Possible Reasons for Innocent Killings by USA

American drone strikes are killing a large number of innocent people in a lot of countries. The reason of the drone strikes is to apparently kill those who are a threat to USA and its citizens. What the Americans don't want to know or acknowledge is that each innocent person that dies in American drone strike has family and friends and acquaintances. They become very upset on the illegal death of their innocent loved-one. And in the process, they stop loving America if they ever were loving it in the first place. They start hating America and Americans. They start to see America and Americans as a gateway of deaths to innocent people all around the world. They start to see that Americans are killing innocent people freely all around the world, because they can, and no one in the world can do nothing about it.

Some of the possible reasons that the American politicians, generals, and policy makers are so indifferent to innocent human lives of non-Americans can be as follows:

• They need to keep the American nation in a perpetual state of war with enemies all over world, to make their media to generate glorious stories of American bravery and heroism.
• They need people all around the world to hate USA so that USA can keep its defense budget high and gives huge orders to its weapon manufacturers.
• American political system is so corrupt that the politicians policy makers do not realize the dreadful situation on the ground due to their actions and policies in other countries.
• American political system is in strong grip of religious and racial extremists who want to conquer the world and are very short sighted to see the longer term consequences of their actions and policies towards their own people, good well, and economy.
• American policy makers see the perpetual war as the only practical way to keep the whole world in a long war and keep them busy and dependent on USA for their defense. 
• Americans see all kinds of long wars as a method to improve their aggressive and offensive military capabilities to maintain its hegemony for as long as possible.

There can be several other reasons the current behavior of American politicians and policy makers when it comes to the world outside USA.

Survival of the Weakest 02

Physical Health of Rich and Poor

Lives of Rich and Poor
Rich people lead their lives in safe and clean environments. They have all kind of protections and high tech medical treatment on their disposal.
On the other hand, poorer people live in relatively unclean environment and they face all kinds of pathogens and get sick all the time. They also lack all kinds of medicines and state of the art treatment.

Fatalities
But the fatality rate of poorer people due to health problems is not very high compare to the rich people.

Under the Hood
When the rich and clean people don't get sick and they are safe from all kinds of less and more dangerous pathogens, their immune systems remain weaker and inexperienced. They develop several kinds of allergies to benign things. Consequently, they become more prone to several kinds of illnesses from the ordinary things all around in natural environment.
On the other hand, the poor people immune systems develop and fight the dangerous pathogens and don't get easily sick, due to early repetitive exposures. They also have least number of allergies and are not threatened by substances commonly found in natural environment.

Struggle in Opposite Direction?
Humans regularly strive to collect as more resources as possible, which apparently increases their survival odds. Apparently, success in this struggle for richness should make people strong in almost all aspects, but on average physically rich people are weaker than the working class poorer people. This phenomena shows more visible drastic results related to survival of rich people compared to poorer people in cases of sudden catastrophes affecting everybody equally, like floods,storms, earthquakes, war, etc.

Wrong Support

Supporting Americans against Afghan Taliban proved strategically very bad for Pakistan. Reasons are as follows:

• During Taliban regime, first time the drugs were completely stopped but American occupation of Afghanistan took drugs production to its peak.
• Western border of Pakistan was safe and quite and there were hopes for peaceful resolution of the border issue during Taliban regime. Now the Western border is very insecure and the region is full of violence.
  
• Taliban had ended support for insurgency in Baluchistan from Afghanistan completely. Americans arrival in Afghanistan started it once again as the terrorists have safe haven in Afghanistan.
• Pakistan provided logistical support to Americans which resulted in the destruction of roads and bridges. Americans remain very reluctant to pay expenses, and even those expenses were named as aid. 
• During Taliban regime, at start when Americans were not too crazy about them, there were prospects of peace in Afghanistan and the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan to their real homes. Now, situation looks dark again.

After Americans run away from Afghanistan, situation there is still not improved. Americans spent trillions of dollars and killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans. Taliban are still stronger even after death of thousands American soldiers died in action. Americans main focus was on defeating Taliban, not warfare of Afghans which might include cooperation with Taliban. Americans declared Taliban as absolute enemies and there were no compromise on that. Now Americans have learned after a decade of destruction in Afghanistan that talking with Taliban is not a bad idea.

Journalism Then and Now

I am listening to a podcast 375  from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. The skeptic rogues are talking about irresponsible journalism as some journalists had published news reports about published papers with very poor quality. Rebecca Watson at one point says:

The new job description of journalist is not doing journalism, it's selling newspapers.

 This and several other events shows how much unprofessional Western journalism has become. Eastern journalism is also going on the same path as the news outlets are struggling for funding and advertising.
But the sad point is that no more than a century ago, Western journalism was on its peak, and it defined a standard of professional journalism. Even today the textbooks of journalism written in that era heavily focus on ethics and quality of news reporting. Alas, the journalism is spiraling downward with time instead of progressing.

Looking in the Past with Starlight

Looking into the night sky stars is watching a live past, a past in action right now. What we see when we look at the stars is the past, several years, or thousands of years, ago from now. Obviously the reason is the huge distances between stars and us. The light travels those distances in several years, despite the incredible speed of light.

Photo from ScienceBlogs.com

When we look at the horrifyingly huge distances and wide open space, we are looking at how for can not we go. This is a huge wall or obstacle that has to be tackled if we wish to visit a star. And the most terrifying of this is time, the time required to physically travel through this huge space. Tragically, the duration of human life is very short which makes such travels impractical.
So, this makes this earth of ours a big prison which has several interesting things to occupy the short lives of human beings. But outside this earth, there is an unimaginably huge number of extremely interesting big worlds that we humans are wishing to go to, but we cannot, and so we are stuck in the earth.
I don't know what should I call it, but at the time of this writing, there are two stars in partially cloudy night sky. I can see only these two stars which I see every night when I go to sleep outside in summer nights.
A strange kind of feeling I have right now about vastness of the sky and the confinement of the earth, for a few nights. And right now I am looking into the past through my memory and imagination, not through the lights of stars.

Richard Dawkins and Razor Blade

Richard Dawkins gets into a comments war with feminists about every day sexual harassment western women face, and he writes that problems of western women are much less than the problems Muslim women face.
He presents several points and mentions that Muslim women get their genitals mutilated with a razor blade, according to him from Islamic teaching.
I grew up in Pakistan in a society of Muslims and have religious background. I had never listened about this female genitals mutilation tradition until I read the biography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Wikipedia. After some more research, on internet, I found on two English blog posts that in a backward community in Sindh in Pakistan. Although this is common practice in a few very backward countries in Africa, and even there in Africa the attribution of the female genital mutilation to only Islam is not clear. Their local customs have much more influence than Islam has on their daily lives.

When a scholar like Richard Dawkins attributes this to Islam and implicitly implies that this is a common practice in Muslim societies, probably around the world, then this shows that even a respected and knowledgeable scholar like him can be deceived by incorrect perceptions about other cultures. This can also be attributed to the propaganda or lazy journalism of Western media when they report about other countries.

The sad thing about British media is that they had colonized most of Muslim countries for more than a century and they have much more experience. In that time, they probably learned nothing about the local customs and traditions. British were probably too much busy in looting and killings.

When a knowledgeable scientist and activist like Richard Dawkins doesn't properly verify his arguments in debates, he is more likely presenting a bad face of science and logic to the third world countries, who will see it as an another weapon of western civilization.

Transformation of Western Media

In 2003, everyone saw how the Western media paved the path for attacks on Iraq by making repeatedly false accusations of Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction. They spread all kinds of false information and doubts about Saddam Hussein, and made him a non-negotiable person.
Western media eagerly played the dirty game of corrupt government officials in Western governments. One reason was that the media and/or the owners of the media had direct and indirect interests from attack on Iraq. Western media told a very huge amount of lies to their own people and to all of the world. The sad thing is, majority of well-respected and credible western journalists were also deliberately part of this lying game.
Western media has come to this stage of waging wars and be a part of killings of millions of innocent people.  This state is after the western media as being free and truly professional for several decades after WWII.

In the twentieth century, Western media showed to the world what it meant to be professional and provided good standards and examples. Now, it is crushing its own legacy of standards and professionalism.
Western media has been transformed into corporate media which now serves the interests of its corporate owners. They can publish any kind of false information if monetary interests are involved. They hide facts and mislead their own population in any direction they want. They have forgotten the investigative and journalistic professionalism of past. Western media is no longer a shining beacon to the newly freed media developing world.
The question is: Will this happen to newly freed media of Pakistan and the developing world as well?

Survival of the Weakest 01

Racial Survival of Powerful People 

Introduction: 
From the beginning, the human civilizations worked through a world systems. There are several criticisms on this theory, but it can properly describes our point.

People: 
The Core nations colonize and exploit the Peripheral nations. The people of the Peripheral nations face several hardships and they struggled for their survival. On the other hand, the people of the Core nations are leading easier and safe lives. According to human understanding and behavior, the people of the Core nations are powerful and fittest in the world, as they can develop their environment in many ways and advance their dominance. On the other hand, the people of the Peripheral nations are weaker and they struggle with everyday basic needs of life. Their lives of full of several kinds of crisis, including safety and survival.

Nature: 
In nature, each organism wants to transfer its genes to next generation, through reproduction. But they modify their behavior of genes transfer according to their environment. Here, we are talking about the organism of human beings, people.
If the environment is safe and food is readily available, then there is no major threat to the survival of individual and the offspring, as we have in Core nations. This makes people to have fewer kids and invest more resources on each kid. This reduces their population but makes each individual more powerful and resourceful.
On the other hand, if the environment is dangerous, like in the Peripheral nations, people worry about their own safety and survival and survival of offspring, then unintentionally they start to have as many kids as practical. This increases the chances of survival of their genes even if only a few kids survive longer. This makes the population of Peripheral nations to increase, as the deaths of kids are most of the time less than births. As the available resources are fewer, they can invest very little in each kid and his/her education. This exacerbate the situation for the future generations as the lack of education increases bad decisions and more crisis.

Movement of People:
Core nations usually don't want the people of Peripheral countries to migrate. Even if the migration is allowed, then there are several restrictions and conditions. The best people of Peripheral nations are allowed to migrate to Core nations, keeping Peripheral nations more poorer and Core nations stronger. This is called Brain Drain or Human capital flight.

Competition in Core:
The people of Peripheral nations living in the Core nations are on average more hard working and they have more kids than the native people of Core nations. More, the slower continued stream of migration from Peripheral countries continue and never stops. On the other hand, the native people the Core countries have fewer and fewer kids which results in their reduced population.

Consequence:
With time, inside the Core nations, the people from the immigrant people demographically dominate the native people of the Core nations. More, the Peripheral nations population increase with time, and the flow of the immigration to the Core nations can also consequently increase. With time, the demographics lookout of the Core nations changes and their native races become minority, while the races of the Peripheral nations dominate.

Survival of the Weakest 00

In evolutionary theory, there is a concept: survival of the fittest. But when we see human society and civilization, we can observe the opposite trends in several cases. The next few posts will list examples and discussions about this point.
One can point out that the main issue is the definition of the fittest when it comes to human society. What humans want and consider right, and how the nature behaves, both are two different matters. But humans think that their actions are according to the nature, and nature doesn't care what humans think.

In the articles in the series, we might have some contradictory points, which is due to the complexity of the issue and situation. If we try to become too logical and correct in all aspects, then the discussion will become very complex and we might miss the whole point of the argument.

If US Iran Nuclear Deal Fails

American politicians and media are trying their best to derail the US Iran Nuclear Deal. There are several reasons, but the sense of American superiority is playing a major role, the sense that Americans do anything they want.
When we look at the concerns in speeches of American politicians and talks on American media, we can easily see that the deal is between Americans and Iran. The P5 + 1 is only a show.
Americans are dragging around the other nations only to show that it is supported by others as well. But the other nations are silent.
If the deal fails, then the Iranian people will suffer, and the responsibility will be on extremist politicians of USA and irresponsible propagandist American media. At this point, Iranians are ready to reduce nuclear enrichment capability but then they will be forced to increase it as there will be no point. Iranians will suffer because they have rectified NPT and they are not allowed to benefit from it in any way.
Americans are shouting that the world should not trust Iranians who say that nuclear weapons unethical. But should the world trust Americans who were making a lot of noise about Iraqi WMD in 2003 and then attacked Iraq and found nothing? Americans know that the world has no other choice but to comply with Americans.
The world already distrust Americans after the Snowden spying scandal, and how Americans handled that. It has already started to affect American economy as the world no longer trusts American technology companies and products. The failure of US Iran nuclear deal will make the Americans even less likable and trustworthy to the world. And the world will try to come back on Americans in future in any way they find practical.
USA is giving the world an impression that it doesn't care about anyone and anything as long as its interests are involved. USA is losing its status as a champion of democracy and human rights. USA is also destroying its soft power by playing in hands of extremist politicians, religiously and racially motivated Israeli Jewish government, and religious extremist Saudi government. Americans are losing a lot by playing in wrong hands but they don't realize it and it is becoming very expensive to recover.

Power Projection is Aggression in Polite Words

I am reading a comment on an article by Armchair Officer who say:

The US military invading countries like Iraq and Afghanistan isn't deterrence, it's basically just power projection.

We can see that Power Projection is a very nice little technical term, with no bad connotative meanings. Does this means that aggression is not a bad concept anymore? Or is attacking weaker nations is no longer morally questionable by the technical-policy makers of the Western world?

Good Human Nature

It is human nature to hate felony and love good deeds. In almost all movies made, novels written, and stories told, heroes are depicted as good doers and the antagonists as bad people.
In conflicts between groups of any size and structure (whether they are two individuals, families, teams, armies, states, countries, continents, or worlds), each party sees the other as bad, and therefore the war is to reduce the bad influence of the other party.
This shows that human nature by itself is good. It only needs to be properly guided and managed to resolve conflicts.
If each party in conflict thinks out of the box and considers the views, points and the reason behind the war of the opposing party, then the conflicts can easily be resolved peacefully.
For the resolving conflicts peacefully by considering the views of the other party, farsighted leaders and politicians are required. This also needs education in common people so that they can think for themselves and humanity, their present and their future.

Allegedly Sponsoring of Terrorism by Iran and USA

On the website of Republican Senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton has released a statement on incoming US-Iran nuclear deal. The statement summary is here on his website.
In the statement, he calls Iran an adversary (enemy) while claiming: terror-sponsoring, Islamist Iranian regime. This statement seems to be far fetched when we see the role of Saudi-e-Arab, USE, and Qata in the region, all of which are very close allies of USA. They are the ones funding ISIS in Iraq which USA itself has described a terrorist organization. Even in Yemen, they are bombing Al-Houthis but are not touching Al-Qaeda there. And don't forget that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 911 attacks.
The Senator Tom Cotton is also presenting USA as an angel who has never supported any terrorist ever, or USA is currently not supporting any terrorists at this time either. It is USA who has been arming Syrian rebels against government which resulted in a bloody civil war. It was also USA who armed and supported Libyan rebels against government which has buried Libya in in a deep fog of civil war. And don't forget about dropped high-tech weapons to ISIS by US, Baloch rebels in Pakistan, and secret support of Jundallah against Iran, and open unconditional support of any Israeli action against Palestinians whether its new illegal settlements of foreign Jews or carpet bombing civilians.
On this point, the "honorable" Senator might say that every country has to support anyone for its interests. But when USA is doing it then it is ok, but when others are doing it while making USA unhappy, then it is not ok. This is called American logic. Anything that is good for Americans is ethical and anything that goes American interests is illegal.

Re-usability of Curiosity Landing Space Hardware

NASA landed Curiosity Rover on Mars on 6 August 2012. It has been still working with a long range of mission objectives.

Curiosity Hardware Locations. Photo taken from http://io9.com/5932592/see-all-the-landing-hardware-that-curiosity-scattered-on-the-surface-of-mars

During landing the Curiosity, first a heat-shield was used to slow it safely through thin Mars atmosphere, and then a parachute was used to low it further. Sky-Crane was then used to descend the Curiosity to Mars surface without blowing any dusts around.
The heat-shield and Sky-Crane are two very heavy equipments. They could be use to dig bigger holes in the Mars surface to be examined later by Curiosity.
The heat-shield has already done its double job, securing the Curiosity from intense heat and making a big fresh crater on Mars surface. Nothing special was needed in this case.
On the other hand, the Sky-Crane was a complex machinery with rockets involved. After descending the Curiosity to surface and going away to safe distance, it could be used to hit the Mars surface with a proper angle to dig a hole through the impact. The impact could be made more powerful by speeding the Sky-Crane through the remaining jet-fuel in its jets and making the impact point of the Sky Crane more like a sharper cone. This is very late to talk about the Sky Crane of Curiosity, but we still have Mars 2020 rover mission and changes can be made in that one.
The parachute can also act to collect dust particles for a long time to be examined later. More, it the Curiosity to visit it more than once after some time, to see how the parachute is changed with time. It can examine changes parachute material with time, through temperature and radiation.
Curiosity can be made to visit the impact points of the heat-shield and Sky-Crane on regular interval through its long life. As time goes by, the Curiosity speed can increase due to increased confidence about Mars surface.
 

Muslims Concept of Heaven

He says that he doesn't want to go as a Muslim to the heaven where there will be Muslim murderers and no non-Muslim saviors of lives and humanity.

A crazy man told me some very strange things about Islamic heaven (jannah or jannat). He told me that it is not a place where only morally pure people will go. The people there will not necessarily be all good. Anyone who has said some specific Arabic words by tongue will go there, regardless of his/her characters and behavior towards his/her fellow creatures. He said that a murderer, a thief, deceiver, and any type of corrupt and bad person can go there, as long as he has said those Arabic words. All this doesn't make heaven an all-good place. The funny thing is, no matter how good a person is to fellow creatures in the world, and no matter how selfless s/he is in being a good person, s/he will not go to heaven unless s/he says the given Arabic words. Isn't it strange?

I told him that according to Muslims believe bad Muslims will go to hell first and then after spending a lot of time there as a punishment, they will go the heaven in the end. But he responded that a time will come when all bad Muslims will be in heaven, and all good people will be in hell due to not saying those Arabic (kind of magic) words.

This made me speechless.

China in Afghanistan after USA

I just read an article China’s power play in Afghanistan written by Ahmed Rashid.
Ahmad Rashid talks about the retreat of USA from and Chinese entry into Afghanistan.
It talks that China is trying to bring peace in Afghanistan by pulling different parties in the conflict together. The parties are Taliban, Afghan Government, and Pakistan. China wants to do investment in Afghanistan in minerals.

China is trying to bring peace to a region destroyed by USSR, and then again by USA. USA first came to Afghanistan with no homework about the Afghan culture and mindset and failed miserably.

This time, the Afghan discussion has parties of Taliban, Afghan Government, Pakistan who has influence on Taliban and a long spurious border with Afghanistan and has millions of Afghan refugees for more then three decades, and China.

In past USA tried bringing India into the equation and Pakistan out while knowing that India has even no border with Afghanistan, but failed. Its purpose was to reduce Pakistani influence. Now even USA is not in the Afghan discussions.

USA also refused to negotiate with Taliban, and tried to completely destroy them. They failed and now Taliban is still a force and USA is flying out. On the contrary, Chinese are considering Taliban as a major player and think that there will be no peace in Afghanistan and the region without Taliban agreement.
USA played the game of guns and refused to bring everybody to tables and now China is doing the table bringing.

USA focus was on security while economy and social issues were not in its main policy. On the other hand, China wants peace and security for economic and social well-being of everyone in the region. If China succeeds in bringing peace and prosperity to Afghanistan, then it will show that the world is going into a positive direction after USA decline as a super power.

Chinese approach for the region is very different from that of USA. China wants peace at its west and trade with the region, and a trade route to adjacent regions. On the other hand, USA wanted to show to the region its power and superiority. Chinese approach has good news for everyone in the region, while the American approach brought only misery and destruction.

One other point about Chinese approach is that it is not intervention in the internal issues of other countries. It is a dialog for asking others to get their things together and work for welfare of the people in the region. Chinese even don't care who rules the Afghanistan. On the other hand, USA approach was direct and indirect intervention in internal affairs of every country in the region. If any country talked against Americans actions in the region, bad consequences were waiting for them. Americans acted like bullies from outside. If anyone who Americans didn't like had government in a region, then Americans tried very hard to oust them, even if it meant military invasion and economic destruction in the region.

Lets hope that Chinese struggle in the region for peace are successful.

Cultural Privileges and Responsibilities

The current western culture is considered more advanced and civilized. One major factor is mass education and tolerance for opposite opinions.
When western intellectuals talk about other cultures and nations, they emphasize the two points. When a culture is considered superior, then there is also a need for the other cultures to embrace the values of the superior culture.
Western politicians and intellectuals are talking to spread the good values of western culture all over the world. It was the Bush Senior New World Order, export of democracy by Bush Junior, defeating evils of communism and the current war on terror: all are the spread of good values of western culture.

In the mean times, Western politicians and intellectuals ignore a few thing:

• With privilege comes responsibilities.Any wrong step on Western side reduces good perception of the their cultural values.
• Wrong decisions of current politicians and good decisions of past politicians in West points to the decline of the good values in western culture itself with time.
• Most of the time, Western countries sacrifice the good western values on their national economic and political interests. This leads to the perception that western cultural values can't pragmatically guide a country in their political and foreign policies.
• The above point also tell the world that Western nations usually don't care much about the good Western values when it comes to political and economic interests.
• One can also say from the previous points that the Western cultural values are in danger not from competition from other cultures but from the policies of West itself.

Killing without a Fuss

Americans kill people of different nationalities through drone strikes and apparently nothing happens. There are no major discussions and debates about the legal issues of killing others without a due process.
But during that killing spree, when they kill an American citizen, then something happens. A legal debate starts about the procedure through which they kill Americans. Still no proper debate about killing non-Americans.
I am a non-American and I fear that some day Americans will kill me and then they will synthesize some story about me and prove me a bad guy, possibly dangerous to Americans interests. The current blog post can also serve a starting point for Americans to start with.