That Taliban needs to be defeated is not in dispute among the civilized folks. But beside the prologed war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, what other tactics could be effectively employed against a brutal, fanatical regime? The Indian magazine Pragati suggests an intriguing answer: Mock them!
Continue reading "Mocking Taliban " »
by Anurag Wadehra
For your spiritual reflection, you can do no better than read the posthumous editorial of Lasantha Wickramatunga, the editor of the newspaper Sunday Leader in Sri Lanka. He was killed two weeks ago for his fierce criticism of the Sri Lankan government's handling of its war on terror against LTTE (the separatist terror group also called the Tamil Tigers).
Continue reading ""The Call of Conscience"" »
by Anurag Wadehra
Stop This Viscious Slaughter is an excellent satire by Martin Lewis on Huffington Post comparing the current Hamas-Israeli conflict to that between England and Germany in the Second World War. Unlike political op-eds where each side lays out its arguments in critical, logical terms, with ad nauseum debates on definitions and premises, the parody relies on the rhetorical power of similarity and association between the two situations.
Continue reading "The Power of Parody" »
by Reena Kapoor
Shikha Dalmia of Reason presents an interesting case in WSJ with her article Arming India against Terrorism where she talks about how and why Mumbai a city of 18 million was held hostage for nearly 60 hours by 10 gunmen in the recent attacks. She says that part of the reason terrorists ran free in Mumbai was that no one else was armed properly - not the police, not the private security of the establishments under attack and certainly not the citizenry - thanks to draconian anti-gun laws. Putting aside for a moment the libertarian stance for gun ownership by all citizens, even anti-gun ideologues should be able to see that victims in this attack would have fared much better if at least private establishments (in this case hotels) had properly armed security guards.
Continue reading "Guns vs. Terror" »
by Reena Kapoor
A number of media clips from Pakistan TV are making the Internet rounds that show how Pakistan's media is treating the Mumbai attacks as a creation of the Indian government! Reminds me of the conspiracy theories that abounded in the Arab world post-9/11. I've pasted a few links here; note the liberal use of Urdu may prevent them from being fully intelligible to all of you (although even with a decent knowledge of Urdu the rants are not entirely intelligible to me!)
Continue reading "Pakistan: Delusional, yet some hope?" »
by Anurag Wadehra
How we respond, as individuals, to a crisis reveals our character. How we react, as a community, to a crisis reveals our ethos: what a group will stand for and fight against. In this light, here is a profound and symbolic gesture by the Mumbai Muslim community, as reported by NDTV (Indian media).
Musilm organizations in Mumbai deny burial for slain terrorists....
Continue reading "Slain Terrorists Denied Stairway to Heaven " »
by Anurag Wadehra
The article on the heroism of Taj employees (also linked in Reena's previous post) recounts numerous incidents indelible in their poignancy.
Continue reading "Terror & Silence " »