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"For in its innermost depths, childhood is lonelier than old age." I read this saying in some book and I've always remembered it, and found it to be true. Is it true then that grownups have a more difficult time here than we do? No. I know it isn't. Older people have formed their opinions about everything and don't waver before they act. It's twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground, and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth and right and in God.Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn't realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us, problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually, until, after a long time, we think we've found a solution, but the solution doesn't seem able to resist the weapons which reduce it to nothing again. That's the difficulty in these times, ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.She was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp in November 1944, Bergen-Belsen, a camp rife with typhoid and starvation. It is estimated that she died in March of 1945 at the age of fifteen. What were her crimes? Nothing really. A mouthy girl trying to express herself; her writings at the time were little known. She was just one of the wrong kind of people.
I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death, I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.
Do you know this young lady?
Her Name is Malala Yousufzai. She is fourteen years young lady. She is a writer with a minor following; she has a Facebook page. What does she write? O, she writes and campaigns for education for girls. Well she did do that, but she is not doing that right at the moment. No, she is not studying for exams or goofing with her girlfriends over a fashion magazine. She is recovering. You say, Oh, she is sick? Well not exactly, you see the Taliban radio mullah, Maulana Fazlullah sent a hit squad after her."Before the attack, the two fighters personally collected information about Malala's route to school, timing, the vehicle she used and her security," Ahmad said.They decided to shoot her near a military checkpoint to make the point they could strike anywhere, he said.On Tuesday, the two men stopped the bus she was riding home in. They asked for Yousufzai by name. Although the frightened girls said she wasn't there, the men fired at her and also hit two other girls in the van. One of them remains in critical condition.
Shot in the head and the neck, Yousufzai still lies unconscious in hospital, unaware that world leaders from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to U.S. President Barack Obama have pledged support. Schoolchildren in Swat prayed for her recovery.Reuters quoting: A Taliban spokesman said she was targeted for trying to spread Western culture and that they would try to kill her again if she survived.
It would be easy for Sharky&Sharky to be ironic and cynical at this turn. However it is not about turning a clever etude. It is about presenting credible evidence that the violence against the two young women comes from the same source. That source of evil is the people good at heart that Anne refers are those that did nothing to help Anne people from being exterminated or Malala in her campaign for educating girls and women. If good people do not step forward to thwart the evilness in their societies those societies are condoning and comforting evilness in their midst and saying there is nothing wrong with killing young women. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer affirms:
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God [Allah] will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act...The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.Let us all hope that Ms Yousufzai recovers, lives a well and happy life, and continues her work. Also let us all hope that governments including ours begin to see the scourge that the Taliban are to the development of Women and Men.
UPDATE: The Taliban are using their perverse sick ideology to justify the shooting of Malala and asserting that the press has been biased toward them and they plan to get even:
According to sources, the Taliban felt that the media has become biased against them and was giving ‘undue’ coverage to the attack on Malala and portraying them as the ‘worst people on earth’.Give Sharky&Sharky a fucking break!
The militants were reported to have held meetings and decided to suspend all their current operations and activities in the country and directed field commanders and fighters to divert their attention towards media organisations instead of the government and security forces.
In this regard, the sources said, the militants had selected12 suicide bombers and tasked them to target media organisations, particularly the electronic media and some foreign media organisations and their workers, in Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi and wherever they found them.
“The suicide bombers have particularly been directed to target offices, vehicles and journalists individually who had become a party and were issuing fatwas or decrees against the Taliban,” TTP sources said.
They said the Taliban had deputed people to closely monitor various media organisations, Pakistani and foreign media, after the attack on Malala to assess which media outlet was giving how much coverage to her and how the journalists remained impartial and unbiased while reporting the incident.
Malala's condition continues to improve. First she was brought to a Pakistani army Hospital as the local hospital could not take care of her. Now she is in England:
Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital also confirmed that it had received more than 1,500 messages of support for Malala Yousafzai, who arrived in Britain on Monday.In its latest statement concerning the schoolgirl’s progress, the hospital said: 'Malala Yousafzai continues to receive one-to-one nursing care, 24 hours a day, from staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, working alongside colleagues from Birmingham Children's Hospital.She has a slight movement in her limbs. Sharky&Sharky are betting on her making it.
"C'mon Malala the next generation needs you"
Sharky&Sharky©
