Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

There are Paul Sperry, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Pipes, and there are Colbert I. King, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert amidst the myriad of other contrasting columnists. Some writes with hatred disguised in pious liberty, and some writes with genuine integrity. In America, the land of freedom and opportunities for immigrants for the last few centuries, the voice of malevolence is growing, but the hope is not dead, it is still thriving in the voice and words of sincere men and women whose conscience propel them lashing out to those bigots who want to see a demented America. These repugnant scribes want to see an America where hatred triumphs over sanity and tolerance. But don't you worry, dear readers. The voice of pure innocence is still bold and proudly erected in America over bigots and bigotry. Regards, Sohel You Can't Fight Terrorism With Racism By Colbert I. King Saturday, July 30, 2005; Page A19 During my day job I work under the title of deputy editorial page editor. Th...

You may say it madness, insanity, or whatever word you like to use to define this recent phenomenon of bombings around the world. Or you may simply turn off your television or radio set, log off internet, and immerse in mind numbing music blaring from your boosted speakers on the wall instead, but you may not deny the underneath fear creeping spine and chilling sensation in blood witnessing the tremor on earth like a forewarning earthquake, as if a monstrous truck is rushing toward your way and you have no where to go in this abandoned road of discarded humanity. Seeing the picture of a grief stricken petrified daughter, screaming in tearful agonies squatting just beside her bullet ripped lifeless father in Iraq, or the panicked commuters in London fleeing from recent spade of bombings, and even the collapsed buildings and twisted, burned metals of luxurious cars in Egypt's most secured resort place, invoke terror in its most elemental form. And if you are a colored person like me,...

When bombs blasted through London subways and double-decker bus, I grimaced. No not again. And this time around, it rings to home more closely. My sister is on a study group from her university in Europe for the last few months, and she will be visiting London in the coming days from Italy and France . That’s what human beings are. When violence seems to be a thing of distant shore, almost abstract in its taste and texture, we feel comfortable in nurturing various kinds of theoretical aspects of wars and terrorism. But when one’s dearest one has remotest chance of being victim, less alone being the unfortunate one, one sees thing from a different perspective. Yes, there were deadlier attacks and violence in Iraq , Afghanistan , Chechnya , and occupied Palestine , Israel , Sudan , Rwanda , Vietnam , South America and many other parts of our world after the deadlier Second World War inferno. Innocent men, women and children were ripped apart from their earthly flesh and b...

I haven't read C. K. Prahalad's "path breaking book" that David Ignatius describes in his Washington Post column, but it sounds impressive in its theme and contents. There are so much tears (real or fake) abound about the plight of poor and dismal poverty, serious thoughts on how to reduce poverty are emerging, especially a few recent books including C. K. Prahalad's might be worth spending time on. Regards, Sohel Profits, A Penny At a Time By David Ignatius Post Wednesday, July 6, 2005; A17 At the Group of Eight summit this week in Gleneagles, Scotland, the leaders of rich countries will be talking about how they can aid poor countries. That's a noble mission, but a remarkable new book argues that it misses the point. Treating the poor as wards of the global economy ignores the fact that they are a vast market -- and that companies can profit right now by serving their needs. "If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start reco...

Every minute progress in battling lung cancer is a success, no matter how marginal that seems to be to the general mass. For a patient of lung cancer, any cancer, 21 months of more longevity with their friends and family, soaking up life's last aesthetic essences, even though going through measured morphin, surgery and chemotherapy, surely a positive aspect of human beings' continuous struggle in combating a disease, cancer in its various forms and shape, that still remains to be a pronounced death sentence for the majority of patients. Significant numbers of research are being conducted in world's top notch universities around the world, and in time, one can only hope, that complete cure from this all invasive disease will surely emerge, perhaps too late for many, including our generation, too engrossed in raging superficial wars against one another. Regards, Sohel Lung Cancer Lung cancer is such...

I am one of the lucky ones to see The War of the Worlds in its first week of release. Spielberg has made a scary movie, tension filled and heart pumping action drama, non-stop, overall a terrific movie must be seen this year, in my humble view. I am also one of the lucky ones not to see George Walker Bush's out of reality speech last week when he invoked 911 five times and tried to link the Iraq war with it. I didn't miss much, I believe. I glanced over his speech found in various online newspapers, and quite literally found myself choked with laughter though being aware of the grim reality of Iraq war in seeing Bush acting like that old shepherd boy whose fake cries for repeated non-existent wolves became the thing of mockery to his peers that quite literally cost him dearly when the moment of real terror arrived. In War of the Worlds, Tim Robbin's brief but powerful acting was memorable along with his profound words: "Occupations always fail". And it did in Sp...

Selective freedom and selective exclusions, aren't these grand in defining the liberty of selectivity? Regards, Sohel Let's Proudly Hail the Rights of All By Colbert I. King Post Saturday, July 2, 2005; A29 Principles of liberty and justice always draw a focus on the Fourth of July. In 1852 Frederick Douglass used the occasion to bring attention to the gross injustice of slavery, telling an anti-slavery audience in Rochester, N.Y.: "The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. . . . This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." On this Fourth of July, what must Muslims in America be thinking? Do they feel within or beyond the pale of our national celebration? Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union released a report last month called "U.S.: Scores of Muslim Men Jailed Without Charge." The groups charge that after Sept. 11, ...

This war brought nothing but miseries. Started on deceited premises, this war is about more deceptions, deaths and destructions. Stop this war. Stop these ubiquitous real terror mongrels. Regards, Sohel America Held Hostage By PAUL KRUGMAN A majority of Americans now realize that President Bush deliberately misled the nation to promote a war in Iraq. But Mr. Bush's speech on Tuesday contained a chilling message: America has been taken hostage by his martial dreams. According to Mr. Bush, the nation now has no choice except to keep fighting the war he wanted to fight. Never mind that Iraq posed no threat before we invaded. Now it's a "central front in the war on terror," Mr. Bush says, quoting Osama bin Laden as an authority. And since a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would, Mr. Bush claims, be a victory for Al Qaeda, Americans have to support this war - and that means supporting him. After all, you wage war with the president you have, not the pre...

No way to die in pain. No way to die in vain. In rain while straining the gasp of fear, the death, oncoming absolute certainty, stokes imagination, of the ultimate terror, of pain and fear of absolute non-existence, or perhaps anger filled "god's" reddened face like scripted conflagration in supposed hell, nastier than the hellish world, where devilish "angels" whip their devilish lashes......shooop, shooop, shooop......punishment for being born.........punishment for not obeying thousands and millennial old scriptures, clear and contradictory, as if, being born is a curse, as if, "nirvana" or "heavens" cannot be achieved without adopting secluded monastery or ancient rituals. No way to die! But die, we shall! Regards, Sohel No way to Die We all hope to pass away peacefully, but despite the best efforts of 21st-century medicine, too many of us end our lives in agonising pain and distress. Why are we seemingly incapable of managing d...