Kapil Komireddi, writing in the Foreign Policy magazine, says:
Moderate Pakistan, if such a thing ever existed, is dead

Below, excerpts from a thought-provoking piece titled, Take Pakistan’s Nukes, Please (emphasis added):
..The attack on Sunday, May 22, by Taliban fighters on the Mehran naval air base in Karachi — its audacity, the foreknowledge it implied, the militaristic precision with which it was executed — carried a message: Pakistan is no longer a contested territory; it is now emphatically their turf. The reins of official power may not be in their hands yet, …

From a BBC report
‎”..We had located Bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan”
How many of our channels will highlight this info?
Will America now declare Pakistan a terrorist state?  Will Pakistan finally own up to supporting global jihadi terrorism & aiding/ abetting attacks against India?
Is it not time to hold Pakistan to account? …or – as Sh Jay Bhattacharjee put it in an email to me – “will one of the world’s most criminal countries going to get away scot free, once again ?”
Also read: ”All roads lead to Islamabad…“, All …

I wonder whats next? Misguided Tourists?
This is what I am talking about…

Screenshot of Google World News webpage taken at around 1.16am IST
Related Posts:
Very very bad militants
My name is whatever…and I’m not a terrorist
Bad Militants…
The missing “T-word”
Somewhat Related: Why the “War Against Terror” cannot be won by guns alone
Also read: Why terrorists are called “militants” in India

Courtesy NY Times, I learnt today that a certain “militant group”
..has expanded its operations in Afghanistan, inflicting casualties on Afghans and Indians alike, setting up training camps, and adding new volatility to relations between India  and Pakistan
Curious to know who this “militant group” is?

It goes by the name of Lashkar-e-Taiba and inconveniently happens to be a designated foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department.
Of course the State Department cannot control NY Times’ use of words…but I wonder…when we cannot even name the enemy, what hope is there to win …

This is a “lazy” post – essentially a compilation of excerpts from articles related to radical Islam, “Islamism” and “Jihadism”. They make for worrying reading. Comments and thoughts welcome (emphasis mine, throughout).
First, excerpts from Radical Islam: An Introductory Primer by Barry Rubin (emphas.
…A young American named Ramy Zamzam, arrested in Pakistan for trying to fight alongside the Taliban, responded in an interview with the Associated Press: “We are not terrorists. We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.”
What he says is well worth bearing in mind in order to understand …

I may be an extremist, a militant, an Islamist, a fighter, a jihadi…but I am not a terrorist.
This post was prompted by a 1500-odd words long article in a recent issue of TIME, “Somalia, Again” by Alex Perry.
The article’s description of the situation in Somalia is unsettling…but what was even more unsettling for me was the missing “T-word”
The article talks about Somalia being “much on the minds of those fighting terrorism these days“, then moves on to the leader of an Islamist group before mentioning a handful of jihadis …

Some thought-provoking excerpts from The Human-Rights Facade Is Beginning to Crumble by Noah Pollak (Hat Tip: Kaushal):
*** Excerpts begin ***
…The UK Times was impelled, finally, to give some space to the fact that Amnesty, one of the two largest human-rights groups* (the other being Human Rights Watch) has been promoting Begg, a former Gitmo detainee and booster of terrorists and radicals. What finally attracted press attention to this outrageous state of affairs was the appearance of a whistleblower from within the ranks of Amnesty.

Meet Gita Sahgal, the head of Amnesty’s …

Start this weekend with excerpts from Kashmir: Propagation of Islam and the Terror of the Sufis” by M A Khan (emphasis mine):
How did Islam come to Kashmir?
“It came through the peaceful missionary preaching of the Sufis,” comes the answer.
Sufis have been universally credited with the peaceful propagation of Islam around the world. An Islamic legend tells us that there was a king in Kashmir, at an unknown point in time, who had no religion. One day, he wished to adopt a religion. Both Muslims and Hindus came to convince him. …

Last evening as I was trying to explain to my 14-year old why a possible US withdrawal from Afghanistan could be bad for India, I realised how hopeless the US case for continued involvement in Afghanistan looked.
In a statement that sounded pretty unconvincing, David Axelrod, Senior Advisor to President Obama said:
We have a different situation in Afghanistan. It is actually the place…where the folks who attacked us on 9/11 are holed up and plotting against us still…
It’s a threat that still exists. We have to deal with it and so …

Start the weekend with this fascinating piece on a flawed understanding of intelligence.
Move on to a persuasive piece by Swaminathan S Aiyar on why direct cash transfers may provide better relief  to the drought hit than NREGA.
Next, read Aseem Shukla on why Scotland’s myopic act of mercy in releasing Abdel Megrahi may cost the world dearly.
And finally, read RealityCheck on why  Below Poverty Level is not “Below Poverty Level”.
Enjoy the weekend. Stay Safe and Keep Healthty.
Excerpts from all the above articles below, as always.
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