A Nation Punished

Muslims of India were facing inhuman treatment by Hindus. Getting fed up they had demanded their own country where they could live peacefully and could perform their religious duties without encumbrance. While leaving British rulers acceded to this demand and the result was Pakistan. Pakistan’s independence was to be announced on the night between 14 and 15 August, 1947.

As soon as this decision was announced in March, 1947, Hindus of India started mass massacre of Muslims forcibly pushing them out of their houses. Only a few of the pictures taken by foreign media during 1947 are reproduced below.

Happy New Year and More

HAPPY NEW YEAR

May you along with your families
be blessed with
good health, happiness and prosperity

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 33,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 12 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Reason Behind Terrorism

I was surfing the web and came across a stunning reality.
The richest 300 people on earth have as much wealth as the poorest 3 billion.
This is no accident; those in power write the rules.
The rules that create inequality and poverty.
The reason behind terrorism.

Switch on the speakers, click here to start the video and try to understand the realty.

Cost of War, the People Pay

I am a common man and have concerns about common people, may they be living in my country, under Super Power (USA), in Europe or cold world of Russia & China or in the Middle East or far-East. Common man is living in this world to work hard and pay for the comfort of the influential. Governments these days are spending more of the common man’s (tax-payer’s) money to ward off fear of danger to their self than on welfare of common man from whom the money was extracted. Common man elects them to elevated positions and thereby cause to kill common man on the globe. Common man fails to understand that the ongoing killing of it’s lot is ‘War on Terror’ or ‘War of Terror’ as people are killed somewhere by suicide bomb and elsewhere by government forces’ fired missiles while they are busy in marriage ceremony, religious congregation, shopping in the market, traveling to visit friends or witnessing a movie or drama. Victims in all the cases are innocent people who are killed without having caused any provocation. The most confusing thing is that so far no one has sincerely tried to define what is terrorism and who, in fact, is a terrorist because two different persons doing the same act of killing, one is named terrorist and the other is said to have been under understandable emotions.

I was surfing web for some engineering project that I hit a page which made me hold my breath. Below is an extract from a report prepared by National Priorities Project at the end of year 2011

Introduction
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, National Priorities Project has tracked the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recent events, including the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq in December 2011 and the winding down of the troop “surge” in Afghanistan, have led to the question – what’s going to happen to funding for U.S. operations in these countries?

The answer is in three parts:
Annual funding will be lower than in the past.
1. The wars will continue to draw on taxpayer resources even after combat operations in both countries have ended.
2. The funding stream will increasingly flow through federal agencies other than the Department of Defense, primarily the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
3. NPP will continue to analyze funding for Iraq and Afghanistan – and the counters will keep rolling – for as long as U.S. taxpayers are asked to support the direct and indirect costs of these wars.

War Costs To Date
[Note: These totals are based on appropriations that provide funding through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2012.]

Total War Funding: $1.38 trillion has been allocated to date to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $121.1 billion in fiscal year 2012.

a) Iraq: To date, $807.4 billion has been allocated for the war in Iraq since 2003, including $10.1 billion in fiscal year 2012.

b) Afghanistan: To date, $570.9 billion has been allocated for the war in Afghanistan since 2001, including $111.1 billion in fiscal year 2012.

Pity The Nation

Justice Asif Saeed Khosa, Judge Supreme Court of Pakistan, while agreeing with the decision of the court, wrote additional remarks depicting the state of the nation and reminding people of their duty to the Country. I am copying a very effective poetic part of it. Complete version can be seen here.

3. With an apology to Khalil Gibran, and with reference to the present context, I may add as follows:

Pity the nation that achieves nationhood in the name of a religion but pays little heed to truth, righteousness and accountability which are the essence of every religion.

Pity the nation that proclaims democracy as its polity but restricts it to queuing up for casting of ballots only and discourages democratic values.

Pity the nation that measures honour with success and respect with authority, that despises sublime and cherishes mundane, that treats a criminal as a hero and considers civility as weakness and that deems a sage a fool and venerates the wicked.

Pity the nation that adopts a Constitution but allows political interests to outweigh constitutional diktat.

Pity the nation that demands justice for all but is agitated when justice hurts its political loyalty.

Pity the nation whose servants treat their solemn oaths as nothing more than a formality before entering upon an office.

Pity the nation that elects a leader as a redeemer but expects him to bend every law to favour his benefactors.

Pity the nation whose leaders seek martyrdom through disobeying the law than giving sacrifices for the glory of law and who see no shame in crime.

Pity the nation that is led by those who laugh at the law little realizing that the law shall have the last laugh.

Pity the nation that launches a movement for rule of law but cries foul when the law is applied against its bigwig, that reads judicial verdicts through political glasses and that permits skills of advocacy to be practised more vigorously outside the courtroom than inside.

Pity the nation that punishes its weak and poor but is shy of bringing its high and mighty to book.

Pity the nation that clamours for equality before law but has selective justice close to its heart.

Pity the nation that thinks from its heart and not from its head.

Indeed, pity the nation that does not discern villainy from nobility.