The “Khan” effect

Judging by what happened yesterday, I would say US Airport Officials want us to believe that regardless of background or qualifications, anyone with the last name of “Khan” could possibly be a potential terrorist wanting to blow up all of America.

While news channels in different countries portrayed the event – the detention of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan – as either “humiliating” (as per the Indian media) or “a dramatic over-reaction” (as per the pro-American news channels), what this really shows is how fundamentally flawed the American so-called counter-terrorism intelligence really is.

I mean firstly, not only did they manage to attack and invade a sovereign country under the pretext of non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction (does anyone even remember that anymore?) and defend that claim for over a year, but when the truth finally did come out in 2004 – that, in fact, there really was no WMD and that the intelligence was seriously flawed – they conceded that damage was already done. And that they now had stay in order to “stabilize” a country they originally invaded on stupid intelligence.

And coming back to the present, now because Mr. Khan is a global celebrity with good political connections, he was just ‘taken aside’ for questioning and released with the full support of the Indian Embassy 2hours later.
But I shudder to think what would have become of the more common Khan – one who is not so well connected to people in high places.
Would he have been held for days, maybe weeks for the “secondary questioning”?
Or maybe even sent to Guantanamo Bay, just like the countless other innocents languishing for years there, held without any charge?

Regardless of whatever “its-all-for-security” reasons anyone gives, if a computer turns up someone’s name just because of their cultural or religious affiliation without any other basis, it shows how pathetic the whole system really is. I mean seriously, do they program those things to turn red and sound alarm bells just because someone’s NAME sounds funny?

For that, they might as well put up a sign that says,
”People named Khan, Muhammed, or Abdullah not allowed without additional verification”.

And if that’s how they are going to keep their citizens safe anymore, they really shouldn’t call themselves “The Land of The Free” anymore.

Update, 24Aug:
After extensive reading, I find out that there *is* such a thing as a "No-Fly List" in the United States and Canada, detailing names - and nothing more - of passengers who are, quite simply, not allowed to fly. Over time, this list is rumored to have grown to over a million names (although this claim is officially denied) and poses significant hinderance to the common person who unfortunately happens to shares their name with someone on the list.
In such cases, the person is expected to prove that "I am not him/her" using a variety of identification methods, and apparently almost always leads to delays/missed flights for such people.

A phone through the spin cycle

In case you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like for a mobile phone to go around in a washing machine…
…I can tell you: they DO NOT like it.

And I found that out the hard way this evening after I stuffed my laundry into the washer, turned it on, and then three cycles later discovered that I forgot the phone in my jeans.

And needless to say; it died a sad, wet death under layers of suds and fabric softener; and I’m still mourning over the loss of my poor Nokia 6230i.
May she rest in peace.

Now moving on and getting to the realities of the situation; I still have another phone – a clammy old one from work; and I’m not missing a lot of phone numbers because the only people who call me are either from work or concerning work; and I already have their numbers on Outlook.

The biggest loss for me though, was all my data that it took along with it. I had a list of all passwords I use for pretty much everything online; I’ve marked important dates on the calendar; scribbled in a bunch of notes; even put in a little to-do list for the week.
All of which I don’t have anymore.

In a way it kinda freaks me out because it draws us to realize how so very much we are dependent on these little electronics which you can lose at any time.
I mean, when my laptop died last year (yeah, this evening wasn’t the first time I lost data to gadget hell) I was absolutely lost because that is where I had almost every aspect of my online life; from Email to documents, pictures, contacts, videos…pretty much everything.

And in a way it teaches you too; it was only after that mishap that I realized you should never stash data all in one place; and that it’s important to take regular backups. And that you should always keep written copies of passwords.

But I guess no matter how prepared you are, nothing prepares you for that one sudden moment when it all turns black; and you realize its all over.

Just like our own lives.

New Delhi and the bombs

Shortly after 6:30pm IST, a series of 5 bombs rocked the Indian capital of New Delhi, killing around 2 dozen people and wounding around a hundred others.

On behalf of everyone here, we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to the families who have lost their loved ones…for no fault of theirs. And at the same time, curse the wrecked freaks who caused this; killing innocent people in their mindless wake.

And it makes me angry thinking about it. This is not the first time this has happened, and probably is not the last. So in between when it happened for the first time and now; what has changed and what hasn’t?

As ever, the President, Prime Minister, Other Ministers, and all the guys up in Parliament, issued their standard statement expressing their “deepest concerns” and “appeal for calm and peace”.

On the face of it, it sounds like a good idea. Keep calm. And let the authorities do their job.

But as history bears witness, this does not really happen. What does happen is a series of routine tasks:

1)       The police ‘investigates’ and makes random arrests around the city of ‘suspects’…as if terrorists just hang around waiting for the police to grab them.

2)       Security gets ‘beefed up’ (whatever the hell that means) around airports, train stations and other ‘strategic locations’…as if terrorists are stupid enough to attack the most obvious places just hours after a major attack.

3)       Barricades are put up, and a major part of the public that had nothing to do with this is agonized by not being able to visit their loved ones in hospital or move away from hot spots.

4)       News channels, magazines and news sites go into overdrive on how to deal with the menace.

5)       The government reiterates its commitment to fighting violent attacks and acts of terror.

6)       The opposition party organizes rallies on how the current administration is doing such a sloppy job.

7)       Two weeks later, everyone forgets the whole thing. And life goes on as usual.

As usual of course, except for those who lost their loved ones in the attack. And then those ‘suspects’ who were rounded up just to make the police look good, and languish in dungeons with no charges laid against them.

Conveniently forget; is sadly what our country seems to do best.

T is for Torture

Let’s suspend the fun stuff for a bit and talk something serious.
I guess most of us don’t think about stuff like this quite often and I’ll have to admit, what really got me going was while I was reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and got to the part where Hermione gets crucioed by Bellatrix. That kind of spooked the daylights out of me, so I started to wonder on the real-life implications and applications of torture and brutal interrogation techniques.

I didn’t have to look too far.
All you have to do is spell it out on Google, YouTube or any major portal and there you have it: hundreds of thousands of first-person accounts, pictures and videos of people – in many cases innocent civilians – being tortured on the pretext of accusations; and in many cases confessing to a crime they did not commit.
And if you think I’m stretching this issue, check it out for yourself. A UN report once openly claimed that almost as many as 2 % of the entire population on earth has at one point been a victim of torture.

What really hits me hard is that several governments accept this as a form of maintaining security. The now famous Taser (which was in the news recently) is one such device United States law enforcement would swear by, maintaining that they wouldn’t have been able to capture a lot of crooks without it.

And you don’t even have to imagine what goes on inside war-zones.
While Israel approved of using ‘mild pressure’ on detainees, more infamous places like Guantanamo Bay have CIA approved ‘techniques’ to interrogate POW – many of whom have been detained without specific reason. Without going into the specifics of the horrors recounted by them and others like the fortunate ones to make out of Abu Ghraib, I’d just like to mention: this isn’t just about them.

This is about every single one of us. Every one of us rational, free thinking, citizen needs to stand up and shout it out loud…coz it might not be long before we wake up one morning and find a guy pointing a wand at you and say “Cruicio”.

A "loner" strikes again!

I don’t mean to be insensitive, but all I can say is – Yup, there it is again.
For those of you wondering what’s this all about, here’s an insight. Yesterday, on the 7th of November an 18 year old ‘gunman’ walked in and opened fire in an otherwise quiet town in Finland, killing 8 people before turning the gun on himself.
And that’s not all. Further investigation revealed that at the time of his death, the guy still had over 320 bullets and lots of inflammable liquids in possession; and I bet my baloney sandwich he probably planned on using them!
Which brings to mind an important question: how does a teenager end up with around 400 bullets (by the way, each of his victims took at least two bullets) anyway?

Somehow, it feels just like just yesterday when the same thing happened at Virginia Tech University in the United States.
And once again, it’s the same story all over again; the kid was a ‘loner’, hated people, was bullied at school, and somehow figured out a way to end it all.
And just like the last time, people light candles, flags fly at half-mast, news channels go into overdrive, and in two weeks everything will be forgotten and back to normal.

And once again; NO ONE called him a terrorist!

Almost makes me wonder who the hell a terrorist is exactly. Does it really take a middle-eastern-looking guy wearing a turban and waving an AK-47 to be called a terrorist? Or would you have kill people on a plane or train rather than a school to qualify as one?

I believe terrorism has no religion. And I also believe pre-planned, calculated, cold-blooded mass murder of innocent school-children amounts to terror.

It’s about time we did away with the stereotypes, and called a terrorist a terrorist; loner or not!

Civilian Deaths

Apparently not enough civilians are getting killed in Iraq these days.

The Economic Times reported last Monday that ‘only’ 1,700 odd civilians got ‘killed violently’ in Iraq last month, which happens to be the lowest in the past 5 months with a 36% drop. Now this tells us two things;
One, for the past 3 years or so (when did the pre-emptive strikes begin?), more than 2,400 civilians have been dying every month. Now remember, we’re not talking about terrorists, militants or soldiers, we’re talking about people living in their homes, children going to school, people going to work, who don’t know if they will wake up the next morning.

I really don’t know if you can appreciate the gravity of the situation but working out the math, that means some poor innocent guy in Iraq, minding his own business, gets killed EVERY 20 MINUTES!

Secondly, there’s something else. Why isn’t anybody doing anything about this? We hear about social welfare, women’s welfare, child welfare and even animal welfare all the time, but what about welfare for innocent people who get killed for no reason at all?

Maybe we don’t know

Or we don’t care.

But closing our eyes to this isn’t making anything better; so at least when we go to sleep tonight, let us say a little prayer for those who won’t wake up tomorrow morning.

The Real Terrorist

For those of you who came in late, three days ago on the 16^th of April, a masked gunman stormed into a classroom at Virginia Tech University and opened fire, killing 32 of his fellow students and a professor.

Worldwide condemnations of this shoot-out occurred instantly and while every news-channel and publication worth its name ran headlines of the “horrific” incident and the “worst violence since the Columbine High School massacre” and all that jazz, in case you haven’t noticed, NO ONE called him a terrorist.

And he wasn’t. He was just a South Korean student, your everyday boy-next-door who was a “loner” and “disturbed by the rich kids” so he decided to take them out.

You know, when I heard the news, the first thing that came into my mind was, please don’t let him be Arab.
Hypothetically, assuming that he had been somebody else, say some guy named Muhammed-Al-Something or Ahmed-bin-Something-Else, the news would have been dramatically different.

Everyone would have been talking about the ‘latest terror attack against America’…

President Bush would have made statements to continue the War on Terror…

The news channels and papers would have published long and scary articles on the spread of religious terror and why it wasn’t safe for anyone anymore…

Yup, things would’ve been so different. But they aren’t. Why? Because the guy involved was a South Korean instead of an Arab, so we can go to sleep tonight thinking this is just an isolated incident about a ‘disturbed’ kid instead of a worldwide plot to spread fundamentalist terror.

Double standards for terror? I don’t know.

But guess that kind of makes the terrorist feel like a “loner” too…

The Qana Massacre

On the 30th of July, a group of innocent civilians who've never held a gun or hurt anyone, many of them little children, driven from their own homes for of fault of theirs, surviving on whatever was left of the rubble after their homes were destroyed, sheltered in a building in a town down in south Lebanon.

The night before when they went to sleep, little did they realize what they would wake up to..
38 Children and many others never woke up; they were blown to bits by enemy shelling targeted at A BUILDING FULL OF CIVILIANS!!!!!

Now the 'talks' are on, 'roadmaps' to a 'ceasefire' are being discussed at great length and breadth. But who will pay for the life of 38 10 year-olds who never got to see an eleventh birthday?

Eye for an eye...

A few weeks back, a bunch of morons kidnapped (or whatever) Israeli soldiers from Lebanon. And before you know it, the whole nation was up in arms, waging a bloody war.

Who loses? Not Israeli Army...Not Hizbollah...certainly not the United States. Innocent civilians whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Everyone can fire all the rockets or grenades or whatever they want at all the 'terrorists' they know... but who dies is an all-together different story.

10 year olds needn't have to die for that....

UN - Are You Listening?????

Dead by the beach

On a lovely sunny Friday morning on the 9th of June, 2006 a Palestinian family went on a picnic to the beach. They had nice food and games planned for the day. What they didn't plan on was ending up dead.

Dad and the kids were playing by the sea when all of a sudden a huge blast rocked the golden sands. For some of the kids, it was the last thing they ever heard. Mom rushed over in a frenzy as her entire family fell around her dead or dying. Coast gaurd and other people rushed in to help but it was alreadt too late for 3 of her children. Dad and rest of the people injured were rushed to nearby hospitals; aid poured in from other poeple around; but the damage was done. Official sources put the toll at 7, including 3 children; but of course, we know how 'official' figures are done. More than 35 people ended up in hospitals, many were children.

Some people recover, some die, some lose entire families in an instant, some get killed on their way to school; or work, or simply sitting at home doing nothing. The international community 'condemns' this; Israeli Army 'investigates' this; the United Nations ignore.

Life goes on...