Terrorists have no religion???? huh

Mumbai attacks are sad. It makes me angry when I think about it. Angry because of the several failures of existing systems that led to it, Angry because of the lax attitude of the current govt. towards terrorism. Angry at how slow and inefficient our response has been. Angry at the insensitive media. And the irresponsible politicians didn't help much. Like most common men, I mouthed some choicy cuss words for the terrorists and wanted to have some friendly interaction with Qasab in person. And decided not to go to Ravi Kebobs, DC area's finest Paki restaurant, just so as to cut down that 0.01 dollar of my haleem bill which would go to fund some dubious religious charity in Pakistan from where it would be re-routed to rip apart the flesh of my fellow Indians.

India has not stated any concrete steps that would be taken yet. Some ministers were blamed and kicked out. Dr.Singh made a bland address to the nation promising strong action against the terrorists which we have got so used to in the past 5 years. And thankfully we passed the bill to form a centralized intelligence agency and decentralize the NSG commando forces. Both big loopholes in our system which needs to be addressed at the earliest. 

US has taken notice of Pakistan's involvement with the terrorists but I don't think they'll go beyond words to take any action due to their own constraints. It would be stupid for India also to act directly given that they are our neighbours with Nukes and missiles that can reach deep into our country. We should continue applying the diplomatic pressure and resort to some economic arm twisting, directly or indirectly, to force Pak to act on these anti India organizations. However given that the average Pak junta is sympathetic to the Kashmir cause it will be difficult to wipe out the support completely. But we should at least ensure that it becomes difficult for these anti India organizations to run operations on their soil. 

 

Coming to the attacks, I was surprised at how seemingly well prepared the media was to ditch the much popularized Mumbai resilience from the last attacks. It was the darling of media during the previous bomb blasts. Everybody praised the mumbai spirit and resilience to the sky. But there were absolutely no takers for it this time around. Probably because they have abused it so badly the previous time. What has become extremely fashionable these days is saying "Terrorists have no religion".

NONSENSE

Terrorists have a religion and that is THE PROBLEM. Face it. Religion is the problem, not the solution anymore. Statements like this blatantly deny the problem. Why would the 20-25 year old youth take up arms and walk into certain death instead of doing more productive things like maybe having chilled beer in the friendly neighborhood bar? What could motivate them to give up the prime of their youth and go die for a dubious cause? The promise of a paradise and the 72 virgins waiting for them over must definitely have been an influential factor in their decision model.

And who are these 20-25 year olds anyways. We have established that they are Pakistanis. But irrespective of their nationality, I'd like to know what they did before they got into this. And if my guess is right, they would be fairly normal people, without any serious criminal offences. Unlike most of us they probably didn't booze, watched no porn, ate according to their Holy book and prayed 5 times a day. The moderately sinful people like us, who drink an odd beer, gamble, watch adult content etc. could not even think of doing anything even remotely so destructing and stupid as what they did.  For one, I am not very convinced of the 72 virgin paradise and would rather stay here and try my luck. That makes a big difference as I want to live vs. these folks who probably aren't having much luck here and can't wait to see their 72 girls. Once the zeal to live is gone they become infinitely more dangerous. And secondly, I don't believe that there is anybody jobless enough to watch over my acts and judge them. So I give myself the responsibility and I tend to be pretty ruthless. I'll never allow myself to cause such grief. Most of these folks also under normal conditions would have been good to others. But their cause, the religion, gives them the license to destroy in its name. They have the comfort of prayer and religion which will absolve them of their sins. I don't have such comfort. And if these guys really didn't have that comfort, they would never have been proud of taking this extreme step. 

Apparently the Hindu fundamentalists have also recently made their decent to these abysmal levels of violence. Almost every other major religion has also proved its capability to destroy under favourable conditions. So if provided suitable pressure and temperature all religions can get destructive. Nothing can fill people with such pure hatred as religion and make them feel great about it. Religion gives people an identity and makes a reason for "us" to fight "them". If there was no religion, there would have been no "us" vs. "them". Actually that's not true. There would always be "us" vs. "them". If it is not religion, man would find other innovative ways to differentiate among themselves and reduce it to a "us" vs. "them".

As much as I'd love to, I am not asking Man to give up religion up yet. I understand Man has not yet evolved enough to do the right thing without the fear of some kind of ambiguous supernatural power. It would actually be disastrous for people without a good conscience to give up religion as they won't have a reason to be nice to others. So religion is still required at some level. But we should atleast acknowledge the problem and give religion the credit it is due. Denial of the problem doesn't help us at all in finding a solution. Atleast not a solution that can work in the long term. 

It might give you popular support from religious people if you claim that the terrorists have no religion. It won't help the nation to deny the problem, repackage it and sell it in a more marketable form. Stand up for the truth, do the right thing. The truth is religion is the mother ship of terrorism.

Origin of ghosts

This is NOT Ghost Physics 3. Ghost physics 3 has been suspended indefinitely due to matrixophobia, fear that the 3rd part will ruin the excitement of the earlier 2. Some trilogies are best left without the triquel.

Ghosts! Those gracious charismatic elusive electromagnetic afterlife forms. The concept of ghosts is also the second most popular hypothesis with no solid proof. They have captured the imagination of many generations and have carved out a niche segment for themselves in Hollywood, Bollywood, Tollywood and all other respectable woods all over the world.

Ghosts have been very profitably employed by almost all civilizations throughout the history of mankind. The earliest known reference of ghost was in 8347 BC when the 6 foot 3 inch hunter felt there was someone watching him in the deep forests in central Africa. He thought it was his mother-in-law whom he had killed the previous week due to some domestic differences over portioning of dinner. The feeling sent a chill up his spine and he ran away from the place. He later informed his beloved wife of his experience much to her amusement. A week later he was attacked by a pack of wild wolfs and was never seen again. The tribal chiefs attributed the disappearance of this fine hunter to his old mother-in-law's ghost.

Within 2 days the news spread to the entire African continent and was well on its way into Europe and Asia. Dedicated gossip mongers were also dispatched to Australia, Antarctica and the Americas and never again heard about. Their disappearance is also very conveniently linked to the ghost of the MIL. Several other killings, disappearances in the forests over the next year were attributed to the ghost of the MIL. Soon several other men all over the world started seeing their dead MILs in lonely places. All these men, a later research found, were directly responsible for the death of their MIL.

A decade later it was observed that the average life expectancy of MIL's grew by 7 years. There were fewer instances of domestic differences at dinners leading to murders. And an average man started being much nicer to his MIL. About this time the phenomenon of ghosts has started spreading to include other relations. Consequently the general homicide rate went down significantly much to the relief of authorities. Buoyed by such positive results, the authorities were inspired to put to good use the fear of the ghosts.

The first known conscious application of ghosts was in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. On the banks of river Tigris, there was a small tribal settlement in the exact space where a notorious jail, Abu Ghraib would be set up centuries later. Several kids from the tribe were lost in the waters of Tigris much to the grief of the community. The octogenarian chief thought up of a very original and path breaking idea which changed the course of evolution of Ghosts. He gathered the tribe for a GBM(general body meeting) and told them in graphic detail his encounter with the terrible ghost at the Tigris and how it drinks the raw blood sucked out of innocent kids. The message got home very well and the child deaths in Tigris decreased by 98.34% within 6 months.

The success of this strategy spread like wildfire through the extensive human information network spread over the world. Soon several other tribes followed the best practice and replicated the much sought after success. Inspired by this initial success many smart analysts the world over modified the ghost characteristics to customize to the local needs and designed elaborate campaigns to publicize them. These customized ghosts were employed very innovatively in diverse fields for diverse tasks. The most popular applications of the ghosts can widely be classified as

1. Protect property. Especially employed by the rich people mostly because they are the ones who have any property. When the rich have to stay away from their property for whatever reasons, there is no better caretaker than a terrible, ruthless ghost. This is by far the most important and most used/abused application. It has modified and used in different formats on different kinda properties, almost always with positive results.

2. Keep people away from danger. This is again the earliest known use. And again presented in different formats to suit the location of danger. Like, yours truly while in school was told of a ghost that lived on the terrace of his school. This was ofcourse to avoid school kids from getting on the terrace and jumping/falling down. The inquisitive stupid kid he was, went to check it out one day only to find the door firmly locked. In retrospect he thinks that the ghost must have existed before the school authorities bought that shiny lock.

3. To scare people away: Mostly employed by people involved in illegal activities. They use ghosts to keep people away from their dens thus keeping their activities a secret. This is a rather modern application and again very effective.

4. Entertainment: This is economically the most viable application. All major movie industries of the world have dedicated horror genre of movies. Collectively they rake in up to $10billion annually in sales. They have amongst the best risk/reward ratio among all movie genres. apart from movies, there are popular TV shows, books, comics, video games etc which use the ghost theme.

5. Tourism: There are 537 towns on the east coast of USA which claim to be the scariest towns in the world citing important metrics like absolute no. of ghosts, ghosts per sq. inch, ghosts to people ratio, ghosts per Hooters and so on. These towns typically are the ones settled early but where not much happened since then, other than the death of its founders. To attract visitors, these towns have well organized ghost tours around the old houses, graveyards, churches etc conveniently scheduled in the night to capture the ghosts in all their glory. Again fairly profitable, creates employment opportunities and helps the economy in dead towns.

6. Psychic reading: This is a very sophisticated and smart application. Psychic readers are very well trained individuals with an impeccable attention to detail. They have an extensive knowledge of the most common characteristics of typical people based on their age, gender, race, geography, language etc. They use this easily gatherable knowledge from their subjects and use common names, general characteristics to convince their customers that they can communicate with the dead. Just check out how Darren Brown does it here.

7. Stupidity: Not strictly an application but 80.38% of the ghosts in existence can be directly attributed to this very entertaining human characteristic. People attribute every unexplainable thing to either God or ghosts largely depending on the mood of the first person who experienced the phenomenon. These ghosts are the ones which are most inconsistent, contradictory and useless. The one found in the gas station in this video is a good example.

And if you haven't figured it out yet, the blue angel is very likely some innocent fly(or some other bug) hanging out on the camera lens.

Ghosts will continue to amuse us, entertain us and in their own ways, help us. Love them or hate them, they are here to stay.

PS. Just in case someone is jobless to check out Abu Ghraib on google maps, it is away from the Tigris because that bloody river has changed it course over the years.