Enough of Eulogizing Benazir...here's a little perspective

An article written by William Dalrymple in The New York Times puts things in perspective to us Indians who might've not been the news fiends when the Benazir was doing her stuff:

"
WHEN, in May 1991, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India was killed by a suicide bomber, there was an international outpouring of grief. Recent days have seen the same with the death of Benazir Bhutto: another glamorous, Western-educated scion of a great South Asian political dynasty tragically assassinated at an election rally.
There is, however, an important difference between the two deaths: while Mr. Gandhi was assassinated by Sri Lankan Hindu extremists because of his policy of confronting them, Ms. Bhutto was apparently the victim of Islamist militant groups that she allowed to flourish under her administrations in the 1980s and 1990s.
It was under Ms. Bhutto’s watch that the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, first installed the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was also at that time that hundreds of young Islamic militants were recruited from the madrassas to do the agency’s dirty work in Indian Kashmir. It seems that, like some terrorist equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, the extremists turned on both the person and the state that had helped bring them into being.
While it is true that the recruitment of jihadists had started before she took office and that Ms. Bhutto was insufficiently strong — or competent — to have had full control over either the intelligence services or the Pakistani Army when she was in office, it is equally naïve to believe she had no influence over her country’s foreign policy toward its two most important neighbors, India and Afghanistan.
Everyone now knows how disastrous the rule of the Taliban turned out to be in Afghanistan, how brutally it subjected women and how it allowed Al Qaeda to train in camps within its territory. But another, and in the long term perhaps equally perilous, legacy of Ms. Bhutto’s tenure is often forgotten: the turning of Kashmir into a jihadist playground.
In 1989, when the insurgency in the Indian portion of the disputed region first began, it was largely an amateur affair of young, secular-minded Kashmiri Muslims rising village by village and wielding homemade weapons — firearms fashioned from the steering shafts of rickshaws and so on. By the early ’90s, however, Pakistan was sending over the border thousands of well-trained, heavily armed and ideologically hardened jihadis. Some were the same sorts of exiled Arab radicals who were at the same time forming Al Qaeda in Peshawar, in northwestern Pakistan.
By 1993, during Ms. Bhutto’s second term, the Arab and Afghan jihadis (and their Inter-Services Intelligence masters) had really begun to take over the uprising from the locals. It was at this stage that the secular leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front began losing ground to hard-line Islamist outfits like Hizbul Mujahedeen.
I asked Benazir Bhutto about her Kashmir policy and the potential dangers of the growing role of religious extremists in the conflict during an interview in 1994. “India tries to gloss over its policy of repression in Kashmir,” she replied. “India does have might, but has been unable to crush the people of Kashmir. We are not prepared to keep silent, and collude with repression.”
Hamid Gul, who was the head of the intelligence agency during her first administration, was more forthcoming still. “The Kashmiri people have risen up,” he told me, “and it is the national purpose of Pakistan to help liberate them.” He continued, “If the jihadis go out and contain India, tying down their army on their own soil, for a legitimate cause, why should we not support them?”
Benazir Bhutto’s death is, of course, a calamity, particularly as she embodied the hopes of so many liberal Pakistanis. But, contrary to the commentary we’ve seen in the last week, she was not comparable to Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Ms. Bhutto’s governments were widely criticized by Amnesty International and other groups for their use of death squads and terrible record on deaths in police custody, abductions and torture. As for her democratic bona fides, she had no qualms about banning rallies by opposing political parties while in power.
Within her own party, she declared herself the president for life and controlled all decisions. She rejected her brother Murtaza’s bid to challenge her for its leadership and when he persisted, he was shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances during a police ambush outside the Bhutto family home.
Benazir Bhutto was certainly a brave and secular-minded woman. But the obituaries painting her as dying to save democracy distort history. Instead, she was a natural autocrat who did little for human rights, a calculating politician who was complicit in Pakistan’s becoming the region’s principal jihadi paymaster while she also ramped up an insurgency in Kashmir that has brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.
"

For once you can rest in peace that Musharraf hasn't screwed up :)

I am sick & tired of all this sex on the TV

I keep falling off!

How to make love

Ingredients:

4 Laughing eyes
4 Well-shaped legs
4 Loving arms
2 Firm milk containers
2 Nuts
1 Fur-lined mixing bowl
1 Firm banana


Directions:

1. Look into laughing eyes.
2. Spread well-shaped legs with loving arms.
3. Squeeze and massage milk containers very gently.
4. Gently add firm banana to mixing bowl, working in and out until well creamed. For best results. Continue to knead milk containers.
5. As heat rises, plunge banana deep into mixing bowl and cover with nuts, leave to soak (preferably NOT overnight).
6. The cake is done when banana is soft. If banana does not soften, repeat 4 steps 3-5 or change mixing bowls.

Notes:

1. If you are in an unfamiliar kitchen, wash utensils carefully before and after use.
2. Do not lick mixing bowl after use.
3. If cake rises, leave town.

Three rights make a left...

And two Wrights make an Airplane.

If two wrongs don't make a right, try a third. -Nixonian theorem

Two Wongs don't make a white. -Elmer Fud

Two Wongs make Peking Duck. -White-man

Crappy bathroom tiles

A guy from the local mafia decided he needed a new house. After the construction of his new house was finished, he called one of his best friends to see his home.
When he asked his friend, what he thought, his friend said he was rather impressed. But he didn't like the tiles in the bathroom, they were rather ugly and he wondered how his friend could afford such an expensive house, but buy such crappy bathroom tiles.
The guy from the mafia disagreed. "They are not inexpensive at all. Come with me"
They went to the bathroom again. "Can you see what's written on them?"
And his friend noticed with surprise that all tiles were labelled "Intel Pentium Pro"

Why dont we greet eachother?

The other day when I got into the lift at my office I noticed a few Dutch people
among the passengers and I got thinking. I have been to The Netherlands before
and I am aware of how these people greet anyone who gets in or gets out of a lift.
A person, even a stranger, getting into the lift is greeted with a Dui(an equivalent
of Hi) and is greeted again with Dui when he leaves. And I was thinking what
these people must be thinking of us who get in and get out of the lift almost
scorning eachother.
There is no eye contact, no smile for godforbid what if the other person asks
for an earth shattering favor or the other person of the other sex may think
that I am making an advance.
The latter is true most of the time in the Indian context. In Indian, I can't think
of the fairer sex person to respond with a Hi! to a stranger male though this might
not be true vice versa, but which might not happen unless the male is hrithik
and the female is the so called 'liberated' woman.

Once, while travelling to some place in Europe, I had this Indian Dude sitting
beside me and I thought let me introduce myself and we can have a little chit-chat
on the way. Mind you this was not even a lady. And I was greeted with a
oh-not-another-jerk kinda look with no introduction in return! I thought what's
wrong with this guy. These are the people who put a bad name to indians. And
possibly putting off people who want to be polite to others.

Maybe the readers can throw some light on why Indians dont greet eachother like the
way westerners do.

Good day!