Tackling Terrorism....

Plot :


On June 27th 1976, a mixed group of German and Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France Airbus A300 which was traveling from TelAviv to Paris via Athens.




The plane was diverted to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, after a refueling stop in Benghazi, Libya. Over the next few days, many of the hostages were released, but over 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers remained in the hands of the hijackers.

At Entebbe Airport in Uganda where three additional terrorists joined the hijackers. Uganda's President, Idi Amin, was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and his military forces were deployed effectively in support of the terrorists.

The terrorists demanded the release of 40 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, as well as others held in France, Germany, Switzerland and Kenya. They threatened to begin killing hostages on July 1st if their demands were not met. In the meantime, the terrorists held the hostages in the transit hall at Entebbe Airport. The terrorists did eventually release just over half of the passengers, keeping those whom they believed to be Israeli or Jewish.

On July 1st, the Israeli government offered to negotiate with the hijackers in order extend the deadline to July 4th. Simultaneously, preparations were being made for a rescue mission.


On July 4th, Israeli special forces launched a daring mission to rescue the hostages...

Plan:

It was decided that the mission would be carried out by commandos of Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit, carried in C-130 Hercules aircraft, and accompanied by a Boeing 707 to be used for medical and communications support. As a ruse to approach the airport buildings, one Hercules would carry a black Mercedes and Land Rovers, which would be used to trick the Ugandan guards into believing that Idi Amin or another high-ranking official was visiting the airport. Since no suitable black Mercedes was available in Israel, a differently-colored Mercedes car was apparently borrowed from an Israeli civilian and spray-painted, on the understanding that it would be returned in its original color.


Rescue:

Four Israeli C-130 Hercules aircraft were loaded with the rescue force and their vehicles, just before dawn on Saturday July 3rd. Additionally, medical staff were loaded on board an Israeli Air Force Boeing 707.

The aircraft took-off at around 1pm, but did not receive the final authorization to go ahead from the Israeli cabinet until the C-130s were refueled in the air, just to the South of the Sinai peninsula.

The medical-support Boeing 707 headed for Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya. The C-130s headed directly for Entebbe without the assistance of ground control, and despite some stormy weather on the way, landed at 23:01, just one minute behind schedule,

As the C-130s touched down, the rear cargo door was already open to allow fast unloading. While the aircraft was still moving, some commandos rolled out and placed emergency beacons, just in case the runway lights were turned off.

A black Mercedes and Land Rover vehicles which were on board one of the C-130 Hercules were first unloaded. In an attempt to fool any Ugandan guards, these vehicles were driven towards the terminal building at high-speed, in a similar way to that done by Idi Amin. Two sentries who knew that Idi Amin had recently purchased a white Mercedes ordered the vehicles to stop, but they were immediately shot dead by the Israeli commandos who then entered the airport terminal building itself.

When Israeli commandos entered the terminal building they shouted "Get down! Get down!" in both English and Hebrew. One hostage, Jean-Jacques Maimoni, who stood up was shot by the commandos who mistook him for a terrorist. Additionally, two other hostages, Pasko Cohen and Ida Borochovitch, were killed in the brief firefight. All the hijackers were killed, and the Israeli commandos suffered no casualties during their assault.

The Israelis then used armoured personal carriers, carried on the other C-130 Hercules, to secure the airport perimeter and other airport buildings. All the Hercules aircraft were refueled from Entebbe's own fuel tanks, using pumping equipment that the commandos had brought with them.

Before taking-off, to prevent any pursuit, the commandos destroyed 11 Ugandan Army Air Force MiG-17 fighters which were at the airport. The hostages were then loaded and the C-130 Hercules departed for Israel via Nairobi, Kenya. It was during the loading that the Israeli commandos suffered their only casualty: Lieutenant Colonel Yoni Netanyahu was killed by Ugandan gunfire. Out of 103 hostages, 3 had been killed, and 10 were wounded.

45 Ugandan soldiers were killed, and an unknown number wounded during the raid, as were 6 hijackers.

The raid is generally considered a great anti-terrorist success, especially in view of the tremendous logistical challenges which had been overcome, and the low casualties among both the hostages and commandos.



Chaim Herzog Israel's Ambassador to the UN from 1975-1978 in address to UN Security Council said "We come with a simple message to the Council: we are proud of what we have done because we have demonstrated to the world that a small country, in Israel's circumstances, with which the members of this Council are by now all too familiar, the dignity of man, human life and human freedom constitute the highest values. We are proud not only because we have saved the lives of over a hundred innocent people - men, women and children - but because of the significance of our act for the cause of human freedom. "


The mission struck a blow at international terrorism. "It resonated far and wide," Shomron later commented. "It showed that you could counter terrorism, and that it was worth cooperating to do so."

Nothing to say much ...just compare this one with the incident where Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacked on Christmas Eve, Friday, December 24, 1999, shortly after the aircraft entered Indian airspace at about 5:30 p.m. Indian Standard Time by five Pakistani nationals. The hijackers stabbed 25-year-old guy, who later died of his injuries.Ultimately, the plane landed in Kandahar in Afghanistan, where the hijackers agreed to release their hostages in exchange for the release of three Terrorists.

After negotiations between the India government and the hijackers, the hostages were freed eight days after the hijacking occurred.

On December 31, 1999, the freed hostages of the Indian Airlines Flight 814 were flown back to India on a special plane. The hijackers disappeared into Afghanistan in vehicle provided by Taliban before releasing a Taliban official they had taken hostage..and they masterminded future terror attacks on India and the rest of the world !!.

No doubt , as a nation we lack the vision and true daring leadership to counter the terrorism .. As a state we are too soft on terrorism and the way our media glorify the terrorists... Hence, there is no wonder the way 9 blasts rocked Bangalore killing two on Friday noon !!!.

We are here...So...What's Next?!?

Recently i came across the slogan, "make a dent in the universe," that apparently is attributable to Apple's CEO Steve Jobs:




"We're here to make a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why even be here?...... We're creating a completely new consciousness, like an artist or a poet. That’s how you have to think of this. We're rewriting the history of human thought with what we're doing."


It even showed up in his commencement speech at Standford university:

"Remember to see each challenge and even conflict as an opportunity to learn and grow. Dare to be the different voice and embrace those different voices that might help you reach better decisions for the good of our society. "Make a dent in the universe"


Kinda cool and wonderful thought, isn't it ??...its all about leaving one's mark ...try to be different and trying to do something good and making a world a better place . :-)

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005....very inspirational speech...read it out !!.








I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Think Different !!

Here's to the Crazy Ones!

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.



They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas & see a work of art?
Or, sit in silence & hear a song that's never been written?
Or, gaze at a red planet & see a laboratory on wheels?


While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

"Because the people who are crazy enough to think they
can change the world, are the ones who do." :-)