Is this called Democracy and Equality?

USA, UK, Russia, France, China had hundreds to thousands of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Nuclear devices). Israel also had over hundred such WMDs unannounced though.

When India tested her Nuclear Device objections were raised by the Western powers but there was not much of fuss. Finding threat of WMDs at door and then blatant warnings by Indian leaders including that by India’s Prime Minister, Pakistan decided test Nuclear device. Pakistan informed the big powers and neighbouring countries about the test to be performed. Hell broke and threats and warnings started pouring in from USA and UK as if all the earlier WMDs of seven countries together were roses and if Pakistan tested the device, perhaps, skies will collapse. After the test, stringent embargos were slapped on Pakistan.

Now North Korea, being under threat of the Western powers, has tested a nuclear device and skies appear to be falling again. All sorts of embargos have been slapped on North Korea through UNO.

No body ever asked Israel why she had about 200 of Nuclear WMDs without ever announcing even the capability to produce one.

No body questions who has used Nuclear devices so far (at Hiroshima and Nagasaki)? No body asks who used dilapidated Uranium in Afghanistan and Iraq. That all, perhaps, was showers of roses.

N-Powers’ Arsenal:

U. S. A. : More than 5,000 strategic warheads, more than 1,000 operational tactical weapons meant for the battlefield and less powerful than the strategic arms and approximately 3,000 reserve and tactical warheads.

Russia: Nearly 5,000 strategic warheads, and approximately 3,500 operational tactical warheads. In addition, it has more than 11,000 strategic and tactical warheads in storage.

France: Approximately 350 strategic warheads.

China: As many as 250 strategic warheads and 150 tactical warheads.

U.K. : About 200 strategic warheads.

Israel: Refuses to confirm it is a nuclear weapons state but is generally assumed to have up to 200 nuclear warheads.

India: Between 45 and 95 nuclear warheads.

Pakistan: Between 30 and 50 nuclear warheads.

North Korea: Believed to have enough fissile material for about a half-dozen weapons, but estimates vary widely and are unverifiable.

Life Cycle of Woman

The movie clip shows life cycle of women

Men! Please, don’t envy. Men also have a life cycle:

Born – Ate – Slept – Ate – Slept - - - - - Died

PS: Do not think the other way. I am a man

Will New be Visible Today

Why moon sight is important?

Make the decision yourself after seeing the images.
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Image at the top represents the astronomical position as on October 23. It is claimed that 1% of moon is visible
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Image in the middle represents the astronomical position as on October 24. It is claimed that 4% of moon is visible.












Image at the bottom represents the astronomical position as on October 25. It is claimed that 9% of moon is visible

Greetings

On the auspicious day of Eid ul Fitr, heart-felt sincere fecilitations from me and my family to all Muslims, especially of Pakistan origin. May Allah grant your fasts and prayers and bless you with everlasting good health, happiness and prosperity. Amen.

Please do not forget the people affected by devastating earth quack of October 08, 2005. They need you sypthy as well as material help

The Truth – Musharraf Vs Nawaz

More to Clinton-Nawaz rendezvous than known
By Nayyar Zaidi
WASHINGTON: “(President Bill) Clinton asked (Prime Minister Mian Nawaz) Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was. Did Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear tipped missiles?”

This is an account of the July 4, 1999, meeting between Clinton and Sharif at the White House by Bruce Riedel, then a Clinton adviser, who was the note-taker during the exclusive Clinton-Sharif meeting.

In an October 13 interview on an Urdu TV channel, Gen Pervez Musharraf claimed that his version of Kargil is “the truth and the whole truth”.

Riedel has written an account of that historic meeting titled “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House”, published by the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

“Sharif then asked that the meeting continue just with the two leaders. Everyone left the room except Sharif, Clinton and myself,” Riedel says. “The President insisted he wanted a record of the event. Sharif asked again to be left alone, Clinton refused.”

This categorically contradicts General Musharraf’s claim: “I can also say with authority that in 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational.” On page 97 of his book “In the Line of Fire”, Gen Musharraf says this while rebutting what he called the “fourth myth”, i.e. “we came to the brink of nuclear war”.

It is highly unlikely that the president of the United States was bluffing on the real probability of nuclear war.

Actually, in terms of a potential nuclear clash, Clinton compared the Kargil situation to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis where the Americans and the Soviets were on the brink of a nuclear war.

Gen Musharraf claims (page 96) that on July 2, 1999, he personally briefed the Defence Committee of the Cabinet (DCC) and “actually laid out the entire military picture. I covered all possible hypotheses of enemy actions in the air, the sea, and on land”. He claims to have said in the DCC meeting “that the Indian forces despite their massive strength would never be able to dislodge the freedom fighters and NLI (Northern Light Infantry) from their ingress and positions held by them”.

The head of US Central Command, General Anthony Zinni, arrived in Islamabad on June 24, 1999. The same day Associated Press quoted Indian military officials saying, “In Kashmir today, Indian jets fired laser-guided bombs at Islamic guerrilla strongholds, preparing to capture strategic peak, Tiger Hill....At dawn, Indian jet fighters carried out four bombing runs....All four strikes were successful....Ground troops had ringed the peak and were preparing to evict 30-40 guerrillas from the stronghold above India’s National Highway 1. In two weeks of battles, India has cleared two other peaks.”

Indians did not have “laser-guided bombs”, also called “smart bombs”. They had asked the United States to provide laser-guided bombs. Earlier, and for the record, the US had declined. But obviously, Indians did use laser-guided bombs which had turned the tide of the war by June 24, 1999, when Zinni landed in Islamabad with a tough message from Clinton. Laser-guided bombs could smash high-altitude positions with accuracy.

By mid-June Indians were boasting of the acquisition of $50,000 a piece bomb to strike those positions, according to a source. Interestingly, Indians did not deploy troops along the international border sitting quietly as if they knew the eventual outcome would be in their favour.

In his October 13, 2006, TV interview, Gen Musharraf reportedly said: “I call Raja Zafarul Haq a liar if he doesn’t speak the truth now” because, according to Musharraf, Haq had attended the July 2 meeting. But Haq doesn’t have to speak because, according to Riedel, Sharif had called Clinton on July 2, 1999, apparently after the DCC meeting, and “appealed for American intervention immediately to stop the fighting....” Riedel says Sharif told Clinton he could come on July 4, leaving Islamabad on July 3. The president reshuffled his schedule to accommodate Sharif.

Musharraf told the Urdu news channel that after the July 2, 1999, DCC meeting, he went to Murree where “I received Sharif’s call in Murree at around 9pm and he asked me to reach Chaklala airport immediately. When I got to the airport, I saw Nawaz Sharif ready to fly to the US.” Musharraf claimed that Sharif went to the US and “solely decided on Kashmir”.

The visit to Washington had been in the works since Zinni’s visit between June 24 and 26. Ironically, a major Karachi English daily’s report, which covered Gen Musharraf’s speech to the media on June 26, 1999, read, “COAS: Nawaz and Clinton may meet soon over Kashmir”. It went on to say: “Talks are under way to prepare [a] meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and US President Bill Clinton on the Kashmir crisis, Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf said today....The general declined to say when the meeting was likely to take place” but he added, “I hope soon.”

The statement went on to say that “Musharraf said the US and Pakistani sides had explained their points of view during the recent meetings. They wanted to find a solution agreeable to Pakistan, India and the United States, to cool down the current tensions and move towards a settlement of the five-decade-long dispute over Kashmir, he (Musharraf) said.” If he knew a meeting was in the works, why was he surprised to see him leaving for Washington?

Interestingly, Musharraf’s book makes no mention of Gen Zinni’s mission on Kargil or any other visit to Pakistan. Zinni is missing from the index.

Even with his hands completely tied during the Washington summit and the so-called Washington declaration being dictated to him, Sharif was able to include an amendment which said: “The President would take personal interest to encourage an expeditious resumption and intensification of bilateral efforts (i.e. Lahore) once the sanctity of the LOC had been fully restored”. Clinton accepted the amendment.

After the withdrawal from Kargil, President Clinton, says Riedel, “privately invited Sharif to send a senior trusted official to Washington to begin a discreet discussion on how to follow up on his ‘personal commitment’ to the Lahore process”.

According to Riedel, it soon became apparent, however, that “all was not well in Islamabad....We concluded the Pakistani internal situation was not ripe for Sharif to take action.” Finally, when Sharif came in late September 1999, says Riedel, “he all but said that they knew a military coup was coming. On October 12, 1999 it came....”

Riedel says President Clinton instructed to “do all we could to convince the new Pakistani leadership not to execute Sharif....President urged Musharraf to let Sharif free. With our encouragement the Saudis pressed hard for Sharif’s freedom.”

Kargil could not have been planned if then chief of army staff, Gen Jehangir Karamat, retired on time, i.e. January 10, 1999, because it would have been too late to plan and take positions by February. But Gen Karamat, by sheer coincidence, found a way to get out of the way in October 1998. After his retirement, Gen Karamat became the first chief of army staff to head for employment in the United States, taking up his first assignment at the Brookings Institution.

Who gained the most from the Kargil adventure? Unmistakably, the United States. “Doors opened to Americans in New Delhi that had been shut for years. The Indian elite, including the military, and the Indian pubic began to shed long held negative perceptions of the US,” says Riedel. That seems closer to“the truth and the whole truth”.

Quotes . . . Quotable ???

President of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf during his tour of America noted about his Afghan counterpart: “This is most terrible and I don’t like one bit of it that we should be on such a course where he is bad-mouthing Pakistan and I’m attacking him. This is a sign of defeat and weakness and is setback for the whole coalition for whatever we are doing in that region.”

At another point he stated: “I really got tired of going everywhere and giving all these hundred interviews but this is what I tried to achieve: If I can change the mind of this President Karzai, then we will go together to fight the enemy and fight the problem. Now we are fighting ourselves.”

On hostile media and unfounded allegations: “My natural instinct is to fight back. Agar koi mujahee aik sunae tu mein unhein pundra suna doon ga.”

His reaction to a BBC interview was: “He (interviewer) had the audacity to ask me that ISI should be dismantled and I said what the hell are you talking and let him have it then with equal anger. I was very aggressive and told him that you expect us to tell you to dismantle your MI6 for not doing well.”

On outdated list of Taliban handed over to him by the Afghan intelligence chief: “I told him is this your intelligence that you waited for the presidential visit to hand it over…in fact I was very rude to him.”

On development projects: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have also built a coastal highway and you can drive on it as fast as your car drives.”

On his strengths, President Musharraf said: “I have a few strengths and one is that I am a Sayed. I have been inside Khana Kaaba seven times and I am the only leader who went to the roof of Khana Kaaba. I’ve been to Madina six times.”

Referring to the Hudood ordinance and Women’s Protection Bill, President Musharraf pointed to two Pakistani women journalists present at the press conference in New York on September 27 and stated: “There are these two ladies sitting here and we must do something for them and I’m with them on this issue. And I don’t care whatever destabilisation takes place. It will be done, this must be done. This has to be done and we have to pass a bill.”

The most embarrassing moment experienced was when some 1,000 Pakistani-Americans assembled at a glitzy New York hotel to watch the much-publicised CBS interview on the eve of President Musharraf’s book launch. The occasion was sheer embarrassment for the Pakistanis. Musharraf was introduced as the president of a country where the “Pakistani evil of A.Q. Khan lives” and Pakistan was described as the ‘most dangerous’ country.

The president arrived at the function after the interview had been aired and perhaps to make up for the super let-down spoke extempore for more than two hours non-stop, testing the endurance of the guests and scores of US secret service personnel looking after his security. Realising that he had set a record, the president in the end quipped: “I think I have never spoken so much but I thought I would test myself after the open-heart surgery.”

OVERCONFIDENCE: On domestic front, president’s loud and clear message throughout the visit was: all is under control. Rubbishing rumours of a military coup in Pakistan, he categorically stated: “The army follows me, the army likes me. I’m relaxed as the army and military is with me. So how can anything happen there? Nothing will happen there ever.”

At another point, he asserted: “Pakistan army never gets defeated and what we do is from a position of strength.”

Public Welfare Projects

People as well as the money lending / donor organizations often wonder why fruit of public projects does not become apparent. The sketches below describe the process of implementation of public welfare projects.

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The disastrous Jolt of Last October 8

One year back, Free part of Jammu Kashmir and Northern provinces of Pakistan were severely jolted but Free part of Jammu Kashmir and Northern areas of Pakistan had become valley of death. Nearly all buildings had come down. It was 7.6 magnitude earthquake that wreaked havoc.

Last year, it was death and destruction but this time it may be disease and hunger. With humanitarian corps pulled out long ago and generous Pakistanis only very little in sight, the challenge is still right here haunting the 3.5 million people.Today, the survivors stand alone amid the debris of their homes and desires.

A year after the earthquake, the reconstruction could hardly kick off. The most vulnerable tucked on the mountain slopes of Neelum, Leepa, Kaghan, Naran, Bisham, Allai valleys and other remain under-served. The payment of so called 'compensation' installments remains more controversial than the very amount of money being offered to reconstruct the homes and start lives afresh.

The earthquake zone ranging from the outskirts of Abbottabad to the shaken peaks of Allai, Neelum and Leepa mountains, scores of survivors are awaiting the first installment of the government-announced compensation while the Erra bureaucracy claims to have so far disbursed Rs25 billion among the victims as compensation.

Ironically, however, last year it was a, but this year it could be a harsh winter that threatens the ill-equipped, under-nourished and homeless 3.5 million survivors.
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Self-respect is priceless

Here are three letters published in Dawn

From Karachi by HUMA
President Pervez Musharraf’s book In the Line of Fire is no doubt written in a very readable style though its contents are highly controversial. But what simply cannot be forgiven, considering the fact that a publisher of repute has published it, are the many errors in the dates of important events. Here is a list of some of the errors I detected:

Iskander Mirza’s coup: Oct 8, 1958 (it was Oct 7) – p. 156
Ayub Khan’s coup: Oct 28, 1958 (it was Oct 27, 1958) – p. 156
Year of Benazir Bhutto’s second dismissal: 1997 (it was November 1996) – p.162
Census in Pakistan: 1997 (it was 1998) – p.169

Any good editor familiar with Pakistan’s history could have corrected these dates immediately.

From Karachi by Akber
With reference to Ms Huma's letter (Sept 27) pointing out the errors in dates in President Musharraf's book In the Line of Fire, I may add one more. On page 16, the author writes, "Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last viceroy, persuaded London that Britain could not hold on till then (June 1948) and had the date moved forward to August 1947. This was announced in April 1947." That is wrong. It was the June 3 plan (1947) that announced that India would be partitioned and the British would withdraw from the subcontinent.

President Musharraf is also reported to have defended in New York his move to write his memoir while in office. He says this is not unprecedented and cites the example of Nelson Mandela. The president would be well advised to revise his history. The Long Walk to Freedom was written earlier and published in mid 1994. South Africa's first all-race elections were held in April 1994.Mandela was inaugurated as the president of South Africa on May 10, 1994. That is the cut-off point for the book. He didn't write any book while in office.

From London (UK) by an Indian, Vipul Thakore
Officials were aghast and journalists were incredulous when Gen Musharraf turned a White House press conference into a book promotion, helped in some measure by President Bush who was only too happy to have his ally duck the question pertaining to the reported threat by Mr Armitage to bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age.

For President Musharraf some extra book royalty dollars are more important than the ‘izzat’ of the proud people of Pakistan, as he ridiculed his own country publicly. The latest revelation smacks of cowardice and submission.

No Indian leader would like to do or dare to do such a thing, as sovereign people of India would just get rid of him or her. They taught Indira Gandhi a lesson for declaring even a brief spell of emergency. The people of Pakistan, while individually brave and with care for honour, are impotent in front of the guns of their own army.

India’s main political parties have unanimously criticised President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s version of the Kargil conflict as detailed in his autobiography as more lies from Musharraf. President Musharraf’s attempt to undermine the Indian army to save his personal reputation from self-inflicted damage will come back to haunt him and Pakistan. In this he has performed another disservice for Pakistan.
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Islam was not spread with Sword – Says a Jew Scholar

Excerpts from an article of Uri Avnery who once was a member of the Knesset and Irgun, and was Jew commando fighter in the 1948 war with Arabs

The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism," in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations."

In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword.

Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"? Well, they just did not.

For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian.

In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith--and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians.

There is no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"?

When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire ) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted.

WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book." In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost.

Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for 50 generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist and left wing peace activist. He was a member of the Knesset from 1965 to 1973 and 1979 to 1981. As a youth, he was a member of the Revisionist Zionist paramilitary group, Irgun. In the 1948 Arab–Israel War he was a fighter in the Samson’s Foxes jeep unit and also wrote its anthem.
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