Punjab: The Land of Five Rivers #25 - Indeed. I have spent hours thinking over the reasons for why Pindi girls are the most beautiful in Pakistan. I came to this conclusion that Pindi is the melting pot of punjabis, kashmiris and pathans. And hence the phenomena of seeing heart-stoppingly beautiful girls coming out of those old and shabby houses in the interior of Pindi.

Regardless of the reason, on many of my visits to Pakistan I find myself roaming Moti bazaar where girls come with their mothers for shopping.

Punjab: The Land of Five Rivers #1 - I sugget the title for Rawalpindi should be be replaced to ``Rawalpindi - Along whose narrow streets live the most beautiful girls in Pakistan`` :)

yeah, i wrote the above sentence with a smile on my face...

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling #149 - duh! and they stopped doing it because late model laptops cannot be packed with explosives, right? if i were to profile you, i would put you in the category of ``smart asses`` who try to get ahead of themselves.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling #137 ``With all its flaws and lop-sided foreign policies USA will still rank much higher in civil liberties if compared to the land of faithful’s. ``

Yes indeed, if you want to feel good about it, then yes, US has better civil liberties than Angola, Cameroon, Saudi Arabia and many others. But I thought USA was the benchmark that every country looked up to. Since when did other countries became the benchmark for US to look at? When you have to defend the declining civil liberties in US in this manner, then there really is an issue.

Salim #138 - Yes, I thought the instruction to turn on the laptop was strange. But then, we hadnt yet seen the pre-midterm election fear campaign of last year whereby our water bottles and shaving gels were branded as instruments of terrorism.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling salim # 120 ``Now, putting one gross of condoms and a slightly mutilated copy of Playboy was an excellent ploy.``

FYI, some of us keep condoms for more than just a ploy :) Indeed, your article of long ago to dodge just such profiling at the airport sometime comes to mind. Unfortunately the problem with getting profiled is that there are things - such as your name, that cannot be covered even with a family size pack of condoms, or the last 12 issues of Playboy in backpack...

scout #124 - I did not get antagonized either :) However, I think profiling is just one of the issues - the much bigger issue facing this great nation is the erosion of civil liberties. When you hear about people who are put behind bars without any charges, you realize that getting profiled is nothing more than a nuisance. Lets hope that this climate of fear, perpetuated by this administration to further its dark global agenda, eases as the awareness in general public grows.

On a positive note, Cindy Sheehan - the woman whose son died in Iraq, has taken her protest to Guantanamo Bay. She has linked her son`s death to the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay...her son was killed in the same month that first pictures of Abu Gharaib came to light.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling Urstruly # 110 - well said!

kulharee # 108 - ``are you really that dumb to differentiate between ethnic cleansing and racial profiling?``

A basic principle of marketing is that you first profile the market, before you target it. Similarly, to get to ethnic cleansing, you first profile that ethnicity. Seriously, jews will be better off having wise enemies, than stupid friends like you.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling scout # 109 - ``i just want to know what YOU are doing since this whole thing has affected you so dearly``

Well, one obvious thing I have done is to actually go through the trouble of writing an article and publishing it on a website to create awareness about racial profiling. It may not be much, but it is something. And given the pak / India mud slinging that inevitably occurs on every chowk board, the message may have been drowned a bit. But I am sure serious folks like dost mittar, zeemax, urstruly, burpinder, samina, iron mask, tahmed and many other silent readers have this message revived in their minds, even if they don`t fully agree with it.

Secondly, but more importantly, I do not feel obligated to name the organization I send donations to, or list the protests that I have attended or the source of the money that I donate from. But if you are really dying to know, I would be glad to post some pictures on UP of some of the protests I attended :)

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling tahmed # 91 ``hitler used the reichstag fire to go after the communists``

chacha - little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

tahmed # 100 ``the first (and as far as i know, the only) guy to be arrested under the patriot act (the other favorite topic in addition to airline security for many muslims) was an office holder of some kind in the ADL ``

chacha - little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

#92 - ``It is always the same mantra..``why us?``..`who did this to us?``.``

Dont you be making fun of jews...

Kulharee #90 ``what is stupid is that you think Holocaust was racial profiling, and your effort to equate current environment faced by some muslims is somehow equal to that.``

A proverbial stone thrown in the waters off Mexico turns into a hurricane in Florida. Jewish persecution in germany didnt occur all of sudden beginning 1933. To start off, someone must have written some small article in some small newspaper blaming them for the defeat of germany in WWI....and over years it turned into a flood gate of persecution. Please read up on the people you are defending, otherwise you do a disservice to them.

Scout # 102 - Its not a one man lobby, there are thousands of people in it and dozens of organizations who have taken it up. Please get some familiarity with how things work in DC...afterall you are a citizen, right? :)

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling kulharee #85 - ``The way to achieve that end (in my humble opinion) is to speak up against the morons who are the cause of such a system, rather than those who use it. ``

Great! When Hitler used the pretext of Riechestag burning to profile and arrest jews, the onus to prove their innocence was on jews! Got it.

P.S: You are very stupid.



arjun #86 - hahaha....who says an indian cant be funny :) See?!! Another reason to not profile indians as a permanently constipated bunch.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling #82 - ``but please write on something other than politics next time ``

taubo karo chacha...when we have pundits like you around, why should atif (of all people!), write about politics?

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling Scout # 77 - As usual, you are late in the game. Lobby, lawsuits, campaigns...all are underway. Inshallah, not just muslims, but my hindoo friends on this board - who are cheering profiling, will benefit too from this useless profiling too. Remember my hindoo friends, when germany burned in 1930s, it were not just the jews that burned with it, gypsies did too.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling #73 ``did we really need to know the kind of junk you carry with you? and why are you making such a fuss over the fact that the security people become alert when they see a young man of middle eastern/desi type looks?``

What junk? Condoms? Dont you use them? As for the ``fuss`` you allude to, let me do a tahmed on you: please cut and paste for me from the article where I have made a fuss of profiling. I even went ahead and called it a ``lovers` quarrel``. Its never too late in life to start making sense, Sultan of circular logic :)

Avkrishna # 69 - please dont take each one of my comment seriously. some are meant in jest. regards.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling #54 - and here comes the master of circular logic! he is decrying the racial profiling of latinos who are busy doing racial profiling of passengers.

#52 - no offence, but you have to be at least a green card holder to elicit a response from me for your stupid posts...I dont have much time for headshaking h-1B visa holders.

#50 - It turns out that when we muslims find something that is not to our liking, we stick around and try to change it...unlike injuns who simply bend over. When we came to India and noticed how nude people were living on trees along with monkeys, we didn`t run back to Arabia. We stuck around and alhamdolillah, today we have nearly 160 million muslims in India alone and nude charlatans like Gandhi are exceptions rather than a rule.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling dost # 46 ``I am being routinely sent to secondary immigration for a more thorough check-up. Why? Because my passport was stolen six years ago and I therefore fall into a group earmarked for more intensive inspection.``

Dost sahib, this is different than being profiled due to your genetic, religious, ethnic make-up. I am sure many european canadians, who have had their passports stolen in the past, are given the same treatment as you.

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling #44 - ``what? Jews flew planes into the Rheistag (sp)?``

No. But they did torch it. Now go munch on that for a while.

#42 - thanks burpy. I wrote this during that same flight...with few spelling / sentence structure touches afterwards...so yeah, it was straight from heart :(

jang #41 - The thing that freaks me out about Dulles airport is the grisly sight of Sikhs working there. They have near monopoly on everything from baggage screening to food court and souvenir shops

A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling Urstruly #36 - ``I think almost all Arab airlines are best in service and hospitality``

I would rate east asian airlines (Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia) to be the best in the world – on both domestic and international routes. Swiss and Lufthansa are the best European airlines.

Three middle eastern airlines have fast emerged as top contenders – Qatar, Emirates (from Dubai), and Ettihad (from Abu Dhabi). The business class of Ettihad is the best I have ever experienced. The seating arrangement in its business class is such that you have your own mini cubicle to yourself, with complete privacy from passengers sitting on either side of you. They served halva poori and murgh cholay for breakfast from Islamabad to Abu Dhabi flight. Imagine that!

And lets not even talk about the quality of flight attendants. I am not exaggerating when I say that flight attendants on Qatar, Emirates, and Ettihad airlines (mostly egyptian, lebanese, oriental, and east european) are the prettiest of all airlines and their service in business class is so good that it is the closest a passenger can get to making love, without actually making love. Once when she did not have the entry I had requested, the attendant was so apologetic that I had to actually give her a hug to comfort her. Go figure!