For 7 Years They Tortured Me Without a Reason They Believed In

Saad Iqbal. Photo be Akhtar Soomro for The NY Times

"C.I.A forgot what Egyption and Indonesian intelligence had caught me for," tells Saad Iqbal who faced 7 years in the custody of American government (precisely, C.I.A, is it not of American Govt.?) in Guantánamo 'without any charge'. And, of course not without most brutal, barbaric, indescrible physical, as well psychological punishment and torture. He had been freed recently from the infamous, and without doubt, heinous and a disgrace for any American, Guillotine, oh sorry, Guantánamo.

Mr. Saad Iqbal is a professional Koran (Holy book of Muslims/Islam) reader. You must be curious for what sin did American govt. kept him in their hellish custody. Well they forgave him then as they do him now for he didn't commit any crime/sin against them. Yes, they admit this today as they did then. The NY Times reports, "Mr. Iqbal was arrested early in 2002 in Jakarta, Indonesia, after boasting to members of an Islamic group that he knew how to make a shoe bomb, according to two senior American officials who were in Jakarta at the time."

Mr. Iqbal insists he never made this statement. If it had been true, let's presume, he must have been asked in the Gilloutine, I beg your pardon again, Guantánamo. Yeah! he wasn't! But, C.I.A during the torture begged him to admit that he did met what Mr. Iqbal called as OBL and other important things.

There is even more interesting matter in this story. Hot news. Academians must be interested, the psychologists, doctors etc, etc. They must be feeling in heavens as they have found a fresh object known as ex-datinee whose memory is bruised yet fresh with the types and kinds of tortures he had to bear - in short Mr. Saad Iqbal. They might like to listen to him. 

But, very curiously Mr. Iqbal has no desire for revenge to Americans as he said, “I feel ashamed what the Americans did to me in this period.” Yet, he believes (very, very superstitiously, illogically, in fact) that the sins done against him shall be addressed and taken care of, one day. "Be it today, tomorrow or an indefinite period. God will pass his judgement and punish them for what they did to me."

What exactly happened to him? Better ask him. So they did. He talked for the first time (probably) to New York Times in Lahore. Please follow this link to view his video interview.

* All quotes, mentioned or not mentioned have been taken from this source.

Political Image & Cement - A Commonality

"Political image is like mixing cement. When it’s wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there’s almost nothing you can do to reshape it."

Walter F. Mondale (b. 1928), U.S. Democratic politician. 'Quoted in Independent on Sunday (London, May 12, 1991)'.

Like our ever smiling and witty Mr. Bush has - now...

Laziness

Read Critically - But How

Here's a formula, which need not be fixed in one's mind. Develop your own strategies in reading and writing. However, its imperative to learn from other's experience for you cannot become him/her (I can do leactureship me! Wrong). But what a way of reading this (following) essayist had! And the implications of practising it which follow 'like a liquid mercury on a sloping thing', to be archaic or not, shall be fertile, hopefully.

I went back to the good nature books that I had read. And I analyzed them. I wrote outlines of whole books - outlines of chapters - so that I could see their structure. And I copied down their transitional sentences or their main sentences or their closing sentences. I especially paid attention to how these writers made transitions between paragraphs and scenes.

-ANNIE DILLARD

Visit her personal website.

Oh! Its The Same Old Man

(Image Source)

Yes, I wish to tell you my friends, if you wish to listen this from me. Oh! that its the same old man, the same old morning in which he rises and same old gratifying - sometimes diabolical - pleasures. The net which catches man, be it from nature (good) and anti-nature elements (bad), is even the same, as it were for ancients, medievalists and you. The preventions; the prescriptions are the same. No surprise.

I realized this fully when I saw this, read it, absorbed which and thereby, was touched, motivated to utter away the discovery, the insight. For I couldn't keep it to myself. Just for that sake:

"IN the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present—I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world? Or have I been made for this, to lie in the bedclothes and keep myself warm?—But this is more pleasant.—Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and not at all for action or exertion? Dost thou not see the little plants, the little birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees working together to put in order their several parts of the universe?"

Wait. He, the man who lived probably between 121-180 A.D, further pens:

"And art thou unwilling to do the work of a human being, and dost thou not make haste to do that which is according to thy nature?—But it is necessary to take rest also.—It is necessary: however nature has fixed bounds to this too: she has fixed bounds both to eating and drinking, and yet thou goest beyond these bounds, beyond what is sufficient; yet in thy acts it is not so, but thou stoppest short of what thou canst do." 

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, The King of Rome, from his The Meditations, Part V.

Objectivity and Responsibility

Umer: (With looks of rejection and hate.) These so-called top-brass generals wear such stern caps, if you observe closely, by hiding their eyes as inaccessible elitists. They wish to prove if they were not of earthly matter. I hate such syndromes of vainglory, toploftiness and elistism, yar.

A Friend: (Very patiently and quietly) They may be wearing such caps to keep the sun off their eyes.

Angry man's guns fell into the abyss of shame.

A Mesmerizing Answer On Success

PS: If you could choose one characteristic you have that brought you success in life, what would it be?

Master Khuram: Well, actually I still have to get success. I have been failed in getting many “achievements”. But “success”, in a better sense, is beyond some minor achievements. The actual state of being “successful” may never be “achieved” as well. In the words of Hazrat Wasif Ali Wasif, “destination” is the name of “being in journey”. Actually we are successful as long as we are trying to pursue success. Stage of “success” may never come however. We actually fail … when we stop doing efforts.

Another person, mentor and guide to me, said, similar to what said in preceding penned lines, "The pleasure of [this] journey shall dissolve the desire for destination." Don't mistake yourself by glancing on these words causally. Feel them and decode the symbols.

Such Dishonesty Fits Right In

Crisis: Online/Offline Internet/Computer Data Theft

"Criminals who steal personal data [online] often don't exploit it. Instead, they put it up for sale on one of the many vibrant online black markets, forums and chat rooms," writes Benjamin Sutherland in "The Rise of Black Market Data", Newsweek, Dec 15 2008.

Time for IT ethics for financial instituitions. No, no. They aren't the culprits. They are to fight it. As Bernard Shaw, the writer, once said, "A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." Thus, already established instituitions need thinking and re-thinking for things and matters very pertinent Harvard Business School Doesn't Teach Them.

ID theft, credit and debit card, personal data, guests data from hotel, online password of accounts, apart from all that they, the theft-theft bandits/hackers are 'legions', security experts say. More than that (in connection to the earlier quoted remark in the beginning of the post), "It's a price war," says Francois Paget, a security specialist for McAfee in Paris.

But their, world-wide hackers, tactics are even more effective against law-enforcement agencies: 'Stunning use of English, often using Russian.... in far, far away terrories like Russia and looting Paris...imagine the paper work between two authorities... meeting "in-person" offline to deliver stoled payment card details'. You name it.

Interestingly. 'Dishonesty' can be the best policy (or atleast effective) in order to fight data theft and smart cyber-criminals (as cunning as patwaris, corrupt low level government land data handlers, of Pakistan). Here's the quote:

"Specialists from some financial instituitions pose as buyers and sellers to gather information to aid law enforcement, or to disrupt markets. Bill Dunn, VP of fraud management at Visa Europe in London, says his team tries to intercept stolen credit-card details so the card company can cancel accounts before a theft occurs... Franklin, the Carnegie Mellon University researcher, explains another disruption technique: his team infiltrates markets and, posing as ripped-off buyers and sellers, slanders participants to foment confusion and mistrust. In the world of illict data markets, such dishonesty fits right in."

* All quotes from, "The Rise of Black Market Data," by Benjamin Sutherland, published in Newsweek, Dec 15, 2008.

Clerihew

I like games of words, but not playing (perhaps because of inclination towards mental as well physical idleness). Rather, formulating, I'd like (in dreams). That's why CLERIHEW interests me. Here's what they've to say about The Hot Word:

"A CLERIHEW is a four-line poem that pokes fun at the famous. Invented by British writer Edmund Clerihew Bently (1875-1956), these mini-verses have three rules: They rhyme aabb, they're about a celebrity named in the first line, and as for the meter? There are no rules! Here's an example:

Actor Harrison Ford

Was feeling extraordinarily bored.

So he grabbed his hat and picked up his bones

And starred in yet another Indiana Jones."

(Quoted from Reader's Digest, Asia, Oct 2008, Pg # 28)

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Make up your own Clerihew poem and send it to www.rdasia.com/submit. If they like it, they just might run it for the magazine. And, don't forget to share with us!

word of the day

portmanteau word -

'Word blend of two other words. I had to chortle (chuckle + snort) while brunch (breakfast + lunch) in the smog (smoke + fog)'.

If you know of a portmanteau word, we'd like to know it.

* Quoted from Reader's Digest, Oct 2008, Asia.

One Possible Defiance Tactic By Palestinians - Now

Human Shields

Yes, Palestinians, not only one with arms, can back off Israeli air force by one simple defense tactic: 'Human Shield'. Very dangerous. But, what an option is left to them? And, it worked, at least once in these days. To quote BBC News, "The Israelis had backed off knowing that to strike would cause large numbers of civilian casualties which would, of course, have played very badly in the court of international opinion." It takes courage. They've it. "From militant leaders to schoolgirls, Palestinians can unite in confronting their enemy and the passive resistance of the human shields will be admired from around the world. The boys on the roofs, armed only with Palestinian flags and facing down war planes...."*

Map: Gaza and Israel Conflict. (Source)

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* URL Link.

Isareli Incursion Fully Begun

Source. BBC NEWS

Israeli troops have entered Gaza, with helicopters. Israeli troops have ordered in the wind Palestinian public to leave their homes at once. On the rationale that wind that blows contains answers. I don't know but its a messenger of worst sort of miseries for men/women of Gaza. "An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed the incursion and said the aim was to seize areas from where Hamas was launching rocket attacks on southern Israel."Latest Flash (data): "The mosque raid [latest] brought the Palestinian death toll to at least 446, with about 2,050 wounded..."

This is ridiculous, though its very less powerful word, words cannot convey our pains any more. For there's nowhere for the victims of the diabolical might of the powerful idols to run. Where to hide? Absolutely nowhere. During raids? bombing? ground and air assault? I know I cannot stop it, but let me mock them, and hate them.

Conditions for the victims are somewhat like this: 

"The plight of the 1.5 million Palestinians crammed into Gaza was growing more desperate. People sheltered in their homes and humanitarian agencies warned that food, water and medical supplies were running short.

The power plant has shut down and the sanitation system cannot treat the sewage. In the winter cold, fuel for heating and cooking was no longer available, aid agencies said.

'We do not sleep at all at night. We stayed awake the whole night because of the planes,' said Umm Kamel, a mother of 11 baking bread on a wood fire in her home in Gaza.

'Nobody feels safe,' an International Committee of the Red Cross worker said in a report on the body's website. 'The problem is that we have nowhere to run for shelter.'"

And, not to forget, "Israel occupied Gaza in the 1967 Middle East War and after Palestinian uprisings formally ended its military rule in 2005, although it still controls the borders."

Note: Source of all quotes is here.

Islamic Law

A read a very interesting point in fiqah (islamic law) which I wish to share here:

"There is a main rule in Islamic Law

that a particular regulation

which is made for a particular reason

is enforced only when that reason

is clearly in evidence"

From Our Dialouge, -Vol III, 1997.

Preface.

What do you feel and think about this rule?

American Library Association On Computer

The computer is only a fast idiot, it has no imagination; it cannot originate action. It is, and will remain, only a tool to man.

Attribution: On Univac computer exhibited at the 1964 NY World’s Fair.

Quoted From: Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson.  1988.

Do you agree? And, why?

Tale of Disintegrations

(Image source)

Is it true that tales are intrinsically about disintegration, may it be for evolving of new consciousness, in words of an artist gone by?

It may depend on the artist, his vision and the role he chooses for himself and his art. Then,as per his purposes, 'disintegration' as a mode of thought may be a 'necessity' to bring about needed 'adjustment(s)'. Or, as someone once said, "An irregularity deserves another." How witty!

Leave these matters of art to those who are really noble. Who live in ecstasies. I don't, so I won't.

Coming back to the point - writes Abdullah Yusuf Ali in Introduction, concretely, the Tale of Disintegration:

When men spread themselves over the earth,

And became many nations,

Speaking diverse language,

And observing diverse customs and laws;

The evils became multiplied,

As one race or nation

Became alienated from another.

The Brotherhood of Man was now doubly forgotten -

First, between individuals, and secondly, between nations.

Arrogance, selfishness, and untruth

Were sown and reaped in larger fields;

And Peace, Faith, Love and Justice

Were obscured over masses of men,

As large tracts of land are starved

Of sunshine by clouds floating far on high.

'As large tracts of land are starved/Of sunshine by clouds floating far on high.' Arrogance, selfishness, and untruth.

Why do they bomb on us? Oh please! get past those unrealistic-realist notions of finishing genocide or making world securer by these devils. Try some new ideas, which may dazzle us and not make our retarded existence yawn incessantly. Trick us. Come hither, play with us. Confuse us. And, then entrance us. Show us your skills of argumentation. You're highly educated military strategists. Make plans. Kill us but in ways we'd love to. Mortgage crisis, faulty financial policies, things we vote for. Thanks goodness you work a lot! 

Utter retardation.... And Peace, Faith, Love and Justice/Were obscured over masses of men....

  Oh masses! my masses!

The evils became multiplied....

The Brotherhood of Man was now doubly forgotten

Assimilate. Come hither near and close to one another, so that you produce life for yourself and others.

  Oh masses! my masses!

You're the only end here! You're the centre of stars and planets and what may lie beyond!

You're the only end here! 

Gaza Carnage: Words Can't Convey Our Pain Any More

Injured Palestinian chidlern Hatham Yahga and Yousaf who are in Dubai for treatment. - KT photo by Rahul Gajjar

No Words Left

Sam Hamod,  a distinguished Arab poet.

No Words Left Sam Hamod Without words,

Children screaming, 

Mothers wailing, 

Men cussing, 

Imam's praying, 

Israeli bombs splaying blood, 

F16s ratcheting missiles everywhere, 

Buildings exploding, Hospitals shredded, 

University splintered, 

Shrapnel flying everywhere, 

No words from Bush, No words from Brown, 

No words from Obama, No words from Rice, 

No words from Biden, No words from Clinton, 

No words from anyone in the U.S. media, 

No words, 

No care, 

No hearts, 

No words... no care... no hearts

Nothing 

Nothing 

No, nothing at all.

(Source.)

!'m shocked...!'m sad...my hearts are heavy...!'m never the same...! lack courage...! lack proactivity...but !'ll kill them...in one way or another...as a toll for their barbarism...and...its yet not an end...! resolve genocide...without profoundly mixing terms so badly...that world is all hurt in the same way it is...it would be never ever as it was...which ! tremble to admit is the unfortunate now...the all-powerful idols strike now...they've started their final journey...they should mark it down...that that's the sum total of my life thinking paper: of what i do and be in totality and wholeness...

Laugh!

A wife buys an enomorus birthday present for her husband. he opens it and looks rather confused.

       "What am I supposed to do with a rocket?"

"You wanted space," she replies. "Now get lost."         SAMUEL SNOWDEN, Reader's Digest, Oct 2008.

'An Art Which Conceals Art'

Reading short stories of Guy de maupassant imprints on its reader such 'natural' impressions and clear pictures that he is overcome by the mere words of the story. He feels watching things happening around him. He sees and 'feels' the events, the plot of the story as they are per se. I've rarely seen a talent unique in its quality as Guy de's. More than that we're intoxicated by the pictures he creates in which our nature is punctuated that we tend to forget if it were a piece of art! My intuitions were confirmed when I read a critic's, Arthur Symons, remarks on Maupassant, he says: 

"But his style is quite different from that of Flaubert (his mentor and teacher), of which it has none of the splendid, subdued richness, the harmonious movement; it is clear, precise, sharply cut, without ornament or elaboration; with much art, certainly in its deliberate plainness, and with the admirable skill of an art which conceals art…" [From “Studies in Prose and Verse” (1899).]

There is no point in his stories where you may come to praise the 'thought' in intellectual terms, A. Symons, the critic, points out. "What impresses you is the extreme ingenuity of its handling; the way in which this juggler keep his billiard-balls harmoniously rising and falling in the air." And, he further observes, "...it has just enough of ordinary human feeling." This is why I felt much closeness and nearness to what Guy de writes, and because of this quality of him, the same critic in 1899 remarked, "..an art which conceals art."!

Remove The Synthetic Chrysliars

"In an age of synthetic images and synthetic emotions, the chances of an accidental encounter with reality are remote indeed."

Serge Daney (1944–1992), French film critic. repr. In Sight and Sound (London, July 1992). “Falling Out of Love.”

Pure consciousness; not 'pure appearances' as D. H. Lawrence would say. We only need to be empathic; self-aware, whether we can be trusted or not and so on and so forth. By following same age-old tested principles of our fathers and fore-fathers, which aren't or weren't part of social taboos or relative moralities - no, rather absolute. Rather, 'correct principles' that are grounded firm in our nature as light-houses or minars (minarets), the symbols of guidance and defense. Pure consciousness; not 'pure appearances'.

New Year Song

Even though my heart is torn out for I belong to humankind, one in essence but torn out. Yet hope, beauty and yearning - you can't survive without them. This song is for all of us young (not in age), who are one. Dedicated to hope, last seen in 10,000 B.C, as pessimists report. Let them have their part of the goat as well!

Then sing, young hearts that are full of cheer, With never a thought of sorrow; The old goes out, but the glad young year Comes merrily in tomorrow.

	Emily Miller (1833–1913) U.S. journalist, writer, poet. New Year Song.