Thanks
Thanks
“We are here to help, let us help, we will do our best” said a US Marine upon landing in Sri Lanka. There is not a shade of doubt the US Marines & the most vibrant & largest economy of the world would do their best. These are the people who carried out Marshall Plan to resurrect Europe aftermath of Second World War, helped Japan to become a world player & helped the Germans with Great Berlin Air lift. Heartfelt thanks must be expressed to U. S. A.
And thanks go to India too with who we have a love & hate relationship. On 26th Dec. ’04, India was the first country to respond to Sri Lanka's call for help despite suffering huge losses herself. In addition to the immediate relief goods and assistance despatched, Rs.100 crore (23 Million USD) reconstruction package was approved for Sri Lanka by the Indian Cabinet. The first Indian relief and rescue team landed in Colombo the same afternoon. Ten days after the catastrophe, two Indian Naval warships today sailed into Sri Lanka's Galle port when the naval divers and survey team cleared the approach channels. The Warships INS Sarvekshak and INS Sutlej entered the harbour and later Indian sailors cleared two jetties to allow berthing of relief supplies from other nations. The Naval divers were helped by a team of army sappers who restored water and power supply lines to the harbour
This is the time to be generous, this is the time to be charitable, and this is the time to share, echoed the world. United States of America, Australia, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, have taken the lead .Sri Lanka is grateful to those countries & all other magnimanius countries, corporations & individuals for their phenomenal generosity & overwhelming sense of humanity during a catastrophe in countries far away from their lands.
"It is a pity at a time of national catastrophe the Tigers should engage in baseless propaganda. In fact, once the pro-rata on the basis of population is taken more aids have been delivered to Tamil dominated areas in Eastern coast more than Sinhalese dominated South Western coast” said Hon. Laksman Kadirgamer, Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka (a Tamil himself) in reply to a BBC interviewers question ( 7th Jan. ’05) on accusations by Tamil Tigers to the effect not sufficient aid had been delivered to Tiger controlled areas.
While Sri Lankan soldiers are donating blood in tiger held areas, Tamil Tigers accuse them of redirecting aid bringing trucks to other areas; while even India (Foreign Secretary Shayam Saran) has said there is no misunderstand or misapprehension with regard to arrival of US Marines in Sri Lanka, the tigers (Voice of Tigers radio, the terrorist mouthpiece) have accused the Americans of spying. Most possibly as a result of the accusations, two ships full of Marines and heavy equipment steaming toward Sri Lanka, which could possibly have helped the Tamil dominated eastern coast of Sri Lanka, were diverted and instead bolstered the U.S. task force off western Sumatra, the area hardest hit by last week’s tsunami. The USS Mount Rushmore, carrying a smaller contingent of Marines has arrived in Galle of Sinhala dominated south western coast of Sri Lanka. Such is the effects of Tiger propaganda in a time of national catastrophe.In Italy the collected sum of private donations had reached $33.1 million surpassing the government aid. Such is the outpouring of hearts of the Romans. It is a tragedy that the aid agency “Medicines Sans Frontiers” had to warn the donors that would do, please channel your money to other crisis areas such as Darfur & Congo; it is a pity Director, Oxfam, U.K. had to say (BBC interview hard talk Extra 6th Jan 2005) much more than concentrating on direct Aid, U.S. A. could have helped Sri Lanka by reallocating (contract between America and Sri Lanka for readymade garments has expired after 15 years) the import Quota of Garment from Sri Lanka. It is a pity a Top Gun of a Welfare organization could not have differentiated between a humanitarian assistance & complicated commercial quotes with other overriding factors that are shaped by other commercial deals, U. S. A. make with the other countries around the word. A pathetic point of view.Have you seen the people (Sri Lanka), killed (40,000), injured (thousands) & alive or seized to live (one million) with their families killed, homeless, homes flattened, grounded to the mother earth, waiting for the arrival of trucks with food. People who lost all their livelihood, people who had their own way (even though humble, poor) of life & means to sustain their humble existence?Well, Secretary Powell & Secretary General Anan have seen. That would do.
With Tsunami, my mouth went dry & froze, my throat went dry & froze, my right hand trembled. There were only two other occasions that had happened to me. Once at the death of my brother–in-law in an air crash during battle against Tamil Tiger Terrorists (KIA posthumously awarded with Presidential Honours) & other was at the death of my one & only child – one day old son.
B. U. N. PEIRISSri Lanka
Nuclear Bomb of Pakistan by bunpeiris
Nuclear Bomb of Pakistan by B. U. N. Peiris. 26th Sep. ‘04
A New York writer, Mary Anne Weaver, who has been covering Pakistan for 20 years, in her fascinating & authoritative book “ Pakistan: In the shadow of Jihad & Afghanistan” writes “ In every city & town there are monuments to Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. In Quetta, Peshawar, Karachi, & Lahore towering replicas rise. And in the capital of Islamabad futuristic granite structure soars by day & is illuminated by night in fiery hues of orange. As I stood before it one evening & puzzled over what it meant, a Pakistani friend explained that the interior lighting was meant to impart the glow of the nuclear weapon that had exploded in the Chagai Hills.”
A Sri Lankan Muslim friend of mine has only this much to say:AlHamdulillah! Great! This nation is no hypocrite -it doesn't hoard nuclear weapons and declare that it has no wmds! This weapon is a great equalizer - it is this weapon, which forced India to play down its hand during theKargil crisis a few years ago - otherwise, by now Pakistan would have been another colony of India!
That much to say, for him at least. But then there is much more to say.
It is not a question of hypocrisy. There are no nuclear secrets in the world in spite of the denial of its nuclear bombs by Israel. Pakistan has declared that it has test exploded nuclear bomb the following day to test explosion by India. Though India took the one & only super power by surprise, President Clinton was duly informed by his ally General Musharaf that he had no alternative. Though President Clinton had failed to persuade General Musharaf out of the need for testing, it is said Clinton had understood situation India had deliberately put Pakistan in. The world has no need to see the monuments of Pakistani Nuclear bomb to bear in mind the first nuclear bomb of an artificially created Islamic State, the one & only country to born out of nothing but a faith, a faith of which, some radical elements have began to threaten the modern civilization.
Monuments are built solely for the purpose of commemoration of good deeds & good men. Monuments are built for the purpose of commemorate tragedies as in this case of the cenotaph for the A-bomb victims in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Monuments are not expected to commemorates nuclear bombs. No other country has ever built monuments to commomerate Nuclear Bomb. It is not a matter of hypocrisy: it is a matter of good taste; it is a matter of sensibilities.
The world has not forgiven United States for the utter instant destruction, of two cities, reducing those to ashes & cumulative death toll associated with effects of the bombing to 237,062; the world has not forgiven the United States for bombing two, not one atomic weapons on a nation that was already defeated & defending its own land. And the world hasn’t been amused of an array of vulgar monuments to the creation & test explosion of an atomic bomb either.
On 6th August 2004, on 59th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, Mayor of Hiroshima Tadatoshi Akiba said, “The egocentric world view of the United States government is reaching extremes.” The egocentric celebration of Pakistan, in the form of monuments in every city & town reach its extremes too.
The first Soviet nuclear bomb Josef-1, most appropriately named after mass murdering dictator Josef Stalin, was exploded at the Semiplatatinsk test field on 29th August 1949. At the celebratory congratulatory dinner with the scientists hosted by the man in charge of the project General Susow, the leading scientist Andrei Sakarov, while toasting remarked that he would hope Soviet Russia would never have to make use of the nuclear weapon. The team of scientists was momentarily stunned. Neither General Susow nor Chairman Krushnev would be pleased to say the least.
In reply General Susow opted to bring in his vulgarity on to the dinner table. “ Comrades, An old man was praying, “God strengthen me, harden me, guide me” Having heard his prayer his wife retorted, “ Man, get it harden, I’ll guide it myself”. If the team was stunned at Sakarov’s remarks of conscience, then they were petrified with the ultimate thrust of vulgarity of the general in terms of a weapon, which could kill several hundred thousand of people within few seconds. Pakistan’s array of phallic erections in commemoration of its Atomic Bomb wouldn’t take a back seat to the depth of Soviet General’s vulgarity.
Pakistan is a country like no other. Pakistan is among many other things, also the country founded for Indian Muslims. It is considered as pioneer of the Islamic revival. A gift thrown into the lap of the Muslims by the British. What could have been a gift better than geographically large country born out of nothing but a faith? And now to have a cherry on the cake, a bomb. And again it is a bomb like no other. A Nuclear bomb produced, test exploded, hoarded & celebrated in the name of god: an Islamic atomic bomb. If it is ever used then it would most possibly be proclaimed the bombing is for the Jihad.
It is said like the Old Testament, the Qur’an is hard to interpret. One can find phrases that urge Muslims to “fight & slay the pagans” & also passages that say “no compulsion in religion.” The Arabic word jihad means “striving in the path of God.” But it can also mean holy war against infidels & apostates. A German scholar who has wisely chosen to hide behind the pseudonym Christopher Luxenberg is arguing that the orthodox reading of the Koran (or Qur'an) is based on mistranslations. The earliest Muslims did not speak Arab, he argues, but a language closer to Aramaic. When the teachings were put into writing long after the death of Mohammad and his original followers, a number of statements were mistranslated into Arabic. For example, he argues that the commandment for women to be covered up with "scarves" is a mistranslation of an Aramaic command to “snap their belts around their waists.” Perhaps even more controversially, he claims the 72 wide-eyed houris or virgin sex slaves (slaves in heaven – heaven for the believers is hell for the virgins who are reduced to sex-slave status-such is the debasement of women in Islamic heaven.) with "swelling breasts" male Muslims hope to enjoy eternity with in paradise are really based on a mistranslation of words meaning respectively "white raisins" and "juicy fruit." Believers would commit suicide running an airliner into a tall building killing thousands innocent civilians & over a bowl white raisins, so we are told. In case of a revised interpretation “Houris”, to the tribe of those who wouldn’t know how to take off but then mastered the art of flying into skyscrapers, an Islamic atomic bomb would turn out to be a highly illuminating option.
"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once in the sky, Which would be like the splendor of the mighty one.” Quoted Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer out of the Indian epic “Mahabarata” If we continue that passage, we come to the line “I became Death.”
Oppenheimer indeed recognized that the role he played as director of Los Alamos during the war was carried out serving under orders from the president, as commander in chief. And Oppenheimer never regretted his role in the development of atomic bombs, as is clear from an exchange that took place following a lecture he gave in Geneva in 1964:
van Camp: If you had foreseen the present situation in the world, would you have dared start the researches that led to the atomic bomb?
JRO: My role was very much more modest. . . . My role was to preside over an effort, to make, as soon as possible, something practical. But I would do it again.
Victor Weisskopf: I would like to address Mr. Oppenheimer in a different fashion. Given what has happened these past twenty years, would you in the position you were in 1942, would you again accept to develop the bomb?
JRO: To this I have answered yes. . . .
An assistant: Even after Hiroshima?
JRO: Yes
If Dr. Robert Oppenheimer could still hold such a view, if such is the virtue of lesser evil, perhaps we could hardly blame Pakistan for producing nuclear weapons: a nuclear armed giant neighbour who broke away East Pakistan from Pakistan to create another state by the name of Bangladesh, looms large & threatening in the backdrop.
In spite of the difference of opinion with my Sri Lankan Muslim friend, I would wholeheartedly agree with him that Pakistan, to say the least, is the best friend of Sri Lanka.
****************************************************************************************************************************************************************