An Air Canada Flagging

harimau: I repeat what I said in #118 - ``To find the answer, I think we need go no further than Master Harimau, the nobel prize winning Hindutva Apologist on chowk: when someone mentions the murder of innocent muslims in Gujerat, he comes running to remind the world that there is an explanation for the killing of muslim families, viz. this was revenge for Godhra. The roots of the problem therefore rest in a mindset that has no respect for human life - in other words, the mindset of the terrorist. Hindu or muslim it does not matter. The mindset is the same. ``

I have nothing more to say to you.

Yo Mullah32,

I notice that while you have been vociferous about the responsibility of the Modi government in Gujarat and the Vajpayee government in New Delhi for the protection of the citizens of Gujarat, you have not said so much as boo on the board ``Army Action in Wana and Our Responsibility``.

harimau #130 You are wrong (what else is new!) on two counts here - first, comparing Gujerat to Wana demonstrates your mentality - in Gujerat, innocent muslim families were brutalized and killed. In Wana, armed men (many of them from other countries who are illegally in Pakistan) were confronted, given a chance to surrender, and then attacked.

In comparing these two completely different events, you demonstrate that Jay Thakeray is not the only hindutva on chowk who has gone completely mad.

and the other place you are wrong is in saying that I never mentioned Wana - in fact I have discussed it earlier on chowk.

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#132 arjun_m
Detroit. We were flagged through (this was before TSA & before they started checking laptops and made you take your jackets & shoes off but they scanned you with a wand), but old, white folks were picked out for some reason. They were made to open all their handheld luggage, had to empty their pockets & purses even though the walkthrough scanner didn`t go off. First class line was simply waved to move on.
A less offensive way profiling is done is by increasing the sensitivity of the scanner when a chosen target appears. The victim is not offended since he/she wasn`t picked at random in an obvious way.
Incidentally, here is something from Boston Globe.
The Trusted Traveler program is based on the dangerous myth that terrorists match a particular profile and that we can somehow pick terrorists out of a crowd if we only can identify everyone. That`s simply not true. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were unknown and not on any watch list. Timothy McVeigh was an upstanding US citizen before he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel are normal, nondescript people. Intelligence reports indicate that Al Qaeda is recruiting non-Arab terrorists for US operations.

Airport security is best served by intelligent guards watching for suspicious behavior, not dumb guards blindly following the results of a Trusted Traveler program.

Moreover, there`s no need for the program. Frequent fliers and first-class travelers already have access to special lanes that bypass long lines at security checkpoints, and the computers never seem to flag them for special screening. And even the long lines aren`t very long. I`ve flown out of Logan repeatedly, and I`ve never had to wait more than 10 minutes at security. The people who could use the card don`t need one, and infrequent travelers are unlikely to take the trouble or pay the fee to get one.

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All PiA / Air India hostesses are multi-lingual. Imagine one of them with the slightly put on accents getting down and dirty in the lingua franca!

#131 by tahmed32

[In Wana, armed men (many of them from other countries who are illegally in Pakistan) were confronted, given a chance to surrender, and then attacked.]

Oh really?! The razing of the Wana Bazaar, in line with the principle of collective responsibility as per the outdated Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) doesn`t target innocent Pakis, does it?

harish: so you too think that the military action in wana (against bands of armed men from chechnya, central asian states, middle east - with the al qaeda leadership hiding in their midst) compares with the mob attacks on families in Gujerat? join the club of mad indians on chowk. what you people need is group therapy i think.

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tahmed32/138 - well, Gujarat issues of mobs attacking families are being handled by the Courts and the rest of the system.

But your ````military action in wana (against bands of armed men from chechnya, central asian states, middle east - with the al qaeda leadership hiding in their midst) ````, hey, this sounds very much like the freedom fighters who were being politically and morally supported by the same military in Kashmir, right?

From Ayaz Amir`s column:- ````Al Qaeda`s war against the Pakistani establishment is not the main war Pakistan is engaged in. This is a side show, an example of Frankenstein turning against his creator, of the forces of jihad rebounding against their erstwhile masters.

Pakistan`s military intelligence agencies nurtured the forces of jihad for over 20 years. Their twin aims: turning Afghanistan into a client state and bleeding India in Kashmir.

When the world turned on its axis after the September 11 attacks on the United States, these ambitions perforce had to be abandoned, U-turns considered as betrayal by the forces of jihad. If they now strike at the hands that once fed them, it is only to be expected. ````

Don`t worry about mad Indians. Look inside your own home, and fix things fast.

veeresh: rest assured i dont worry about indians except when i come to chowk and read the lunatic ravings from the likes of Jay (now alas no longer with us it seems) and his ilk (to use Jay - may Thakeray rest is soul - favorite term for bad people like me who kept pricking his delusions).

anway - you got this one right. Wana is more comparable to the Indian action in kashmir (where I have always in fact opposed the pakistan army policy of proxy war that put those thugs in kashmir the same way i oppose the thugs in wana that the pakistan army is doing its national duty by fighting). It was your countrymen (the aforementioned lunatic fringe) who started comparing Wana to Gujerat.

And btw, dont talk to me about justice in Gujerat - Modi was re-elected PM when he should have been behind bars, and I have read news items about witnesses being intimidated and only a small handful of individuals being actually brought to court.

tahmed32/141 - justice in Gujarat or elsewhere in India, well, do remember that the politicians are only one of the many pillars that constitute the various powerful self-correctives within India. So, in due course of time, most everything reverts to a sort of sensible middle path. Some call that chaotic, many refer to it as laws of nature. I prefer to believe that large percentages of the ``silent majority`` tend to remember the focus of their direction, and provide huge inertia levels that eventually work for society`s good.

Which means, the bad guys, in India, eventually get their just desserts.

Because it is not just a simplistic ``religion + governance/military`` kind of equation.

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kkandk #143 you seem well travelled along the world famous GT Road - that crowning achievement of Sher Shah the Soor - with side trips to mumbai and lucknow. Yes indeed, to compare Wana with Gujerat is to compare the chapli kebabs of kissa khani with the masala dosas of madras (if indeed they have masala dosas in madras).

Of course no one will gets bumped off a seat in a restaurant in kissa khani either (this last is my contribution to your efforts to bring this discussion back to the subject of this article).