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Guns n Roses |
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JUNE 19: The week ending June 18 has been pretty surrealistic on the
news front both in des as well as in pardes.
From the sidelining of Vajpayee and handslapping of Modi to the
beheading of Johnson by Al Qaeda operatives, from Bill Clinton's juicy
self-exposure to the screening and u la la of Girlfriend (lesbian)
movie in India, a rainbow of views, opinions and comments has joined
the two divides and made the whole world go on a space trip. The
bird's eye view appears abstract, but the feeling is intense and
profound.
Vajpayee may have spoken too late on Modi and then self-served by
taking all the blame himself for BJP's unexpected defeat. Both
represent two extremes within the same political environment. While Modi vented his views on the loudspeakers of Gujrati
psyche, Vajpayee
chose to relax on the armchair of Raj Bhavan's opulences. The rest is
of course history.
The controversial new Bollywood
film Girlfriend, with its depiction of a steamy lesbian
relationship, drew fire from Hindu right-wing organizations in India.
Activists belonging to Sangh Parivar, Shiv Sena and its students'
wing, Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Sena, staged violent protests in various
Indian cities, demanding that the movie be banned. Some states did ban
it but India's metropolitan New York albeit Mumbai remained
insensitive even though Bal Thakeray resides there.
Talking about hounding. Terror hounds Saudi Arabia deeper than the
resentment against the Saudi Royal families. Two wrongs don't make one
right though. But revenge in the name of justice seems to be getting
past the milepost of civility. Looks like time is traveling back full
circle and a Lawrence of Arabia may emerge to stamp a daylight saving
time on the land of the crescent.
Just as sunflowers turn their heads to catch every sunbeam, so too have we discovered a simple
way to get more from our sun. We've learned to save energy and enjoy sunny summer evenings by switching our clocks an hour
forward in the summer. Arabia is where the sun is!
The Pakistani army wanted him dead or alive. Dead it was, with Nek Mohammed, who led
the fierce resistance to the army's efforts to flush out foreign
fighters from the tribal areas, killed in a raid on Thursday. Nek's
death is a major victory for Islamabad, and for the US, as Nek aided
the resistance in Afghanistan. But his death will not go without
retaliation, say observers.
In a recent interview with the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) Pashto service, Nek
threatened to bring the battle from the tribal territories into urban
Pakistan, and popular tapes and videos in the North West Frontier
Province, in which the tribal areas are located, feature the handsome
Nek calling for jihad against "foreign invaders" in Afghanistan and
against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas.
The battle is not over yet.
But for Bill Clinton "In some ways it was liberating," he wrote in the
book, "My Life," which is to be released on Monday with an initial
printing of 1.5 million copies, adding that he no longer had a secret
to hide. He blamed his affair with Monica Lewinsky on the "old demons"
that have haunted him all his life.
He said the affair was personally humiliating and almost cost him
his presidency and his marriage. In the end, after months sleeping on
the couch, a year of intensive marital counseling and his acquittal on
impeachment charges in the Senate, he said he finally felt free.
The book is the first full-length explanation from Clinton of how it
felt to be at the center of so many storms. He said as a child he
learned, too well, how to live with secrets. His family creed, he
said, was "don't ask, don't tell."
While Mr. Clinton had his day, Mr. Bush keeps telling "C'mon make my
day".
It is hard not to think back to earlier acts of defiance against the
might of the United States and wonder if we are not seeing a parallel
erosion of presidential authority: the steady drip-drip of casualty
figures from Vietnam that proved the undoing of Lyndon Johnson's
presidency in 1968, or the corrosive effect of the Iran hostage crisis
on Jimmy Carter 12 years later.
Yesterday, a Washington Post article was headlined: "Is al-Qa'ida
winning in Saudi Arabia?" It was just such questions about America's
enemies that led President Johnson to his "Cronkite moment" in 1968 -
his realisation that he could no longer count on the support of the
country's favourite television news anchor, Walter Cronkite, and that
he had therefore lost the sympathy of the electorate as a whole.
The overall mood is slipping away from the born-again President. Two
recent polls show that a majority believe the war against Saddam
Hussein was not worth it.
The anti-Vietnam war protests in the 60s found voices in the screams
and yellings of Woodstock festivals but now there are no guns
and roses left to characterize such a scenario. All are heavily
indebted to the plasticity of the 'don't leave home without it'
monster - the credit cards I mean!
More By Irshad Salim:
 Musharraf and Bloody Ma(r)y
'Oscar-Tango Karachi'
Chalabi: Now you see him now you don't
Is Bush being ambushed? |
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