Osama Bin Laden and the Moral Paradox

by Yamin Zakaria, London

“Despite the religious rhetoric and the bloody means, Bin Laden is a rational man. There is a simple reason why he attacked the US: American Imperialism. As long as America seeks to control the Middle-East, he and people like him will be its enemy”
– (Michael Mann, Incoherent Empire)

The conflict between Osama Bin Laden and the US President, reminds me of the parable of Alexander the Great and a captured pirate, narrated by St Augustine in the “City of God”. The Emperor places the pirate on trial and angrily demanded of him, “How dare you molest the seas?” To which the pirate replied, “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate and a thief. You, with a great navy, molest the world and are called an emperor”.

If Osama the Pirate was captured and put on trial, one can imagine the eloquent and rational Osama retorting to the simplistic allegations of terrorism, by pointing out that it is a small reaction to the greater terrorism of the state (state-terrorism), which is euphemistically termed as “foreign policy”. The pirate effectively turns the table and puts the emperor on trial, and asks: I kill 3000 in response to your orgy of killing hundreds of thousands, and that makes me a terrorist, whilst your act is somehow moral and lawful, how can that be the case, it is you who should be on trial, but the world is governed by might is right; thus, leaving the emperor speechless.

The US made no effort to apprehend the frail and unarmed Bin Laden; they could have given him the option to surrender, instead, the unlawful execution on a foreign soil was preferred. Surely, by putting Bin Laden on trial, the US could have exposed the fallacy of AL-Qaeda’s ideology and methods. However, deep down the US knows its guilt, and the fear was Bin Laden would have managed to put the US on trial. From the onset, the US violated international laws by the terrorist acts of bombing Afghanistan, instead of following the due process of law like the Taliban, who offered to hand over Bin Laden, provided the US could furnish evidence. Subsequently, the US continued to act as a pirate state, it invaded Iraq on a false pretext and killed at least 100 times more than the 3000 killed in 9/11. Hence, execution made sense, because the US feared Bin Laden’s tongue.

A similar policy is being pursued with the numerous attempts to execute Anwar al-Awlaki, rather then apprehend him and put him trial, as one would expect a civilised nation to do. Why does the US resort to such crude methods given that it claims to have intellectual superiority over the ideology of the ‘terrorist’? It could easily provide a challenge to Anwar al-Awlaki and demolish his ideas, which would do far more damage than simply killing the man, and giving strength to his ideas and inspire others to follow. A series of debate on TV would generate huge interest, but the US fears loosing the ideological battle, even though it would have the advantage having full control over the media coverage. Such an exchange would probably perturb lot of the audience in the US, and some left in a state of confusion, as they are not used to open debates on such matters.

How ironic, that after lecturing about free speech, the US pursues a policy to silence someone through execution, rather than have the courage to debate the issues even in their own territory. The whole point of free speech is permitting the opponents right to be heard, as Professor Chomsky stated, unless you permit your opponents a fair and equal voice, then you do not really believe in free speech.

The conflict has been portrayed by the US in the simplistic image of Hollywood; simply we Americas are the good guys, against the bad guys (Al-Qaeda). Why are they bad? Because, the bad guys are needed to make the case for the heroes, just like the movies! There is no serious attempt to elaborate on the causes the drive the bad guys. If you shift through the puerile name-calling, paradoxically, Al-Qaeda seems to have the higher moral grounds, as shown by the following points:

a) 9/11 and 7/7 – the immediate response to the unlawful execution of Osama Bin Laden was to selectively highlight the victims of 9/11 and 7/7 as justification. However, if they were certain of Osama’s guilt, then why not capture him and put him on trial? Simply because, the US do not have sufficient evidence to convict him in an independent court of law. For the argument sake, let us assume Osama was guilty. If human lives are valued equally, then why the selective outrage for the victims of 9/11 and 7/7? Where is the outrage when the innocent civilians were killed daily in the Islamic world prior to 9/11 and it continues post 7/7? Oh we know, for the emperor that’s just “foreign policy”, otherwise such acts are terrorism!

b) Torture – the US has been systematically incarcerating and torturing innocent people; Abu-Ghraib is a reminder of such inhumane behaviour, where prisoners were tortured just for the fun of it, even young children were raped and sodomised. In contrast, the few prisoners captured by Jihadi groups that are related to Al-Qaeda were treated in accordance to the Sharia principle, thus you can exclude: children, gang rape, sodomy, porn-torture, etc. If they were executed, it was in response to the US actions – but never for some sadistic reason or some form of sexual perversion or xenophobia which the US soldiers and civilians display.

c) The killing of innocent civilians – this is main accusation laid against Al-Qaeda, as if they are the only ones who are guilty of this. You hear the constant name-calling, Bin Laden the ‘mass murderer’. If Bin Laden earned this title by killing 3000 or more, then what do we make of Bush and Blair over Iraq? What about their client, the Israelis who have murdered thousands of Palestinians? Anyone examines the accumulated figure of Palestinian casualty from 1948 (Israeli casualty figures are insignificant in comparison), it points to a policy of systematic genocide of an innocent population. If you delve into history, the killing of innocent civilians started with the use of explosives and air raids over populated cities, here the West has excelled.

After the demise of Osama Bin Laden, they ask: is the world a safer place. Of course it is – it is safer for the Anglo-American-Israeli axis to bomb and invade more countries with impunity! The roots of the conflict are not embedded in the ideology of Al-Qaeda, but the injustices felt by the actions of Western countries. In fact, it was this injustice that gave birth to Al-Qaeda.

The price of peace and security is justice for the victims. Nobody has asked about compensating the Iraqis for the criminal invasion built on lies. Or is this only reserved for the victims of 9/11 and 7/7? What about the killing of innocent civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan by the drone attacks and the casual Israeli raids that continues to kill Palestinians? They are just statistics, whereas each victim of 9/11 or 7/7 is a tragedy, a story to be told. It’s this type of double standard that inflames the situation; the most obvious one is the preferential treatment given to Israel, who are constantly urged and requested to follow UN directives that has been sitting on the shelf. In sharp contrast, the Muslim countries are bullied and bombed into compliance in the name of UN resolutions. There can be no peace without justice, and the resistance will continue regardless of the death of Osama Bin Laden.

The Abbottabad inquiry: Nawaz Sharif’s Valid Demand

by Nasim Zehra

The PML-N, whose fortunes in the recent months, marked by reactive, angry and dull politics and confronted by Asif Ali Zardari’s incredible political cunning, has been on a downward trajectory. However, in the post-Abbottabad operation period, Nawaz Sharif has responded to the national challenge that now confronts us in a statesmanlike fashion.
Of the following three options to conduct a national inquiry into the fiasco, Nawaz Sharif opted for the third option seeking its execution within a realistic time frame.

Let’s examine all three options to see the merit in the third option

Option 1 is the existing inquiry commission headed by the Adjutant-General which the army had first announced and the prime minister endorsed in his May 9 parliament speech. For obvious reasons such an inquiry, whose primary task would be to hold an investigation on the intelligence and security failure, will have little credibility if the head of the inquiry belongs to the very institution whose performance is in question.

Option 2 could have been a parliamentary commission with representatives from all elected parties. Perhaps the existing bipartisan Parliamentary Committee on National Security could have been tasked to hold the inquiry into the US’s clandestine Abbottabad pperation. While such an option would have been in the spirit of parliamentary politics, in all likelihood there would be no substantive outcome of such an inquiry because most parliamentary parties do not appear to be in the mood of seriously examining Pakistan’s own failures connected to the Abbottabad operation. The statements made by political leaders across the board show they are all satisfied waxing eloquent about violation of our national sovereignty and the opposition parties, including opposition men, JUI, Imran Khan and Shah Mahmood Qureshi asking for the president and the prime minister’s resignation.

The government itself has decided to adopt a hands-off approach on the internal dimension of the Abbottabad operation. The prime minister’s May 9 speech in parliament was a hotchpotch of historical recall about Osama’s evolution, some contradictory statements about the United States’ role and finally a desperate effort to convince the army that there would be no accountability initiated by the civilian government. In fact, in what will go down as one of the most terrible speech of Yousaf Raza Gilani’s political career, he announced that the army’s response to the Abbottabad operation was “adequate” and that while there was complete unity among all national institutions, the media was playing a divisive and negative role! Maybe in his ‘all-praise for the security establishment’ mode, the PM overlooked the fact that the army itself had acknowledged in an ISPR press release that there had been a security and intelligence lapse. Equally interesting was the fact that at instead of standing by the elected prime minister and being present in parliament when he was making an important speech concerning the army, the army chief was visiting garrisons and complaining about lack of information made available to the media and hence to the public. The army chief has been doing the garrison rounds to deal with the restive troops who are raising questions regarding the Abbottabad fiasco. But our prime minister, perhaps tutored by the Foreign Office and the GHQ officials, would have us believe that essentially all is well on the internal front. That there is no need for accountability. Essentially operating in the same vein, it seems that most parties represented in the Parliamentary Committee on National Security, did not deem it necessary to call for the setting up of an independent inquiry commission to investigate the Abbottabad fiasco. Not a word on May 9 from the Committee Chairman, Senator Raza Rabbani, on an inquiry commission when he addressed the media after the committee’s meeting.

Against this backdrop where parliamentarians, either because of how the army has sent packing those who have even talked of holding independent inquiries on military –related fiascos (prime ministers Junejo and Nawaz Sharif over Ojhri Camp and Kargil) or perhaps playing power politics the old way of seeking GHQ support, are in no mood to hold the security establishment accountable, opting for a parliamentary committee would have been a less than wise option. It would have become a casualty of political point-scoring by the politicians.

Option 3 is invoking the Inquiry and Commission Act of 1956, set up a judicial commission to hold an inquiry. The commission demanded by Nawaz Sharif, headed by the CJP with high court CJs as its members and with the authority to call in any office holder or official from any institution perhaps is likely to present a more credible report to the government and to the people of Pakistan. The judicial commission can also call independent security and intelligence experts to enhance its capacity and credibility while conducting the inquiry.

The judicial commission’s report must be made public and the elected government should implement its recommendations.

Perhaps the only criticism of establishing a judicial commission would be that the judiciary is yet again being encouraged to play an expanded role, and this time at the cost of parliament’s role. In principle this maybe correct, but not in substance. In substance, a parliamentary committee would play politics instead of conducting a fair inquiry while the judiciary and especially the CJP, beholden partially to General Kayani for his restoration, would be constrained to opt for fair play. The commission would be in sharp public focus compelling it to competently implement its mandate.

Such a judicial commission set up by the government would obviously not amount to judicial activism but would indeed be viewed as the judiciary performing its constitutional role. The ball is now in the PM’s court. In his Senate speech he had undertaken to consider any proposals made by the opposition to deal with the post-Abbottabad crisis. With the objective of identifying and fixing our own internal institutional and policy-making weaknesses, Nawaz Sharif’s proposal for a judicial commission is worth adopting.

American Journalist Kim Barker Exposes Nawaz Sharif’s Flirtations with Her

Excerpts from “The Taliban Shuffle” by Kim Barker – her interviews with Nawaz Sharif (published by Doubleday):

“With Bhutto gone, I needed to meet the lion of Punjab, or maybe the tiger.

No one seemed to know which feline Nawaz Sharif was nicknamed after. Some fans rode around with stuffed toy lions strapped to their cars. Others talked about the tiger of Punjab. By default, Sharif, a former PM like Bhutto, had become the most popular opposition leader in the
country. He was already the most powerful politician in Punjab, which was the most powerful of Pakistan’s four provinces, home to most of the army leaders and past rulers. Some people described Sharif as the Homer Simpson of Pakistan. Others considered him a right-wing wing nut.

Still others figured he could save the country. Sharif was once considered an invention of the establishment, a protégé of the former military dictator in Pakistan, General Zia, but like all politicians here, he had become a creature of himself. During his second term, Sharif built my favorite road in Pakistan, a hundred and seventy miles of paved, multilaned bliss………..

“One of Sharif’s friends tried to explain him to me: “He might be tilting a
little to the right, but he’s not an extremist. Extremists don’t go do hair
implants. He also loves singing.”
……

“The inside of the house appeared to have been designed by Saudi Arabia—a hodge-podge of crystal chandeliers, silk curtains, gold accents, marble. A verse of the Holy Quran and a carpet with the ninety-nine names of God hung on the walls of Sharif’s receiving room, along with photographs of Sharif with King Abdullah and slain former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Finally I was summoned. “Kim,” Sharif’s media handler said, gesturing toward the ground. “Come.” I hopped up and walked toward the living room, past two raggedy stuffed lions with rose petals near their feet. So maybe Sharif was the lion of Punjab… His press aide tapped his watch, looked at me, and raised his eyebrows. I got the message and proceeded with my questions, as fast as I could. But it soon became clear that this would be unlike any interview I had ever done.

“You’re the only senior opposition leader left in Pakistan. How are you
going to stay safe while campaigning?” In Pakistan, campaigns were not run through TV, and pressing the flesh was a job requirement. Candidates won over voters by holding rallies of tens and hundreds of thousands of people. Even though Sharif was not personally running, his appearance would help win votes for anyone in his party.

Sharif looked at me, sighed, and shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a good
question. What do you think, Kim?”

“I don’t know. I’m not the former PM of Pakistan. So what will you do?”
“Really, I don’t know. What do you think?”

This put me in an awkward position—giving security advice to Nawaz Sharif.

“Well, it’s got to be really difficult. You have these elections coming up. You can’t just sit here at home.”

“What should I do?” he asked. “I can’t run a campaign sitting in my house on the television.”
……

“I stood up. Sharif’s aide was already standing. “I should probably be
going,” I said. “Thanks very much for your time.” “Yes, Mian Sahib’s
schedule is very busy,” Sharif’s handler agreed.

“It’s all right,” Sharif said. “She can ask a few more questions.” I sat
down. I had whipped through most of my important questions, so I recycled them. I asked him whether he was a fundamentalist. Sharif dismissed the idea, largely by pointing to his friendship with the Clintons. I tried to leave again, fearing I was overstaying my welcome. But Sharif said I could ask more questions. “One more,” I said, wary of Sharif’s aide. Then I asked the question that was really on my mind.

“Which are you—the lion or the tiger?”

Sharif didn’t even blink. “I am the tiger,” he said.

“But why do some people call you the lion?”

“I do not know. I am the tiger.”

“But why do you have two stuffed lions?”

“They were a gift. I like them.”
……

“We drove to the next rally. I looked at my BlackBerry and spotted one very interesting e-mail—a Human Rights Watch report, quoting a taped conversation from November between the country’s pro-Musharraf attorney general and an unnamed man. The attorney general had apparently been talking to a reporter, and while on that call, took another call, where he talked about vote rigging. The reporter had recorded the entire conversation. I scanned through the e-mail.

“Nawaz,” I said. I had somehow slipped into calling the former PM by his first name. “have to hear this.” I then performed a dramatic
reading of the message in full, culminating in the explosive direct quote
from the attorney general, recorded the month before Bhutto was killed and just before Sharif flew home… It was unclear what the other man was saying, but Human Rights Watch said the attorney general appeared to be advising him to leave Sharif’s party and get a ticket from “these guys,” the pro-Musharraf party, the massive vote riggers.

Sharif’s aide stared at me openmouthed. “Is that true? I can’t believe
that.” “It’s from Human Rights Watch,” I said. “There’s apparently a tape
recording. Pretty amazing.”

Sharif just looked at me. “How can you get a text message that long on your telephone?”

“It’s an e-mail,” I said, slightly shocked that Sharif was unconcerned about what I had just said. “This is a BlackBerry phone. You can get e-mail on it.”

“Ah, e-mail,” he said. “I must look into this BlackBerry.”
……

“After more than eight years of political irrelevance, Sharif was back. I
sent him a text message and asked him to call. A few hours later, he did,
thrilled with his victory.

“I saw a car today, where a man had glued blankets to it and painted it like a tiger,” I told him at one point. “Really?” he asked. “Yeah. It was a tiger car.”

He paused. “What did you think of the tiger car, Kim? Did you like the tiger car?”

Weird question. I gave an appropriate answer. “Who doesn’t like a tiger
car?”
……
“This time, in a large banquet hall filled with folding chairs and a long
table, Sharif told his aides that he would talk to me alone. At the time, I
barely noticed. We talked about Zardari, but he spoke carefully and said
little of interest, constantly glancing at my tape recorder like it was
radioactive. Eventually, he nodded toward it. “Can you turn that off?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, figuring he wanted to tell me something off the record.

“So. Do you have a friend, Kim?” Sharif asked. I was unsure what he meant.

“I have a lot of friends,” I replied.

“No. Do you have a friend?”

I figured it out.

“You mean a boyfriend?” “Yes.” I looked at Sharif. I had two options—lie, or tell the truth. And because I wanted to see where this line of questioning was going, I told the truth. “I had a boyfriend. We recently broke up.” I nodded my head stupidly, as if to punctuate this thought.

“Why?” Sharif asked. “Was he too boring for you? Not fun enough?”

“Um. No. It just didn’t work out.”

“Oh. I cannot believe you do not have a friend,” Sharif countered.

“No. Nope. I don’t. I did.”

“Do you want me to find one for you?” Sharif asked.

To recap: The militants were gaining strength along the border with

Afghanistan and staging increasingly bold attacks in the country’s cities.
The famed Khyber Pass, linking Pakistan and Afghanistan, was now too
dangerous to drive. The country appeared as unmoored and directionless as a headless chicken. And here was Sharif, offering to find me a friend. Thank God the leaders of Pakistan had their priorities straight.  ”Sure. Why not?” I said.

The thought of being fixed up on a date by the former prime minister of
Pakistan, one of the most powerful men in the country and, at certain
points, the world, proved irresistible. It had true train-wreck potential.
……
“In the sitting room, I immediately turned on my tape recorder and rattled off questions. Was Sharif at the negotiations? What was happening? He denied being at any meetings, despite press reports to the contrary. I pushed him.

He denied everything. I wondered why he let me drive all this way, if he
planned to tell me nothing. At least I’d get free food.

He looked at my tape recorder and asked me to turn it off. Eventually I
obliged. Then Sharif brought up his real reason for inviting me to lunch.

“Kim. I have come up with two possible friends for you.”

At last. “Who?”

He waited a second, looked toward the ceiling, then seemingly picked the top name from his subconscious. “The first is Mr. Z.”

That was disappointing. Sharif definitely was not taking this project
seriously. “Zardari? No way. That will never happen,” I said.

“What’s wrong with Mr. Zardari?” Sharif asked. “Do you not find him
attractive?”

Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, was slightly shorter than me and sported slicked-back hair and a mustache, which he was accused of dying black right after his wife was killed, right before his first press conference. On many levels, I did not find Zardari attractive. I would have preferred celibacy.

But that wasn’t the point. Perhaps I could use this as a teaching moment.

“He is the president of Pakistan. I am a journalist. That would never
happen.”

“He is single.” Very true—but I didn’t think that was a good enough reason.

“I can call him for you,” Sharif insisted. I’m fairly certain he was joking.

“I’m sure he has more important things to deal with,” I replied.

“OK. No Mr. Z. The second option, I will discuss with you later,” he said.

That did not sound promising.
……

“I needed to get out of there. “I have to go.”

“First, come for a walk with me outside, around the grounds. I want to show you Raiwind.”

“No. I have to go. I have to go to Afghanistan tomorrow.”

Sharif ignored that white lie and started to talk about where he wanted to
take me. “I would like to take you for a ride in the country, and take you
for lunch at a restaurant in Lahore, but because of my position, I cannot.”
……

“Once the interview was finished, Sharif looked at me. “Can you ask your
translator to leave?” he asked. “I need to talk to you.” My translator
looked at me with a worried forehead wrinkle. “It’s OK,” I said. He left.

Sharif then looked at my tape recorder. “Can you turn that off?” I obliged.

“I have to go,” I said. “I have to write a story.”

He ignored me. “I have bought you an iPhone,” he said.

“I can’t take it.”

“Why not? It is a gift.”

“No. It’s completely unethical, you’re a source.”

“But we are friends, right?” I had forgotten how Sharif twisted the word
“friend.”

“Sure, we’re friendly, but you’re still the former prime minister of

Pakistan and I can’t take an iPhone from you,” I said.

“But we are friends,” he countered. “I don’t accept that. I told you I was
buying you an iPhone.”

“I told you I couldn’t take it. And we’re not those kind of friends.”

He tried a new tactic. “Oh, I see. Your translator is here, and you do not
want him to see me give you an iPhone. That could be embarrassing for you.”

Exasperated, I agreed. “That’s it.”

He then offered to meet me the next day, at a friend’s apartment in Lahore, to give me the iPhone and have tea. No, I said. I was going to Faridkot. Sharif finally came to the point. “Kim. I am sorry I was not able to find you a friend. I tried, but I failed.” He shook his head, looked genuinely sad about the failure of the project.

“That’s OK,” I said. “Really. I don’t really want a friend right now. I am
perfectly happy without a friend. I want to be friendless.”

He paused. And then, finally, the tiger of Punjab pounced. “I would like to be your friend.”I didn’t even let him get the words out. “No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen.”

“Hear me out.” He held his hand toward me to silence my negations as he made his pitch. He could have said anything—that he was a purported billionaire who had built my favorite road in Pakistan, that he could buy me a power plant or build me a nuclear weapon. But he opted for honesty.

“I know, I’m not as tall as you’d like,” Sharif explained. “I’m not as fit
as you’d like. I’m fat, and I’m old. But I would still like to be your
friend.”

“No,” I said. “No way.”

He then offered me a job running his hospital, a job I was eminently
unqualified to perform. “It’s a huge hospital,” he said. “You’d be very good at it.” He said he would only become PM again if I were his
secretary. I thought about it for a few seconds—after all, I would probably soon be out of a job. But no. The new position’s various positions would not be worth it.

Eventually, I got out of the tiger’s grip, but only by promising that I
would consider his offer. Otherwise, he wouldn’t let me leave. I jumped into the car, pulled out my tape recorder, and recited our conversation. Samad shook his head. My translator put his head in his hands. “I’m embarrassed for my country,” he said.

After that, I knew I could never see Sharif again. I was not happy about this—I liked Sharif. In the back of my mind, maybe I had hoped he would come through with a possible friend, or that we could have kept up our banter, without an iPhone lurking in the closet. But now I saw him as just another sad case, a recycled has-been who squandered his country’s adulation and hope, who thought hitting on a foreign journalist was a smart move. Which it clearly wasn’t.”

Mukhtaran Mai serves Legal Notice to Dunya TV

 Barrister Masroor Shah, lawyer of Mukhtar Mai has sent legal notice to National Communications Services (SMC) Pvt Ltd carrying business of Dunya TV as well as Mian Amir Mehmood (Chairman and CEO), Mubashar Lucman (anchor), Mian Ghaffar (journalist), Hafeezullah Niazi (journalist) and producer of “Khari Baat – Lucman k saath”.

“That on 21st April 2011, a talk show namely “Khari Baat” was televised on Dunya TV.

Apart from having Mr Mubashar Lucman as the anchor person of the show, two other persons namely Hafeezullah Niazi and Mian Ghaffar were invited as guests in the defamatory program”

The thrust of the program, led by the strange looking Lucman was that  General Musharaf was right in stating that Pakistani women themselves want to get raped or at least level allegations to that effect solely to get publicity and obtain nationalities of western countries.

Karma: But Have the Pakistanis Done to Deserve This?

Once there was a sweeper in a well known temple and he was sincere and devoted.

Every time he saw thousands of devotees coming to worship the Lord, he thought that the Lord is standing all the time and giving help and He must be feeling tired.

So one day innocently he asked the Lord whether he can take the place of the Lord for a day so that the Lord can have some relief and rest.

The deity of the Temple replied, “I do not mind taking a break.

I will transform you like Myself, but you must do one thing.

You must just stand here like Me, smile at everyone and just give benedictions.

Do not interfere with anything and do not say anything.

Remember you are the deity and you just have faith that I have a master plan for everything.”

The sweeper agreed to this.

The next day the sweeper took the position of the deity and a rich man came and prayed to the Lord.

He offered a nice donation and prayed that his business should be prosperous.

While going, the rich man inadvertently left his wallet full of money right there.

Just then a poor man came and he put one coin in the bowl and said that it was all he could afford and he prayed to the Lord that he should continue to be engaged in the Lord’s service.

He also said that his family was in dire need of some basic needs but he left it to the good hands of the Lord to give some solution.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the wallet left by the rich man.

The poor man thanked the Lord for His kindness and took the wallet.

The sweeper in the form of the deity could not say anything and he had to just keep smiling.

At that point a sailor walked in.

He prayed for his safe journey as he was going on a long trip.

Just then the rich man came with the police and said that somebody has stolen his wallet and seeing the sailor there, he asked the police to arrest him thinking that he might have taken it.

Now the sweeper in the form of deity wanted to say that the sailor is not the thief but he could not say so and he became greatly frustrated.

The sailor looked at the Lord and asked why he, an innocent person, is being punished.

The rich man looked at the Lord and thanked Him for finding the thief.

The sweeper in the deity form could no more tolerate it, and he thought that even if the real Lord had been here, he would have definitely interfered, and hence he started speaking and said that the sailor is not the thief but it was the poor man who took away the wallet. The rich man was very thankful as was the sailor.

In the night, the real Lord came and He asked the sweeper how the day was.

The sweeper said, “I thought it would be easy, but now I know that Your days are not easy, but I did one good thing.”

Then he explained the whole episode to the Lord.

The Lord became upset on hearing this whereas the sweeper thought the Lord would appreciate him for the good deed done.

The Lord asked, “Why did you not just stick to the plan?

You had no faith in Me.

Do you think that I do not understand the hearts of all those who come here?

All the donations which the rich man gave was all stolen money and it is only a fraction of what he really has and he wants Me to reciprocate unlimitedly.

The single coin offered by the poor man was the last coin he had and he gave it to Me out of faith.

The sailor might not have done anything wrong, but if the sailor were to go in the ship that night he was about to die because of bad weather and instead if he is arrested he would be in the jail and he would have been saved from a greater calamity.

The wallet should go to the poor man because he will use it in My service.

I was going to reduce the rich man’s karma also by doing this and save the sailor also.

But you cancelled everything because you thought you know My plan and you made your own plans.”

Moral  -  God has plans and justice for everyone….we just have to have patience!

Control The Sense of Direction While We Act

The forces, which interact to produce the phenomena of world history and geography: souls, matter and the Supreme Soul (God), are threaded by the law of karma. When there is mental communion (connection) with the Supreme, the soul’s relationship with matter changes. This means that the internal love-link that the soul has with the Supreme is reflected in the performance of the soul in the material world and in the degree to which the soul has mastery over matter; firstly over the sense organs of the body and through that, over the colors, shapes and sounds of the material world.

We have continually sought to understand which way to act, but have lost our sense of direction for various reasons:

• We forgot that we were soul-actors.

• We became lost on the world stage.

• We became over-identified with our costumes the physical body.

• We lost sight of the story of the drama.

• We forgot that we were residents of the soul world.

• Due to body-consciousness the soul severed (broke) its subtle connection with the Supreme Soul.

Pakistan Has One of the Highest Oral Cancer Rates

The people of Pakistan appear to remain unaware that paan (betel leaf), sweetened betel nuts, or chaalia, is addictive and could result in mouth cancer.

Medical experts say the incidence of oral cancer is 2-4 percent in Europe but as high as 40 percent in the Indo-Pakistani sub-continent, due to the use of betel nuts, betel leaves and related products.
The two tiny plastic packets cost only Rs1 (about US$0.01). Sometimes the paan seller, who wraps up the glossy, heart-shaped betel leaves with various ingredients to sell to his customers, hands over a few packets of chaalia for free.

A fungus released by the betel nuts is known to contain a toxin that doctors believe give rise to cancer.

“I have seen children as young as 12 years with cancerous mouth sores. Others suffer problems which make it hard for them to open their mouths fully. Dentists can pick up these problems early, but visits to dentists are rare here,” said a family medical practitioner who works at a charitable clinic in a low-income area of Karachi.

A 2009 study found that while 96 percent of the 370 children between the ages of 10 and 16 years surveyed were aware of the harmful effects of chaalia, its use remained widespread due to the low cost of the product, a liking for its taste and social acceptability. Children as young as four were known to consume betel products.

“I love to suck on a piece of chaalia or hold it under my tongue,” Asif Pervaiz, 8, said. His father, Muhammad Din, a carpenter, said he was aware of the harmful effects of betel products, but could not persuade his son to stop using them, despite forbidding him from doing so, as “they are so easily available and so many children use them all the time”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the use of smokeless tobacco is a culturally acceptable habit in Pakistan. Studies from Karachi have shown that 21 percent of men and 12 percent of women use betel.

For both men and women, 7.3 percent use pan, 6.7 percent chaalia, 7.5 percent gutka, 14.6 percent naswar, while the use of betel and chewing tobacco is 20 percent and 17 percent respectively. In medical students, the rate of use was reported as 6.4 percent, while among primary-school children, the use of areca and betel was 74 percent and 35 percent respectively.

WHO noted the rate of oral cancer in Pakistanis higher than in other countries in its Eastern Mediterraneanregion and is more prevalent among certain communities.

Certain groups use betel more often than others, due to cultural factors. Early diagnosis is the key to successful treatment, but since access to medical care is limited amongst poorer communities, the cancer is often not detected till it is too late and the cancer has spread.
Chaalia also poses other risks: accidental inhalation of the small nut by children is common, according to media reports and poses a risk of death.

The government needs to create more knowledge about the risks of betel. The nuts must not be sold to children. I have seen mouth cancer cases and the end stages are extremely unpleasant.

Since 9/11, Pak has received nearly $20 Billion in US Aid

A recent update released says that US funding to Pakistanhas more than doubled since President Obama took office in 2009. In fiscal 2010 US gave nearly $4.3 billion to Pakistan, up from about $3 billion in 2009 and $2 billion in 2008. The USfiscal year runs from October to September.
This updated information was collated by Congressional Research Service (CRS), associated with the US Congress. The CRS briefs are not available in the public domain, but this document has been published by Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a nonprofit peace advocacy group.

After the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, lawmakers in Washington have been questioning the wisdom of the US policy of providing financial aid to Pakistan.

For fiscal 2011, US state department has till date not released country-specific estimates under the Continuing Resolution, a law that allows spending to continue while US Congress and President hammer out a compromise.

With these new figures, the total financial aid received by Pakistan since fiscal 2002 — that is, after 9/11 — adds up to a whopping $20 billion. This is more than the aid Pakistan received from the US in the preceding half century. Between 1947 and 2000, Pakistan received about $12 billion from the US.

The latest information shows that between 2002 and 2010, Pakistan received over $13 billion as “security related” assistance and about $6 billion as economic assistance.

K Alan Kronstadt, specialist in South Asian Affairs at CRS says in that Congress has appropriated $1.6 billion under Coalition Support Funds for 2011, while President Obama has requested $1.75 billion for the same head for 2012.

For a decade now, theUShas been pouring money intoPakistanin the form of both military and economic aid. It should be clear by now that the money is not being used for the intended purposes, as repeated audits by the US itself have revealed. Surely it is time theUSdemanded some accountability. Hard questions need to be asked ofPakistanand further aid must be made conditional on enforceable guarantees that the money will be used only for legitimate purposes set out by those giving the aid. A workable monitoring mechanism must be put in place to ensure that happens.

Germany Will Become Islamic State, Says Chancellor Merkel

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.

“Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants,” Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. “For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.”

Germany, with a population of 4-5 million Muslims, has been divided in recent weeks by a debate over remarks by the Bundesbank’s Thilo Sarrazin, who argued Turkish and Arab immigrants were failing to integrate and were swampingGermany with a higher birth rate.

The Chancellor’s remarks represent the first official acknowledgement that Germany, like other European countries, is destined to become a stronghold of Islam. She has admitted that the country will soon become a stronghold.

In France, 30% of children age 20 years and below are Muslims. The ratio in Paris and Marseille has soared to 45%. In southern France, there are more mosques than churches.

The situation within the United Kingdom is not much different. In the last 30 years, the Muslim population there has climbed from 82,000 to 2.5 million. Presently, there are over 1000 mosques throughout Great Britain – - many of which were converted from churches.

InBelgium, 50% of the newborns are Muslims and reportedly its Islamic population hovers around 25%. A similar statistic holds true for The Netherlands.

It’s the same story in Russia where one in five inhabitants is a Muslim.

Muammar Gaddafi recently stated that “There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without sword, without gun, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists; we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50 plus million Muslims (in Europe) will turn it into the Muslim Continent within a few decades.”

The numbers support him.

The question is where will all the rich Muslims will go for holidays during the summer once Europe also become a stronghold of Islam?

Osama’s Wives

Osama bin Laden once told an interviewer, “Believe me, when your children and your wife become part of your struggle, life becomes enjoyable.”

The late al-Qaeda chief uttered those words before 9/11, when he was able to keep his four wives and many children living comfortably in separate houses across Afghanistan. Every few weeks or so, Osama would drop in on a wife to fulfill his husbandly duties.

But at the end, his rosy portrayal of being married to jihad was sorely tested. His family must have driven him nuts. During his last days in Abbottabad, Osama had to contend with three wives and 17 noisy children under one roof. He had no escape from the din, save for furtive pacing around the garden late at night or vanishing into his so-called Command and Control Center, a dank, windowless room.

Osama, the world’s most wanted terrorist, was also a family man.

An Arab woman married to an al-Qaeda fighter said after 9/11, that Osama and his lieutenants made provisions for their families to flee the impending NATO invasion of Afghanistan. His youngest wife, Amal Ahmed al-Sadah, may have escaped to Yemen via Pakistan, while Osama’s other wives are thought to have fled through Iran. But the terrorist got lonely. After setting up camp in Pakistan and breaking his own orders, he summoned back three wives: the most recent addition, al-Sadah, plus two Saudi women he’d wed in the 1980s. The Saudis were mature, educated women — Khairiah Sabar was a child psychologist and Siham Sabar a teacher of Arabic grammar. (They converted a room in the Abbottabad compound into a classroom.) Osama had been their husband for 25 and 27 years, respectively.U.S. counter-terrorism experts, who are eager to interrogate the wives, now in Pakistani custody, will surely want to know how al-Qaeda smuggled the boss’s wives and their kids to Abbottabad to ease his solitude.

Under Islam, polygamy is allowed but only if the husband is able to treat all his wives equally. Muslim law also states that a man may have only four wives at a time.

Osama married six times, but one marriage ended in divorce and the other was annulled. While inAfghanistan, the wives were able to steer clear of one another. According to a 2002 interview that “AS,” presumed to be al-Sadah, gave to the magazine Al Majalla, the women “did not live in one house. Each wife lived in her own house. There were two wives in Kandahar, each with her own house. The third wife had a house in Kabul, and the fourth in the Tora Bora mountains.” Even then, a polygamous family is not without its frictions. When al-Sadah joined the growing clan in 2000, “Osama’s other wives were upset, and even his mother chastised him,” according to Lawrence Wright, journalist and author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

Judging by the blueprints of the Abbottabad compound, Osama tried to keep his three families separate but equal. Each wife and her children were allotted their own floor, and Osama would spend time with each group. When U.S. Navy SEALs raided the compound, they found Osama on the third floor with al-Sadah. Initial White House accounts say she was shot in the leg while trying to shield her husband.

In all, Osama had six wives.

Wife No. 1: Najwa Ghanem, a Syrian and a first cousin, was 15 when she married Osama, scarcely two years her elder. Back then, Osama was a rich and well-connected Saudi youth, and Ghanem had every reason to believe she was destined for a cushy life of luxury. Instead, she ended up raising 11 children on the run, struggling to keep her good looks in the scorching deserts of Afghanistan. (Osama didn’t believe in air conditioning or iced drinks, say his former comrades.) After 9/11, she fledAfghanistan with a mentally disabled son and is thought to have returned to her nativeSyria. Still married at the time of Osama’s death, she is technically his fourth widow, although she is not in custody.

Wife No. 2: Khadijah Sharif was a teacher and nine years older than Osama when they were wed in 1983. She reportedly bore him three children before they were divorced sometime between 1993 and 1996, when they were living inSudan and Osama fell afoul of the Saudi regime.

Wife No. 3: Khairiah Sabar, whom Osama wed in 1985, was the “spiritual mother” of the sprawling family, according to a woman who knew the Osamas inAfghanistan. “She was very openhearted. Everybody went to her for advice,” she says. This source claims that after 9/11, Sabar fled through Iran, where she was detained under house arrest before the Iranians allowed her to return toSaudi Arabia. From there, she slipped back intoPakistan to rejoin the al-Qaeda chief in Abbottabad.

Wife No. 4: Siham Sabar, who was also captured in the Abbottabad house, wed Osama in 1987. Militant sources say that after 9/11, she may have slipped into Pakistan, remaining there in hiding until it was safe for her to answer her husband’s summons. Wife No. 5: Osama’s fifth marriage is a mystery. He rashly wed a woman of unknown nationality in Khartoum in 1994, but the marriage was annulled before it was consummated within 48 hours.

Wife No. 6: Amal Ahmed al-Sadah may have been as young as 15 when a $5,000 price was paid to her Yemeni family before she was shipped off to marry Osama, nearly 30 years her elder, in Kandahar. Wed in 2000, they had one daughter, Safiyah, who was allegedly in the bedroom with her father and mother when the Navy SEALs shot him dead.

So far, Pakistan has not charged Osama’s three widows of any crime. Pakistan has said it will eventually expel the three to Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and will grant direct access to US interrogators when the trio “is ready.”

As for useful intelligence information, an Arab woman with ties to al-Qaeda said that al-Qaeda militants aren’t big on pillow talk. “They tend not to tell their wives anything about their operations,” she says. Hamid Mir, who interviewed Osama in 1997, recalls, “Osama once told me men should never share their secrets with women.” Nevertheless, these three women all have vital stories to tell of how al-Qaeda’s network in Pakistan managed to smuggle them back to their forlorn terrorist husband and keep them hidden for so long. As widows, under Islam, they are free to marry again, if they wish. But few suitors are likely to step forward. Marrying the widow of the world’s most wanted man has its own complications. 

The U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama and removed a bonanza of documents and flash drives may have left behind a vital source of intelligence:

The story of how Osama’s wife Amal Ahmed al-Sadah found her way back to Osama’s hideout in Pakistan from Yemen could well have revealed crucial clues as to whether Pakistani authorities had been aware of the al-Qaeda leader’s presence in their country. And ifU.S.officials had been tracking her at the time, they might have found Osama sooner.

The White House says that al-Sadah, 24, was shot in the calf when she charged at the SEALs who burst into Osama’s bedroom, presumably to protect her husband. Osama’s body was taken away for burial in the Arabian Sea. But al-Sadah was left behind, along with her young daughter Safiyah, who Pakistani officials say witnessed her father’s killing. It is not clear how many of the dozen other children in the compound were Osama’s. Pakistani officials say Osama’s wife and daughter are now recovering in a military hospital in Rawalpindi, and they have released al-Sadah’s passport photograph. The photo shows a pale young woman with generous lips. In accordance with Islamic convention, her face is framed by a headscarf and she is wearing no lipstick or makeup. In 2002, al-Sadah reportedly gave an interview to a Saudi woman’s magazine, Al Majalla, in which she explained how, after the 9/11 attacks, she made her way out ofAfghanistan back toYemen with assistance from Pakistani officials.

Osama’s widow told her Saudi interviewer at the time, “When the U.S. bombing ofAfghanistanstarted, we moved to a mountainous area with some children and lived in one of the caves for two months until one of his sons came with a group of tribesmen and took us with them. I did not know that we were going toPakistanuntil they handed us over to the Pakistani government.”

Parts of that account were confirmed by an Arab woman who prefers not to be identified but who knew Osama personally inAfghanistanand whose family formed part of al-Qaeda’s inner circle. After 9/11, al-Qaeda’s leadership decided to evacuate their families. “All the families had to leaveAfghanistanswiftly,” the Arab woman said. “They didn’t want their women and children captured.” However, one of Osama’s former aides inYemeninsists that al-Sadah never reached home.

After Osama’s young bride — al-Sadah was then 19 — was turned over to the Pakistani authorities, she and Safiyah were released and allowed to fly home to Ibb, a town not far from Sana’a,Yemen’s capital, where her father worked as a minor civil servant.

But Osama somehow arranged for al-Sadah to rejoin him and his kids inPakistan. In her magazine interview, she was asked if she would return to her fugitive husband. Her enigmatic reply: “Let us see what happens.” Pakistani press quoted officials as saying that al-Sadah claimed to have been living with Osama in the Abbottabad safe house for five years.

With the benefit of hindsight, it seems thatU.S.counterterrorism experts spent years trying to decipher the name and the whereabouts of Osama’s elusive courier, when keeping tabs on his comely young wife might have led them to him sooner.

Then there’s the question of whether Pakistani authorities had been aware that Osama’s wife had returned to their country. Robert Grenier, a former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and a security expert, says it’s not impossible to imagine that the Pakistanis could have let al-Sadah leave the country and failed to detect her return. “The Pakistanis would want to get her back home,” Grenier says. “There are cultural taboos that come up with women. They certainly wouldn’t facilitate her interrogation by foreigners.”

So far,Pakistanis refusing to letU.S.officials anywhere near al-Sadah, who is under guard at a hospital. Chances are that won’t change — cultural taboos aside, she may know too many uncomfortable truths. Pakistan’s army chief, General Kayani, said on May 5 that Pakistan is ordering all but the “minimum essential” U.S. personnel to leave the country, a sign that the tense relations between Pakistan and the U.S. have worsened as a result of the Abbottabad raid.

Pakistan‘s security establishment has long been accused of playing a double game: taking billions in U.S. aid while secretly backing select jihadi militants in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s tribal region. Even al-Qaeda types were expected to play ball. Says the Arab woman formerly connected to al-Qaeda: “There was an understanding with the Pakistani army. We would get a tip-off that the army planned to raid one of our houses in the tribal area. We would flee but leave some ‘evidence’ behind so that the army could show to the Americans that we’d been there.”

CIA Director Leon Panetta said this week that “either the Pakistanis were involved or incompetent. Neither is a good place to be.” But Grenier suggests a more complex scenario: “I’m not giving an alibi for the Pakistanis, but it’s virtually inconceivable that Osama and those close to him would have voluntarily allowed their presence to be known by Pakistani officials, especially given the large number of his followers captured by Pakistan. We don’t trust the Pakistanis. Why should he?” On the other hand, he adds, “If his whereabouts were discovered by the Pakistani officials, I can envision them saying, ‘He’s keeping a low profile, and if we turn him over to the Americans, it will create a real firestorm for us.’ “

Al-Sadah may be said to have leaped to her husband’s defense during the SEAL raid, but her acquaintance interviewed remembers her as being shy and meek when she was first brought to Kandahar in 2000 and was staying with one of Osama’s other wives. “She was new. She was out of place. The sheik’s other wives were much older than she was. So were many of his sons,” the source claims.

Al-Sadah became Osama’s fifth wife. His first never got over the fact that the billionaire’s son she married preferred a simple hut in Afghanistanto a palace back home. In 2000, Osama sent a trusted Yemeni aide, Abual Fida, on the hunt for a new bride. As Fida later told an interviewer, Osama wanted his new wife to be “religious, generous, well brought up, quiet, calm and young enough not to feel jealous of the sheik’s other wives.”

Despite the huge age gap between al-Sadah and Osama, her family considered it an honor to marry off their daughter to him. The al-Qaeda chief reportedly paid $5,000 in jewelry and clothes for his teenage bride, who was then brought to Afghanistan to marry the grizzled warrior — already on the U.S. most-wanted list for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. “To me, it’s astonishing that she came back to join him inPakistan,” says the source with former ties to al-Qaeda. “None of the other fighters brought back their wives.” But did the Pakistani authorities know that she had returned fromYemen? With Osama’s wife now in Pakistani custody, the White House won’t find out anytime soon.

Tim McGirk is a fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s investigative reporting program.