Whither Democracy?

Dost Mittar,

Thanks for your last post; you are right.

Btw, Sadna, and DM, have you seen the Sunday Times` Week in Review Section? An op-ed piece on al-J and US media censorship from a Harvard Journalism School bigwig...thought he made some nice points...unfortunatly, many Americans I speak to think al-J should be shut down...says something, doesn`t it?

regards

Neptune,

{{Ahah! So I did manage to convince you that time}}

No s *it; Sherlock!:) Youre da man...

Rgds

Dr Watson

...& not a single one of those heads has a brain in it!!:)

Pakistani two-timing at it`s finest:

BBC Website, South Asia News

Monday, 12 November, 2001, 19:22 GMT

Deported journalist `uncovered collusion`



Justin Sutcliffe and Christina Lamb fly home after their ordeal

A British journalist who was deported from Pakistan at the weekend says she believes the action may have been triggered by her discovery of collusion between some Pakistani army officers and the Taleban.

Sunday Telegraph reporter Christina Lamb said authorities which deported her gave no explanation and detained her for 18 hours without food.

She told BBC News Online she was kept in the dark about why she and photographer Justin Sutcliffe were sent home from Islamabad on Saturday.

It`s a matter of huge concern that a country we are in alliance with in fighting for freedom, is treating people in such a barbaric manner



Christina Lamb

Journalist

The pair had been detained by Pakistani authorities since the early hours on Friday in the border city of Quetta.

Ms Lamb, 35, said they were woken in their hotel in the middle of the night by five members of the military intelligence and two police officers.

`Not allowed to sleep or eat`

She said they were driven to a railway rest room and then flown to Islamabad, but not allowed to sleep, eat or make contact with Britain until they were sent home the next day.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has expressed concern about the deportation and plans to stay in contact with Ms Lamb about any further representations to Pakistan.

Ms Lamb said she had uncovered evidence of a covert operation by rogue elements in the Pakistani military intelligence service to smuggle arms to the Taleban.

But the deportation order vaguely described the reason as ``acting in a manner prejudicial to the external affairs and security of Pakistan``.

Ms Lamb said: ``It`s a matter of huge concern that a country we are in alliance with in fighting for freedom, is treating people in such a barbaric manner.

``To deport people without giving them any chance to answer any charge that they are supposed to have done is incredibly frustrating.``

Miss Lamb denies booking a ticket in Bin Laden`s name



The Sunday Telegraph is planning legal action against Pakistani newspapers that recently claimed the pair had booked an airline ticket from Quetta in the name of Osama Bin Laden.

Ms Lamb, who has a two-year-old son called Lorenzo, said that was not true and related to a throwaway remark she made to a travel agent who said she could book a flight under a false name.

She said she thought the airline ticket stories, which accused her of trying to prove Bin Laden was in Pakistan, were the pretext for the deportation.

Her son and husband in Portugal were worried about her safety after they were told by the hotel she had checked out in the middle of the night.

`I felt like a criminal`

Ms Lamb, who has been reporting in Pakistan since 1987, said her detention was very frightening and made her feel like a criminal.

She said she thought it was probably the result of her investigations into the allegedly pro-Taleban actions of the Pakistani military intelligence.

Ms Lamb told BBC News Online: ``Even the spokesman for President Musharraf was shocked to hear about our experience and other senior government officials knew nothing about it.

``This begs the question `Is he really in control of the military intelligence and who is actually running the country?```

Sunday Telegraph editor Dominic Lawson said: ``We have been given no reason for the deportations beyond the vaguest generalities.

Christina was simply carrying out her duties as a journalist



Dominic Lawson,

Sunday Telegraph editor

``Christina was simply carrying out her duties as a journalist.``

Labour rebel MP Paul Marsden was on a fact-finding mission in Pakistan when Miss Lamb was detained.

She said he helped to raise the alarm about her plight and helped secure her freedom.

Ms Lamb said she wanted to return to Pakistan to continue her work as soon as possible.

Re: bijli

``IS THERE ANY HISTORICAL EVIDENCE ,BIOLOGICALLY OR ARTEFACT WISE -GOD DAMMIT WE HAVE FOUND PRE HUMAN DINOSEUERS WHY NOT A SINGLE ARTEFACT OF RAMAYAN OR MAHABHARAT???-SO MYTHOLOGICAL STORIES ARE CALLED FICTION AND ITS BEST WRITER IS ONE RUSHDIE.AND IMAGINE YOU SILLY PEOPLE HANGING ON TO MYTHOLOGICAL FICTION FROM SOMEONE LIKE RUSHDIE ,STARTING THE WHOLE RELIGION.& GULLIBLE INDU STICKING TO 12 HEAD OR 16 ARMS BIO EXISISTENCE NEVER PROVED BIOLOGICALLY POSSIBLE.``

And you do have ``biological proof`` of 72 virgins waiting for good Muslim men in heaven. And you have a DNA sample of Allah which you have been working on sequencing.

Layman

And one last note if you couldnt read my long email... it is easy to make such statments.. it is not your religion being hijacked by fools like Fatimah.. it is not your country which is being maligned by a handful of fanatics...

-YLH

There is no defending the indefensible:

This is what Layman was trying to defend

Fatimah Says about Maleeha Lodhi:

`She looks like a DALIT converted to islam .I dont know her hx but she is no way an attractive figure .Go ask around.`

Does it matter? Arent Dalits human beings? What is so amazing about that.... You probably have an American passport... Why dont you stop making judgements about Pakistan huh... It is not your country...

If a Pakistani American wants to have anything to do with Pakistan... he/she has to declare the following:

`I hereby solemnly swear that I place the interests of Pakistan before the `perceived` Interests of Islam, and that I realize that I have been led astray by the Islamic scholars in the North American Mosques which are bastions of Bigotry and not Islam.`

Pakistaniness is not the Hijab. Hijab can never be a Pakistani thing... Hijab is an ugly stupid cloth that should be abandoned...

for your information you idiotic Muslim American... We are proud of the fact that Pakistani culture is a unique mix of various cultures including Indian, Iranian, Afghan, and Central Asian and British... and now Pakistani culture is the Global culture... Pakistan should become committed to one world!

If it is the TNT you base Pakistan on, then remember the defining point of Pakistan remains its South Asian heritage... it was the South Asian Muslims who according to the TNT constituted a nation not and I repeat NOT the entire Islamic Ummah... TNT is very specific about that.. TNT is not concerned with whether you believe in God or not..it is concerned with an indigenous ...

On another place you said.. Jinnah didnot make Pakistan... that is a stupid statement... but let us assume that is true... is it Iqbal who is the father of the Pakistan idea... if so... then read his address to Allahabad Muslim league in 1930 .. he speaks of only South Asian Muslims... Muslims of India.. he doesnot ... and I repeat doesnot speak of the Ummah when he defines the TNT.

And you daddyos... the Maudoodis, the Jamaat e Islami wallahs, the Deobandis.. all of them opposed the creation of Pakistan.. why dont you stick with that and grow up?

-YLH

Layman

`Ylh, you come across as an emotional, if sometimes misinformed / confused young man. If you ever hope to become a leader, you need to communicate with dignity, not rant and rave like a street-corner neta. I also notice that you are not able to handle well people who disagree with your (passionately held) views. This is as sincere a feedback as I can give to someone of your country.`

With all due respect I dont need your sincere feedbacks... I usually open to criticism, as many know, but I know you too well to believe anything to be sincere ... because you know what... we are damned if we do... we are damned if we dont... Your country has a double edged policy ... Pakistani leadership is guilty of chamberlainism.. we are guilty of chamberlainism when dealing with fanatics and bigots, who despite being a small minority end up ruining Pakistan ... for three years I have tolerated in vain the absolute nonsense that Pakistani Americans spout out in ignorance.

As for people not agreeing with me... maybe you will shed some light on why you responded to my argument which was backed up documents and legal evidence.... by saying `fcuk off kid`... Is that the lesson you telling me to learn?

Should I handle people who disagree with me by telling them to `fcuk off` ... huh layman? Are you just talking the talk? can you walk the walk?

I am sorry but this is the problem with you Indians... you are all over the place with your `sincere` advice ... but the problem is that most of ya`all dont follow your own advice... neither nationally nor individually.

I have been more than open to criticism, advice and constructive feedback... Shammi, Stuka, Egalitarian Brahmin, all of them know... I appreciate all truly `sincere` pieces of advice.. but allow me to say neither is your advice sincere nor is it productive... it is a continuation of `fault finding`....

You people dont want people like me screaming our heads off... You dont want us to rip off the Hijabs of these people... because you want to see Muslims backwards ... You want to see our women dressed up in Burkahs... You know why? It gives your pathetic existences a chance to feel happy about... and gives you a chance to criticize us..

I will scream out... I will denounce the Mullahs.. I will destroy the fanatics... there.. I dont want to be the Prime Minister if it means making compromises... I dont want to be leader if it means making bargains or aligning myself with fundoos... I am no `Congress Party` politician ! I am no `Gandhi` who would support the Khilafat Movement for his reasons ... I am no Azad who will team up with the deobandi fundamentalists...

I am quite content in the `street shouting` neta role... I will be even more content with a role as a social commentator... I would rather follow the footsteps of Ardeshir Cowassjee or Salman Rushdie than be a Nawaz Sharif or a Benazir or an Imran Khan ...

I WILL SPEAK MY MIND. and that is what chaps like you are scared off..

-YLH

fatimah .. has it occured to that we might wanna be like Phillipines and the rest of Humanity?

Shankar #341

Re: the hydra-headed retard

[EVERYBODY knows you come to Chowk with several identities...]

Ahah! So I did manage to convince you that time!

Best regards

Mycroft Holmes

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/national/12STUD.html


In Sweeping Campus Canvasses, U.S. Checks on Mideast Students

By JACQUES STEINBERG

In the two months since the attacks of Sept. 11, federal investigators have contacted administrators on more than 200 college campuses to collect information about students from Middle Eastern countries, the most sweeping canvass of the halls of academia since the cold war, the colleges say.

The agents have asked what subjects the students are studying, whether they are performing well and where they are living.

They have also questioned the students themselves, asking about their views on Osama bin Laden, the names of their favorite restaurants and their plans for after graduation.

The investigations have put the universities in a difficult position, pitting the government`s interest in security against the institutions` desire to protect students` privacy and to avoid engaging in racial profiling.

But in the end, a national survey of college registrars found, nearly all the universities approached have readily supplied answers to the government`s questions, largely because the law appears to be on the government`s side.

The agents, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have used those conversations as the basis for interviewing dozens of students.

One Saudi Arabian student, who attends the University of Colorado at Denver, said federal investigators closed their interview with him by saying, ``Expect to see us again.``

The college officials who have been sought out - including those at Columbia University, Tufts University and San Diego State University - said that the often unannounced visits and the urgent lines of inquiry were throwbacks to a decade or more ago, when it was not uncommon for a federal agent to ask a dean a question like ``Did Vladimir show up at the lab today?``

Larry Bell, director of international education at the University of Colorado in Denver, said that federal agents had visited his office or the registrar`s office five times in recent weeks.

Mr. Bell said that the agents had interviewed at least 50 students from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other Arab countries. He said he did not believe any had been arrested or linked to a terrorist cell.

``The students are not sure what the purpose of the questions are,`` Mr. Bell said. ``But they know that the government isn`t interviewing any students from Germany.``

Mindful that a terrorist with a student visa participated in the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal agencies said they were seeking to mine further leads and to begin making good on the president`s promise to ensure that the half-million foreign students studying here were accounted for on their campuses.

``One of the reasons they want to know where a student lives is so that they can come find them when necessary or simply watch them,`` said Catheryn Cotten, director of the international student office at Duke University, who has yet to receive such a visit but has been in contact with many colleges that have. ``It`s not that they want to arrest the students. They want to keep track of them coming and going.``

Still, the sudden appearance of agents in college buildings and the government`s plans to expand such surveillance have heightened the anxiety on campuses already jittery because of the terrorist attacks and the anthrax scares.

``It`s just very hard to squeal on your own students,`` said James O. Freedman, a former president of Dartmouth College. ``You don`t want students to get the perception that you are in league with those who may be out to get them.``

The Saudi student in Colorado, who asked not to be identified, said that two agents from the F.B.I. and another from the I.N.S. arrived at his apartment unannounced on a Wednesday evening about a month ago.

The agents said they had gotten his name from two other Saudi students who had been briefly detained after they had been observed taking photographs of the university`s sports arena. The photographs were for a photography class, Mr. Bell said.

In his interview with the authorities, the student, a 26-year-old landscape architecture major, said he was asked about his classes, activities and politics. ``I was afraid,`` he said. ``I know they can do anything they want to you.``

Still, he understood the situation. ``I don`t blame them,`` he said. ``Thousands of innocent people were killed in a few seconds and a few hours.``

In a survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, 220 colleges reported that they had been contacted at least once by the F.B.I. or the I.N.S. after Sept. 11 about the status of foreign students. Nearly a quarter of those institutions reported multiple contacts.

A federal immigration official, who insisted on anonymity, said that the colleges had been identified in the belief that foreign students there might have information that would assist the government`s inquiry.

``These visits are a component of an ongoing criminal investigation,`` the official said.

Under federal immigration law, the government is entitled to much of the information it has sought. As a condition of most education visas, a foreign student signs a waiver permitting a college to let immigration officials know when the student arrived on campus, how many credits the student had earned and whether the student`s field of study or mailing address had changed.

Though college administrators are required to collect such information, they said that the government asked them to stop sending it to Washington years ago, in part because the I.N.S. could not scale the mountain of paperwork.

But in the weeks since Sept. 11, federal officials have been aggressively gathering such records and more. The colleges comply for financial and legal reasons. By alienating the government, a school could risk losing its authority to request visas for foreign students, most of whom pay full tuition.

There is a long tradition of law enforcement watching over college campuses in times of crisis. But Sol Gittleman, provost of Tufts University and a professor there for nearly 40 years, said he could not recall when outside agencies had descended on so many campuses so quickly. ``Unprecedented,`` Mr. Gittleman said. ``We`ve never had a national emergency like this.``

The scrutiny of students of Arab descent has so far touched off little protest, a stark contrast to the outrage when American-born students have been profiled by university or law enforcement officials. In 1992, the campus of the State University of New York College at Oneonta was riven for weeks after the college provided the state police with a list of every black and Hispanic student in an investigation of an assault on an elderly woman.

In the current investigation, federal agents have contacted Columbia University two or three times and interviewed at least one foreign student, said Virgil Renzulli, a spokesman for the school. Mr. Renzulli said he did not believe that the student was arrested.

At San Diego State University, the government has sought information about many of the 60 students from the Middle East because, university officials said, two of the hijackers lived in San Diego and had ties to the Muslim community.

University officials said that the authorities later arrested one San Diego State student and transported him to New York, where he was being held as a material witness.

But the investigation on the San Diego campus continues. On Wednesday, immigration officials delivered a written request to the university seeking information about the locations and studies of 40 students from Arab nations, a request that the university intends to honor.

``It`s upsetting,`` said Jane Kalionzes, associate director of the international student center. ``Even though we`ve always known that reporting is a part of our job, we haven`t done it in so long.``

Ylh #330:

``Bigoted fanatical fools ... I hate you all! Die all of you Die!``

And you hope to become the Prime Minister of your country!

Ylh, you come across as an emotional, if sometimes misinformed / confused young man. If you ever hope to become a leader, you need to communicate with dignity, not rant and rave like a street-corner neta. I also notice that you are not able to handle well people who disagree with your (passionately held) views.

This is as sincere a feedback as I can give to someone of your country.

sadna,

{{I think 15-head claimed to be a psychiatrist some time ago}}

Whoah! thats blasphemy!

12 headed hypocrite,

{{She looks like a DALIT converted to islam .I dont know her hx but she is no way an attractive figure .Go ask around.}}

HA HA!

So much for the EGALITARIAN character of Islam! Typical--the guys who thump Islam on their chest are the ones who spit on the face of the Prophet(pbuh).

I got news for you, pal--in your previous life you were the 10 headed Ravana. When your ancestor was converted to Islam, you came back--with 2 extra heads!

EVERYBODY knows you come to Chowk with several identities. Yet you have no shame! You continue to persist & I`m afraid we cant get rid of any of your personalities because you will just pop up with another personality.

In hindu mythology, if Ravana`s head was chopped off, another head would replace it. Perhaps, you could do us all a favor & just come up with just one Chowkie pseudonym--Ravan (new, improved version of the Islamic kind).

Rsaxena,

{{He winks at girls, you wink at boys. What`s the difference?}}

My friend, if you dont know the difference, you`d better see a shrink. Ofcourse a real shrink--not a quack like me...

saminashah #333
I think 15-head claimed to be a psychiatrist some time ago. My opinion of the health system is now in the Mariana trench somewhere. `course, even `homes` must be wired now :)