Someone is asking the same questions...

I feel so vindicated that at least one powerful voice asked the very same question I was pondering over yesterday. This person is the former prime minister of Pakistan, Mr. Nawaz Sharif who has said that Mr. Zardari is indeed lying straight off his face when he says that Qasab doesn't belong to Pakistan. In fact, he has slammed the Zardari goverment for cordoning off the entire village of Faridkot and not allowing International Media access to members of Qasab's family.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kasab_belongs_to_Pakistan_says_Sharif_also_slams_Zardari/articleshow/3861829.cms

I used to wonder if India was the worst mockery of the institution of democracy under the sun. After observing the pathetic state of lawlessness and corruption Pakistan is in, I have to admit that in comparison India seems almost utopic. But having said that I will also admit that if we don't watch out and elect people of higher moral and intellectual quality than the Deshmukhs and Mayawatis of our land, we are definitely going to end up like Pakistan with criminals at the helm of our nation, reducing the very concept of a civil state to a joke.

Who is lying - Zardari or the Indian Media?

For the past few weeks, Indian media has reported that Indian agencies are saying there is undeniable proof that the masterminds of the 26/11 terror attack have links to Pakistan. Yet one man, the President of Pakistan, Mr Asif Ali Zardari has been consistently denying these allegations. In fact, today there's an article on the NDTV website which says Mr. Zardari even denies that there is any evidence that Qasab, the lone terrorist captured alive from the Shivaji Terminus attack site, has anything to do with Pakistan. This after media reports on how Qasab's parents have been identified and the the whole family resides in Faridkot in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Well, they resided there till they mysteriously (and so predictably, what can you expect?) disappeared on December 3rd, 2008 presumably moved to a safe-house by the Pakistani government or worse, are now being held captive by some terrorist outfit. I say this in the naive belief that the two are separate entities. I just hope and pray that they are still alive and safe.

Well, the question foremost on my mind is who is lying? The media is not made of one or a handful of people. Its a much bigger network of journalists, reporters and other people. Could they all be lying? I am wary of nationalistic media propaganda that in the fashion of post 9/11 reports, drums up mass hysteria to lend support to a government that launches an unjustified military attack on another country. I also beleive that the Indian media, from time to time, does display such jingoistic tendencies but now that it has become pretty clear that public consensus in India is clearly against waging a war against Pakistan, what purpose would such propaganda or jingoism serve?

And why should we doubt the veracity of all these news reports when the man who denies them all, Mr Zardari, has been accused of money laundering by the Swiss, British and US goverments and no court has so far been able to give him a clean chit? Not only this, Mr Zardari also allegedly lied about his educational background saying he obtained a B.Ed degree from the London School of Economics and Business which cannot be corroborated. And for the records, I didn't make this story up nor did any member of the Indian media. This report comes from the media establishment in Pakistan.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\03\12\story_12-3-2008_pg7_17

Ode to a sonogram

Flutter, pulse, shake and tremble,
sound waves give a tiny body
to primeval yearning.
On a hazy, lazy, bright screen,
in a dark room somewhere,
New life just filled two other lives
with the gut wrenching power of miracles.

What are political boundaries good for?

1. Creating arbitrary divides and animosity between people who often share the same socio-cultural background and should in fact, be getting along quite well with each other otherwise. Political and media propaganda widens the divide by encouraging mistrust between neighbors and in extreme cases such as India and Pakistan, it creates hatred which benefits no one. If religion is cited as the biggest difference, again as in the case of India and Pakistan, it results in cross border terrorism.

2. Shifting focus from what people across borders have in common to what their differences are. The first thing that's sacrificed is thread of common humanity that binds all people on earth.

3. Allowing one country to nurture terrorists and hatch elaborate plots to create political and social instability in a sub continent while other countries have no powers to stop or prevent this from happening. Also, when the terrorists cross over borders and kill innocent people in cold blood in a neighboring country allegedly with the help of their home country's Intelligence Agency, adequate political and economic pressure cannot be brought on the guilty parties to arrest the culprits.

4. Wasting a lot of precious time sharing niceties and in maintaining diplomatic protocol in the hope that it will pacify voters on both sides of the border while in reality, it just makes people angrier and angrier by the day.

5. Wasting tax payers' money to guard borders which are porous and in case of maritime borders, practically impossible to guard anyway.

6. Creating a false sense of security.

7. Preventing right thinking people from working on what really matters: education, health, economic development and poverty allievation. Governments are known to divert attention to other issues when they want to shun resposibility for doing what they should be doing for their people.

8. Creating a false sense of pride and ownership as well as guilt and denial. When attacks like 9/11 and Mumbai 26/11 happen its time for all human beings to hang their heads in shame.

HOW CAN WE STAND BEHIND GEO-POLITICAL BOUNDARIES AND POINT FINGERS HERE AND THERE and not ask how could each one of us have contributed to creating such Frankensteins that wreck havoc on Humanity itself? When terrorists have minimal regard for geoplitical boundaries, why should we, the Sane, not start thinking beyond them as well and see how we can fix things?

Passing the buck around the world..

I was just watching an NDTV 24x7 live discussion on Mumbai 26/11 and was seriously disappointed by what Professor Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute had to say. When asked by Barkha Dutt, what concrete measures could be taken to diffuse the mounting tension between Pakistan and India over the alleged ISI involvement in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Prof. Cohen said that he thought that an International commission should be created to collect evidence and implicate the resposible parties and that this commision and not the goverment of India should press for corrective action. He further said that the US should not be the only country involved. Western European countries should also play an important role in this process. Needless to say I was extremely disappointed by this opinion of his. Instead of taking the shortest route by identifying specific actors and ennumerating specific actions so that someone is made accountable for bringing those responsible for this horrible act of terrorism to justice at the earliest, Prof. Cohen beleives in complicating the process and passing the buck all around the world so that no one is ever accountable for anything. In short, his long winded , round about solution would serve no purpose rather than ensuring that no action is ever taken.

Why are people in power and intellectuals both so squeamish about calling a spade and spade? Why are they so reluctant to act? Surely if 183 innocent people were killed and 10 or 15 men were trained to do the killing, someone somewhere was responsible for sponsoring them? Why is it so difficult to apprehend them? Why is that if one man kills another man in cold blood on this planet, he faces the death sentence but when one man, with the help of others kills 20, an International commission is needed to play for time so that the guilty parties can go scot free?