My Review in Young World, DAWN

My Review got published in DAWN's Young World




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Link : http://dawn.com/weekly/yworld/pdfyworld7.htm

(You can now Follow Me On Twitter @ www.twitter.com/zeeshan_ahmed )

Is It The Matter of Uttering Thoughts?

Ever wondered?
When you see pain in front of your eyes, when you look at people dying, when you see children crying, when you look into the mirror and ask, "Who Am I to think about that?"
The world is nothing but a web of webs of thoughts. We all are linked together, all of us.
Is that weeping child your relative? Then why are you feeling his sorrow deep inside yourself? Is that old lady, who just tipped over, urged you to help her, make her stand again, ask if she's alright.
My dear friends, that's nothing but your connection to these souls.
Without even knowing the person, why are you urged to help them, this explains the most amazing phenomenon, a beautiful phenomenon that is overlooked by us.
This connection breaks when we overlook those souls, when we just ignore a dying person by saying "Who is that? I don't know him…"
You can always break a physical connection, but can you break a connection that is spiritual, the existence of which is not in a form that we can touch, but only feel...?
It does not matter if you recognize and feel the link, but it does matter when you ignore it...
Think about it...!

Syed Zeeshan Ahmed
[ Now find me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/zeeshan_ahmed ]

My Recent Comments

One of my Latest comments got published in DAWN's Young World...(On March 14, 2009)

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And previous comments were also published in the same Magazine, few weeks back

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Regards, Syed Zeeshan Ahmed

France's rendezvous with history

Earlier this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said his country would end four decades of self-imposed isolation and return to Nato's military command.

Here, the BBC's Allan Little reflects on France's long journey to reconcile itself with one of the darkest chapters in its history and its difficult relationship with the US and the UK.

There is a story about a conversation between General de Gaulle, who, as president of the French Republic, telephoned his American counterpart Lyndon B Johnson, to inform him that France had decided to withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty alliance.

Since its foundation nearly two decades earlier, Nato had had its headquarters in France. Now Nato would have to move.

Furthermore, de Gaulle added, it was his intention that all American service personnel should be removed from French soil.

"Does that include," Johnson is said to have replied, "those buried in it?"

Ouch.

Anti-Americanism

But go to the cemeteries of Normandy and you see what an Anglo-Saxon business the D-Day landings - and the liberation of France - really were.

The historian Andrew Roberts has calculated that of the 4,572 allied servicemen who died on that day on which, in retrospect, so much of human history seems now to have pivoted - only 19 were French. That is 0.4%.

Of the rest, 37 were Norwegians, and one was Belgian. The rest were from the English speaking world - two New Zealanders, 13 Australians, 359 Canadians, 1,641 Britons and, most decisively of all, 2,500 Americans.

After the disastrous Suez crisis in 1956, it fell to Harold MacMillan as UK prime minister to move Britain from the Age of Empire to the Age of Europe.

But his attempts to take the United Kingdom into what was then called the Common Market fell foul of General de Gaulle's famous vetoes.

Harold MacMillan spoke of the strained relationship with France

Twice Monsieur Non listened politely to Britain's plea, and twice he slammed the door.

De Gaulle saw in British membership the Trojan Horse of American imperialism in Europe.

After Algeria won its independence from France in the early 1960s, de Gaulle was fond of saying that he had not granted freedom to one country only to sit by and watch France lose its independence to the Americans.

MacMillan, in old age, spoke ruefully of France's almost psychotic relationship with its Anglo-Saxon allies.

France, he said, had made peace with Germany, had forgiven Germany for the brutality of invasion and the humiliation of four years of occupation, but it could never - never - forgive the British and Americans for the liberation.

French anti-Americanism has a long pedigree. The 18th Century philosophers of the European Enlightenment believed the New World to be self evidently inferior.

They spoke - and wrote, prolifically - of the degeneration of plant and animal life in America.

They believed America had emerged from the ocean millennia after the old continents; and that accounted for the cultural inferiority of civilisations that tried to plant themselves there.

Self-liberation

I was living in Paris when France celebrated the 60th anniversary of its liberation.

In Paris the French Resistance received back-up from US soldiers

I went to the beaches of Normandy on the 60th anniversary of D-Day and watched veterans assembling one last time, old men, heads held high, marching past blown up photographs of themselves as young liberators.

France's ambivalence - the same neurosis that Harold MacMillan spoke of - was evident.

Paris launched a series of events to mark the 60th anniversary of its own liberation in August 2004.

The city's mayor had given the celebrations the title Paris Se Libere! - Paris Liberates Herself!

One of the newspapers published a 48-page commemorative issue. There was no mention of the allies until page 18.

Building a myth

An English friend of mine, in town that weekend, had remarked how empty Paris felt in August, the month the city empties out as its residents head for their annual sojourn in the countryside.

"I see," he said "that Paris was liberated in August. I guess the Parisians didn't find out about it till September, when they came back."

Again - ouch. The caustic Anglo-Saxon wit stings.

President Sarkozy has taken his country back into the Atlantic fold

It stings because the tale that France told itself after the war was built around a lie. Paris se libere.

The words were first spoken by de Gaulle himself at the Hotel de Ville on the evening of 25 August 1944.

Paris had been liberated by her own people, he declared, "with the help of the armies of France, with the help and support of the whole of France, that is to say of fighting France, the true France, the eternal France."

France knew, in its heart, even in 1944, that that was not true. It took until the 1980s for a generation of historians properly to re-examine the darkest chapter of France's 20th Century history.

When I was living in Paris, it struck me that Sarkozy - not yet president - had the potential to be France's first post-Gaullist leader.

His enemies called him "Sarkozy the American" in the hope that this would make him unelectable. It did not work.

And now he has taken his country back into the Atlanticist fold.

It seems to me another step in a long journey, in which France - in its mature, disputatious, entrenched democracy - is growing reconciled to the history that is now challenging the myths.

Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7942086.stm

Sri Lankan cricketers injured in terror attack

Cricinfo staff

 Terror struck at the heart of cricket when masked gunmen attacked the bus carrying the Sri Lankan cricket team to the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. Five cricketers, including Mahela Jayawardene, the Sri Lankan captain, and his deputy Kumar Sangakkara, received minor injuries. The attack also left six security men and two civilians dead.

Ijaz Butt, the PCB chief, said the Test has been called off. Salman Tasheer, the Punjab governor, said a helicopter will soon evacuate the Sri Lankan players from Gaddafi Stadium and take them to a nearby airbase from where the team will fly back to Sri Lanka. Duleep Mendis, the Sri Lanka Cricket chief, said that they were "getting the team back [to Sri Lanka] today".

Mahinda Rajapakse, Sri Lanka's president, condemned the attack and asked foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama to fly to Pakistan to oversee the evacuation of the Sri Lankan players.

There have been terror strikes on the peripheries of cricket, but this is the first time players have been directly targeted. The Sri Lankans were on their way to the Gaddafi Stadium when their bus was attacked by five armed terrorists near Liberty market. Habibur Rehman, chief commissioner of police, said 12 masked terrorists fired at the Sri Lankan team bus. The gunmen shot at the wheels of the bus and also injured the driver. A grenade was also thrown at the bus but it missed.

Jayawardene received a cut to the ankle while Sangakkara was injured in the shoulder. Thilan Samaraweera and Tharanga Paravitarana were the ones most seriously injured; Samaraweera received shrapnel in the leg and Paravitarana in the chest. Ajantha Mendis received shrapnel in the neck and scalp.

"The bus came under attack as we were driving to the stadium, the gunmen targeted the wheels of the bus first and then the bus," Mahela Jayawardene told Cricinfo. "We all dived to the floor to take cover. About five players have been injured and also Paul Farbrace [a member of the support staff], but most of the injuries appear to be minor at this stage and caused by debris."

 Sangakkara told CNN-IBN that "all the players are out of danger". "We are shocked, but apart from that everyone is okay. Thilan [Samaraweera] has a shrapnel wound in his leg, but he is fine. [Tharanga] Paranavitana had shrapnel in his chest, but thank God it wasn't very deep and just on the surface.

"I had shrapnel injuries in my shoulder, but they have all been removed and I'm okay now. Ajantha [Mendis] had shrapnel in his neck and scalp, but he too has had medical attention and is fine. Everyone else is perfectly all right.

"It's very unfortunate that this has happened... I don't regret coming here to play cricket because that's what we have been doing all our lives. That is our profession. But... all we want to do now is to go back home to our families, get back home and be safe," he said.

Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, confirmed that the remainder of the tour had been cancelled. "We note with dismay and regret the events of this morning in Lahore and we condemn this attack without reservation.

"It is a source of great sadness that there have been a number of fatalities in this attack and it is also very upsetting for the wider cricket family that some of the Sri Lanka players and one match official have been injured in this attack. At this time our thoughts and prayers are with the injured people and also the families of those who have died."

Television footage of several gunmen creeping through the trees, crouching to aim their kalashnikovs then running onto the next target were aired by Pakistan's private channel Geo.

Chamra Ranavira, third secretary and press secretary at the Sri Lankan High Commission in Islamabad, said Samaraweera and Paranavitana had been admitted to hospital, but were out of danger now. "We are communicating with the Pakistan Cricket Board and the high commission has taken action to send the cricket team back home as soon as possible," he said.

The reserve umpire Ahsan Raza was also injured in the attack. Nadeem Ghauri, the TV umpire, who was traveling in a bus behind the Sri Lanka team bus said the firing continued for some time. Umpire Steve Davis, who was on the team bus, called the terrorist attack "terrible". "I'm lost for words," he said.

Speaking from Sri Lanka, Sanath Jayasuriya said that it was an "extremely unfortunate incident. "We've never had this kind of problem," Jayasuriya told CNN-IBN. "They are all safe, that's the good news I got when I spoke to Kumar. I don't think they'll stay back and play. I think they will come back as soon as possible. Depends on the injuries."

Speaking on Geo TV, Inzamam-ul-Haq, the former Pakistan captain, said: "This is the first time that a cricket team has been seriously targeted... Pakistan's image will be hit and only time will tell how much damage has been done to Pakistan cricket. The World Cup too might be affected... no country would want to come now to Pakistan... I am worried where Pakistan will get a chance to play, not only in Pakistan but outside as well. This is all so sad."

The Indian cricket board, which called off a scheduled tour of Pakistan last December, expressed its sorrow over the attack. "We pray for the speedy recovery of the injured cricketers, and sympathise with their families and compatriots," BCCI Secretary N Srinivasan said in New Delhi. "The BCCI stands alongside Sri Lanka Cricket in this hour of crisis."

The Sri Lankan team had stepped in after the Indian government had barred the Indian team from touring Pakistan after the terror attack in Mumbai.

Link : http://content-www.cricinfo.com/pakvsl/content/story/393212.html?CMP=OTC-RSS