Didn't like Wordpress. Not too many editing features, not free at least. So. On Blogger again. New Blog over here. Still working on it though.

My blog has been shifted to http://hopingforsanity.wordpress.com/

I don't like many wordpress features at the moment. But they block blogger whenever they feel the need to. Maybe I'll shift to blogger again if I don't like wordpress.

I forsook writing for so long, I am not even sure I can write anything at all. I have lost my capacity to hold one thought at a time and then take it to its conclusion. I think my mind is degenerating, dissolving into an uninspired mass of dumbness. Neurons splitting up, delinking. One thought suddenly halting ... it then disperses in a whoosh. Another thought takes it place, completely unconnected to the previous one, and then it leaves off too. So there is a vacant look in my eyes sometimes, a vacantness in my mind. Yes, I am becoming dumb I suppose. By why should I really fear dumbness? What is it in stupidity that frightens me? The fact that I'll fall down in my opinion? Or in others' opinions? Or the former because of the latter? Is it the human reality then? Or just my reality perhaps? Corrupted Being. Thats all that matters to us. How do we fare in the minds of others? With materialistic matteristic things and non-matteristic things. Even when all the while, we profess the fact that it doesnt. Maybe my self-esteem goes a bit higher if I see myself well reflected in other people' s eyes. Even if I know I am too hollow, too unworthy of it all. Oh, why do I not hate myself for that? But how do you escape it? Can you ever? Are we fed a constant dose of high praise on purpose? By our genes and our minds. A sense of false importance and distinctness? For the purpose of that survivalistic struggle. Makes one feel not in control of one's self. Maybe thats one of the reasons which puts sense into the idea of the presence of an Absolute Being. So that we submit our inflated egos, allow them to be dissolved. By that complete and utter submission of our selves. A complete self-abnegation of sorts. And meanwhile its the empty, empty, empty sordid self of mine. Empty. Sordid.

And I can't continue any more. I felt I had to fill these spaces with whatever came into my head. But the nonsensity is at an end here. Don't know when I'll write again..

Hey everyone,

Its been a long while ... there were reasons ... but anyway, will try to be back ... If ever do I get regular access to the internet ...

Lebanon Death Toll Hits 1,300 by Robert Fisk

Lebanon Death Toll Hits 1,300

By Robert Fisk

They are digging them up by the hour, the swelling death toll of the Lebanon conflict. The American poet Carl Sandburg spoke of the dead in other wars and imagined that he was the grass under which they would be buried. "Shovel them under and let me work," he said of the dead of Ypres and Verdun. But across Lebanon, they are systematically lifting the tons of rubble of old roofs and apartment blocks and finding families below, their arms wrapped around each other in the moment of death as their homes were beaten down upon them by the Israeli air force. By last night, they had found 61 more bodies, taking the Lebanese dead of the 33-day war to almost 1,300.

In Srifa, south of the Litani river, they found 26 bodies beneath ruins which I myself stood on just three days ago. At Ainata, there were eight more bodies of civilians. A corpse was discovered beneath a collapsed four-storey house north of Tyre and, near by, the remains of a 16-year old girl, along with three children and an adult. In Khiam in eastern Lebanon, besieged by the Israelis for more than a month, the elderly village "mukhtar" was found dead in the ruins of his home.

Not all the dead were civilians. At Kfar Shuba, dumper-truck drivers found the bodies of four Hizbollah members. At Roueiss, however, all 13 bodies found in the wreckage of eight 10-storey buildings were civilians. They included seven children and a pregnant woman. Ten more bodies were disentangled from the rubble of the southern suburbs of Beirut - where local people claimed they could still hear the screams of neighbours trapped far below the bomb-smashed apartment blocks. The Lebanese civil defence organisation - almost as brave as the Lebanese Red Cross in trying to save lives under fire - believe at least three families may be trapped in basements deep below the wreckage.

Ignoring the dangers of unexploded ordnance, several Lebanese Shia Muslims returned to their destroyed homes to retrieve personal belongings - including family snapshots and albums that contain the narrative of their lives - only to fall between gaps in the broken apartment blocks and plunge dozens of feet into the darkness beneath. Among the last to die only minutes before the UN ceasefire came into effect was a child who was found in her dead mother's arms in Beirut.

How many of these dead would have survived if George Bush and Tony Blair had demanded an immediate ceasefire weeks ago will never be known. But many would have had the chance of life had Western governments not regarded this dirty war as an "opportunity" to create a "new" Middle East by humbling Iran and Syria.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

So the ‘Islamic fascists’ have struck again? ( I must say that was a new one in his usual 'they-hate-our-freedoms' speech. I am sure he came up with it all by himself.)

My father thinks it’s very convenient for such a plot to be discovered just when Bush & Blair needed it the most. He thinks it’s a way to divert Western public’s attention from the atrocities committed by Israel in Lebanon. And I can it from the way such past ‘plots’ are perceived in this part of the world that what my father thinks is the general opinion of the masses in Pakistan.

Personally I am sceptical as always, just too sceptical. How can I believe these governments of U.S. and Britain when in the past they are known for following false intelligence leads, for sending people to Guantanamo without trial? And what about that recent Forest Gate incident? But as always not one reporter in the Western News Channels is going to question that. They instead chose to speculate on the nature of the liquid bombs. And parroting about the ‘mass murder’ that had just been prevented (of course strong words like ‘mass murder’ are reserved for deeds undertaken by terrorists alone). One CNN newscaster said it was chilling the way something as ordinary as a liquid could be used as a bomb. Seems pretty familiar to me. Whip your public into a frenzy of fear, so that they eventually stop questioning you.

'Refuseniks' say they won't attack civilians

The situation in the Gaza Strip remains "extremely volatile" - Red Cross

"Sharp decline" in the humanitarian situation in Gaza after six weeks of siege Report, OCHA, 7 August 2006

Israel's Promise Of Humanitarian
Corridors Is Exposed As A Sham By Robert Fisk

What Do You Say To A Man Whose Family
Is Buried Under The Rubble? By Robert Fisk

Israel's rain of missiles on Gaza and Tae'er's legs

Blogging the Middle East

Fake facades and deceptive masks are dissolving away in this war for me. People, journalists on TV whom you somehow respected, are suddenly unfamiliar. I watch them with horror as they dexterously warp and fog the meaning behind the events of the war in Lebanon and Palestine. CNN, of course, I am not talking about. It’s BBC that has unhingingly (for me) transfigured itself. Israel’s barbaric invasion is being clothed with words like ‘self-defence’ and ‘retaliation’ to somehow make it less malignant or more excusable. Its losses are magnified, over-emphasized, while those in Lebanon go maddeningly under-reported. The use of illegal cluster and white phosphorus bombs is blissfully ignored. BBC wasn’t exactly the lone champion of truth in the wilderness of misleading reportage. But you always expected better from BBC. It was supposed to be different. I have taken to visiting Electronic Intifada, Counter Currents and Daily Star (a Lebanon English Daily I recently discovered) now. Its sad, painful, upsetting and … outrageous to think of the diet of misinformation being fed to the Western public and every where else around the world these channels are watched. Perfect thought control. I just get more and more of you each day Orwell.

And I am frightened. A terror holds me each day in the normalcy of my life in Lahore. The terror of watching the world, my world spiral towards the destruction of a monstrously huge black hole. I see the corpses of dead children and homeless families, waiting their fate to be pronounced by the lords of this world. And fear that more young people are going to be led towards despair, more of them will be convinced that bombing trains, buildings and themselves is the only choice despite the futility. People in the West might not perhaps understand this despair. I can only describe it in the words of John Berger who, in the foreword to Arundhati Roy’s ‘Algebra of Infinite Justice’, describes aptly seven levels of despair …

The search every morning
to find the scraps
with which to survive another day

The knowledge on waking
that in this legal wilderness
no right exist

The experience over the years
of nothing getting better
only worse

The humiliation of being able
to change almost nothing,
and of seizing upon the almost
which then leads to another impasse

The listening to a thousand promises
which pass inexorably
beside you and yours

The example of those who resist
being bombarded to dust

The weight of your own killed
a weight which closes
innocence for ever
because they are so many

But how much longer is this supposed to continue? How much longer non-Israeli, non-American, non-Western lives will count for nothing? Valueless. Trashed away to apparently save more “valuable” lives. Exterminated, without a thought, as in a computer good-guys, bad-guys war? When is anyone going to tell them that these are real people, this is real world, not a 3-D game? How much longer?

US/Israeli traps set for Lebanese resistance by Jonathan Cook, Electronic Lebanon

The refugees' fury will be felt for generations to come by
Karma Nabulsi, The Electronic Intifada

Israel Tightens The Siege Of Gaza By Rick Kelly

More children killed in Rafah
Report, PCHR, 5 August 2006

This Draft Shows Who Is Running America's Policy... Israel by Robert Fisk

There is darkness all around. It is filled with the moans and cries of children, with piercing wails of women. I see faces of children pock-marked with shrapnel, charred with incendiary bombs. Pictures of amputees, of dead bodies that are never shown. And yet I can fish out no word that fits these every day scenes in Lebanon and Palestine. I take out my Pocket Thesaurus. Look up the synonyms of Brutal: animal, barbarous, bearish, beastly, bestial, bloodthirsty, boorish, brute, brutish, callous, coarse, crude, cruel, ferocious, harsh, heartless, impolite, inhuman, insensitive, merciless, pitiless, remorseless, rough, rude, ruthless, savage, severe, uncivil, uncivilized, unfeeling, unmannerly, unsympathetic, vicious. Perhaps these words may combine to give a meaning that fits. Or not enough still.

There is nothing to be said. Nothing I can say that haven’t been said. And if I say it, would it matter?

Lebanese, Palestinians have been crushed, are being crushed, till they are bombed into servility and no one will stop it. No one can. No one at least in this “international community”. How can it when the one who flouts UN Laws and Geneva Conventions is identified as the victim and the one who is resisting as the terrorist.

Condoleezza Rice describes this as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East.” An Israeli official says they are doing Lebanese a favour.

I used to wonder what went on in their minds. In the minds of people who advocate racism in the name of justice. What did they actually think inside? How can they ever justify all of it to their conscience? To their humanity?

Unless … unless … they think the others (the Arabs, the Muslims and anyone who dares to oppose) to be somehow inferior, less of a human than they are, fit to be bombed, mutilated, burned. So they can die and leave space for Israel and Rice’s New Middle East. Stop resisting. Abandon their homes, gather in a vast ground and allow Israel to bomb them out of existence. To let Israel fulfill its dream.

So I don't wonder any more.

I just wish I could let them know they are wrong. They are so wrong.

P.S. While the world is focused on Lebanon, Palestine is going unnoticed. Check the link out for the massive "Operation Summer Rain" as they have named it, going on.

Every single Israeli action is legitimate, no matter what. It cannot be held accountable because everything Israel does is legitimate.

The bombardments, the illegal weaponry, the demolition of a building, housing refugees; all of it is legitimate. Some people just don’t choose to understand. Don’t choose to understand at all that it’s the terrorists they are dealing with, not normal individuals but the most vicious, the most brutal terrorists ever to grace this planet. Who will pose an "existential threat" to Israel if not instantly removed. Yes, the civilians are dying but that’s not Israel’s fault. In their vast conspiracy to mar Israel’s unstained reputation, the terrorists are using these people as human shields, so unfortunately Israel ends up taking all the blame. This of course is another testament to Hezbollah's unbounded cruelty. Some people just stubbornly refuse to understand. And though the Lebanese are full of rage at the moment, they will appreciate Israel’s sincere effort to root out terrorism once this war is over. They will eventually be grateful to Israel for then these "birth pangs" will seem to them like an insignificant ant sting compared to the ecstatic joy of seeing a New Middle East unfold before their eyes.

Meandering Mind

I cannot focus. I cannot concentrate. My mind has decided to leave me in the middle of a bog while it hops around happily in the un-bogged green Shire-like pastures beyond. What am I trying to say? What I mean to say is that my brain, my mind has acquired these vagabondly traits through which it is able to desert me completely especially when I most need it. I mean there would be a textbook page in front of me, ‘mechanisms of synaptic transmission’ for instance, pleading desperately for my mind’s attention. Just a few moments out of its busy schedule. And the mind chooses instead to delve deeply into the several reasons why Chris was voted off from the American Idol (I thought he would make it to the final at least). Or sweeps other unconnected, unrelated, disjointed thoughts towards me. There is a vast variety of these 'thoughts' if you might call them that, apparating from nowhere, “Why Isabel Archer chooses to stay with Osmond in the end?” (Even though I read ‘Portrait of a Lady eons ago), the contents of Mahmoud Ahmedinajad’s letter or reflecting upon my every day discontents or contentment for that matter. It sometimes meanders into other dark, mysterious alleyways, which despite their darkness are somehow warm, a warm inviting darkness. I of course don’t want to clamp down on this tendency in its entirety. The exasperating thing is that this happens when I badly, frantically need to study. Could there be a worse example of mind treachery? Can you imagine having your thought train so totally out of your control? Treason it is.

How do you tame this wandering gypsy? These nomadic predispositions of your mind. They (those who have their own will perfectly under control and so can look condescendingly down below) say the lack of will is the main culprit in situations like these. I admit not having this will in superfluous quantities. But the fact of not having it in appreciable quantities does make it more difficult to will my will not to let the mind fly away when I need it not to. Its one flaw I have been having a battle of swords against. Though it does occur to me that my sword might be a bit blunt. And therefore ill-suited to inflict a sufficiently strong blow. That I am also perhaps not trying hard enough. Am I just a slave then? Of my faults? It hurts my ego to think that.

If all of this makes sense please do tell me because sometimes (or at most times), I don’t succeed in my hunting for the right words. I search them in the jungle of my mind but in vain. Like tiny dwarves trying but unable to climb an unscalable wall. Trapped in their city.

Anyway I didn’t post ‘coz I was struggling to keep my mind towards synapses and kidney’s histology and stuff of that kind. I thought about posting at the end of May but then changed my mind. There will be my MCAT around August somewhere so I do have to sit on my books for a long time. Don't know what will happen to my post frequency.

Random Rambling

Being a girl isn’t easy. Being a girl in a country, sagging under the heavy, cumbrous, merciless presence of deep-set, pernicious prejudices is suffocating. Asphyxiating. It is curious. The way these ancient prejudices work their way through a society that has become a favourable breeding ground for them (ever since I read Richard Dawkins' 'The Selfish Gene', I tend to think some things in that selfish genetic, memetic vein). Perpetuating themselves. Perpetuating their meme. Humans becoming mere unthinking programmed vessels to do their bidding. Like a cell, like the way a cell becomes a DNA-making slave-machinery. I don’t know if you sometimes see those prejudices in the faces of people you know or thought you knew to be mind-possessing, reasonable beings. But I do. People you know suddenly turn around and you see totally unrecognizable faces. As if the monstrous memes of antiquated societal biases have taken control. They direct the mouth to speak, the body to take action. For their own survival.

Yet again ... another bombing

After Karachi’s worst bombing in nearly two decades, 57 people dying, Sheikh Rashid, our very own Federal Minister of Misinformation , says talking to private channel here in Pakistan :

“Terrorists days are numbered and we would soon wipe out terrorist elements operating in the country.”
As we, the people of Pakistan are accustomed to expect, we know there is not going to have any sort of impartial inquiry into this attack. It’s too familiar. Same old routine. 1. An attack. Step 2. Political parties hinting conspiracy. Step 3.Everyone running their own agenda. Nothing done. A committee formed perhaps but nothing substantial results. Step 4.The attacks, the people forgotton.

Eg, they have already started to point towards a government involvement(which I submit is quite possible):

"Qazi Hussain Ahmed said a conspiracy was being hatched to push the religious leadership out of the way and let secular forces prosper in the country. He said the enemies of religious forces in Pakistan had carried out the attack, which had claimed many lives. He said the only way to overcome the situation was to accelerate efforts to implement an Islamic system and Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) ideology in the country.

Is there something, some hope, some hidden stars behind these dark clouds that might lead me into thinking that no, there is no need to despair; we soon are going to be fortunate enough to know who was behind this?

Frustration. Extreme Frustration. That’s what it is. And so I am ranting about the ‘usual’ stuff. The ‘usual’ killings. In the usual words.

Okay I am being a pessimist over here. Let me know of something to change that. Please.

There are a million questions and I don’t have the answers. I don’t know where to go and get them.
Can anyone tell me, for instance, who those angry mobs were? The ones who set fire to petrol pumps, and several cars. Just normal people? Or hidden government ‘agents’ trying to ‘tarnish the image of religious parties’ or ‘some mysterious force trying to blacken the image of Islam’? Who were the bombers? Who was behind them. Does it all point to a ‘Shia-Sunni’ strife? Or does it go beyond that? Something deeper. Some conspiracy? Something that mere normal individuals like me, don’t have the right to know. What do I lead my mind into thinking? It’s spinning and knows not where to stop and look and what to believe. All a web of lies.

Dan Brown and Judas Iscariot

Dan Brown cleared of all charges ... its good to know ... I personally thought the whole affair to be rather silly ... not that I am an ardent fan of Dan Brown or anything. I like Da Vanci and others for their value as good thrillers. I mean I won't go to his books for a lesson in history. When I first read Da Vanci code, about two years ago, I was all excited and did a bit of research into the whole affair. All of which revealed that he actually got his facts wrong. Though reading Da Vanci did spark my interest in Church History and Arianism and the Nicene Creed and I ended up knowing something about it.

Gospel of Judas found ... Interesting ... very interesting ... there is a documentary coming tomomoro on National Geographic. Figure out the time yourself.

P.S. My ban on Blogger isn't working at all ... I am stricken with this addiction for the internet. Anyway ... gotta go now.

Taking a Break!

Greetings everyone!

Well ... I am writing this to break to you the news that I won't be posting much in the next two months ... maybe I will but most probably not (perhaps just a story or two). The reason? ... I have to study of course. So if you suddenly notice a lack of posting over the next two months, don't despair, I'll be back after my exams are over.

Just pray that I do my exams well.

Take Care.

P.S. Check this out. The World largest letter signed by Pakistani Children. Sent to them with love from India.

Despair!

I am writing this with utter pain corroding my body; with tears streaming down my eyes … I am sick! Completely sick of everything! Perhaps it’s just because I just read this Arundhati Roy’s article … she always makes me cry … if I am reading her articles or The God of Small Things (with its incessant tragically beautiful tone). It’s the power she has in her words. The power to move you. To shake you from your petty, inconsequential everyday concerns (comparing with the magnitude of what’s going on in the world). There are people still dying in Iraq. There are people still dying over here in Pakistan. A doctor colleague of my mother had his cousin’s soldier son transported back from Waziristan. Dead. After fighting a war, the reason of which he wasn’t told. At the moment while I am writing, I can hear the air ringing with vehicles’ rumbling, an occasional chirp of a sparrow. Not too far away, the cries of that soldier’s mother might be ringing the air. Just a soldier. Who cares?
Why isn’t there a sense of urgency in anyone? Why do we continue to as if nothing has ever happened? WHY?

Okay, wait … I know I am going to spew forth the normal, useless, desperation-filled clutter of sentences. Nobody is going to listen to me and nobody is going to care.

At this moment, the moment I am writing, I have no real Hope in anything. I know it’s temporary, just a mood. Yes, temporary and soon I’ll go back to my selfishness. Thinking of my problems. And the people will still die.

P.S. There is a poem ‘To Hope’ by John Keats that I love and sometimes when I am sitting alone in my room, thinking of nothing but dark thoughts, I like to read it. It doesn’t dissolve everything away but it does help. Even though it sometimes makes me cry even more, seeing the hopelessness of Hope in my despair. I would just like to paste it. Dunno why.

When by my solitary hearth I sit,
When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.



Whene’er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon’s bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moon-beams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof.



Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!



Whene’er the fate of those I hold most dear
Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbid fancy cheer;
Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!



Should e’er unhappy love my bosom pain,
From cruel parents, or relentless fair;
O let me think it is not quite in vain
To sigh out sonnets to the midnight air!
Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head!



In the long vista of the years to roll,
Let me not see our country’s honour fade:
O let me see our land retain her soul,
Her pride, her freedom; and not freedom’s shade.
From thy bright eyes unusual brightness shed—
Beneath thy pinions canopy my head!



Let me not see the patriot’s high bequest,
Great Liberty! how great in plain attire!
With the base purple of a court oppress’d,
Bowing her head, and ready to expire:
But let me see thee stoop from heaven on wings
That fill the skies with silver glitterings!



And as, in sparkling majesty, a star
Gilds the bright summit of some gloomy cloud;
Brightening the half veil’d face of heaven afar:
So, when dark thoughts my boding spirit shroud,
Sweet Hope, celestial influence round me shed,
Waving thy silver pinions o’er my head.

- Text pasted from Poet Seers