AFTER OSAMA

The world’s most wanted man, public enemy number one- Osama Bin Laden is dead.  There are few who believe that Bin Laden died in 2002 of some disease and since Obama was worried about the upcoming US Presidential elections in 2012, the billions of dollars being wasted in Afghanistan (The cost of running the war in Afghanistan is $400,225,824,340 and the cost of running it in Iraq was $787,878,147,208 totalling almost 1.2 trillion dollars) and finding a face saving solution to the problem, he declared Bin Laden's death now, (and buried his body hastily in the sea!) Regardless of whether Bin Laden died in 2011 or 2002, one thing is for certain, that he is dead or else, the world's most powerful man would not have taken the liberty of making a claim that he knew was false.

The jubilations on the streets of USA, ecstatic tweets and posts celebrating America’s revenge for 9/11 certainly sing of justice and retribution. But saying that USA has killed the world's most dangerous man, and in doing so, completely smothered terrorism, is way too far-fetched. Here are a few things that will not happen as a consequence of Bin Laden’s death -

             1) Terrorists across the world will give up their violent ways due to the loss of their supreme spiritual leader.

2)    Al Qaeda will be completely incapacitated as Bin Laden was personally instructing each and every terrorist across the world.

3)    The ‘random’ airport passenger searches will now be actually random.

4)    Democracy will be instored across the middle-east.

5)    President Obama will resist the urge (and succeed) to use this accomplishment during his 2012 presidential campaign. (going from far-fetched to dreamy)

Simply killing Osama bin Laden does not end Al Qaeda. Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian No. 2, has long played a crucial role as Al Qaeda’s COO. And Al Qaeda is more of a loose network than a tightly structured organization. AQIM, the version of Al Qaeda in North Africa, is a real threat in countries like Mali and Mauritania, and killing bin Laden will probably have negligible consequences there. The AQIM terrorists may admire Osama and be inspired by him, but they also are believed to be largely independent of him. And Anwar al-Awlaki, the Qaeda-linked terrorist in Yemen, likewise won’t be deterred by bin Laden’s killing. With Osama being gone, it might be a moral-buster for the Taliban, but it leaves a big, open hole in their chain of command, one that will be too easily and eagerly filled by another.

The only sure-shot repercussion of Laden’s death,  is a bump in Obama’s poll numbers, and a spate of articles, blogs and pieces in the media celebrating the president for heroically keeping the promise of killing the diabolical Osama. Although Obama’s cashing in on this operation for a re-election boost is funny, since the intelligence that led to this raid was directly tied to Guatanamo bay, enhanced interrogations and water-boarding; while Obama has been trying to shut down guatanamo bay for three years and he has been a vocal critic of enhanced interrogations. Also the fact that Obama was unsure of the military operation undertaken to kill Osama Bin Laden, and had to sleep on it for 16 hours- to make a decision any American would have made in a heartbeat.

Yet the political mileage gained from Bin Laden’s killing could be short-lived for Obama, because in America, it all comes down to the economy. (Case in point: George HW Bush was a hero after the victory in the gulf war in 1991, but was defeated in Nov 1992 by Bill Clinton, owing to economic downturn) With the nation’s economy still ailing, higher prices at gas pumps and grocery stores, unemployment still at 9%, unpopularity of the new Health-care bill and billions of nation’s wealth still being spent in waging (meaningless) wars, Obama would have to do much better than winning a Nobel prize, claiming the spoils of Bin Laden’s death, giving another canned speech from a teleprompter, and running an interesting social media campaign.

Speaking of social media, the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death may have been first spotted on twitter, even before the official announcement. One man even live tweeted the raid which killed the Al Qaeda leader, not realizing the monumental news at hand. Some were as usual clueless about such happenings like @parishilton who tweeted- “Can't wait to get home to my pets. I miss my babies," as the world watched, celebrated and tweeted about Osama’s death.

End of terror or not, as a final act of terrorism, Osama certainly blew up the news feeds, posts, tweets and Obama’s ratings!

Visual Pollution !

Fashion is a very broad term- it can be a style, a characteristic, a facade or a fad depending on which way we look at it. 
I wont criticize or adulate fashion here. I hardly know anything about it. 
I'll talk about the 'visual pollution' some people call fashion, which they endorse, flaunt and throw in everyone's face with extreme brazenness. Some of the most downright appalling examples of this pollution are-

1) CROCS- They come in all the imaginable colors under the Sun, yet they manage to look excessively bad with each and every article of clothing. The only thing they can go along with is social gaucherie and complete idiocy! Maybe on the beach side they can get a pass- but for running around town- simply hideous. It is amazing how crocs are a unique combination of being supremely expensive, poor quality and ugly- all at the same time! These gaping holes called shoes are a remarkable mockery of the basic concept of footwear! 

2) Skinny Jeans on men- Skinny jeans do make sense- but on cyclists who want to avoid a tangle, and on women who are in love with their super thin legs and want to show their curves off! These jeans only make men look like wannabe lean women or roller skating divas. They are conspicuously uncomfortable to wear- so I cant comprehend their craze among men! If it is in the "thin is in" spirit or it is to show off one's thunder- they fail hopelessly at doing both these things. Skinny jeans make men look undeniably and unnecessarily lean to the hilt of being borderline gay and make it impossible for them to sit cross-legged normally! And frankly who cares for the thunder thereafter! 

3) SHADES Forever- 'Sunglasses' is the apt and self-explanatory term- it means a cover for the eyes when one is in the Sun. Though shades are more of a fashion statement than a protection medium now. They look cool no doubt, but it gets preposterous when people start wearing them on anything and everything, even indoors, and at all times of day and night! What could justify these ridiculous acts? Well there can be a few plausible reasons for people indulging in them for instance when- 
a) They are blind, in which case they genuinely need the shades at all times.
b) They are ugly, and again they need the shades to hide their horrid faces and to look better in pictures (if the world lived on facebook- they could get away with it too!)
c) They want to publicly stare at people (chicks) in which case they can clock a decent amount of time ogling at them without anyone noticing.
d) They wear cheap clothes, in which case they think that their shades,worth a few thousands, can make up for everything else.

4) Red Lipstick- Two kinds of people look good in a red lipstick- vampires and marilyn monroe! Red lipsticks look extremely horrible on most women and 
less horrible on the rest. There are a thousand names for literally the same shade of red colour- berry juicy, midnight love, cherry desirable, royal red. It's obvious they are making up this ridiculous nomenclature when they start using words like "love" and "desirable" to describe color! Technically it is either dark red or light red- both equally ludicrous. Insecure women, with boring faces, and mostly striking complexions, who wear this hokey, unreal shade of red- look nothing less than clowns- only lacking cherry on their noses to complete the ensemble.

5) Too much Perfume- Technically it isn't a visual offense, but it does completely ruin the mental image one would form of a person, whose aura is a stifling nauseating cloud of too much scent. Too much perfume on a person shows that not only does he/she not know how to wear perfume (dab it on the skin rather than spray it all over!) but also that he/she suffers from serious BO! No one likes to slam into the wall of excessive perfume perpetuated by its carrier even after he has left the place. I read a very interesting article which claimed that scientists have partially proved that depression in women causes a loss in sense of smell- thereby leading them to wear more perfume. Whether it is out of depression, stupidity, or an effort to exact some artificial pheromone reaction from others, too much perfume is a complete turn-off; a human repellent- that needs to be controlled!