India’s Potential Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario

The Good Wife

``....She was laughing at Allah Bux, her white teeth flashing between her red lips. Aman Din had no choice but to a...``

Prolly pre -Zia zinna .Its good thing Hijab prevents a wife from flirting in front of her husband & in pre Zia Jahilliya days such awargi was common......flirting behind his back!

Thank God for the progress.

I get your alluding to murdered Daughter akin to selective gender selection in India BUT A HINDU WIFE WOULD DIE FOR HER HUSBAND unlike a muderous ,flirtaceous dishonorable muslim wife.

The Riverbank

May be there is a lesson for Chowkies here,NEVER DISCUSS RELIGION SERIOUSLY & BE CARRIED AWAY EMOTIONALLY IN IT !!!

Not only that pplz still believe in after life but going to heaven hopefully .

Heaven-or-hell argument ends with shotgun slaying



An argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun, police said Monday.

The man charged in the slaying is a corrections officer.

Johnny Joslin, 20, was allegedly shot by Clayton Frank Stoker, 21, on Sunday. The two had spent Saturday night bar hopping with two other men in Fort Worth, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of Godley.

Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said a witness who was the designated driver for the group told police the four men were sitting at a table outside a trailer park after their night on the town and began arguing about religion.

The talk became heated when the subject turned to who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.

Stoker said he would settle the argument and went into a house and returned with a shotgun, which he loaded and placed in his mouth, Alford said the witness reported.

``The victim Joslin then took the gun out of Stoker`s mouth, saying, `If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me,``` Alford said, citing the witness report.

The shotgun went off, hitting Joslin in the chest and killing him.

Stoker, a Johnson County corrections officer, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder, Alford said.

07/30/2002 06:45

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ADVANI GOES ALL OUT IN MODI DEFENCE



FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT New Delhi, July 24: Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani today was out on a limb in the Upper House of Parliament while defending Narendra Modi?s handling of the riots in Gujarat.

?In the last 50 years, I have seen many riots. No chief minister has controlled the riots so ruthlessly and effectively than Modi,? Advani told an outraged Opposition.

He was replying to a brief discussion on Gujarat that was marked by repeated interruptions by the Opposition.

An annoyed Advani said at one point: ?I feel the Opposition does not want to listen to me, they have already made up their minds.?

It was in a way a pointless debate with the government and the Opposition unwilling to yield even an inch. Advani?s reply to the debate was ? not surprisingly ? devoted to defending the Gujarat government. And despite repeated attempts, the Opposition failed to get answers to most of their questions.

The Congress, the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Left parties had insisted that the elections in Gujarat could only be held under President?s rule as no one could trust Modi after the post Godhra carnage.

RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav wanted to know if free and fair polls could be conducted under a chief minister who ?engineered the riots in Gujarat?.

However, Advani made it clear that the Centre was in no mood to either remove the chief minister or impose President?s rule. Ironically, the same NDA government is keen to hold the elections in Jammu and Kashmir under Central rule.

?Yes, the elections will be held under Modi. My friends in the Opposition must also know that during this period, the state government held panchayat elections where the turn out was as high as 78 per cent,? Advani said.

The deputy Prime Minister began his reply saying the Centre had acted in the spirit of the resolution passed by the Rajya Sabha on May 6. The Union government had intervened in Gujarat under Article 355, sending out the army, setting up relief camps and gearing the administration to cope with the violence.

Advani went into the details of Centre-state relations and quoted liberally from the Sarkaria Commission report to make the point under what circumstances federal forces can intervene.

He also quoted selectively from the report to drive home that ?while intervention is legally permissible?, it may not be ?politically proper?.

Kapil Sibal of the Congress, however, interrupted Advani to say that the report also stated that the Union had the right to deploy its forces suo motu. ?The Centre did not think it essential to intervene in Gujarat immediately when the situation was going out of hand. Why did the government wait?? he asked. ?Especially when Modi himself was encouraging the atrocities.?

The deputy Prime Minister argued that the Opposition had always tried to make out that the situation in Gujarat was much worse than what it actually was. Immediately after the Godhra massacre, he said, 103 of the 182 Assembly segments were not affected by violence. But it was made out as if the entire state was in flames.

After April, only 22 or 23 Assembly constituencies continued to be prone to the violence.

The Opposition reacted to Advani?s statements with loud protests. ?If you don?t want to listen, I won?t speak,? Advani said.

The leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Manmohan Singh, said: ?We want specific answers. Our charge is that you have a government in Gujarat which is trying to manage the politics of this country by unleashing terror. It is a government which is capitalising on violence. This is our view and you may not agree with us, but are conditions in Gujarat secure enough for the minorities to come and vote??

Advani, certainly, thought so.

Kashmir Fatigue

Kashmir Fatigue

Kashmir Fatigue

How Not to Reform Universities osted on Tue, Jul. 09, 2002 f

Muslim leaders denounce terrorism



BY JOYCE M. DAVIS

Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON ? Some of the Muslim world`s most powerful religious leaders were in Washington on Monday to publicly denounce violence in the name of Islam and to warn against demonizing Muslims, an estimated 8 million to 10 million of whom live in the United States.

``The events of Sept. 11 have aroused some fear and mistrust between people in the Muslim World and the West,`` said Dr. Abdullah al Turki, secretary general of the Muslim World League, a nongovernmental organization based in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, that has wide influence in the Islamic world. ``We are all confronting a world crisis.``

The decision by this group of prominent Muslim scholars to travel to the United States to counter the perceived anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States is highly unusual and is a measure of that sense of crisis.

Al Turki said the tension was pitting the Islamic world against the West, especially as the Bush administration has targeted many militant Islamic groups in its war against terrorism.

Much of the hostility between Muslims and the West stems from false stereotypes that equate Islam with terrorism, al Turki said.

``Today we have more than a billion Muslims throughout the world,`` al Turki said. ``Many of them, like any other people, make mistakes; they commit sins; they become extremists. ? It is unfair to take such individuals as representatives of Islam and Muslims.``

The leaders said the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving people who share many common values with people of the West, including love of family, freedom and democracy.

``We are concerned that the voices of moderation are not being heard, but these other voices are being heard,`` said al Shieck Ahmad Lemo, president of the Islamic Educational Endowment in Nigeria.

While the scholars denounced militants who ``abuse religion,`` they also criticized aspects of U.S. foreign policy, which they said were at the root of anti-American feelings in the Muslim world. Muslim leaders often accuse the United States of being biased toward Israel to the detriment of Palestinians, who are predominantly Muslim.

Al Turki and the other Islamic leaders stressed that Islam opposes terrorism and suicide bombings. But he said Israel`s ``oppression`` of Palestinians provoked such actions.

``There is a difference between justifying something and understanding something,`` said Dr. Muzamil Sidiqi, former president of the Islamic Society of North America. ``The root of the problem is that people are hopeless. Who wants to kill themselves? Give them a way out.``

Representatives of the Muslim World League traveled from Nigeria, Jordan, India, Canada, Bosnia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to express their concerns to American government, religious and academic officials throughout the country. They will meet with members of Congress in Washington at a reception today.

Coney Al Jazeera

Life among the graves

Harsh Mander

Frontline, Volume 19, Issue 13

June 22 -- July 5, 2002

A survivor of the Gujarat riots attempts to come to terms

with the past - and the present.

IT is a searing day in Ahmedabad, in the sombre, forlorn summer of 2002.

Khaled Noor Mohammed spends most of his waking hours sitting vacantly at

the imposing gate of the Shah-e-Alam dargah, as he has done for more than

two months since the mass violence that tore apart Gujarat first broke

out. The medieval shrine has been transformed into a spartan makeshift

sanctuary for over ten thousand devastated women and men, girls and boys.

In its normally serene courtyards, where throngs of pilgrims used to

gather for worship in happier times, these internal refugees are trying to

come to terms with their sense of profound collective betrayal, horror and

bereavement, and their abrupt lapse into destitution. The wounds that have

ravaged some of their bodies - festering burn injuries caused by fire and

acid, dagger and trishul, and amputations - are slowly healing. But not so

the lacerations on their souls.

As Khaled looks back on the seventy five years of his life`s journey, it

is as though, for him, its most significant landmarks were a series of

major communal riots. He speaks of them the way others talk about personal

life events: births, deaths, weddings. He recounts their blood-splattered

trail. The Partition riots of 1947, in which he lost his father, then the

riots of 1969, which broke a long interlude of peace, the Jagannath riots

of 1985, the sectarian violence that followed in the wake of the

demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992, and now the ferocious carnage of

2002.

``I have seen many riots,`` Khaled says, ``and each time we have moved on.

But this hullad was completely different. My body may still have strength,

but this riot has just broken my back, and my spirit. In earlier hullads,

they killed our men and attacked our homes and shops. But women and

children were mostly spared. Never before has there been this merciless

burning alive of our people, even of infants and small children. Never

before this mass rape and humiliation of our women. Never before have so

many of us been rendered so completely homeless.

``I have seen such things with my own eyes. Others have only heard stories

of the horrors, but I have seen them. As I try to sleep, their memories

haunt even my dreams. I lie awake at night, without rest. I try to find

solace in prayer, and I recite my namaaz, but I hear the terrified screams

of women and children and the menacing roar of the mobs. My mind is

cracking up. It is beyond human tolerance. Insaan ke dimag ke limit ke

baahar hai.``

Khaled was born in a village in Gulbarga in Karnataka. His parents worked

as wage labourers, earning an uncertain ten rupees a month. He recalls

also that his father was an amateur wrestler and body-builder, and Khaled

himself grew up to share this passion. Khaled was the eldest child among

six brothers and sisters. The Partition riots ravaged Gulbarga, as they

did large tracts of the country. The marauders killed not only his father,

but all the adult men of his joint family, his father`s two brothers and a

cousin. Khaled, unschooled, still in his teens, became the head of the

family. Work was scarce in the endemic drought fields of Gulbarga,

therefore Khaled migrated with his widowed mother and five younger

brothers and sisters to seek his fortune in the prosperous industrial city

of Ahmedabad.

There were many odd jobs that he did in the early years. He worked in

hotels, in melas, even dug graves in the cemetery at twelve annas (roughly

the equivalent of 75 paise) per grave. He recalls with satisfaction that

as a young man, he had acquired no bad habits. He would eat whatever was

cooked in the house and outside it he only drank tea and ate paan twice a

day. He saved money. In 1962, Khaled was married to his first cousin, the

daughter of his father`s elder brother. They moved to Naroda, and as the

years passed, he built two homes. One was in the name of his wife, the

other was for his son Sharmuddin.

Khaled specialised in house painting. He taught his son the same trade,

initially just white-washing, later colour painting as well. In time, he

became a small contractor, and employed two or three workers. He was

particularly sought after by the Patels. ``I never had any enmity with any

Hindu all my life,`` he recalls.

His mother lived with him to the age of hundred. Khaled married off his

two sisters, one in Mumbai, the other in Ahmedabad. He also got his

brothers married, mostly within their own family: because who else would

give their daughters to boys who hardly knew where their next meal would

come from. He found work for two of his brothers, one in the cotton mills,

one in a hotel. The mills closed down, and one brother bought a rickshaw.

The other, Ibrahim, took to drink and eventually died. ``My brothers turned

away from me as they grew up, and have lost contact with me. It is only

Ibrahim who would visit me every week, but he is no longer alive,`` said

Khaled.

Khaled found a bride for his son six years ago. They had two children, one

five years old and one two years younger. ``My daughter-in-law was a fine

woman, very simple, and she read the Koran daily. My son Sharmuddin too

was regular with his namaaz,`` said Khaled. Khaled`s daughter, who was nine

months pregnant with her first child, had come to her parents` home for

her delivery. Close to their home lived his wife`s younger sister with her

husband and children. The three families slept in separate homes, but they

ate and lived together, sharing all their joys and sorrows.

This was Khaled`s world. Today nothing of it survives. It was annihilated

by the murderous frenzy of the carnage.

The news of the horrific killings in Godhra on February 27 reached them at

Naroda. There was palpable tension in the air. However, they did not

believe that they would be attacked. Khaled said, ``After all, we in Naroda

were mostly working class people. We had lived together in peace for so

many years.`` Khaled and his large family were in their homes on the

morning of February 28 drinking tea, preparing food. The Vishwa Hindu

Parishad had declared a bandh in protest against the Godhra killings, so

they were all indoors.

The attack was as brutal as it was unexpected. Three truck loads of young

men arrived, dressed in khaki shorts and saffron vests. They were armed

with swords and trishuls, and raised slogans, shouting ``maro, maro``.

It turned their blood cold. Everyone ran out of their homes in a blind

panic, and Khaled was separated from the rest of his family. Some young

Muslim men tried to muster a resistance by throwing stones, but they had

no weapons, and were no match for the ferocity of the attacking mobs.

Khaled, petrified, hid himself the whole day on the roof of a dhaba. The

young men who had arrived on trucks were joined by employees of the State

Transport workshop, who supplied diesel and petrol to the attackers. The

crowd of attackers swelled further with the accretion of strangers,

criminal gangs and a few local people. Houses were looted and scorched and

the air was dense with smoke, the screams of people set ablaze, women

being assaulted, children dying, and the gut-churning odour of burning

human flesh. It is the nightmare of those hours that continues to haunt

Khaled in his sleepless vigil at the relief camp.

In the evening, the dhaba where Khaled crouched was also attacked, and

detonated by releasing the contents of its cooking gas cylinder. Khaled

escaped just on time once again, and choking in the thick smoke, he groped

his way to their home.

Near his house, he found still alive his five-year old grandson Asif. The

little boy`s body was almost completely burnt, and dripping with blood.

Khaled carried him into his home, which had still not been attacked. He

fed the child some bread, weeping. The boy said to him - ``Abbu Dada,

don`t cry out loud, or they will kill you as well. They burned them all,

my mother, my father, my grandmother, my little brother. Only you and I

are left.`` And then he died in his grandfather`s arms. ``He was a wonderful

child,`` Khaled said. ``Only five years old, but so intelligent. And until

the end he was worried about me.``

He searched like a man possessed for the bodies of his loved ones. But

the heaps of charred and maimed bodies were so disfigured that it was

impossible to identify the remains of all those with whom he had shared

his life. It was made even more difficult by the impenetrable swirling

smoke, the fading evening light, and the tears that clouded the old man`s

eyes. The only body he found was of his daughter Kausar. Nine months

pregnant, the baby due any day. When he found her, her mouth was caked

with froth, her stomach cut open, the foetus burned by her side.

The survivors of the massacre, Khaled among them, hid in the darkness of

the killing fields, not knowing whether they would live to see the next

dawn. The first word of tentative, tenuous hope spread through whispers.

Trucks had been sent by the organisers of the Shah-e-Alam Dargah to rescue

those who were still alive. Constables of the Railway Protection Force had

retrieved a little of the compassion that was so completely lost to their

counterparts in the State police: they too garnered their trucks for

rescue. The survivors were packed, body pressed against body, into the

waiting vehicles, and they left for the sanctuary of the dargah.

Women and children wailed, the men tried to hold back their weeping, as

the crowds of survivors swelled to several thousands at the dargah. Each

brought with them their unspeakable tales of horror. In the days that

followed, nearly a hundred similar camps with more than one hundred

thousand people came up in the city - in dargahs, schools and even

graveyards, wherever they felt safe.

The first few nights they lay on the bare floors of the courtyards, used

normally for prayer. Volunteers prepared food, which they ate collectively

in large aluminum plates, eight or ten people together. Others tended the

wounded and the sick. Frayed canvas covers and shamianas were hurriedly

erected for the women and children. No government officials helped set up

or run the camps, as they had in riots of the past. The stunned survivors

were busy mostly with the everyday acts of basic subsistence, milk for the

children, medicines for the wounded, finding places in the open for

toilets and bathing of women who normally remained in purdah.

But Khaled would sit apart from them all. He still nurtured an unsteady,

fading hope that someone from his large family may have survived. His

little grandson Asif had told him that they were all dead. But maybe

someone was still alive.

Almost a week later, as Khaled routinely searched the faces of the new

arrivals to the camp, his heart leapt at the sight of a familiar face. It

was his wife`s sister`s son Javed. In the three families that had lived as

one, which Khaled had headed and tended, only this one, Javed, had

survived. Eight members of his family were dead: his wife, son,

daughter-in-law, their two sons, his wife`s sister, her husband and their

daughter.

Khaled held Javed close to his chest. There is an irony that Allah had

chosen to save the one boy whom the family mostly considered a waster.

Javed had refused to study, chewed tobacco, and from the age of twelve,

began to work as a conductor in a rickshaw bus. He was now fourteen,

orphaned, his only living family member his irascible uncle Khaled.

Javed was with his mother until she died in what he described as a ``ball

of fire``. As the screaming crowds in Naroda had tried to escape, all exit

paths were blocked. It was often policemen who drove them into the hands

of mobs armed with petrol and diesel, pipes and daggers. The open road in

which Javed and his family were trapped was blocked by throngs of men, who

doused them with diesel, petrol and oil. First the children, then the

older men and women. Javed, screaming, clung to his mother`s hand. Many of

the men were drunk. Most of them were strangers. But those who led them

for the attack on their homes were their own neighbours.

There were screams all around. ``Bachao... bachao... maro... maro...`` From

the top of the surrounding houses, people - including their neighbours -

threw burning logs and blankets to feed the fire. The multitude below,

trying in vain to escape, maddened with terror, got engulfed in the

swirling, racing, inexorable embrace of the conflagration.

Javed`s hair was singed, his feet and trousers were burnt. But somehow he

managed to run away. It was dark by the time he crept into his home. He

put on a fresh pair of trousers, and then began to run for his life. He

ignored the excruciating pain, the marauding mobs, the screaming, burning

people, the blazing houses... He just ran blindly, kilometre after

kilometre, until he reached his seth`s home. The seth was a Hindu, the

owner of the rickshaw bus in which he worked as a conductor.

The seth was distressed to see his fresh burns, and immediately drove him

to the nearest government hospital. He left Rs.150 with Javed for food.

Javed was unconscious for two days, with 20 per cent burns. Each time he

came round, he remembered his mother burning. The inferno, the wails. But

the hospital compounder was kind to him, and nursed him, urging him to be

strong.

Six days later Javed was discharged, and the compounder took him to the

Shah-e-Alam camp. He had heard that the survivors of the Naroda massacre

were gathered there.

It was at the gate of the dargah that he found his old uncle Khaled.

Together they had to come to terms with the terrible truth that of their

large and closely bonded joint family, only the two of them remained in

the world.

Khaled had resolved that he would sell his property at whatever price it

would fetch, collect his compensation, and return for the rest of his life

to his village in Gulbarga with Javed. There was no work there, but at

least they would live in peace. However, compensation eludes them. The

authorities insist on death certificates of those who are dead, and Khaled

has these only for his grandson Asif. The rest had been buried anonymously

in mass graves, their charred bodied disfigured beyond recognition. But

Khaled is told that they will be declared to be `missing persons`, and it

may take even seven years before he would become entitled to the relief.

In the village, his old mother-in-law, who is also his aunt, still lives.

They spoke to her on the telephone and assured her that they were all

well. ``She will surely die when she knows the truth,`` Javed said with the

ruthless assurance of a child.

It is only Javed now who binds Khaled to life, even though it is by a

thin, frayed string. A boy who had gone astray, about whom his parents

would worry and despair, that no good would come of him. Today Javed

says: ``I want to grow up to be a good man, one whom my parents would be

proud of, one who will bring light and honour to their good name. I am not

sure what I will do. But I will not go back to being a bus conductor.

Maybe I will sell watches, or toys, or clothes.``

He has already given up chewing tobacco. In our subsequent visits to the

camp, we found his face well scrubbed, his hair neatly oiled and combed.

At the camp, he has volunteered to serve food in shifts to the ten

thousand residents, a job which keeps him busy for the greater part of the

day.

Khaled continues to intone: ``May even my worst enemies not have to see

what I have seen. In earlier riots, I had found the strength to move on,

each time. But this time, I feel utterly broken. It is only for this boy

that I still live...``

As we spoke at the camp, the temperatures rose to a ruthless 45§C. Men,

women and children sat alone with their thoughts, or tried fitfully to

sleep, or paced restlessly in the heat. We shifted to the shade of the

graveyard adjoining the dargah, where young volunteers had gathered small

children in a makeshift school, to study, play and forget for some moments

the horror of their memories that had become their lifetime`s legacy. We

watched with wonder as the laughter of the traumatised children rang out

from between the graves.

-

Kashmir Fatigue ate Posted: Jul-8-02 14:24:37 EST Reply #: 628

ana

allo shankar, samina, scout and fawad79! :)

Shankar,

I`m afraid I may have already pissed YLH off :D, but I`m sure he`s gotten over it by now. Whatever Jinnah`s vision was (i, myself, lean more towards the considered opinion that it was a secular one), the reality is faaaaar off his track. As far as Hindi filims being banned from Pakistani screens, I leftakistan what seems like a lifetime ago, and I`m not sure what the current policy is..but when I lived there, Hindi filims were available via video, and an Indian channel where they showed Hindi films once or twice a week. I remember (many Chowkies probably weren`t even conceived yet) the record-breaking sales of televisions from shops on Hall Road, and other places when the news came that we would be able to access an Indian channel, and the first movie that came on was `Pakeezah`..beautiful!

Samina..

So true! And why bother making linkages if we are always right, and always better?!?

Scout,

Good point. I mean does it really matter whether we use the word jeevan or zindagi? They are interchangeable afterall! Why must it be pointed out to me that jeevan is a Hindi word, when the person actually understood what I meant?!

Fawad79 :)

Actually there are quite a number of us non-Muslim Pakistanis scattered around these great United States of America, and Canada..quite a few of them from my home away from home away from home, Lahore.

And to answer your curious question about whether I am single or not..the answer is yes :).

Now, now..no comments from the peanut gallery..no haranguing, I see where some of you pranksters were heading with the lucy-shankar exchange!!! *laughing *

ANA

Allah you r soo..... .

You saw t.v. come to Pakistan when Pakizah from India showed on T.V. ???????????

You r not one of the Benjamin Sisters ?

The other day Air Force Commander Cecile was author on Chowk .Did you know that .

Coney Al Jazeera

In Defense of The Left

In Defense of The Left

In Defense of The Left

Since this is in Defence of LEFT or F word forum though hijacked by orphan penniless mid night childrens of Salman Rushdie with no home of there pown to call for .I give you oops request you to go & read this 4 page discussion on Indias vilified humanistic ,fair & equitable distribution advocates....

NION http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20020624&fname=bernie&sid=1

Talkin` About The F-Word (Redux)

I`ve been steering clear of the F-word, because too many on the Left fling that term so carelessly that it soon loses its truth-punch...

BERNARD WEINER

[[ Dear Readers: This article was first published in December of 2001, in the wake of 9/11, when the grim outlines of police-state-like tactics were first starting to appear on the American horizon. It might be useful to compare and contrast -- whoops, it turns out there isn`t much to contrast -- between then and now. Doing so may help us understand the forces we`re facing and how to respond as Bush&Co. continue their move toward a more militarist society. At appropriate points, I`ve added [[ in italics inside double brackets ]] some observations from our contemporary situation.

Reading the essay this way might serve as a reminder that those of us warning then of the due-process dangers ahead faced epithets like ``paranoid`` and ``conspiracists`` -- much like those today who are connecting the dots that take us from Bush&Co.`s pre-9/11 knowledge and the Administration`s manipulation of a frightened Congress and citizenry that have followed. -- BW ]]

First, they came for the terrorists,

and I didn`t speak up,

because I wasn`t a terrorist.

Then they came for the foreigners,

and I didn`t speak up,

because I wasn`t a foreigner.

Then they came for the Arab-Americans,

and I didn`t speak up,

because I wasn`t Arab-American.

Then they came for the radical dissenters,

and I didn`t speak up,

because I was just an ordinary troubled citizen.

Then they came for me,

and by that time

there was no one left to speak up for me.

(Adapted from Pastor Niemoller`s 1945 quote about the Nazis)

I`ve been steering clear of the F-word, because too many on the Left fling that term so carelessly that it soon loses its truth-punch. But things are happening, so quickly, in this country that are taking us closer to a brand of near-fascism that is frightening in its seeming acceptance by the American populace and in its implications for the future of American democracy.

The non-domestic corollary: America, already resented and hated for its arrogant attitudes and policies around the world, is behaving more and more like a mad bull on a Pax Americana rampage.

In short, we appear to be at one of those moments in American history where the executive branch, using the genuine need to respond to a terrorist attack of massive proportions, is badly overreaching in both domestic and foreign areas. (The first draft of Ashcroft`s anti-terrorism law even recommended suspension of the rule of habeus corpus, which would have allowed for indefinite incarceration without charges or trials.)

[[ In effect, Bush&Co. have been able to do exactly that to hundreds being interrogated for a connection to terrorism; when people are ``disappeared`` in third-world countries, we get all weepy-eyed and angry as mothers and wives bang pots &pans in the public squares, trying to find out what happened to their husbands and sons. Here, aside from civil liberties organizations, we remain basically silent. ]]

The Administration figures it can get away with its current actions, and assume even more power, because the Congress and the American people are frightened and willing to bend over backwards to make sure the President has the power he needs during ``wartime.``

[[ Recent polls indicate that Americans are deeply troubled by giving the government, any government, that kind of unbridled power, but, given the current terrorist threat, seem willing to trade off SOME of their Constitutional protections for personal security. ]]

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In Defense of The Left

For Saminashah Ana,

De Say ......

I say let us put man and a woman together

To find out which one is smarter

Some say man but I say no

The woman got the man de day should know

And not me but the people they say

That de man are leading de women astray

But I say, that the women of today

Smarter than the man in every way

That?s right de woman is uh smarter

That?s right de woman is uh smarter

That?s right de woman is uh smarter, that?s right,

that?s right

Ever since the world began

Woman was always teaching man

And I you listen to my bid attentively

I goin? tell you how she smarter than me

Samson was the strongest man long ago

No one could a beat him, as we all know

Until he clash with Deliah on top of the bed

She told them all the strength was in the hair of his

head

You meet a girl at a pretty dance

Thinking that you would stand a chance

Take her home, thinking she?s alone

Open de door you find her husband home

I was treating a girl independently

She was making baby for me

When de baby born and I went to see

Eyes was blue it was not by me

Garden of Eden was very nice

Adam never work in Paradise

Eve meet snake, Paradise gone

She make Adam work from that day on

Methuselah spent all his life in tears

Lived without a woman for 900 years

One day he decided to have some fun

The poor man never lived to see 900 and on

In Defense of The Left