1 Billion Rupees for Flood Relief - not Monument Petition

We need 1 billion for flood relief and rehabilitation, for people of Pakistan. spending of Rs.1 Billion of our money on a monument at this time, is clearly inappropriate, and is actually an insult to our 21.6 million fellow countrymen when we should be using all our country’s resources to help them.
Participate in the petition being signed online and speak out.

1 Billion Rupees for Flood Relief - not Monument Petition

The Hare with many Friends

I despise nepotism and I am very vocal about it. But this does not mean that mere equality means turning a blind eye towards loved ones, especially towards those whom you look upto for every step in life.
So let me add another blog wheeler who is my best pal, fatherly figure, biggest critic and enjoys being pestered around by me. Content quality, vigilent and well thought out blogpost.
A mutual guarantee that both of us are blessed with the 'inability to express our feeling through heart sinking, husky voiced utube videos'.
So I say, Hit it!

Visit:
http://avisoadee.wordpress.com

Damn you Muslims, get off my lawn...(One of the best articles I have read so far and would recommend all to read.)

Damn you Muslims, get off my lawn

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

This much we know: America needs its demons. We need our enemies, our menacing and dark-eyed nemesis, that foreign and terrifying thing we do not understand and against which we must rally and wail, push and pule, fight and destroy.

This is, as the legend goes, how we define ourselves, how we give our tribe and its happily flawed capitalist/Christian system meaning, purpose and a reason to kill anyone who dares to disagree. Too young as a country to know ourselves at any depth, too mal-educated to have any real and lasting confidence, we just lash and burn, too afraid to shut up and hear the quiet roar of our own grand irrelevance. Same as it ever was? Like you even have to ask.

Communists. Arabs. The Japanese. Blacks. Native Americans. Hippies. Gays. "Gooks." Immigrants. Chinamen. The poor. Women. Teenagers. Vegans. Science. What's the problem with this nation? What's really eating at our soul and threatening our honest love of an angry God, apple pie and giant homoerotic firearms? It ain't us. It's them. They're trying to mess with our heads, steal our freedom, impregnate our virgins, poison the water supply. Damn them to hell, and where's my shotgun?

It's in this fine American tradition that we devolve yet another notch, as we can't help but notice, on this recently passed anniversary of 9/11, yet another wretched legacy of the Dark Days of Bush, another scar, another sickness, another sociocultural STD left to us during our nation's bleakest period in modern history, a hateful little nodule of moral cancer known as rampant anti-Muslim sentiment.

Have you heard? It's the latest thing, the easiest target. Islam is now the most convenient demon available given the notable absence of all those tangible demons of yore. As evidenced by the New York furor over a proposed Islamic center to be built near Ground Zero, the tiny, rabid sects of radical fundamentalists who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks are just not good enough anymore. There simply aren't enough of them, and they live way over there, in caves, in mystery, in places we cannot spell. Plus, most of them are probably dead.

We need to expand. Why not believe the panicky media, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party dinkbuttons? Why not ignore all common sense and nuanced understanding, and instead broaden our hate to include an entire ancient religion, over a billion believers strong? That way, we'll never run out of evil. Hey, we're nothing if not resourceful. Most Republicans believe our own president is one of Them, despite how he's been a Christian his entire life. Neat!

See, in the new American mindset, all Muslims are secret Al Queda sympathizers. All lovers of Allah want America to burn, Christians to suffer and innocent white children to be stoned to death for dancing in public while eating a Happy Meal. All swarthy foreign types, even if they've lived here since birth, even if they are your nicest possible neighbor, even if they smile at you every day, actually believe violence is the truest way to heaven, where hordes of nubile virgins await and everyone can finally eat a ham sandwich. Hey, Muhammad said so, right there in the Koran! Someone should burn that damnable thing.

No matter what Obama says in his impassioned plea for empathy and tolerance, the very last thing America needs is subtle thinking, a deep understanding that we are, by definition and Constitution, a great melting pot of multiple religions and faiths, that in any given urban apartment multiplex you'll find not only multiple Muslims but also Jews, Catholics, atheists, Jainists, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, Wiccans, recovering Mormons, even silly Scientologists and their funny little hats. To hell with that. Far too confusing.

By the way, if you would like to pause and offer deep thanks to the source of this anti-Muslim rage, you may now bow in the direction not only of Bush, but of one Dick "Black Soul" Cheney and his flying monkeys led by Karl Rove, who planted the seed during the time of the Axis of Evil, all about fake WMD and the bogus demonization of Iraq, effortlessly manipulating the panicky media and turning America's deepest tragedy into a seething outpouring of mistrust not merely for a handful of extremist dirtballs, but for all members of one of the great religions of the world.

The sentiment has since grown in fits and farts and boozy burps, fanned by Rush Limbaugh's moron Dittoheads, Glenn Beck's gullible simpletons, and of course, the Tea Party, perhaps the first significant political movement entirely dependent on our failing educational system to survive. Truly, the Tea Party might just be the dumbest gaggle of humans ever to rally around a nonsensical, as-yet-unstated worldview no one can quite spell out. Because they have no clue what the hell it is.

But they do know one thing. They are against a general Islamic takeover of America, Wal-Mart and NASCAR. They do not want their wives forced to wear a burka. They do not want to have to walk all the way to Mecca. Where is that, like, in Peru or something?

And of course, they are dead-set against the construction of that Islamic community center three blocks away from Ground Zero, on the site of a former Burlington Coat Factory, right next to skanky strip clubs and Subways and camera shops owned by, uh, Muslims and Jews and the Chinese. Because all Muslims are the same, is why. Sort of like you and I protesting, say, the construction of a Catholic church within a mile of an elementary school.

Did you know there was a Muslim prayer room inside Tower #2? Did you know many practicing Muslim-Americans died when the towers came down? It's OK. Neither did the Tea Party. Far too confusing.

Do not misunderstand: the Muslim faith, being enormous and multifaceted and therefore home to millions of beautiful, mild-mannered, humble practitioners as well as some of the most ridiculous, violent, hateful extremists in the known galaxy, is plenty deserving of scorn and derision. It is, in this way, no different than any dogmatic organized religion throughout time and history. Why let Mormons, Christians and the Catholic Church have all the fun?

Wait, did I say this enemy-invention thing was an American tradition? Far from it. Demonization of the Other as a means to boorish, violent nationalism is universal to nearly all cultures, all nations worldwide. We are, you can say, a planet of self-righteous, petulant tribes, claiming this or that strip of dirt, crying that God chose us as his most favorite, flinging feces at each other like deranged monkeys, signifying nothing. Ain't it grand?

Maybe in this greater truth, we can find a hint of reassurance. This too shall pass. The Islamic center will or won't be built, the media frenzy will die down, the Tea Party will self-flagellate itself through the mid-term elections, and suddenly no one will care about Muslims anymore because, well, we are an ADHD culture. We grow bored so easily. We gotta keep it fresh. We gotta feed the voracious 24-hour news cycle. No one can hold the title of Enemy No. 1 for very long. Praise Allah for that.

Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/09/15/notes091510.DTL

'what was once wrong is now simply unconventional...What is tolerated soon becomes accepted.

"The anchors of moral behaviour appear to have dragged to such depths that they no longer hold firm the ship of life: what was once wrong is now simply unconventional, and for the sake of individual freedom must be tolerated. What is tolerated soon becomes accepted. Contrarily, what was once right is now viewed as outdated, old fashioned and is often the target of ridicule."

These are words from speech of His Highness Aga Khan (IV) in 1976 at First seerat conference in Karachi, Pakistan.

At that time, Pakistan was riding high and the success of the first Muslim Summit Conference was still in the air and people were still open to some sensible debate. The arab leader praying together in Pakistan during the Islamic summit were still flashing on TV screens declaring Muslims as one united wall.

Today after mere 33 years we are not only struggling to steer our daily lives from the chaos and terror rather we have become insensitive, wooden and living savages for our fellow human beings.

This didn't happen in one or two years, not even five. The over indulgence in the Afghan war, the mullaism, the moral brigade, fluctuating tolereance for sectoral faith and vested interest protector of America washed off our abilities to see the dark thick line of falling and failing society and individual standards.

Yesterday we cursed taliban for brutality in swat, today we dig our hand in blood of neighbouring kids and watch the brutality with ease. We protect the savages to let them loose to inflict pain on other but never imagine the same inflicting pain to our loved ones.

No words for the people watching the brutal murder and for the law enforcement agencies. Another flank for hall of shame for government after this: http://tribune.com.pk/story/45537/%E2%80%98mughees-and-muneeb-were-not-robbers%E2%80%99/


The incident of Sialkot was still fresh in mind when Lahore trembles with ruthless multiple attack on Shia Mourning processions http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/06-religious-procession-attacked-in-lahore-triple-terror-blasts-leave-27-dead-290-rs-02

What we hold for future is something philosophical to discuss but what shocks at present is already ragged fabric of society, humanity and justice torn into pieces every passing day to the extent that Pakistanis may be the first nation to face the dangers of extinction by killing each others. Let alone following the Muslim tradition of honesty, integrity or tolerance we have surpassed the limits of sanity and indulged in savagely drenching our teeth in blood of our own brothers.

Sadly the time for 'chiheye', 'we should' or 'lets unite' kind of slogans has even passed and I have no conclusion for this horrible nightmares, seen in open day light getting scarier at each passing day. However I do wish that we on individual level can atleast hold on to the sane common laws of humanity, tolerance and wisdom if not for the country at least for the community that surrounds us.