December’s B-side
Welcome to Other Pakistan’s first ever B-side post. The B-side will in truth be the better side of Other Pakistan for it will carry articles and posts from other writers and commentators regarding issues affecting Pakistan, with brief comment from moi.
Thus it will allow Other Pakistan to become a better forum of dialogue where a myriad of Pakistani futures can be formulated carrying comment from intellectuals, fellow bloggers and Pakistan’s joe public, all voiced with no fear or favour.
The B-side for December includes all of the following:
- Day 221 by AMITABH BACHCHAN
- Brown’s Al-Qaeda Game by TARIQ ALI
- US offers Viagra to win over Afghan Warlords (Daily Times)
An analysis of Amitabh Bachchan’s absurd views after the Mumbai attacks from his blog.
Day 221 by Amitabh Bachchan
The text messages pour in for reactions to press and media. Cynical and provocative text come in describing the ridiculous utterances of the system and those that run it. And actions to placate themselves of dire circumstances, prevail among ruling governance. Ha !!
But the hurt and anger persists. I will refrain and not submit to their requests.
I was to be in Hong Kong at the invitation of ex President Bill Clinton to partake in his Clinton Global Initiative and speak on a topic that would elevate the conditions of our universe.
I cancelled. I am NOT going to leave my country in this troubled hour to travel to a foreign land to lend cause to a foreign initiative, patronized and guided by a foreigner, for his benefit !! I need to see initiative here in my country.
I have also cancelled my participation in LIVE EARTH, the Al Gore initiative which I was to participate in on the 6th and 7th of December. I am NOT going to sing and dance at a time when my country and city bleeds, even though the funds collected were going to be for charity. They can keep their initiative to themselves!!
I have watched TV today and read the press and mingled with citizens. Never ever have I observed the extent of extreme anger in each and every individual of this country towards those that sit in the seat of authority and system and power. This is a determined and definite citizen. A citizen that has decided that everyone of them needs to become his own vigilante. For his sake and for the sake of his country.
I endorse that sentiment.
Amitabh Bachchan
Published on Amitabh Bachchan’s blog on 30 November 2008
WASIM VIEW - Amitabh Bachchan is known to the world as Big B, and not the Baby B that I relegate him to after his childish yet dangerous rant favouring vigilantism after the Mumbai massacre. As I read the post I wondered whether this was the writing of a deluded delinquent caught up in the emotion or whether these were the words of one of India’s icons.
Amitabh Bachchan’s status as one of the finest actors of any time for all time is not the issue here and I say this as a mad fan of his work. However, I was left stunned at Amitabh Bachchan’s cheerleading of vigilante action in response to the Mumbai attacks, an act so dangerous as it provides for an open invitation for more blood and gore.
Indeed if acted upon it would have unleashed a monster bigger than the monster of Mumbai. Thus few can doubt that Amitabh Bachchan’s comments of that day leave him diminshed and degraded for they displayed a timidness in him unbefitting his large frame.
Furthermore Amitabh Bachchan’s decision to not attend Live Earth and the Clinton Global Initiative events can still be understood to some extent. However Bachchan’s rubbishing of both causes displayed a cry-baby childish response unbefitting a man of his stature.
It is time for baby B to grow up and not seek refuge in empty slogans and dangerous raw emotions which only selfishly satisfy his inner Indian. Instead Mr Bachchan can serve India and the wider world better by shining a light on the real issues in India such as the inferior treatment of Indian muslims and other minorities with a view to healing wounds and bringing harmony where there is discord.
An article by the legendary Tariq Ali, need I say more …
Brown’s Al-Qaida Blame Game by Tariq Ali
Gordon Brown is targeting Pakistan. His claim that 75% of UK terror plots originate there is now part of a common western stance that refuses to accept any responsibility for encouraging the growth of recruits to jihadi organisations.
Just as the events of Bloody Sunday helped IRA recruitment, the New Labour-supported wars in Iraq and Afghanistan play an important part in encouraging young Muslims to sacrifice their lives. The London bombings, which Brown mentioned in Pakistan, were the direct result of Labour’s foreign policy. There is near unanimity on this within the British intelligence community. Had Britain not participated in occupying two countries, there would have been no attacks and no training trips to Pakistan or elsewhere.
The US intelligence agencies are close to agreeing that the war in Afghanistan has become a disaster. Some of Obama’s advisers are recommending an exit strategy. Washington’s hawks (backed by Brown) argue that, while bad, the military situation is still salvageable. This may be technically accurate, but it would require the carpet-bombing of southern Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, the destruction of scores of villages and small towns, the killing of untold numbers of Pashtuns and the dispatch to the region of at least 200,000 more troops with all their equipment, air and logistical support.
The political consequences of such a course are so dire that even Dick Cheney, the closest thing to Dr Strangelove that Washington has produced, has been uncharacteristically cautious when it comes to suggesting a military solution to the conflict.
Al-Qaeda as the CIA recently made clear, is on the decline. It has never come close to repeating anything resembling the strikes of 9/11. Its principal leader Osama bin Laden may well be dead (he did not make his trademark video intervention in this year’s US presidential election) and his deputy has fallen back on threats and bravado.
Now Gordon Brown appears to have discovered the existence of the long-established Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (Soldiers of Medina). This is one of the more virulent jihadi groups created by the ISI, Pakistan’s security service, in the mid-90s. Its aim (as I pointed out in 2000) was to repeat the mujahideen’s successful war against the Russians in Afghanistan by opening a new front in Indian-held Kashmir. It could not exist without the patronage of the army. It had a membership of 50,000 militants, foot-soldiers trained in camps in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, bankrolled by the Saudis and the Pakistani government. Teenagers are recruited from poor families, while state payouts for martyrs help fund the organisation.
After 9/11 Pervez Musharraf sidelined them and funding was drastically reduced, but they were not disbanded. Were they involved in the assault on Mumbai? Possibly, but they could not have acted on their own. They needed help inside India, a fact the Indian elite and its western apologists shy away from. Why should it be such a surprise if some of the perpetrators are Indian Muslims? There has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them, of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat was only the most blatant.
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir, which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the west. Being tough on terror but not on the causes of terror is, as we have seen since 9/11, a road to nowhere.
As published in The Guardian on 14 December 2008
WASIM VIEW - A fine op-ed by a more than fine commentator namely the legendary Tariq Ali. It is true that Gordon Brown is simply passing the buck. The issues concerning British foreign policy and its impact on British Muslims and non-Muslims alike have been swept under the carpet for too long.
Gordon Brown needs to open his eyes to the truth that British acts of ommission and commission worldwide such as the blind support for the Iraq War have an impact on people sometimes immediate and sometimes delayed. This does not excuse the evil of terrorism in Britain, far from it indeed it helps to find its roots in foreign policy decisions or unemployment and the like. The onus then is on British governments to address these issues comprehensively for the betterment of the British people and the world at large.
This third post will make you smile, I guarantee!!
US offers Viagra to win over Afghan Warlords (Daily Times)
CIA agents are offering the potency drug Viagra and other gifts to win over Afghan warlords in the US-led war against Taliban, the Washington Post reported on Friday. The aging chieftains often have up to four wives and are open to the Viagra pill as a way to ‘put them back in an authoritative position’, the report quoted a CIA official as saying.
Four Viagra pills transformed one influential 60-year-old warlord who had been wary of the United States, one official told the Post. “He came up to us beaming, and after that we could do whatever we wanted in his area,” he added. afp
WASIM VIEW - What can one say of the Viagra strategy other than it seems to be a masterstroke so far. It seems the Americans have finally found their weapon of mass reproduction!!
- WRITTEN UNDER MARTIAL LAW (My thanks to cowards Tariq Pervez. Sabihuddin, Sardar Raza & Co for selling out)
