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Operation Bluestar - The Details

2006-04-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

The Operation Blue Star (June 4 to June 6, 1984) was the Indian military attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, the holiest temple of the Sikh religion.

The Punjab state in India had seen the rate of murder and overall crime rise in the early 1980's. This was in large part due to the conflict between the Militant Sikhs and the secular government of India. Many Sikhs felt that they were being discriminated against. The distrust between the Militant Sikhs and the government grew. Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had become the voice of the minority of Sikh's who were militancy against the government.

Following a crackdown on Sikh militants in early 1984, a group of militant Sikhs led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale fortified the Golden Temple complex. A majority of the Sikh public in India and abroad did not support this action by the militants.

Bluestar operational plans

The Indian Army had thought the operation would last a few hours at most. However, after the Operation Bluestar commander Major General Brar visited the Golden Temple complex the day before the operation he realized that the Sikh militants had prepared well and built defensive positions against an attack. The Sikh separatist forces within the Golden Temple were led by former Major General Shabeg Singh (dismissed from the Indian Army in 1976).Maj. Gen. Brar, a Sikh himself, and Lt. Gen. Sundarji, another senior commander, believed there was no way to avoid a violent resolution. Brar went in and briefed all troops.

Timeline

The Indian army asked the militants to surrender and made a plea to release the trapped civilians inside. The militants however refused to surrender. The army used as much force as it deemed necessary to dislodge the militants and in course desectrated the Sikh's holiest shrine equivalent to the vatican for Catholics.

Eyewitnesses say that the army deployed tanks, armed personnel carriers, rocket launchers, heavy machine guns and helicopters. Many of the buildings surrounding the Temple were reduced to rubble. The damage inside of the temple complex was severe. The Harmindar Sahib [the sanctum sanctorum where the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, is kept during the day] received many bullet holes. The Sikh holy book itself was even hit by a bullet.

The militants in the temple appeared to be armed with machine guns, anti-tank missiles and rocket launchers and resisted the army's attempts to dislodge them from the shrine. The militants also appeared to have planned for a long occupation of the shrine having arranged for water from wells within the temple compound, and had stocked food provisions that would have lasted months. It is interesting to note the Indian Forces could have waited out the militants, cut off electricity, water etc in order to ensure a peaceful non violent end without the loss of life and desecration of the temple.

The fighting between the militants and the Indian military continued throughout the night. Major General Brar a Sikh himself made the decision to bring in tanks to support the military in hopes of finishing the operation before dawn. After two days of heavy fighting with the assistance of superior military equipment the Indian military was able to bring most of the Golden Temple complex under its control.

Despite the government's claims that only extremists were killed other reports show that many innocent visitors, pilgrims and priests were killed in the cross-fire. Water, electricity and telephone links to the Golden Temple were cut off.
On 18/6/84 Christian Science Monitor reported: -" For five days the Punjab has been cut off from the rest of the world. All telephone and telex links are cut. No foreigners are permitted entry and on Tuesday, all Indian journalists were expelled. There are no newspapers, no trains, no buses- not even a bullock cart can move."

The success in emptying the temple was marred by the damage to the temple building and killing of civilian worshipers caught in the fire.

Operation Blue Star led to India's bitter relations with Sikhs all over the world and continue to this day. It was considered by most Sikhs as a great insult because of the completely unnecessary use of force at their holy place, on one of the most holiest of days. The later assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards was said to be in response to desecrating the temple. The events that followed were more horrific. Anti-Sikh riots broke out in North India killing as many as 4000 Sikhs, militancy in Punjab lasted for more than a decade in which many people were killed.

Later on numerous Kar Sevaks volunteered to rebuild the Harmandir Sahib.
Operation Bluestar was followed by Operation Woodrose, in which the Indian government expanded their operations in Punjab and arrested and killed many thousands of Sikh militants and many innocent civilians.

Operation Bluestar is widely regarded in India and the international community as a military embarrassment, poorly conducted and managed. Many of the leaders of the military action were either assassinated or are as in the case of Major General Brar, in hiding for fear or being assassinated. The inability of its law enforcement and military to curb an insurgency without the loss of as many as 5000 innocent men, women and children.

The Concorde Story

2006-04-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Air France Flight 4590 was a Concorde flight from Charles de Gaulle International Airport near Paris, France to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, New York.
On 25 July 2000, the flight crashed in Gonesse, France shortly after takeoff, killing all 109 on board and four on the ground.

Concorde was the fastest airliner in the world, and—with no fatal accidents since its service entry in 1976—was considered to be the safest, as measured by passenger deaths per passenger mile, until the crash. The tiny Concorde fleet flew far fewer passenger miles than other airliners, however. Indeed, by the same statistic, Concorde instantly became the most dangerous airliner in the world after the crash.

The investigation into the crash determined that a strip of titanium metal that fell onto the runway from an earlier Continental Airlines DC-10 flight punctured one of F-BTSC's tires on the left main gear in the latter stages of takeoff. A large chunk of shredded tire (4.5 kg) hit the underside of the aircraft's wing at over 300 km/h, and the pressure wave within the full fuel tank caused it to rupture near the leading edge. Power was lost on engine number two, and for a brief period, engine number one. A tremendous fire rapidly ensued. The aircraft was unable to climb or accelerate, and it maintained a speed of 200 knots (370 km/h) and an altitude of 200 feet (60 m). The aircraft stalled after engine number 1 lost power again. The crew was unable to control the aircraft, in part because the fire melted away the ailerons on the left side. The plane crashed into a hotel (Les Relais Bleus) just miles from the airport, killing all 9 crew and 100 (mostly German) passengers and 4 people on the ground.
A few days after the crash, all Concordes were grounded, pending an investigation into the cause of the crash and possible remedies. Air France Concorde F-BVFC was allowed to return home from its stranded position in New York, empty of passengers.

The crash would force modifications to be made to the aircraft (mostly a double skin inside the tanks), but just before services resumed, the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks took place, resulting in a marked drop-off in customers and leading to the eventual end of Concorde flights; by Air France in May 2003, and by British Airways in October 2003.

For those who dont know... Jack the Ripper !!

2006-04-28T06:36:00.000-07:00

Part 1

Jack the Ripper is the pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer (or killers) active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area of London in the second half of 1888. The name is taken from a letter to the Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer, published at the time of the killings. Although many theories have been advanced, Jack the Ripper's identity may never be determined.

The legends surrounding the Ripper murders have become a complex muddle of genuine historical research, freewheeling conspiracy theory and dubious folklore. The lack of a confirmed identity for the killer has allowed subsequent authors, historians and mostly amateur sleuths — dubbed Ripperologists — to point their fingers at a wide variety of candidates. Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer due to the savagery of the murders and the failure of police to effect a capture, with the Ripper sometimes escaping discovery by mere minutes.

Victims were women earning income as casual prostitutes. Typical Ripper murders were perpetrated in a public or semi-public place; the victim's throat was cut, after which the cadaver was subjected to abdominal and sometimes other mutilations. Many now believe that the victims were first strangled in order to silence them. Due to the nature of the wounds on some presumed Ripper victims, several of whom had internal organs removed, it has been proposed that the killer had a degree of surgical or medical skill, or was perhaps a butcher, although this point, like most of the beliefs about the killer and facts in the case, is in dispute.

Jack the Ripper was the first to create a worldwide media frenzy around his killings. Reforms to the Stamp Act in 1855 had enabled the publication of inexpensive newspapers with wider circulation. These mushroomed later in the Victorian era to include mass-circulation newspapers as cheap as a halfpenny, along with popular magazines such as the Illustrated Police News, making the Ripper the beneficiary of previously unparalleled publicity. This, combined with the fact that no one was ever convicted of the murders, created a haunting legend that cast a shadow over later serial killers.

Some believe the killer's nickname was invented by newspapermen to make for a more interesting story that could sell more papers. This became standard media practice with examples such as the Boston Strangler, the Green River Killer, the Axeman of New Orleans, the Beltway Sniper, the Hillside Strangler, and the Zodiac Killer, besides the derivative British Yorkshire Ripper almost a hundred years later and the unnamed perpetrator of the "Thames Nude Murders" of the 1960s, whom the press dubbed Jack the Stripper.

Bang on !!

2006-04-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

Hmm....

So I have finally decided what I'm gonna do with this blog !!

Since I'm good at Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, I'm gonna devote this blog to publish anything that might intrigue/befuddle/amuse you. Jokes, funny pictures, famous speeches, air crash investigations, lyrics, ufo's, unsolved murders, famous assassinations, , ,..........and the list goes on !!!!!

PS - All the information/text to be presented on this blog will be published after due consideration of copyright issues !!