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Your 80-person class needs to work a little harder to do some authoritative research. There are a number of factual errors in your long reply. I shall address a few of them.

I did not say that the LoC was breached in 1972. I said it was demarcated in 1972. Since then, the border has always been in a state of tension. Both sides shell each other regularly. The line is often breached by Pakistan-trained terrorists trying to sneak into the state of Jammu and Kashmir. You don't have to take my word for it. Read the report Pakistan, Kashmir and the Trans-Asian Axis. The author, Yossef Bodansky, is currently Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional warfare for the U.S. Congress, as well as a contributing editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy. He has written widely for such specialized journals as Jane's Defense Weekly and Global Affairs.

So what's the deal with Kashmir? Both Pakistan and India claim Jammu & Kashmir.

Pakistan's claim, as you stated, is on the basis of it being a Muslim majority state. Indeed, that is Pakistan's raison d'etre - the idea that Muslims of the sub-continent require a separate country to protect their interests. India is a democratic, secular state. It is host to all major and several minor religions, and provides freedom of expression to all religions. Incidentally, it has a higher Muslim population than Pakistan.

When the British left India in 1947, the princely states were given a choice of joining either India or Pakistan. Except for those states that were on the border, there was effectively no choice. The Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) chose to defer accession. Then, as now in '99, the state was invaded by the Pakistan army in mufti - in the garb of ``armed tribesmen''. The Maharaja of J&K immediately signed the Instrument of Accession and the state became part of the Indian Union. An elected state assembly later confirmed the accession to India. These circumstances are very similar to the manner in which Texas became part of the United States in 1845. Pakistan's claim on J&K has as much legal standing as does Mexico's on Texas. The border as it exists today is roughly at the point when a UN-mandated cease-fire came into effect. If interested, you can look at all the legal documents related to this.

India's PR, unlike what you state, is laughably poor. It's pursual of influence via lobbying members of Congress within the US is virtually non-existent. It's managing of the media is something out of the stone age. An example of this is the propagation of this absurd idea of a bunch of ``freedom fighters'' in rag-tag clothes and poor equipment taking on the Indian army. The invading Pakistani army was equipped with the best snow gear, sophisticated equipment such as Stinger missiles, communication equipment capable of switching frequencies on the fly, and backed by logistics that would have taken several months to prepare. A good PR machine would have paraded all the evidence - captured documents, Pak army pay books, weapons with Pakistani factory markings - before the foreign media camped in Srinagar. What did the Indian government do? Bring it all down to Delhi and called some foreign ambassadors to see it.

Your writing about Bombay and East Pakistan was the biggest faux-pas. Bombay is a city on the west coast of India. It never had anything to do with Pakistan. Perhaps you refer to Bangladash, the erstwhile East Pakistan. It is an independent country today, not ``reintegrated'' with India. This is another good example of the canard spread about religious conflict. The Muslim population of East Pakistan was oppressed by their own countrymen and fellow-Muslims from West Pakistan. About a million people were massacred by the army and at one point 10 million refugees fled to India. That is a staggering number. The refugee crisis in Kosovo involved a few hundred thousand. The United States has admitted some 500,000 refugees in the last fifty years. The Indian army was forced to intervene and helped form the state of Bangladesh in 1971. Yes, Bangladesh suffers flooding and is hit by typhoons regularly. As is India, incidentally. Can India provide aid that would match what the United States can? Of course not. India's per capita GDP is $1720 compared to the US' $31500. The notion that India somehow persecutes Bangladesh on the basis of religion is absurd. India, Bangladesh and the other South Asian nations(Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives) have set up SAARC, an association that promotes and facilitates trade and other forms of cooperation between its member countries.

About the third-world banding together to overthrow the bosses, it's going to happen sometime. There is a large number of nations(India included) whose days of pre-eminence are long gone. The pendulum swings slowly, though. It's unlikely to happen in your lifetime or mine.

Who benefits from the war on drugs? Well, drugs and/or alcohol were involved in about a third of all violent crimes last year, or maybe the year before. Any politician who is tough on other people's drugs can be considered a "good guy" and is immediately elected and reelected. Of course booze won't be mentioned in any big tirades against crime (unless consumed by a teenager), they contribute too much money to the Republican/Democrat Pary. Which brings us to the second beneficiary. Legal drugs. Tobacco and alcohol corporations benefit, they're "okay." Pharmacudical/chemical interests also benefit. Actually, I read that the whole "reefer madness" thing was sponsored by a logging company, because hemp paper was better than tree paper, and they had extensive deforestation rights. I haven't been able to check on that tho. And of course, the CIA can keep selling the illegal stuff. ;)

Heh. Hmmm, I wonder if they block the CIA Kids Page.

Perhaps this software would prefer that _all_ web sites should look like:

I luv you,
You luv me,
We're a happy family...
With a...

Noooooooooooo!

> Figure the U.S. population as 245 million
Pretty close - 270,311,756 (July 1998 est.), according to the CIA

Wanna get the shit scared out of you? Visit http://www.cia.gov/cia/ciakids.