Our friend Brigadier FB Ali is 91 years old.. Mabrouk!

FB Ali - 2 (2010)

Greetings from the 'nineties'! Having just crossed my 91st birthday, I thought you may like to know what it feels like to have lived that long.

The short answer is: incredibly lucky!

All my life I've been inclined to put my experiences and thoughts on paper. Of course, no one writes on paper any longer, so I decided to create a website instead. I called it the Legacy Website, because it was intended to go out to you all with the email informing you of my demise. However, since I find I am living so long that there might be fewer and fewer people who had even heard of me, I have decided to send it out myself now.

So here it is. I hope the link functions; if not, just email me. Feel free to send the link on to anyone else who you think might be interested.

The Website is at: https://sites.google.com/view/fblegacysite 

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32 Responses to Our friend Brigadier FB Ali is 91 years old.. Mabrouk!

  1. LG says:

    آپ جیو ہزاروں سال
    سال کے دن ہو پچاس ہزار

  2. Brigadier Ali,
    Thank you for this wondrous gift. I consider myself blessed for the opportunity to read your writings and comments on this site over the years and have especially enjoyed exchanging comments from time to time.
    Your own amazement at your longevity reminds me of my father. He turned ninety last year and is happily content with his life’s journey. He enjoys the present with the family, but has finally decided to stop shoveling snow and maintaining an old house in northern Maine. We are relieved with his decision. He plans on moving into some arrangement where he no longer has to maintain the property, but he intends to cook for himself and continue fishing. I wish you the same joy and contentment in your remaining years.
    Note to all: I easily accessed Brigadier Ali’s site by manually pasting the URL into a browser window. Just clicking on the URL didn’t work for me. To move around the site, I had to log into my google account which is no problem to anyone with a gmail address.

  3. The Beaver says:

    Happy Birthday Brigadier Ali

  4. Diana Croissant says:

    Thank you! I am not 90. I am “only” 71. I never thought I would live as long as I have. My wonderful parents both died younger than I am now: my mother at 58 (genetic heart condition), and my father at 69 (also an inherited heart problem).
    I was at least lucky to have a wonderful grandmother (my mother’s mother) live to the age of 99. I often drove 60 miles after work just to visit her in the “home.” I was at one time working one full-time and two part-time jobs. I just needed to have someone treat me like a special “little girl.”
    I miss them all terribly.
    I am sure your family must feel blessed to have you.
    Since I am now legally blind, I live in a “senior” community where I can get driving service. Would you believe that the woman who lives across the hall from me is now 106?
    We feel blessed to have her. When she is able to come out of her apartment, she is all smiles. A coffee and pastry shop in town is named after her and is operated by her family.
    You post is important just to make sure people understand that Mr. Bloomberg must be a nasty, mean-spirited person to say you should now not receive medical care if you need it.

  5. jon stanley says:

    my best wishes to you sir!

  6. Barbara Ann says:

    Brigadier Ali
    Congratulations on outliving your legacy, it is a goal to which all of us aspire, yet few of us achieve. I look forward to perusing your site.

  7. d74 says:

    Brigadier Ali,
    Congratulations. Wisdom, and fitness I hope for a long time to come.
    I live in a country, France, whose Constitution is secular. The accepted practice is that politics and opinions are public, but religion is a private matter and must remain so. That seems to me to be a very wise point of view. From time to time, rarely, I think of God: he is a black woman, beautiful, in our image, of course.
    So unsurprisingly, I highly value your beliefs. I particularly remember:
    “I can understand why humans, at different stages of their lives, feel the need for conjuring up such an entity [supernatural Being], but that doesn’t provide proof of its existence.”
    And “In fact, I have come to the conclusion that this Being may well be a human construct.”
    Real luck probably worked in your favor.But you’re too modest. There’s an old saying back home that says, “Luck is only given to those who deserve it.” Cheer up. Haut les cœurs.

  8. turcopolier says:

    Dianna Croissant
    I had cataract surgery in December and my vision is much improved. Any chance that would help?

  9. johnf says:

    You are as yet a young man. Or at least you think like one.

  10. Serge says:

    Brigadier Ali,
    Your paper on the Treaty of Al Hudaybiya was one of the first things that I read on here years ago, it stuck with me ever since and any comments or submissions I see from you are full of the same insight and wisdom. I would have never guessed your age and feel honored to be your contemporary in this truly unique community of ours. Wishing you many more long and fruitful years.

  11. Fred says:

    Happy Birthday Brigadier Ali. Thank you for the insights and I hope we can see more in the futre.

  12. Fred says:

    James,
    Try the links on the header of the Brigadier’s site, those worked for me.

  13. Haralambos says:

    Thank you for this update, Brigadier Ali,
    I have missed your comments and reflections over the past several years.
    Be well,
    Haralambos

  14. nightsticker says:

    Brigadier Ali,
    Best Wishes on your birthday.
    I always enjoy your contributions
    to this Committee of Correspondence.
    Nightsticker

  15. Jack says:

    Best wishes Brigadier Ali. I have appreciated your contributions here at SST and learned much from them.
    You’re just a few years older than me. As I fade into the sunset I’m grateful to the great blessings in my life and pleased that my family’s affairs including our ranch passed on by my grandpa is now firmly in the hands of the next generations.

  16. Sans Racines says:

    Dear Brigadier Ali, Happy Birthday – and I wish you many more!

  17. Ishmael Zechariah says:

    Brigadier Ali,
    Happy Birthday. Many happy returns.
    Ishmael Zechariah
    P.s: Today is not a happy day for us at TSK; we lost quite a few soldiers through the stupidity of tayyip-the-klept. Reality has a way of winning, sooner or later.

  18. The Beaver says:

    Mr Zechariah
    I am seeing that it is between 50 to 79 soldiers – poor chaps !

  19. Ingolf Eide says:

    James,
    Out of curiosity I tried the site with Opera, a browser I hardly ever use. No problem, no need for a Google sign in, just straight to the site’s homepage.
    For anyone who does have any difficulties, TTG’s is probably the best answer; just copy the URL and paste it into your browser.

  20. Ingolf Eide says:

    And, of course, Happy Birthday Brig Ali . . . may there be many more to come.
    Ingolf

  21. James,
    I hear ya. To keep your Google footprint to a minimum, I suggest establishing a gmail account through the Google web page after going through a Tor anonymizer or using a library computer. Don’t use your real name and don’t give any other information for recovery. Don’t use the email account for anything but logging into the rare site you may want to visit. And, of course never log in for a Google search. Unless you are philosophically dead set against using anything Google, this is worth doing to see Brigadier Ali’s site.

  22. Ali O says:

    Brigadier sb,
    Best wishes on your birthday. Having read your book and your writings on this site, I consider myself privileged to have been exposed to your wonderful writing. God bless you.
    From,
    A well-wisher from Pakistan

  23. Lord Curzon says:

    Many happy returns of the day, Sir! A toast to many more years to come with a peg of Scotland’s finest.

  24. David Habakkuk says:

    Congratulations Brigadier Ali, and thanks for improving my understanding with lucid and fair-minded commentary on which my knowledge and experience are very limited, over the years.
    I will explore your site with interest.

  25. J says:

    Happy Birthday Brigadier, may all your days be full of sunshine and the smiling faces of loved ones.
    Again, Many Happy Birthdays to you.
    J

  26. English Outsider says:

    It was a privilege to be able to read the the site. An insight into affairs I knew little about and great writing. Thank you.
    Might I here put in a query to TTG?
    TTG – Unfortunately I couldn’t get to it all. I turned to the writings that had appeared on the Colonel’s site, SST, and found a 404.
    Then 404’s appeared elsewhere, including on sections I had already read. There are instructions for dealing with a 404 but before plunging into that I wondered if the site had become overloaded with others seeking access. Might I ask, is this a possible cause?

  27. muzaffar Tirmizey says:

    Brigadier Sahib, best wishes on your birthday….we know you as one of the best military mind and strategic thinker of Pakistan… one quick question sir how do you see the Kashmir issue unfolding….?
    Muzaffar Ali Tirmizey

  28. English Outsider,
    A 404 error can occur when, for any reason, a page fails to load. However, in this case there appears to be a small error on the writings page. The content is all there. Just scroll down. What is not working at the moment are the links that jump to sections of the writings page. It’s not critical. Perhaps Ingolf, who helped Brigadier Ali in organizing and indexing this particular page can sort it out if it’s not just a temporary Google problem.

  29. Mark K Logan says:

    Happy birthday and best wishes.

  30. FB Ali says:

    I am grateful to Col Lang, an old friend, for putting my email relating to my Website on SST. And to the many persons who have commented on his post. I would like to thank them for their birthday wishes, and for their comments on my Website.
    As I have said on the Website, Col Lang and SST provided me with a great portal to convey my thoughts to an elite audience in North America. I am very grateful for this opportunity, and for all that I learned from him and other ‘commenters’ on SST.
    Sic Semper Tyrannis has been, and remains, my intellectual home. I wish it a long, long life!

  31. robt willmann says:

    FB Ali,
    It is so very nice to hear from you and about your blessed 91st birthday! I think I said in a comment quite some time ago that you are very literate in the English language. I enjoy reading what you say clearly every time. I bought your book, the memoir, when I first learned that it had been published.
    What is published on an Internet website can be printed on paper as well. Since the whole system displaying information through the Internet is somewhat fragile — if electricity, transmission systems, computer software, and computers develop problems — you can print out everything on paper in full color that appears on your website. By doing so, you will have a nice record and something that can be published and enjoyed after the shifting and impermanent electronic arrangement that is in vogue has run its course.
    I heard today that some type of agreement has been signed between the U.S. government and the Taliban (although it is never made very clear what the term “Taliban” means in Afghan society as a whole). From your knowledge of that area of the world, your thoughts on this development would be informative and appreciated.

  32. Ingolf Eide says:

    All,
    Re the 404 problems with the site links.
    They’re working again (hopefully permanently!).
    For anyone interested in what had happened (I’m thinking of you TTG), each link contains a reference to the page on which it’s found and for some reason that had changed to “writings-2” (the original name of the page during its draft stage) instead of “writings”.
    I don’t know why the software made this change and therefore can’t be certain it mightn’t happen again. I’ll check occasionally but if it does recur please send up a flare.

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