No worries. I visit BRF only around once a day, so I don't usually get to respond immediately to posts. Which is a good thing, I guess.Rudradev wrote: On another note I would like to offer my apologies for calling you a "Kangress apologist" some days ago.
From BR ArchivesThe leaks gave no clue whether India was tipped off about the impending attack.
A suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into the heavily fortified Indian embassy gates on July 7, 2008, killing 58 people and wounding more than 140.
Quote:
Staff put Embassy back on track, their symbol: a half-burnt pigeon fighting back
Manu Pubby
Posted online: Thursday, July 10, 2008 at 2350 hrs Print Email
Kabul, July 9: They haven’t given it a name yet, but a survivor of Monday’s suicide attack is fast becoming a symbol of hope and recovery at the Indian Embassy here. A half-burnt, tailless pigeon — one of some 200 “resident birds” that ITBP jawans used to feed every morning at the embassy — is being keenly watched for signs of recovery as it limps around the premises. While the bird may never fly again, the Indian Embassy in Kabul is fast getting back to shape and is scheduled to resume normal operations, including issuing visas, by Saturday.
Mangled pieces of metals, a stray shoe, shattered furniture, half-burnt visa forms are reminders of the massive blast that claimed four Indian lives but the Indian mission is keen to start work at the earliest. The Ambassador’s office is functional, the embassy’s direct satellite link with New Delhi has been made operational and even the campus Wi-Fi is back on line. With work on clearing debris in full swing, the Indian envoy is confident about resuming operations by the end of the week.
“We should start work, including issuing visas, by Saturday. The staff’s morale, under the circumstances, could not be better. They are showing remarkable dedication (to get the embassy functional),” Ambassador Jayant Prasad told The Indian Express.
A reason for the fast recovery and lack of structural damage to the mission building was a new security barrier put up by India last week after intelligence inputs indicated a major attack. The hexa-barrier, a thick wire mesh-and-mud barrier covering the embassy on all sides, absorbed the major impact of the blast and saved the building from serious damage.
Prasad said that though the bomber blew the car at the embassy gates, the shockwaves could have brought down the building roof had the barrier not been there.
More than 40 Afghan citizens who had lined outside the embassy to seek visas had a miraculous escape as they were standing behind the hexa-barrier. But those outside the embassy were not so lucky and most casualties took place on the main road.
Eight of the 11 Afghan policemen stationed outside the embassy died on the spot. Eyewitnesses told The Indian Express that 10 women, including five from one family, died even as they were entering the embassy. According to Prasad, several children, who were walking to a school nearby, were also killed in the attack.
While the Indian toll has remained steady at four, the casualty figures of Afghan citizens has been rising sharply in the past three days. While the initial toll was 37 dead, Prasad said that as of Wednesday evening, at least 54 had been confirmed killed. The toll could rise — of the 139 admitted in various hospitals in the city, 61 were said to be in critical condition.
A major tragedy was averted as a busy shopping complex right next to the embassy escaped maximum impact, the hexa-barrier being the deflector.
“I was looking out at the embassy when the blast took place. I was blown into my shop by the impact. When I regained senses, there were body parts strewn all around. People were running around in panic but I was not badly injured,” said 18-year-old Ajmal Nasiri who works at a printing press next to the embassy.
But shops on the other side of the embassy, not protected by the barrier, were totally shattered. A popular travel agency, which booked tickets for Air India, was completely gutted, killing owner Sayed Aninull Slashen and his two young sons.
SwamyG garu,SwamyG wrote:How far would I be away from the truth if I were to state the following: "The onlee reason BRFites want Unkil to be buried in the Af-Pak chaos is because Unkil was helping TSP for decades."
It is like saying, you started the fire so please put it out.
Cosmo, what are the practicalities of identifying any Pakistani financialCosmo_R wrote:@ vijayk ^^^
Can Americans sue the Pakistani Government in NY just as the Libyans were for Lockerbie...
The answer is no unless the SD declares Pakistan a 'Terrorist State'. Until then, Pakistan has sovereign immunity.
I checked this with the lawyer who filed the Lockerbie suit immediately after 26/11.
Take anything which Juan Cole says with a pinch of salt. He is married to a TSP bibi and duly converted to the ROP.A_Gupta wrote:Sloppy definitions of "Taliban" permit Brian Cloughley to gas away:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/cloughl ... liban.html
Fauji foundation may have US assetsLisa wrote:Cosmo, what are the practicalities of identifying any Pakistani financial
institutions with a US presence that have a relationship with say, any off
shoot of LET, can they be sued as aiders and abettors of murder?
Code: Select all
Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing over Lockerbie
For Every Dead (270): $ 10 million
UTA Flight 772 over Chad
For Every Dead (170) (except Americans): $ 1 million
Berlin Discotheque Bombing
For Turkish Woman Dead: $ 1 million
For Serious Injured: $ 350,000
For Lightly Injured: $ 170,000
Code: Select all
173 dead ~ $ 865 million
308 injured ~ $ 107.8 million
Property Loss ~ $ 250 million
Business Confidence Loss ~ $ 500 million
Emergency Services Cost ~ $ 30 million
Security Services Charges ~ $ 30 million
Processing Costs ~ $ 10 million
Total ~ $ 1.8 billion
Total (Loss of Life and Injuries) ~ $ 1 billion
This is not baimaani. This is traitor.amdavadi wrote:Sau me assi baimaan phir bhi mera Bharat mahan.
I see no reason to dismiss this attitude as a "myth". Pakistan's leadership has in fact consistently managed to get away with mass murder while simultaneously being rewarded for their perfidy with vast sums of US taxpayer dollars. Pakistan pulled off the most heinous terror attack in all of human history, and not against some sh*tpot country like India, but against the world's only superpower, and not only got away with it, but came off stronger than ever! I can't think of any nation in the history of mankind to have managed such a feat.shiv wrote:Mupalla - Pakistanis with an army background or army family background talk like this. The Pakistani army survives on this myth and making others believe this myth.Muppalla wrote:In a very loose talk with a friend of mine, he said TSPA and TSP leaders are the most patriotic that a nation could probably have.
Survive, yes. Thrive? They seem to be doing exactly the opposite.Y. Kanan wrote: You have to give them credit - Pakistan's ability to survive, even thrive, despite their atrocious behavior against everyone (including the very people who maintain Pakistan as a welfare state) is almost beyond belief. Truly stranger than fiction.
That's great, but the point is, what has all this achieved for the average Pakistani? At the end of the day, the point of a nation is to serve the interests of its people. Measures like how much money a state has (GDP, $50B) or the size of its armed forces are only proxy measures of the ability of that state to look after its people.Y. Kanan wrote: On September 10th 2001, if you'd told me some country would kill 3000 Americans and 1500 US troops, and not only get away with it but successfully extort $50 billion from the very people they're trying to murder, I wouldn't have believed it, especially after seeing how badly Iraq and Yugoslavia fared in the 1990's.
That is a wrong way to look at. The average paki exists for sole pleasure and service of Paki army. The paki population solely is at the disposal of the paki army, which utilizes them in their game. So, looking at average paki and feeling his condition is supposed to get better with pouring in of aid is a fools errand. This is very convenient and cheap game for fund suppliers (unkil et.al) and fund raisers(paki army).Kamboja wrote: That's great, but the point is, what has all this achieved for the average Pakistani? At the end of the day, the point of a nation is to serve the interests of its people. Measures like how much money a state has (GDP, $50B) or the size of its armed forces are only proxy measures of the ability of that state to look after its people.
Pakistan has utterly failed, and continues to fail to look after the interests of its citizens on almost every imaginable level - economically, socially, politically, and especially spiritually.
NoT that we dont know about the constant Poak Purification Process Playing Pretty Peach Please Pingpong.Our imagination of ourselves revolves around what I have come to call ‘Pakistani Muslim exceptionalism’. An overwhelming majority of us are Muslims in official records. But that is an identity that we share with only a billion other Muslims all over the world. There is nothing exceptional about that. So, we have constructed a whole new set of characteristics about us that seem to set us apart from other Muslims in the world. This exceptionalism, particularly, consists of us imagining Pakistan as a fort of Islam and the Muslims in it charged with the distinct aim and objective of securing Islam from all internal and external threats. The creation of Pakistan is almost articulated as a divine intervention or at least something that had divine patronage. As per this theory, Pakistani Muslims must then prepare themselves to fight against a host of conspirators who are there to harm them. These conspirators usually appear in the form of American Imperialism and Hindu Zionism (sic) that are eagerly helped by the ‘real’ Zionist, aka the Israeli state. All three forces are conspiring against not just a Muslim nation but also against a nation-state that was founded as the last bastion of Islam. Nobody can and has been able to forward any proof for it, a fact that has largely been ignored. But then the requirement of some verifiable evidence is largely redundant. What is important is that people imagine themselves as the argument directs, since this achieves two objectives. First, it keeps the narrative of ‘Islam under threat’ alive and, second, in our context it allows us to imagine our exceptionalism because it lets us think of ourselves as different from the other one billion Muslims against whom these three forces do not seem to be conspiring with as much gusto. Many can rightly ask: so what?
To them it is not the nation-state Pakistan that defines Islam for itself; it is Islam that must define the nation-state that Pakistan ought to be. Also, it is their version of Islam that is of more importance here. Therefore, there is a problem when the jihadi mindset does not see the government of the day implementing its interpretation of religion in the country. In a well-functioning state and a democracy one would expect such ideological differences to be sorted out during elections. However, that is not the case in our Islamic Republi
Kamboja ... I don't think anything is going to come out of this ... The average joe doesn't give a rat's ass about Pakistan and its perfidy .. In some of the forums I frequent, the whole debate had turned into Repub vs Dem debate by the 3rd or the 4th post on the first page itselfKamboja wrote:In re: impact of wikileaks revelations on the aam Amirkhan...
I think the effect of the sustained bad publicity surrounding Packeeland is starting to permeate into the popular consciousness. First that joker Shahzad, and now these headlines - when even the MSM in the US start talking about it, you know that somewhere in the caverns of the average joe's mind, a dim light has begun to go off.
Today on the subway to work, I was standing next to this WASP holding the NYT and the headlines were screaming something along the lines of 'PAKI PERFIDY IN WOT!!!' -- the chap's expression was 100% furrowed brow as he perused the article.
Made my day
:"It's not justifiable for Afghans to see a country given 11 billion dollars in reconstruction aid and to support its security forces, and then see those same forces training terrorists," said Spanta.
"At least we Afghan politicians are not able to explain this to the Afghan people,"
Reaction to WikiLeaks 'vastly overdone'
July 27, 2010 -- Updated 2211 GMT (0611 HKT) .........................
CNN: What's the impact of the release going to be?
Zakaria: I think the most specific impact is the issue of Pakistan ... the reality is that Pakistan's interest and America's interest are not the same. Pakistan has been maintaining its contact with these militant groups.
The one thing that this report did is to provide enough detail on this set of problems that it's essentially pretty undeniable and it also is very difficult now for the administration to deny that there is a huge problem here -- that the Pakistanis have been playing a double game. That part of it seems to shed light very centrally on the role of Pakistan.
Again to be fair, the Obama administration came into power arguing that Afghanistan needed to be thought of as "Afpak," that Pakistan is very much part of the problem and part of the solution. And they have been working on that. It's not an easy problem because we have limited leverage with Pakistan.
CNN: Why can't the United States take a firmer stance with Pakistan?
Zakaria: If you were to shun and isolate them, it would probably strengthen even further their contacts with the militants. So I recognize that this is a thorny problem for any administration. But I do think it centrally highlights this problem, that you're really never going to solve the Afghanistan problem as long as you have not just a safe haven across the border, but a safe haven in which the government on the other side is playing footsie with the terrorists.
Absolutely no doubt about that Mupalla. No disputes. But there are two important points hereMuppalla wrote: Pakistan was formed for a very small fuedal-TFTA section and it is for them only. The anaology for the entire population of Pakistan is like a poultry. We feed the chicks so that then can become meaty and keep giving eggs and on a later day kill the chicken and eat.
Absolutely correct. Pakis are getting on quite well.Y. Kanan wrote:I see no reason to dismiss this attitude as a "myth". Pakistan's leadership has in fact consistently managed to get away with mass murder while simultaneously being rewarded for their perfidy with vast sums of US taxpayer dollars. Pakistan pulled off the most heinous terror attack in all of human history, and not against some sh*tpot country like India, but against the world's only superpower, and not only got away with it, but came off stronger than ever! I can't think of any nation in the history of mankind to have managed such a feat.shiv wrote: Mupalla - Pakistanis with an army background or army family background talk like this. The Pakistani army survives on this myth and making others believe this myth.
You have to give them credit - Pakistan's ability to survive, even thrive, despite their atrocious behavior against everyone (including the very people who maintain Pakistan as a welfare state) is almost beyond belief. Truly stranger than fiction.
On September 10th 2001, if you'd told me some country would kill 3000 Americans and 1500 US troops, and not only get away with it but successfully extort $50 billion from the very people they're trying to murder, I wouldn't have believed it, especially after seeing how badly Iraq and Yugoslavia fared in the 1990's.
ramana wrote:You must be located outside India to not see the truth of his writings. TO criticize him you need to live in India and see it thru his eyes!
Muppalla wrote:In simple terms - If TSPA, Pakistan's geography and nukes survive then we can safely say that Pakistan won the war against whatever they are fighting against. GDP, VDP and other parameters are all a joke and useless.
The proposed bill seeks to amend the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) 1997. It recommends travel curbs on proscribed organisations whose leaders and workers will neither be able to obtain passports nor will they be allowed to leave the country. No bank or financial institution will be allowed to provide them financial assistance, loans or credit cards. Their arms licences will also be revoked.
Under sub-section 2 of Clause 2, any person possessing illegal explosive material or having illegal links with explosives will also fall within the ambit of terrorism.
Any person found involved in the armed struggle against law-enforcement agencies at individual and group levels or anyone disseminating or preaching his creeds or beliefs through FM radio stations without government approval will also be proceeded against under this act.
acting Senate chairman Mir Jan Jamali referred the bill to the standing committee with instructions to complete deliberations by Friday and bring the bill to the house by Monday so it could be discussed during the next three days.
Shiv,shiv wrote:Absolutely correct. Pakis are getting on quite well.