themselves in such a position; hated, reviled, distrusted, and feared. The west`s paranoia for the Muslims comes from its fears of what Islam represents. Now, whether that is true or false is meaningless, becauce in international relations, in whose vortex Islam and Muslims find themselves, perception is more powerful and credible than reality.

What is the reality? Who created this reality? Why?

The reality is that the international system favors stability over distruptions in its affairs and Islam is, thus, seen as a threat to this international status quo, if you will, and therefore has to be resisted; it has to be resisted in name of the prevailing international relations, which prefer conservative politics of stability over politics of militant anarchy and reactionism and rejectionism.

The argument by many that this is a ``war against Islam`` is not true, but it is based on the perception of the event, which is more powerful than reality of this war. This war is not against Islam, but against those people and nations, who appease this militant version of Islam and to defeat them and to prevent them from undermining the present status quo of the international system. The perception is powerful, because the nations who have appeased the militancy of Islam are Muslims nations, where this militant Islam finds its sancturies and political apathy, which if it does not condones it, tolerates its confrontional ideologies.

This war on terrorism is another name for a war designed and fought to reform Islam and make it more compatible with the modern world. Islam and the west have always existed peacefully in the last century and it was only when Islam assumed a militant personification with the clearly stated intent to reform the international system in its own light, that it became the caus belli of of the western world and comparable to a ``persona non grata`` in the world.

The reason Islam finds itself in this hopless situation is simply because the vast majority of the Muslims did nothing as Islam, and inter alia they, were used to propagate a particularily violent interpretation of its message. The message maybe peaceful and devoted to love and harmony, but it is not so much the spiritual intent of the message, which matters than what is actually experienced in a tangible sense. Islam`s message and actions associated with it do not reconcile with one another and instead create the impression of an ideology, which seems fissured and reactionary.

Let us not worry too much about what the United States is becoming; let is worry what about Islam is becoming and the fact that we, its followers, are doing asolutely nothing, but appeasing its militany by our inactions.

Ciao

Ras,

Before you write your next article, frame the following report from dawn of today and read it for a week. Try to explain to yourself why an australian should be in pakistan, who is supporting the thousands of alquidam men pakistan, who funded those bearded fighters in the heights of kargill, be among the millions that throng to the laskers meeting at madreke.

Australian has links with Al Qaeda

ISLAMABAD, Jan 15: Investigators believe that an Australian man arrested 11 days ago in Karachi has close links with Osama bin Laden`s Al Qaeda terror network, senior officials said on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old, a Caucasian convert to Islam identified as Jack Thomas, had been in close contact with other Al Qaeda fugitives suspected to be hiding in Karachi, a top government official said.

``This guy was in touch with Al Qaeda operatives who have managed to sneak into Karachi. He`s in league with them and was in close touch with them,`` the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

WHAT IS IN A NAME...A LOT

I``t is time to give some semblance of dignity to the ............... and Kashmiri people and not join the superior powers they face who happen to disagree with their aspirations. ``

i ALWAYS WONDERED ABOUT THE NAMES OF THE SO CALLED KASHMIR FREEDOM FIGHTERS. Why are they called Lasker e toiba, arkat mujahideen, hizbul mujahideen. It is ceratain that once the names are changed to kashmir liberation front, no madrassa product will join it.

It will be the end of the world when a mullah in a madrassa in lahore exhorts in urdu to sacrifice their lives for the propserity of the kashmiris with no mention what so ever about jihad, ummah and islam.

The world has at last realised that in islamic countries where the practices are not moderated by a non-islamic tradition, the society will regress into a jihadic one, one of the deserts, a thousand years ago. What is happening in the US is the dawn of the jihadic border control. Next is the control of technology. Terrorists will always emerge from jihadic countries, what is feasible is to limit the numbers and the types of weapons used.

STOIC PAKISTANI,

It is sad to see another pakistani trying to pass of the uniquely pak problem as a problem for the brown skinned. I can accept that when india is celebrating the non-resident indian day, it is the ultimate disgrace for a pakistani to que up to be photographed. When bill Gates is participating in the IIT alumni meet, yet another Yemani from the pak madrassa is transported in handcuffs to quantanamo Bay. When the donated A300 by india takes off in the colours of Ariana airlines to Mecca from Kabul, Harrier jet drops a 500 pound bomb in pakistan demolishing a madrasa.

Ras , it is good to call yourself a desi, now that it is not getting accepted, hide behind a wider generalisation, a brown skinned.

Ras for the sake of the future of pakistan, accept that what is happening to the pakistanis is an outcome of their own mindset. the only thing pakistanis can change is them selves. As an educated person, accept resp[onsibilty, accept and implore fellow pakistanis to eveluate their role in taliban, their role in jihad world wide, their role in aircraft hijacking, their role in kargill invasion, their role in inviting the killers of daniel pearl, the killer of FBI agents and a host of other yemenis and jihadists from all over the world.

First of all, we as muslims are not allowed to make friends with kuffar. We should realize this fact else we will get more and more ``zillat`` from them.

//#11 by ferozk on January 16, 2003 6:52am PT
What is the reality? Who created this reality? Why?
The reason Islam finds itself in this hopless situation is simply because the vast majority of the Muslims did nothing as Islam, and inter alia they, were used to propagate a particularily violent interpretation of its message
//
Well you can just go ahead and ignore the ground reality, that the biggest operation to support and train these Jiahdis was carried out by US itself cos it was the only way to contain the expansion of Communist Russia, into the Afghanistan and then to Pakistan and India. They made Afghanis and Pakis to believe that this is a threat to their Muslim cultutre, and should be fought against. US was behind the hanging of Bhutto, a secular, public figure. Did Bhutto rigged the election has nothing to do with him getting death penalty. He was not gonna let US use the Religious card against Russians, so it was necessary to get rid of him. Thats why that ``SHARABI KABABI`` Bhutto was replaced by ``Mullah ZIA` as he could help propagting the Jihadi concepts for the US and would willingly fight US war against the REDs.
However, when Russians were defeated US wanted to demillitarise these people. However due to some policy differences, and political reasons, they just abandoned them. The next goal os US was to get the pipeline through Afghanistan, however that needed modernisation of Afghans. These Afghans were now more religous inclined thanks to US backed Madrassas in Pakistan and were more millitant, than 20 yrs ago. They took this effort of US similar to the one they just fiouhgt against Russians, an attack on their Islamic-Afghani culture.
US did not spent much time and money to clean-up the mess they created and gpot out of Afghanistan. The destructed country then became a home for people like Ossama, and Aiman Alzahwari and others who have been thrown out of their countries for being enemy of state, and all of them at some point in their struggle were backed, financed and trained by US. These people needed a home where no law applies accept what they think was right.
What do a Paki driving cab 18 hrs a day in NY had to do with Taliban, nothing, Taliban was created by the OK from the US to crush the Russiansand when they turnede back onto US using the same ammunition and ideology given to them by CIA they were labelled as terrorist instead of Mujahedeen, which they were a few years ago. Its time for US to reap what it sowed. Why should these poor men suffer for the mistakes of some stupid US officials who did not saw throught time, while training the Jihadis.
Q1. Did any body know who was in Iraq, hugging and Kissing Saddam and gave him 3 starnds of anthrax, and spy attelite pictures of Iranian millitary. Well MSNBC showed that rare videos of a visit by Don Rumsfield to Iraq and his meeting with Saddam. well no wonder why he knows that Iraq`s accounting of WMD`s is wrong as he knows that there are some more which he and his froiends provided to Saddam under the table.
Q2. Under the Oil for Food programme which International company had the biggest contracts with Iraq during last 12 years after the gulf war while the US was crying out against Saddam, Answer is Haliburton under the great leadership of its greatest CEO Mr. Chenney. Check that out with HardBall host Chris Mathews.
Q3. Were UN inspectors kicked out by Iraq or were pulled out by Paul Butler head of Inspection team, when he got the call from an American official who asked him to pull out just hours before the start of Operation Desert Fox, aimed at assasination of Saddam. These people were there by a mandate from UN, but it was US officials whop without any permission by UN ordered them to pull out. This was disclosed publicly by Paul Butler on Donahue.
I think thats enough if any one need more let me know I have lot more to offer...
Peace...

``Today, if you are foreign born you are a suspect. Brown pigmentation and a beard are certainly unhelpful.``

What the hell is this?? I do not see any Mexicans being off-loaded because they are brown skinned. Neither have I faced any problem, nor for that matter have I heard of fellow Indians getting hassled.

This is not a race issue, so please do not make it one. This is a result of rampant anti-americanization in certain countries. Why should the United States welcome those who abuse it? Theka liya hai??

Read the letters to the editor in any Pakistani paper..Dawn, Jang, Nation...look at the depth of Anti American feeling..You still think that Pakistan is the most allied of allies? Face the fact that neither the people of Pakistan nor Saudi Arabia are particularly fond of America. The allies are not the countries but the ruling regimes. If they want to sell their country short, it is their choice. Putting things plainly, the Arabs and the majority of Pakistanis plain hate this country. Now you may claim that the hatred is justified, but who cares? The US is what it is. If you hate it, it`s your problem. If you have a problem with American values, which includes diplomatic relations with Israel and the acceptance of Judaisim and Zionism as part of the American cultural montage, then it is entirely justified for the US to be wary.

Now, there are plentyy of Arab/Pakistani professionals who are here for the right reasons. They want to make a better life for themselves and their kids. It is indeed unfortunate that these innocent people have to suffer for the misdeeds of a few. Therefore, one should and can always be open to ideas in improving the process of security. Putting pending legal immigrants in jail is stupid and indefensible. So let us work on improving the system.

But let us not forget that the whole excercise is justified, and the primary responsibility of any government is to first ensure the safety of it`s own citizens.

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