Muslim India

Malappuram goes to London to get govt school English teachers - The Indian Express, Mumbai - India

2011-11-20T00:04:00.000-08:00

" Britons were ready to take classes free of cost and even bore the cost of the air tickets. Only local accommodation has been provided by the municipality."

http://m.indianexpress.com/story_mobile.php?storyid=878164

Malappuram goes to London to get govt school English teachers

Posted: Sun Nov 20 2011, 09:03 hrs

Nilambur: It was in 1990 that Malappuram, the district with the highest number of Muslims in the country after Murshidabad in West Bengal, decided to turn its fortunes around with education. Census 2011 put the literacy figures for the district at 93.55 per cent; this March, it registered 88.55 pass percentage in Class X exams. Now this Kerala district has gone one step further, flying down native Britons to teach the English language to its next generation of students.

Four of them have joined as special English teachers at the Government Vocational Higher Secondary School at Nilambur, under ‘Sadgamaya’, a project jointly implemented by the Education Department and the Nilambur municipal body, with UNICEF association. Two more will fly down from the UK next month to teach English to students of Classes VIII and IX till February end.

The teachers were selected through an interview held in London, that weaned out anyone not a natural Briton (to avoid varying accents). They underwent a brief workshop before taking up the assignment.

Nilambur municipal chairman Aryadan Shoukkathu, an award-winning film producer and a Congress leader, says it is perhaps the first time in the state that teachers from Britain have been brought to teach English.

General Education Secretary M Shivashanker said they placed an advertisement in a leading travel magazine in the UK to attract the teachers, a clever idea considering Kerala’s popularity as a tourist destination.

The idea was to attract professionals who take a break from work to travel and were interested in spending their vacations contributing to society. “Some of the teachers’ training institutes in the UK which I had visited were ready to provide more people in this manner,” says Shivashanker.

“The advertisement, which demanded teaching experience from the applicants, evoked 200-odd expressions of interest. To get English teachers from Britain who could teach a correct and uniform accent, we avoided applications from German and French citizens living in the UK. The six teachers were selected after interviewing 10 shortlisted applicants.”

Municipal chairman Shoukkathu says the Britons were ready to take classes free of cost and even bore the cost of the air tickets. Only local accommodation has been provided by the municipality.

One of the teachers, Imelda Devlin, who was an education advisor at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, says there are many retired professionals in the UK interested in teaching English. “Many retired due to economic factors without exhausting the desire to teach,” says Devlin, who took voluntary retirement last year. “I had been to India as a tourist. After retirement, I had been missing my classes. One of my friends intimated me about the project.”

Management consultant Andrew Allport and his wife Beverly, a college teacher, see the assignment as an opportunity to spend time in Kerala. The project period also coincided with the onset of winter in the UK. “We may be able to get new ideas in teaching,” say the couple.

Carle Flack, the youngest in the group, has done a course at the teachers’ training institute. A project conservator in a museum, Flack says: “During the free hours at school, we interact with the students to help neutralise their Malayalam accent.”

Seeing the level of interest from both sides, officials are now planning to implement the project in 70-odd schools in the region next.

Get out, leave AF to Pak - By Shekhar Gupta, Senior Editor, The Indian Express, Mumbai

2011-11-18T23:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/get-out-leave-af-to-pak/877841/0

Sat, 19 Nov 2011

Get out, leave Af to Pak
Publish Post

Shekhar Gupta

Tags : shekhar gupta, columnist, indian express, Get out, leave Af to Pak

Posted: Sat Nov 19 2011, 03:12 hrs

The sharply polarised political debate on the nuclear deal was the most significant instance of the so-called holy national consensus on foreign policy breaking in India. Some of this spirit keeps returning vis-a-vis Pakistan any time the government reaches out to Pakistan, or when there is another terror attack. But beyond that, the larger consensus remains intact. It is not healthy for a democracy, and particularly not when it has a strategic community that has had even greater continuity than its establishment economists, defying all changes of government, leaders, ideology. That is why the time has come to question, or at least intellectually challenge, some other aspects of this lazy “consensus”. Even at the risk of inviting the charge of apostasy, therefore, the time might have come to question the wisdom and prudence of our totally unquestioned, un-debated idea of engaging in a dirty little cold war with Pakistan in Afghanistan once the Americans withdraw from there.

Today, everybody seems to be accepting the idea that Afghanistan is of great strategic significance to India, and we can neither cede it to Pakistan, nor leave them to fill the power vacuum that the Americans will leave behind. Similarly, that this is the Great Game country, and we are back to the Great Game, somehow inheriting the mantle of the British power in the 19th century, except that we might have to deal with an additional distraction called Pakistan. Further, that Afghanistan is a resource (mineral)-rich land where we have future commercial stakes, and is a gateway to Central Asia, making transit rights of such paramount importance for us.

There is some truth to some, but not all, of these. But the larger picture may look very different on closer examination. Also, engaging in a policy that puts us permanently and, inevitably, violently at odds with the Pakistanis is an idea that is being accepted much too readily. As if this is our destiny, part of an ongoing blood feud. As if we have no choice.

All of this, frankly, is lazy, self-serving rubbish, dished out by a strategic establishment that suffers terminally from a cold war mindset, and does not quite know, like all bigger powers (the US included), when to declare victory, and when to cut its losses.
The more curious thing is, some of this is happening under a prime minister who never tires of exhorting his policy-makers to “think out of the box” and a national security advisor who has built a formidable reputation for doing exactly this, not just now but over many decades of diplomatic service.

What kind of strategic importance does Afghanistan have for us now? Yes, we need transit to Central Asia. But to reach Afghanistan, we have to first persuade the Pakistanis to grant us transit. The more we jostle with them for influence in Afghanistan, the lesser the chances of their being so nice to us. Yes, Afghanistan is resource-rich and the Chinese may get there if we are not there.

But what are we, meanwhile, doing with our own mineral resources? So many of our mines are shut, or not accessible. We might get a hundred times more value by either fighting, or bribing (as everybody eventually does with insurgents in Afghanistan), our own Maoists to be able to exploit our own mines. And the Chinese will get there before us anyway. And yes, there will be a power vacuum in Afghanistan. It will still be a country of great strategic importance. But for whom, is the question. It will be of no strategic importance to us. None of our supplies or trade come to Afghanistan. None of our bad guys hide there. No Afghan has ever been involved in a terror attack on India. In fact, almost never has a terror attack on us been even planned in the more precise Af-Pak region. They have all been planned and executed between Muzaffarabad, Muridke, Karachi and Multan. Almost never has an Afghan, Pakhtun, Baluch, Tajik, any ethnicity, been involved in a terror attack in India. It’s always been the Punjabis. Ask anybody in the Indian army who has served in Kashmir and he will tell you that the intruders he fought were exactly of the same ethnic stock as the bulk of the Pakistani army he may have to fight in a real war: the Punjabi Muslims.

Yes, as we said earlier, Afghanistan is still a country of great strategic importance. But for Pakistan, and certainly not for us.

Pakistan has a long, unsettled border with it and a more-than-latent irredentist Pathan sentiment on both sides of the Durand Line that it dreads spinning out of control as (and if) Afghanistan breaks up along north-south-west ethnic lines. From tribal ties, to funny trade-links, like gun and drug-running, an unsettled Afghanistan will be a permanent thorn in Pakistan’s side when six divisions of its army are already not able to get the measure of the armed anarchy in FATA.

Why should India then get into this unwinnable mess? More importantly, why should India give the Pakistani army and the ISI just what they need, a great, holy, moral justification to pour into Afghanistan to “fight the Indian challenge”?

Leave Afghanistan to the Pakistanis. If the Pakistani army thinks it can fix, subdue and control Afghanistan, after the British, Soviets and Americans have failed to do precisely this at the peak of each one’s superpower-dom, why not let the Pakistanis try their hand at it? If they pour another ten divisions and half of the ISI into that hapless country now, isn’t it that much of a relief for us on our western borders? What could serve our strategic interests better than having the Pakistanis discover a permanent strategic threat/ challenge/ opportunity along their western borders? Won’t that be some relief?

And if the Pakistani army thinks it can succeed in a mission in which their mightier predecessors, the British and the Soviet empires and the Americans, failed, good luck to them. Because it will fulfil a fantasy of “strategic depth” they have nursed since they were rocked by totally fictional visions of massive Indian tank assaults through the desert cutting their mainland into two during General Sundarji’s Operation Brasstacks in 1987. It is since then that the Pakistani strategic establishment has been seeking “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. Now, if any army wants to seek the “depth” of Afghanistan for its armour, vital air force assets, or even nukes, good luck to them. In fact, it would be interesting to see how the rest of the world, particularly the Americans, would react if such a thing was even contemplated. Far from being a security asset ever, Afghanistan, for the Pakistani army, will be exactly what it has been for any other invading army in its history: a permanent Waterloo in slow motion.

So shall we leave the Pakistani army and ISI to their own devices in Afghanistan? Whether they fail or succeed, it will confirm only one widely held view in the global strategic community: that howsoever dashing it may be tactically, the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment’s strategic thinking emerges not from its brains but that some place lower down in human anatomy. Maybe then, the best way we can serve our own strategic interests in Afghanistan is to stay out of their way.

sg@expressindia.com

Islamic Terrorism? - By British Jewish Historian Bernard Lewis

2011-11-13T01:18:00.000-08:00

In a discussion entitled ''Islamic Terrorism?,'' the scholar Bernard Lewis emphasizes that there is nothing in Islam as a religion that is especially conducive to terrorism. Like the other great religions, it condemns the maltreatment of the innocent; from early on it laid down rules for the humane treatment of noncombatants during a war. And though it has always had a more explicitly political character than other religions, Islamic terrorism as practiced today is essentially an importation from the West.

On Hindutva Politics and Terror - BOOK REVIEW by MAHTAB ALAM - Mainstream Magazine, NeW Delhi - INDIA

2011-11-13T00:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article3122.html

Mainstream, VOL XLIX, No 47, November 12, 2011

On Hindutva Politics and Terror

BOOK REVIEW

by MAHTAB ALAM

Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India by Subhash Gatade; Pharos Media & Publishing Private Ltd, New Delhi; 2011; pp. 400; Price: Rs 360.

The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neoliberal India by Subhash Gatade; Three Essays Collective, Gurgaon; 2011; pp. X+475; Price: 500.

In December 2010, when Swami Aseemanand, a ‘former’ RSS pracharak and key functionary of the Sangh backed Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, admitted before a Metropolitan Magistrate to have planned terror attacks on Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Malegaon and the Samjhauta Express, it came as the official seal of the Hindutva terror network in India. In his confession, recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (Cr.P.C.) before Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Dabas at Tis Hazari Court, Delhi on December 18, he confessed that he and other Hindutva activists, were involved in bombings at Muslim religious places because they wanted to answer every Islamist terror act with “a bomb-for-bomb’’ policy. “I told everybody that bomb ka jawab bomb se dena chahiye (we should reply to bomb blasts with similar bomb blasts),” reads his 42-page confession. He categorically named (in his confession) the senior RSS leader, Indresh Kumar, the murdered RSS pracharaks Sunil Joshi, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and senior RSS pracharaks Sandeep Dange and Ramji Kalsangra, among others, as being key conspirators in the terror blasts.

What is to be noted here is that this was not a ‘confession’ that the police forces are known for—the forced kind of confession, which is not admissible in the court. Rather, it was a voluntary one, in the wake of a Hirday Parivartan or change of heart and made before the Magistrate under Section 164 of the Cr.P.C., which is also considered as evidence.

However, the question arises: should we take this as an exception or an ‘individual’ act of terror, as often argued by the Sangh leaders? Would it be proper to believe that the Parivar people were unaware of their fellow activist’s actions, given the hierarchical and disciplined nature of the Parivar? The books under discussion ably answer these questions.

Subhash Gatade, as many of us would know, is one of the foremost independent journalists and long-time activist of human rights and social justice. He has been writing constantly and consistently about Hindutva politics, terror and issues of repression and exclusion.

Over a period of more than two decades, he has followed many cases and written on them extensively. In his two books released, he deals with the above subject at great length and reveals important facts about the Hindutva forces, its allies, network, politics and agendas—both short and long-term. While the first book, Godse’s Children: Hindutva Terror in India, focuses on the terrorist activities of the Sangh and its allies, the second book, The Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neo-Liberal India, essentially deals with the policies and politics of the Hindutva outfits. The writer in these two important works also outlines the various processes adopted by these forces in persuasion of their long-term agenda—establishment of a Hindu Rashtra.

After reading these two books one would find it to be a gross underestimation, in fact criminal negligence, if one thought these to be individual acts and the first terrorist activity planned and carried out by the Sangh and its ilk. Because the politics of hate and terror were never absent from the Sangh Parivar’s system. “The tag of terrorism,” as rightly pointed out by Dr Shamsul Islam, who is an authority on Hindutva politics in India, “is not something new.” The history of the anti-national and terrorist activities of the RSS is very long and can be traced to its roots. It is because of its activities that the RSS and its network have been repeatedly censured by umpteen numbers of commissions of inquiry for its complicity in communal violence and terrorist activities. The first of these incidents can be traced way back to June 1934, when the first attempt to kill Mahatma Gandhi was made by the Hindutva fanatics in Pune. It is also an established fact that the first terrorist act in independent India, the killing of Mahtama Gandhi, was carried out by none other than a ‘former’ pracharak of the RSS, Nathuram Godse.
•
IN Godse’s Children, tracing the historical background and ideological foundation, the author points out: “Commission after commission have blamed RSS and its affiliated organisations for their participation in different riots across the length and breadth of the country…but that was different from the confession—about organising terror acts—before a judicial magis-trate by one amongst them.” (p. 32) Ana-lysing the RSS chief’s claim, terrorism and Hindus are oxymorons, Subhash Gatade says: “The thesis of the ‘oxymoron’ has shades of the concept of the Supreme Hindu race emanating from it.” He further writes: “In fact, it can also be interpreted as an indirect admission that whereas Hindus and terrorism are incompatible with each other, terrorism easily gels with non-Hindu religions and communities. Definitely, this is a very dangerous statement to make, not only because it is not based on facts but because it also tries to denigrate every other community and religion, and also because it tries to terrorise them. It can, thus, be seen as a poor attempt to deflect attention from the umpteen crimes committed by Hindu fanatics.“ (p. 71)

On the Hindutvaisation of the military forces, while discussing the case of Col. Purohit, the author notes: “Involvement of military personnel in such activities can happen in multiple ways: i. ideological; ii. direct participation; iii. in the role of facilitator. While people like Purohit could be categorised as ‘direct participants’ in such activities, it can be easily guessed that there might be many more of his ilk who may not have played any direct role in such activities, but would have acted as facilitators and ideological input-givers to the project.” (p. 135) To substantiate his claim, the writer quotes the former Naval Chief, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, who says: “There’s a clear majoritarian view in the military. The RSS has always had an agenda to infiltrate the armed forces, the intelligence services and the bureaucracy.” (p. 136)

The author in this book proficiently documents hundreds of cases of Hindutva terror carried out in different parts of India and concludes: “…if the political leadership, intelligence agencies and the police were interested, it would have been possible to avoid many innocent deaths at the hands of self-proclaimed pioneers of Hindu Rashtra trying their best to turn the dreams of Savarkar, Hedegawar and Golwakar in to reality.” (p. 187)

While dealing with the global dimensions of Hindutva forces, Gatade points out that “…for quite sometime, Hindutva extremists in Nepal have maintained close relations with extremist forces on the Indian side of the border. This relationship had blossomed during the colonial period in India itself, when one found elements belonging to the RSS or Hindu Mahasabha frequenting Nepal or using its example to demonstrate their ‘model state’. For the Sangh Parivar, Nepal happened to be the only state in the world where the ‘one nation, one people, one culture’ weltanschauung of Hindu Rastra was already in place.”(p. 251)

In this section, the author also deals with the role of the Israeli Intelligence agency, Mossad. Towards the end of the book, while concluding, the author seeks our urgent attention and action as he demands: “A lot depends upon the way the secular forces react to the ongoing investi-gations. Whether they would focus themselves on the role of the State only, and confine them-selves to issuing statements and appearing in talk shows only, or they are ready to take up the gauntlet thrown by the challenges of Hindutva Terror in a more militant and creative way that would be the deciding factor”. (p. 318)

•

THE Saffron Condition: Politics of Repression and Exclusion in Neo-libral India is divided into three main sections, namely, Saffronisation and the Neolibral State, Logic of Caste in New India, and State and Human Rights. The book deals with the day-to-day and larger politics of the Hindutva outfits. While the first section of this book is most of what is discussed in Godse’s Children, the section on ‘The Saffron Condition’ is a very crucial one. In this section, the author outlines the politics of repression and exclusion with the marginalised sections of the society especially Dalits, despite the constitutional safeguards.

The author notes: “It is a tragedy of our times that in India, more than sixty years after independence, the age old exclusivist mind-set which stunted the growth of our society, remains unchanged. It is a mind-set based on the notions of purity and pollution, which has helped strengthen the structured hierarchy in our society, and claims religious sanction as well.” (p. 9).

Going into the historical details of ‘merit’, on an earlier point he writes: “The manner in which the reservation discourse has developed in our society reflects a very static understanding of merit. Interestingly, all those who have become upholders of the ‘merit mantra’ would be shocked to find how badly their own forefathers and foremothers fared when they took their first hesitant steps in the education system initiated by the British. The very genesis of third division in education in the Madras Presidency College way back in first part of the nineteenth century was necessitated by the large number of failures amongst the students, most of them upper caste (Tamil Brahmans), who were unable to pass their examinations in first and second divisions.” (pp. 7-8)

Linking Hindutva politics with the neo-liberal paradigm of development, the author comments: “The growing dominance of the highly regressive and reactionary Hindutva politics appears more striking if we consider the simple fact that Gujarat is supposed to be a more ‘advanced State’ of the Indian Union, recognised for its progress in the economic sphere. It has awell-developed middle class. In so far as foreign direct investment is concerned, it stands at number two in being able to attract foreign direct investment. The enterprising nature of the Guajarati elite is also noticeable in that many of the noveau riche from the farming sector have made inroads in the urban sector…Of course this elaboration of the dynamic Gujarati society would be incomplete if we do not focus on the ‘other Gujarat’ which exhibits the underlying social tensions not normally visible. Apart from the overtly visible violence, the invisible violence takes up myriad forms.” (p. 229) Explaining the role of courts and other apparatus of the state in the era of neo-liberalism, the author notes: “In the era of LPG (Liberalisation, Globalisation and Privatisation) and triumphalism of the market, one is not very surprised to see the judiciary becoming more and more insensitive to the rights of the marginalised and the underprivileged, whether it is the workers in a polluting industry or squatters in one of those sprawling slums.” (p. 428)

While these two books inform us, they are instructive as well and place a great responsi-bility before all of those who wish to create an egalitarian, just and equitable society. A must read for all kinds of activists, human rights and social justice campaigners, students of social sciences, especially those of sociology and political sciences. Those working on Communalism, Terrorism and Caste issues can hardly afford to miss these.

Fwd: [Arkitect India] HOW THE MEDIA FOOLS US? By Soheb Lokhandwala

2011-11-12T22:00:00.000-08:00

From: soheb lokhandwala <mpjmedia@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Nov 12, 2011 at 5:27 PM

Subject: [Arkitect India] Are you outraged at the thought that the media passes off paid information as news?Do see the docu..

To: annaadhikarabhiyanmaharashtra@googlegroups.com, arkitectindia@yahoogroups.com, peace-mumbai@googlegroups.com, citizen-mumbai <citizen-mumbai@googlegroups.com>, Jan Arogya Abhiyan JAA <janarogyaabhiyan@gmail.com>

How the media fools Us?

Are you outraged at the thought that the media passes off paid information as news?

Are you aware that this is happening routinely in political coverage, business, entertainment and sports?

If so, you must watch Umesh Aggarwal’s documentary, “Brokering News”. Produced by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) explores this alarming issue in depth, including the Niira Radia tapes.

Supported by well known industrialist Cyrus Guzder, Moneylife Foundation and the vCitizens Action Network are screening the film on 18th November, at Madame Cama Hall, Kala Ghoda.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion, which will feature eminent journalists and activists like Umesh Aggarwal, Ayaz Memon, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Bhawana Somaaya, and Sucheta Dalal

Filmmaker: Umesh Aggarwal
Date: Friday, 18 November 2011
Registration and tea: 5:00pm
Session Time: 5:30pm – 7:30pm

5:00pm:
Registration & Tea

5:20pm – 5:30pm:
Introduction of the film and filmmaker

5:30pm – 6:30pm:
Screening of the film “Brokering News”

6:30pm – 7:30pm:
Discussion and interaction with
a short Vote of Thanks

Venue:

Madame Cama Hall,
KR Cama Hall Institute,
Bombay Samachar Marg,
Opp. Lion Gate, Kala Ghoda,
Mumbai–400023.

Admission: FREE

PLEASE REGISTER WELL IN ADVANCE

Contact details:

Call Judith/Seraphina on 022-24441058-60, or email us at mail@mlfoundation.in,
or log on to www.mlfoundation.in

About the film: The Delhi-based Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT)* recently released a documentary titled "Brokering News—the inside story of paid news".

The film by Umesh Aggarwal addresses a significant challenge facing Indian democracy today—which is the state of its media. The film looks at three aspects of paid news—how politicians are paying for positive coverage during elections, with the result that those who don't pay are blanked out by the media; how the coverage and reviews of movies are orchestrated and paid for and of course, paid news about business and industry. It depicts in detail how journalists were forced to broker deals to offer editorial coverage to politicians.

*(PSBT): The Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) is a non-governmental, not-for-profit trust with the mission to create and sustain a credible space for public service broadcasting in India which is independent, participatory, pluralistic and democratic, distanced from commercial imperatives and state/political pressures. It works to mainstream Indian documentary and empower independent filmmakers. You can get more details of this organisation at www.psbt.org

Arms and the Corrupt Man By Andrew Feinstein - The New York Times

2011-11-12T01:25:00.000-08:00

Anna Hazare, the crusader against corruption, should not leave out Armament procurement and Defence establishment which the world over is the biggest source of corruption in the world. Even wars are deliberately started so that corrupt could make their pile of money.

GHULAM MUHAMMED, Mumbai<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/opinion/arms-and-the-corrupt-man.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Op-Ed Contributor

Arms and the Corrupt Man

By ANDREW FEINSTEIN

Published: November 11, 2011

London

Enlarge This Image

Devin Rochford

LAST week’s conviction of Viktor Bout, the so-called Merchant of Death, was a rare moment of triumph in the fight against the illicit arms trade.

But it points to the fundamental hypocrisy at the heart of the global trade in weapons: Governments protect corrupt and dangerous arms dealers as long as they need them and then throw them behind bars when they are no longer useful.

Arms deals stretch across a continuum of legality and ethics from the formal trade to the gray and black markets. In practice, the boundaries between the three markets are fuzzy.

With bribery and corruption de rigueur — a Transparency International study estimated that the arms trade accounted for almost 40 percent of corruption in all global trade — there are very few arms transactions that do not involve illegality, most often through middlemen, agents or dealers like Mr. Bout.

Mr. Bout made fortunes providing “transport and logistical” services — an oft-used euphemism favored by arms dealers — to conflict zones around the world on behalf of governments, the United Nations, large listed companies and myriad covert operators.

His clients included, among others, the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, the Northern Alliance and then the Taliban in Afghanistan, a number of the protagonists in the Balkans, the Angolan government and its mortal enemy the Unita rebel movement, and all sides in the complex conflict that continues to rage in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mr. Bout clearly lived out the credo of the arms merchant: “Sell to anyone who can pay.”

In 2003, shortly after the invasion of Iraq, the American military faced a major problem getting supplies into Baghdad, as planes came under fire and landing conditions became treacherous. The United States and its contractors turned to a range of air cargo suppliers.

One of the most consistently used was Irbis Air — an airline owned by Mr. Bout. From 2003 to 2004 alone, Irbis Air conducted hundreds of runs to Baghdad and other Iraqi airports, carrying everything from boots to bullets.

Irbis Air landed in Baghdad 92 times between January and May 2004, while also conducting deliveries elsewhere in Iraq. Mr. Bout earned $60 million between 2003 and 2005 — in addition to the free fuel that the United States military gave to regular cargo operators.

Mr. Bout’s client list in Iraq made for intriguing and damning reading: The United States Air Mobility Command, Federal Express, Fluor and KBR, among others. At the time Mr. Bout was supposedly wanted by the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as being the subject of an Interpol arrest warrant.

Mr. Bout and his airlines were also on the verge of being placed on an American Treasury Asset Freeze list and the Foreign Assets Control list, which outlaws the use of certain contractors. The United States military’s Central Command asked for a week’s delay. It was granted, allowing Mr. Bout to deliver a final shipment of arms and ammunition.

Clearly, years later, Washington decided that Mr. Bout’s evils outweighed his benefits, and so began the sting operation that ultimately netted the Russian in 2008.

But as his cell door clanks shut, it is crucial to remember that there are many Viktor Bouts out there, some protected by their own governments, or the governments and intelligence agencies to whom they are useful.

Governments must impose greater transparency on the use of middlemen, agents and brokers, including public disclosure of what they are paid and the details of the specific work they have undertaken. Much of this could be addressed by passing a robust version of the International Arms Trade Treaty currently being negotiated at the United Nations.

Similarly, banning the use of so-called economic offsets in procurement decisions — promises by arms manufacturers to invest in the buying country’s economy — would close down a major route of bribe payments.

And finally, given the close and complex relationships between defense contractors and arms dealers and governments and intelligence agencies, any party participating in arms deals should be banned from making political contributions — a practice that fuels corruption.

These changes require political will, which will materialize only if taxpayers who unwittingly bankroll the arms trade make clear to their elected representatives that current practices are unacceptable.

Until then, the arms trade will remain hidden behind a veil of national-security-imposed secrecy, continuing to undermine democratic accountability, the rule of law and sometimes even the very national security it is meant to bolster.

Andrew Feinstein, a former member of the South African Parliament, is the author of “The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade.”

A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE - By Ghulam Muhammed

2011-11-10T21:56:00.000-08:00

A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE

A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN THE LONG HISTORY OF COMMUNAL RIOTS IN INDIA, WHERE THE CULPRITS AND MASTERMINDS OF GENOCIDAL ATROCITIES AGAINST MUSLIMS WERE NEVER IDENTIFIED, CAUGHT, PROSECUTED AND/ OR IF CHARGED, ALWAYS FREED FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT JUDICIARY HAS TAKEN UP THE CHALLENGE OF OVERSEEING THAT PROSECUTION IS MANAGED PROPERLY, FAIRLY AND WITHOUT ANY BIAS AND PREJUDICE, WITHOUT ANY FEAR OR FAVOUR. THE 33 MUSLIMS BURNED ALIVE IN A GUJARAT VILLAGE BY LANDLORDS OF THE PATEL COMMUNITY IN A MOST HIGH-HANDED SPREE OF REVENGE KILLINGS OF INNOCENT LANDLESS LABOURER CLASS, TO 'TEACH THEM A LESSON' HAD FOR THE FIRST TIME FACED LIFE LONG PRISON TERMS AND VISIBLY BROKE DOWN. THEY HAD NEVER EXPECTED THAT IN THE HIGHLY COMMUNALIZED RULE OF THE HINDUTVA LEADER, GUJARAT CHIEF MINISTER NARENDRA MODI, JUSTICE WILL EVER PASS THROUGH THEIR VILLAGE. EVEN TODAY, MEDIA, EXCEPT FOR INDIAN EXPRESS NEWSPAPER, IS RELUCTANT TO HIGHLIGHT THAT THOSE THAT WERE BURNED WERE MUSLIMS. THAT WILL SQUARELY PLACE THOSE DIPLOMATIC MEDIA THAT APPARENTLY SYMPATHIZED WITH THE HINDUTVA EXTREMISTS, AS ACCESSORY TO THE CRIMES SO AUDACIOUSLY COMMITTED, WITH ABSOLUTE SENSE OF IMPUNITY.

Times of India is reluctant to identify the culprits and victims as Hindus and Muslims respectively, with the pious covering of the agonizing truth in the name of secularism and communal harmony.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Sukla Sen <sukla.sen@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Subject: [GreenYouth] Editorials on the SARDARPURA Judgement

I/III.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/A-Good-Judgment/articleshow/10683448.cms

A Good Judgment

Nov 11, 2011, 12.00AM IST

Given the impunity generally enjoyed by perpetrators of communal violence, the imposition of life sentence on 31 rioters for burning alive 33 Muslim victims in Sardarpura in the 2002 Gujarat riots is a milestone in India's history. If the signal goes out that those responsible for heinous communal massacres do not enjoy immunity from prosecution, that in itself will have a salutary effect in curbing their incidence. It's safe to say that with a few verdicts like this the country will have made a dent in controlling communal riots, and therefore dramatically improved its record of upholding human rights.

Thanks to the Supreme Court's tenacity, the country has come a long way from the shame in the Best Bakery case when in 2003 all the 21 accused were acquitted after eyewitnesses turned hostile. If the prejudicial environment created by chief minister Narendra Modi's rule could not much affect the outcome of the Sardarpura case, it is mainly due to the activism displayed by the apex court in monitoring the investigation and trial of this and eight other high-profile cases. The special protection given to witnesses by a central paramilitary force played a crucial role in securing convictions in the Sardarpura case against heavy odds.

Though the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) claimed credit for the breakthrough, it had actually brought to book only two of the 31 convicts and had failed to convince the court that the burning of the victims, largely women and children, had been the result of a conspiracy rather than a spontaneous act, despite the formidable evidence available to it. The judgment comes at a time when the credibility of the SIT has taken a beating, for the manner in which it has been dragging its feet on Zakia Jafri's complaint against Modi and 61 other high-ups. The SIT is under pressure because of the report given by amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran, another appointee of the Supreme Court, stating that the allegation of complicity made against Modi by suspended police officer Sanjiv Bhatt required to be placed before the trial court and tested through cross-examination of all the officers present at the fateful meeting of February 27, 2002.

It would have surely been in the spirit of Modi's sadbhavna fasts if he had displayed the sagacity to welcome the Sardarpura convictions as a vindication of the rule of law. His silence explains why, even after a decade, the survivors of Sardarpura are unable to return to their homes. The struggle for reparation and restitution is far from over. Nevertheless, the Sardarpura judgment is a good beginning.

II.

The Hindu
Editorial

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article2615779.ece

A milestone verdict

In a historic first, a special court in Gujarat has convicted and awarded life sentences to as many as 31 mostly high caste, landed Patels for burning alive 33 Muslims — the majority of them women and children — of Sardarpura village in Mehsana district. The village was among numerous Muslim habitations targeted across the State by irate Hindu mobs as part of a pogrom ruthlessly executed in the aftermath of the February 27, 2002 Godhra train carnage. The rioters locked the victims in a cramped room and set it on fire, suggesting that they wanted a repeat of the Godhra horror. In handing out exemplary punishment to the murderers, the court has sent out a strong message that perpetrators of communal violence cannot get away lightly and, indeed, that the judgment is a critical step in the reversal of the pattern of administrative and judicial inaction seen in such cases so far. Sardarpura is a legal trendsetter in many ways. It is the first of nine post-Godhra riots cases prosecuted by a Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court, which in another remarkable initiative aimed at securing justice for the pogrom victims, also supervised the setting up of a string of fast-track trial courts.

It cannot be overemphasised that the pogrom-related cases came under the watch of the Supreme Court following complaints that the Gujarat police, itself perceived to be complicit in the riots, was deliberately lethargic in booking and prosecuting the accused. As the highest court in the land observed in an interim order, “the need for early completion of sensitive cases, more particularly in cases involving communal disturbances, cannot be overstated.” In the Sardarpura case, during the course of the trial, the SIT twice amplified the list of accused through additional charge sheets, taking the total number to 76. However, in a blow to the families of the victims, the court has acquitted 42 of them.

The SIT also failed to prove the charge of conspiracy. But easily the most significant aspect of the case — which ought to have a decisive bearing on how future communal cases are fought — relates to the emphasis laid during the trial on protection of witnesses. The Supreme Court's directive to the SIT to provide tamper-proof cover to witnesses ensured that they were able to testify without fear of reprisals. Its instructions to the trial courts to deal “sternly” with any disturbances that might be created to “terrorise witnesses” strengthened the cause of justice. It is now the turn of the central government — which for some inexplicable reason put on hold the comprehensive architecture laid out by the 17th Law Commission in its report on ‘Witness Identity Protection' — to act.

III.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorial-views-on/Edits/No-room-for-mob-justice/Article1-767457.aspx

No Room for Mob Violence

The special trial court in Gujarat has established a principle which will hopefully hold in other cases of mass murder: a mob comprises individuals who commit crimes and are accountable. In giving a life term to 31 people for burning alive 33 Muslims in Sardarpura village in Gujarat during the riots of 2002, it has at least brought some closure to one of the major riot cases — Godhra being the foremost — that was given over to the Special Investigation Team. We have seen that following the riots, investigation processes have rarely been able to come up with specific names of those individuals who carried out the murders, arson or looting. This has led to a situation where after the anti-Sikh riot cases, which left 2,733 people dead, only 25 have so far been convicted. In the Sardarpura violence, a mob of over 500 people surrounded a predominantly Muslim village and attacked the only 'pucca' house there where people had taken shelter. Not content with setting fire to the house, the mob electrocuted some of the victims comprising women and minors.
This verdict is the first step to putting a face to those who commit heinous crimes under guise of being part of a mob. It also does not accept that such violence is part of a spontaneous reaction to an alleged provocation as happened in the case of Godhra that triggered off the fateful riots in which over 1,200 people, mainly Muslims, died in Gujarat. In the case of mob violence, it is extremely difficult to affix culpability or indeed even gather evidence. Much of the evidence has to be based on witnesses who, as we have seen in several riot cases, are intimidated by the perpetrators, or even the State as alleged in the case of Gujarat. There are several unresolved riot cases pending in India: Bhiwandi, Moradabad, Delhi and, of course, Gujarat. The idea that individuals can get away with murder by being part of a mob goes against all our notions of jurisprudence. We have seen the horror of family members of victims of mob violence having to live in proximity with those who have been the aggressors, even murderers.

The Sardarpura verdict is the second major success in the fight for justice in Gujarat, thanks to a vigilant and proactive judiciary. We can only hope that the State takes serious note of this verdict and also initiates moves to try and rehabilitate those who have suffered the loss of the family's breadwinners or loved ones, who have lost their homes, their livelihoods, their dignity in the riots which have plagued India over the years. Sardarpura will send out, we are sure, a signal, that no one can take refuge in a mob or profess to a spontaneous rage to commit that most unacceptable of crimes: murder.

--
Peace Is Doable

Sarkozy and Obama's Netanyahu gaffe broadcast via microphones - The Guardian, UK

2011-11-08T06:48:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/08/sarkozy-obama-netanyahu-gaffe-microphone?intcmp=239

Sarkozy and Obama's Netanyahu gaffe broadcast via microphones

French president called Israeli PM a liar in exchange with US president inadvertently shared with journalists

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 November 2011 10.21 GMT
Article history

The French president Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly said he could not stand Binyamin Netanyahu. Photograph: Alfred/Witt/Sipa/Rex Features

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, described the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, as a "liar" in a private exchange with Barack Obama at last week's G20 summit in Cannes that was inadvertently broadcast to journalists. "I cannot stand him. He's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama. The US president responded by saying: "You're fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day." Neither leader apparently realised that microphones that had been attached for a press conference had already been switched on, allowing journalists waiting for a press conference to hear the conversation. The exchange was first reported on the French website Arrêt Sur Images, and was later confirmed by a Reuters reporter who also heard the remarks. The gaffe came before a press conference while the two presidents were in a private room. Arrêt Sur Images reported that while the two presidents were in private discussions in a closed room before their press conference, Élysée staff handed out translation sets to waiting journalists. A staff member reportedly explained that the headphones to go with the translation sets were not yet being handed out because this would have allowed journalists to listen in on the private conversation still going on. Half a dozen journalists immediately plugged in their own headphones and caught three minutes of the private exchange. The conversation apparently began with Obama criticising Sarkozy for not warning the US that France would vote in favour of the Palestinians' application to join Unesco, the United Nations agency for culture and education. One French journalist told Arrêt Sur Images that the conversation was broadcast for around three minutes before officials realised the mistake. Another told the website that the reporters agreed not to publicise the remarks because of their sensitive nature. The exchange was mentioned on a blog by Le Monde's political correspondent Arnaud Leparmentier, who said the two presidents had discussed their "difficult" relationship with Netanyahu behind closed doors. Spokesmen for the Élysée and Netanyahu declined to comment.

Why our media is anti-people - Press freedom must be examined - By Justice Markandey Katju - INDIAN EXPRESS, Mumbai, INDIA

2011-11-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

PART ONE OF TWO PARTS
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Why-our-media-is-anti-people/870441/0

Why our media is anti-people

Markandey Katju

Tags : markandey katju, columnist indian express, indian express oped, Why our media is anti-people

Posted: Fri Nov 04 2011, 00:24 hrs

To understand the role which the media should be playing in India we have to first understand the historical context. India is presently passing through a transitional period in its history: a transition from a feudal agricultural society to a modern industrial society. This is a very painful and agonising period. The old feudal society is being uprooted and torn apart; but the new, modern, industrial society has not yet been entirely established. Old values are crumbling, everything is in turmoil. Recollect Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Fair is foul and foul is fair” — what was regarded good earlier, for example the caste system, is regarded bad today (at least by the enlightened section of society), and what was regarded bad earlier, such as marriage for love, is acceptable today (at least to the modern-minded).
It is the duty of all patriotic people, including the media, to help our society get over this transition period quickly and with less pain. The media has a very important role to play in this transition period, as it deals with ideas, not commodities. So by its very nature the media cannot be like an ordinary business.

Historically, the print media emerged in Europe as an organ of the people against feudal oppression. At that time the established organs were all in the hands of despotic feudal authorities. Hence, the people had to create new organs which could represent them. That is why the print media became known as the “fourth estate.” In Europe and America it represented the voice of the future, as contrasted to the established feudal organs, which wanted to preserve the status quo. The media thus played an important role in transforming feudal Europe to modern Europe.

In my opinion the Indian media should be playing a role similar to the progressive role played by the media in Europe during its transitional period. This it can do by attacking backward, feudal ideas and practices — casteism, communalism and superstition — while promoting modern scientific and rational ideas. But is it doing so?

In my opinion, a large section of the Indian media (particularly the electronic media) does not serve the interest of the people; in fact, some of it is positively anti-people. There are three major defects in the Indian media which I would like to highlight.

First, the media often diverts the attention of the people from the real issues to non-issues.
The real issues in India are socio-economic — the terrible poverty in which 80 per cent of our people live, inflation, the lack of medical care, education and backward social practices like honour-killing, caste oppression and religious fundamentalism. Instead of devoting most of its coverage to these issues, the media focuses on non-issues — like film stars and their lives, fashion parades, pop music, disco dancing, astrology, cricket, reality shows and so on.

There can be no objection to the media providing entertainment to the people, provided this is not overdone. But if 90 per cent of its coverage is related to entertainment, and only 10 per cent to the real issues mentioned above, then something is seriously wrong. Its sense of proportion has gone crazy. Entertainment may get as much as nine times the coverage that health, education , labour, agriculture and environment together get. Does a hungry or unemployed man want entertainment — or food and a job?

To give an example, I switched on the TV recently, and what did I see? Lady Gaga has come to India; Kareena Kapoor standing next to her statue in Madame Tussauds; a tourism award being given to a business house; Formula One racing, etc, etc. What has all this to do with the problems of the people?

Many channels show cricket day in and day out. The Roman emperors used to say: “If you cannot give the people bread, give them circuses.” This is precisely the approach of the Indian establishment, duly supported by our media. Keep the people involved in cricket, so that they forget their social and economic plight. What is important is not poverty or unemployment, what is important is whether India has beaten New Zealand (or better still Pakistan), or whether Tendulkar or Yuvraj Singh have scored a century.

Recently, The Hindu published that a quarter of a million farmers committed suicide in the last 15 years. The Lakme Fashion Week was covered by 512 accredited journalists. In that fashion week, women were wearing cotton garments, while the men and women who grew that cotton were killing themselves an hour’s flight from Nagpur. Nobody told that story, except one or two journalists locally.

In Europe, displaced peasants got jobs in the factories created by the Industrial Revolution. In India, on the other hand, industrial jobs are now hard to come by. Many mills have closed down and have become real estate. The job trend in manufacturing has seen a sharp decline over the last 15 years. For instance, TISCO employed 85,000 workers in 1991 in its steel plant, which then manufactured 1 million tonnes of steel. In 2005, it manufactured 5 million tonnes — but with only 44,000 workers. In the mid ’90s, Bajaj was producing a million two-wheelers with 24,000 workers. By 2004, it was producing 2.4 million units, with 10,500 workers.

Where then do these millions of displaced peasants go? They go to cities — where they become domestic servants, street hawkers, or even criminals. It is estimated that there are one to two lakh adolescent girls from Jharkhand working as maids in Delhi. Prostitution is rampant in all cities, due to abject poverty.

All this is largely ignored by our media, which turns a Nelson’s eye to the harsh economic realities facing up to 80 per cent of our people, instead concentrating on some glamorous Potemkin villages.

Second, the media often divides the people. Whenever a bomb blast takes place anywhere in India, within a few hours TV channels start saying an e-mail or SMS has been received from Indian Mujahideen or Jaish-e-Muhammad or Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islam claiming responsibility. The name will always be a Muslim name. Now an e-mail or SMS can be sent by any mischievous person who wants communal hatred. Why should they be shown on TV screens, and next day in print? The subtle message being sent by showing this is that all Muslims are terrorists or bomb-throwers.

About 92 to 93 per cent of the people living in India today are descendants of immigrants. Thus, there is tremendous diversity in India: so many religions, castes, languages, ethnic groups. It is absolutely essential that if we wish to keep united and prosper, there must be tolerance and equal respect to all communities. Those who sow the seeds of discord among our people, whether on religious or caste or linguistic or regional lines, are really enemies of our people.

The senders of such e-mails and SMS messages are therefore enemies of India, who wish to sow the seeds of discord among us on religious lines. Why should the media, wittingly or unwittingly, become abettors of this national crime?

The writer, a former judge of the Supreme Court, is chairman of the Press Council

PART TWO

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/press-freedom-must-be-examined/870993/0

Press freedom must be examined

Markandey Katju

Tags : markandey katju, columnist, indian express, indian express oped, Press freedom must be examined

Posted: Sat Nov 05 2011, 00:00 hrs

As I have already mentioned, in this transitional age, the media should help our people move forward into the modern, scientific age. For this purpose the media should propagate rational and scientific ideas, but instead of doing so, a large section of our media propagates superstitions of various kinds.
It is true that the intellectual level of the vast majority of Indians is very low — they are steeped in casteism, communalism and superstition. The question, however, is: Should the media try to lift up the intellectual level of our people by propagating rational and scientific ideas, or should it should go down to that low level and seek to perpetuate it?

In Europe, during the Age of Enlightenment, the media (which was only the print medium at that time) sought to uplift the mental level of the people and change their mindset by propagating ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity and rational thinking. Voltaire attacked superstition and Dickens criticised the horrible conditions in jails, schools, orphanages, courts etc. Should not our media be doing the same?

At one time, courageous people like Raja Ram Mohun Roy wrote against sati, child marriage and the purdah system in his newspapers Miratul Akhbar and Sambad Kaumudi. Nikhil Chakravartty wrote about the horrors of the Bengal Famine of 1943. Munshi Premchand and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote against feudal practices and women’s oppression. Saadat Hasan Manto wrote about the horrors of Partition.
But what do we see in the media today?

Many TV channels show astrology-based programmes. Astrology is not to be confused with astronomy. While astronomy is a science, astrology is pure superstition and humbug. Even a little common sense can tell us that there is no rational connection between the movements of the stars and planets, and whether a person will die at the age of 50 or 80, or whether he will be a doctor or engineer or lawyer. No doubt most people in our country believe in astrology, but that is because their mental level is very low. The media should try to bring up that level, rather than to descend to it and perpetuate it.

Many channels mention and show the place where a Hindu god was born, where he lived, etc. Is this is not spreading superstition?

I am not saying that there are no good journalists at all in the media. There are many excellent journalists. P. Sainath is one such, whose name should be written in letters of gold in the history of Indian journalism. Had it not been for his highlighting of farmers’ suicides in certain states, the story (which was suppressed for several years) may never have been told. But such good journalists are the exceptions. The majority consists of people who do not seem to have the desire to serve the public interest.

To remedy this defect in the media, I have done two things. First, I propose to have regular meetings with the media (including the electronic media) every two months or so. These will not be regular meetings of the entire Press Council, but informal get-togethers where we will discuss issues relating to the media and try to resolve them in a democratic way, that is, by discussion, consultation and dialogue. I believe 90 per cent of the problems can be resolved in this way. Second, in extreme cases, where a section of the media proves incorrigible despite trying the democratic method mentioned above, harsher measures may be required. In this connection, I have written to the prime minister requesting him to amend the Press Council Act by bringing the electronic media also under the purview of the Press Council (which may be renamed the Media Council) and by giving it more teeth — for example, the power to suspend government advertisements or in extreme cases, even the licence of the media houses for some time. As Goswami Tulsidas said: “Bin bhaya hot na preet.” This, however, will be resorted to only in extreme cases and after the democratic method has failed.

It may be objected that this is interfering with the freedom of the media. There is no freedom which is absolute. All freedoms are subject to reasonable restrictions, and are also coupled with responsibilities. In a democracy everyone is accountable to the people, and so is the media.

To sum up: The Indian media must now introspect and develop a sense of responsibility and maturity. That does not mean that it cannot be reformed. My belief is that 80 per cent of those who are doing the wrong thing can be made good people by patient persuasion, pointing out their errors and gently leading them to the honourable path which the print media in Europe in the Age of Enlightenment was following.

(Concluded)

The writer is a former Supreme Court judge and [current] Chairman of the Press Council of India

2011-11-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

The very terse and aggressive response by Editor's Guild to severe criticism levied by Justice Katju, the new Chairman of the Press Council of India, is most impertinent,arrogant, thoughtless and self-serving. The India print and electronic media has never attempted to focus on the damage their coverage of communal matters including riots, police actions, wholesale arrests, instant demonizing, have become one of the most corrosive feature of our social and community life. The hatred of the minorities that has been covertly (Read Congress) and overtly (Read BJP and RSS) promoted and exploited to consolidate their vote banks, are the most detestable and ghastly aspect of Indian democracy. Both these communal political groups have been fooling the people on the scare of minority aggression to corner their political agenda and Indian media, either paid or unpaid, willingly or unwillingly, is the most corrupted accessory of the distortion of Indian democracy. The bane of communalism can only be lifted if and when the very basis of India's political discourse is shifted from the communal divide to the more vital matters of governance, the reduction of poverty, the equality of opportunity between all sections of society, irrespective of caste, region, language, religion et al. And media has a very crucial role to play, provided its owners develop some moral and social conscience and not given to merely making money by stoking the fires of division. Justice Katju deserves great laurels to have the courage to catch the wild bull by the horns. The loss to country from a communalised media is not less than the rampant corruption that Anna Hazare is focused on. It is possible that in Justice Katju, people of the country may find another Anna Hazare, that will change the entire future course of India's polity and its confident march to a just, fair and enviable great society, worthy of its legacy and destiny.

I appeal to all right-minded Indians to join a campaign to rid the media of its anti-people culture of deliberately feeding the opium of communal divide to the unwitting gullible people, in the service of desh-drohis.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: soheb lokhandwala <mpjmedia@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 3:40 PM
Subject: Media and issues of responsibility:-Katju

To: citizen-mumbai <citizen-mumbai@googlegroups.com>, peace-mumbai@googlegroups.com

Speaking to Karan Thapar, the new Chairman of the Press Council of India slammed the media saying that he is very disappointed with the media. Katju also said that the media is not working for the interest of the people.

Do watch the vedio:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbFvcgppjs4&feature=share

The Indian media display certain defects. These should ideally be addressed and corrected in a democratic manner. But if the media prove incorrigible, harsh measures may be called for.

The time has come when some introspection by the Indian media is required. Many people, not only those in authority but even ordinary people, have started saying that the media have become irresponsible and wayward, and need to be reined in.

Only a couple of days back I read in the newspapers that the Union government has issued some regulations regarding licences for news channels, to which there was a lot of reaction. Under the Constitution of India, freedom of the media is part of the freedom of speech guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (a). However, no freedom can be absolute, and reasonable restrictions can be placed on it. One of the basic tasks of the media is to provide truthful and objective information to the people that will enable them to form rational opinions, which is a sine qua non in a democracy. But are the Indian media performing this role properly?

I may only mention certain defects in the functioning of the India's media today.

Twisting facts

One of the defects is that the media often twist facts. I would like to give an example.
One day, a leading English newspaper published on its front page a photograph of Justice Gyan Sudha Misra of the Supreme Court with the caption: “Supreme Court Judge says that her daughters are liabilities.” This was a distorted and fallacious item of news, published on the front page.

Supreme Court Judges have to disclose their assets and liabilities. Against the liabilities column, Justice Misra had written: “two daughters to be married.” Strictly speaking, it was not necessary to mention this because liabilities mean legal liabilities, for example, housing loan, car loan, and so on. Justice Misra's intention was obviously to say that she would have to spend on her daughters' future marriage. She has three daughters (no son), only one of whom has been married. Justice Misra never said, nor intended to say, that her daughters were liabilities. The news was false and defamatory, with the obvious intention of creating a sensation.

Paid news

A second defect concerns the issue of paid news that has become prominent of late. In the 2009 elections, it was a scandal. How this vicious practice could be stopped needs to be discussed. Incidentally, in compliance with an order of the Chief Information Commissioner dated September 19, 2011, we have placed the 71-page report of the Committee consisting of Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Sreenivas Reddy on our website, www.presscouncil.nic.in with the disclaimer that the Press Council had rejected this report at its meeting held on April 26, 2010.

Non-issues as real issues

A third defect is that the media often portray non-issues as real issues, while the real issues are sidelined. The real issues in India are economic, that is, the terrible economic conditions in which 80 per cent of our people are living, the poverty, unemployment, lack of housing and medical care and so on. Instead of addressing these real issues, the media often try to divert the attention of people to non-issues. Such as that the wife of a film actor has become pregnant, whether she will give birth to a single child or to twins, and so on. Are these the real issues facing the nation?

At a Lakme India Fashion Week event, there were 512 accredited journalists covering the event in which models were displaying cotton garments, while the men and women who grew that cotton were killing themselves at a distance of an hour's flight from Nagpur, in the Vidharbha region. Nobody told that story, except one or two journalists, locally.

Is this a responsible way for the Indian media to function? Should the media turn a Nelson's eye to the harsh economic realities facing over 75 per cent of our people, and concentrate on some ‘Potemkin villages' where all is glamour and show biz? Are not the Indian media behaving much like Queen Marie Antoinette, who said that if the people had no bread, they should eat cake?

No doubt, sometimes the media mention farmers' suicides, the rise in the price of essential commodities, and so on, but such coverage is at most 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the total. The bulk of the coverage goes to showing the life of film stars, pop music, fashion parades, cricket and astrology.

Tendency to brand

Here is a fourth defect. Bomb blasts have taken place near the Delhi High Court, in Mumbai, Bangalore and so on. Within a few hours of such a bomb blast, many TV channels started showing news items that said that the Indian Mujahideen or the Jaish-e-Mohammed or the Harkatul-Jihad-e-Islam had sent e-mails or text messages claiming responsibility. The names of such alleged organisations will always be Muslim ones. Now, an e-mail can be sent by any mischievous person, but by showing this on TV channels and the next day in the newspapers, the tendency is to brand all Muslims as terrorists and bomb-throwers.

The truth is that 99 per cent of the people of all communities, whether Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Sikh, and of whatever caste or region, are good. But the manner in which such news is shown on TV screens and published in newspapers tends to create the impression that all Muslims are terrorists, and evil — which is totally false. The person who sends such e-mails or text messages obviously wants to create hatred between Hindus and Muslims, which is the old British divide-and-rule policy continuing even today. Should the media, wittingly or unwittingly, become part of this policy of divide-and-rule?

No doubt there are defects not only in the media but in other institutions also, for example, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and so on.

There are two ways to remove these defects in the media. One is the democratic way, that is, through discussions, consultations and persuasion — which is the method I prefer. The other way is by using harsh measures against the media, for example, by imposing heavy fines on defaulters, stopping government advertisements to them, suspending their licences, and so on.

In a democracy we should first try the first method to rectify the defects through the democratic method. For this purpose, I have decided to have regular get-togethers with the media, including the electronic media, so that we can all introspect and ourselves find out ways and means to rectify the defects in the media, rather than this being done by some government authority or external agency.

I propose to have such get-togethers once every two or three months, at which we will discuss issues relating to the media and try to think of how we can improve the performance of the media so that it may win the respect and confidence of the people.

If the media prove incorrigible, harsh measures may be required. But in my opinion, that should be done only as a last resort and in extreme situations. Ordinarily, we should first try to resolve issues through discussion, consultation and self-regulation. That is the approach which should be first tried in a democracy. I, therefore, request the Union government to defer the implementation of its recent decision regarding news channel licences, so that we can ourselves discuss the issue thoroughly, and ourselves take corrective measures.

Till now the function of the Press Council was only adjudication. I intend to make the Press Council an instrument of mediation in addition, which is in my opinion the democratic approach. For this purpose, I need help, cooperation and advice from the media.

India is passing through a transitional period in its history, from a feudal agricultural society to a modern industrial society. This is a very painful and agonising period. The media must help society in going through this transitional period as quickly as possible, and by reducing the pain involved. This they can do by attacking feudal ideas, for example, casteism and communalism, and promoting modern scientific ideas.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2559712.ece?homepage=true

(This is the edited text of a speech delivered by Justice (retired) Markandey Katju, the new Chairman of the Press Council of India, on October 10 at a get-together with mediapersons at his residence in New Delhi. The full text is available at www.thehindu.com)

2011-11-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

Volume 28 - Issue 23 :: Nov. 05-18, 2011 INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU

• Contents

COVER STORY

Libya recolonised

AIJAZ AHMAD

Libya is the first country that the Euro-American consortium has invaded exclusively on the pretext of human rights violations.

IVAN SEKRETAREV/AP

On the outskirts of Tripoli, a residential building reduced to rubble in a NATO airstrike on June 19. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that the war in Libya has led to the loss of at least 50,000 lives, mostly at the hands of NATO's bombers and local allies.
FROM Kabul in October 2001 to Tripoli in October 2011, a decade of unremitting planetary warfare has seen countries devastated and capitals occupied over a vast swathe of territory from the Hindu Kush to the northern end of Africa's Mediterranean coast. Within the Arab world, this ultra-imperialist offensive of Euro-American predators may yet move on to Syria as well – and beyond that to Iran at some future date. For now, in any case, the occupation of Libya by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's (NATO) clients and corporations marks the vanquishing of the spirit of rebellion that was ignited in neighbouring Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year and has been under attack ever since. For much of Africa, though, this may yet be merely a beginning of a new conquest by the Euro-American consortium that may ravage the continent even more ferociously than did the famous “Scramble for Africa” that was sanctified in Berlin at the end of the 19th century.
Humanitarian interventionism
Afghanistan was invaded in the name of “War on Terror” plus human rights. Iraq was invaded in the name of “War on Terror” plus nuclear non-proliferation plus human rights. Libya is the first country that has been invaded almost exclusively in the name of human rights. In the very early days of hostilities in Libya, President Barack Obama said dramatically that if NATO had waited “one more day, Benghazi could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world”. His senior aides claimed that the imminent “massacre” could have led to the death of one lakh people, and this is what got repeated ad nauseum on U.S. television channels as well as in all the halls of power where the option of human rights interventionism got discussed with a view to obtaining a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution. This was a bare-faced lie, very much in the mould of the lie about Iraq's purported nuclear weapons that was brandished around by Obama's predecessor, President George Bush Jr. It was on the basis of such disinformation that Resolutions 1970 and 1973 were passed in the Security Council, invoking the dubious principle of the “responsibility to protect”, which was inserted into the duties of the U.N. as late as 2005, after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were already afoot.
This was the time when the Bush administration was openly claiming in international fora, including at the U.N. itself, that (a) in this Age of Terror the U.S. reserved the right of pre-emptive military attack against any state that the U.S. considered a threat to its national security, and that (b) in the conditions of the “War on Terror” many aspects of the Geneva Conventions were no longer applicable. This discourse of the right to pre-emptive invasion was then supplemented by the discourse of the benign nature of the empire itself, in the shape of human rights interventionism. The claim now was that the “international community” – as defined by Euro-American powers – had the right to intervene in the internal affairs of any sovereign country if “massacre” or “genocide” was imminent. The NATO bombings in Libya that began in the third week of March were the first that had ever been authorised by the Security Council in its entire history on this dubious principle of human rights interventionism. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, was in his own way quite right when he asserted in the early hours of March 25: “It's a historic moment… what is happening in Libya is creating jurisprudence… it is a major turning point in the foreign policy of France, Europe, and the world” (emphasis added).
No credible evidence has ever emerged to support Obama's claim that a massacre (of up to 100,000) was imminent in Benghazi, and no massacres ensued in the rebellious cities and towns that Qaddafi's troops did occupy in the earlier stages of the fighting. On the contrary, there is incontrovertible evidence of massacres at the hands of NATO's mercenaries. Neighbouring countries, such as Niger, Mali and Chad, have reported the eviction of some three lakh black African residents from Libya as NATO's local allies and clients rolled on towards Tripoli under the devastating shield of NATO's own 40,000-plus bombings over large parts of Libya. Together with these mass evictions of workers and refugees from neighbouring countries – whom the Qaddafi regime had welcomed to make up for labour shortages in an expanding economy – there are also credible reports of lynchings and massacres of black Libyans themselves. The scale of these depredations is yet undetermined but it is already clear that upwards of 50,000 have died as a result of the war unleashed by NATO with the collusion of the Security Council, and half a million or more have been rendered homeless, mostly at the hands of NATO-armed “rebels” who have now been appointed as the new government of the country. Neither the Security Council nor NATO commanders nor, indeed, President Obama – the first black President in the history of the U.S. and himself the son of a Kenyan father – has seen it fit to take up the “responsibility to protect” these hapless people, most of them black Africans, even though several heads of African states have protested, including the very pro-U.S. President of Nigeria.
One of the most pernicious aspects of the liberal discourse of human rights in our time is that this doctrine is utilised in country after country to justify imperialist interventionism in the affairs of the sovereign countries of the tricontinent in direct violation not only of the United Nations Charter and the Westphalian order of nation-states as such but, even more fundamentally, of the very spirit and practices of the anti-colonial movements that fought to dismantle the colonial empires of yesteryear. The right to independent nationhood is inseparable from the right to choose one's own government without foreign interference. In virtually every country of Latin America over the past half a century, peoples have fought against the most brutal kinds of dictatorship but without ever asking for a foreign intervention. For three simple reasons: (1) it is only the people themselves, in their collectivity, who have the right to change their government; (2) it would be hard to find a dictator, including Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein, who has not colluded with imperialism at one point or another; and (3) a military intervention is always, without exception, the intervention of the strong against the weak – always, without exception, in pursuit of the interests of those who intervene.

Given this basic principle, the issue of Qaddafi's dictatorial rule is just as irrelevant today as was the nature of Saddam Hussein's rule in the past; and as irrelevant as would be the dictatorial temper of Bashar al-Asad in Syria or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in Iran in case of invasions yet to come. We shall come to the paradoxical character of the Qaddafi regime, and it cannot be anyone's case that Qaddafi was some sort of liberal democrat. It needs to be said, though, that he was no more dictatorial than most rulers of Africa and the Arab world, most notably the friends of the West in Saudi Arabia and the whole complex of various emirates in the Gulf. His authoritarianism was indeed ferocious. However, if matters are viewed from the perspective of the well-being of the Libyan people, we shall also have to concede that Qaddafi built the most advanced welfare state in Africa – just as Iraq was the most advanced welfare state in the Arab East, Saddam's authoritarianism notwithstanding. Dismantling of the welfare state – and privatisation and corporatisation of the national assets – is in fact the filthy underbelly of this human rights imperialism. If human rights were even remotely the issue in such interventionism, Saudi Arabia would be the logical first target. And, why should there not be a NATO occupation of Israel, immediately, for protecting the human rights of the Palestinian people and the implementation of numerous Security Council resolutions?
In reality, the great crusade for human rights and democracy in Libya was conducted by NATO with the aid of, among others, personnel from Qatar and the Emirates, just as NATO's own Islamists in Turkey have joined hands with Saudi Arabia in providing weapons to the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in Syria against the Assad regime in the name of democracy and human rights.
Empire goes where oil is
The Security Council resolution that authorised NATO's “humanitarian intervention” in Libya was well reflected in a secret proposal to the French government by the National Transitional Council (NTC) in the early days of the “rebellion”, which offered to France 35 per cent of Libya's gross national oil production “in exchange”, in the words of the proposal, for “total and permanent” French support for the NTC. The French government, of course, denied it when the French newspaper Liberation published the communication. This coyness of the conspirators was not to last long. On October 21, less than 24 hours after the announcement of Qaddafi's assassination, Britain's new Defence Minister, Philip Hammond, announced that the United Kingdom had presented to the NTC a “request” for a licence to drill for oil. He then added:
“Libya is a relatively wealthy country with oil reserves, and I expect there will be opportunities for British and other companies to get involved in the reconstruction of Libya…. I would expect British companies, even British sales directors, [to be] packing their suitcases and looking to get out to Libya and take part in the reconstruction of that country as soon as they can.”
As the U.S. Ambassador, Gene Cretz, unfurled the flag over the American Embassy in Tripoli, at its reopening ceremony on September 22, he was equally upbeat:

“We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi's time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things. If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.”
Referring to the Italian oil company, the Foreign Minister of Italy, Franco Frattini, added his own gleeful chime to this triumphalist chorus: “Eni will play a No.1 role in the future.” Qatar, whose overt and covert contribution to the NATO offensive was very considerable indeed, is already handing oil sales in eastern Libya and will also be entering the distribution of the spoils of war from a position of strength. The New York Times noted: “Libya's provisional government has already said it is eager to welcome Western businesses (and)… would even give its Western backers some ‘priority' in access to Libyan business.” That was accurate. “We don't have a problem with Western countries like Italians, French and U.K. companies,” Abdeljalil Mayouf, a spokesman for the NTC-controlled oil company, Agogco, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “but we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil.”
Libya's 46 billion barrels of oil make it home to Africa's largest proven deposit of conventional crude, though Nigeria and Angola dispute this Libyan pre-eminence. Before the civil war began in earnest in February, Libya was pumping about 1.6 million barrels a day, most of which went to southern Europe, whose refineries were tailored to refine Libya's light, high-quality crude. By contrast, Saudi crude is heavier and unsuitable for many of those refineries, while Libya's geographical proximity also makes it much more attractive. Almost 70 per cent of Libya's oil went to four countries, Spain, Germany, France and Italy, even before the NATO war, and oil-producing regions were of course the first to be secured as NATO started bombing its way to victory. The oil industry's biggest players, meanwhile, are ready to reclaim their old concessions and get new ones. The vast Ghadames and Sirte basins, largely off limits to foreign oil companies since Qaddafi came to power 42 years ago, are now expected to be privatised and opened to foreign corporations. The same applies to Libya's offshore oil and gas resources.
The loss of political sovereignty thus leads necessarily to great curtailment of economic sovereignty as well.
AFP/HANDOUT

THE PRODUCTION FACILITIES of a German oil firm in the Libyan desert near the oasis of Jakhira, which was shut in February following the violence. Almost 70 per cent of Libya's oil went to four countries - Spain, Germany, France and Italy - even before the NATO bombings, during which the oil-producing regions were the first to be secured.
African Union vs “The international Community”
At a meeting between the two parties on June 15 this year, some three months after NATO initiated its aerial bombings of Libya, the High Level Ad hoc Committee of the African Union (A.U.) handed over to the Security Council a letter spelling out the A.U. position on the Libyan crisis. Now, even after the fall of Tripoli and the assassination of Qaddafi, the contents of that communication are worth re-visiting if we wish to assess the great gap of perceptions and prescriptions, on issues of interventionism, between nation-states of the tricontinent on the one hand, and, on the other hand, those institutions of “the international community” whose task it is to justify Euro-American interventionism. We shall first offer a series of quotations from that key document:
1. “Whatever the genesis of the intervention by NATO in Libya, the A.U. called for dialogue before the U.N. Resolutions 1970 and 1973 and after those resolutions. Ignoring the A.U. for three months and going on with the bombings of the sacred land of Africa has been high-handed, arrogant and provocative.”
2. “An attack on Libya or any other member of the African Union without express agreement by the A.U. is a dangerous provocation… sovereignty has been a tool of emancipation of the peoples of Africa who are beginning to chart transformational paths for most of the African countries after centuries of predation by the slave trade, colonialism and neocolonialism. Careless assaults on the sovereignty of African countries are, therefore, tantamount to inflicting fresh wounds on the destiny of the African peoples.”
3. “Fighting between government troops and armed insurrectionists is not genocide. It is civil war…. It is wrong to characterise every violence as genocide or imminent genocide so as to use it as a pretext for the undermining of the sovereignty of states.”
4. “The U.N. should not take sides in a civil war. The U.N. should promote dialogue…. The demand by some countries that Col. Muammar Qaddafi must go first before the dialogue is incorrect. Whether Qaddafi goes or stays is a matter for the Libyan people to decide. It is particularly wrong when the demand for Gaddafi's departure is made by outsiders…. Qaddafi accepted dialogue when the A.U. mediation committee visited Tripoli on April 10, 2011. Any war activities after that have been provocation for Africa. It is an unnecessary war. It must stop…. The story that the rebels cannot engage in dialogue unless Qaddafi goes away does not convince us. If they do not want dialogue, then, let them fight their war with Qaddafi without NATO bombing…. The externally sponsored groups neglect dialogue and building internal consensus and, instead, concentrate on winning external patrons.”
It goes without saying that the A.U. is by no means a conglomeration of radicals; it is a conservative grouping of state governments, most of whom are, in one way or another, allied with the West; many of the heads of states participating in A.U. proceedings at any given time are venal, corrupt, authoritarian or worse. That is, however, no more relevant than the personal venality of Sarkozy or Silvio Berlusconi or any other Western leader. The point, rather, is that the A.U.'s is the only united voice through which African states speak and that the principles and points of fact raised here are unexceptionable.
The very first point is that the Security Council, NATO or any other conglomeration of states and institutions simply have no right to represent themselves as “the international community” when what they say and do is opposed by the united voice of the African state system. The second point is that the issue of state sovereignty is posed in Africa and Asia not only in European, Westphalian terms, but, far more sensitively and explosively, in the perspective of the recently won and still very fragile independence of states after a long history of colonial predation. Further, the A.U. letter rejects the position – enunciated by Obama, his NATO allies and the Security Council – that there was any genocide or imminent genocide in Libya. Rather, it speaks strictly of a “civil war” between “government troops and armed insurrectionists”, calls upon the U.N. not to take sides in the “civil war” and goes on then to contemptuously dismiss the “externally sponsored groups” and their “demands” that are designed for “winning external patrons”.
The most important practical point in any case is that Qaddafi had accepted the principle of negotiation and arbitration by the A.U. as early as April 10, after which the A.U. quite rightly demanded that NATO stop its military mission and the U.N. concentrate on facilitating negotiations under A.U. auspices. A significant section of the letter laid out an elaborate plan for negotiations, for policing of violence inside Libya by an A.U. brigade as had been done in Burundi, and for conflict resolution processes using the principles of “provisional immunity” during the peace negotiations, and for the establishment of truth and reconciliation bodies for reconciliation after peace has been re-established.
None of it was heeded, precisely because the voice of reason had come from the weak, while the will for intervention and regime change had come from self-appointed masters of the universe.
Civilisation and the ecstasy of conquest
In the moment of victory, President Obama was relatively more measured in his words than many other Western leaders. The fall of Libya to 40,000-plus NATO bombings was proof, he said, that “we are seeing the strength of the American leadership across the world”. And he was not entirely mistaken in taking the credit. The Security Council resolution that authorised NATO operations would have been inconceivable without the coercive powers of the U.S. Obama's cavalier condoning of assassination and extra-judicial execution, as displayed to the world in the cases of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki among others, was part of the implicit licence to kill the unarmed Qaddafi as well. Less than 48 hours before Qaddafi was actually assassinated, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Secretary of State, was on a triumphant visit to Tripoli, the Libyan capital now occupied by NATO and its local clients, and said unambiguously: “We hope he [Qaddafi] can be captured or killed soon.” Incitement to murder could hardly be couched in words more stark.
This issue of an authorised assassination should detain us somewhat, for it does impinge upon the imperial duplicity of the human rights discourse. Details of Qaddafi's death and burial are still unclear. We do know that the town of Sirte, to which he had retreated during the siege of Tripoli, was devastated by hundreds of aerial bombings by NATO with the single-minded intent to kill him and those close to him. We also know that he was leaving Sirte in a convoy when the convoy too was bombed; the French claimed that it was their Rafale fighter jet that disabled his vehicle; the Americans claimed that it was the work of one of their Predators. The main point is that he was captured alive and unarmed by NATO's mercenaries on the ground, kicked around, beaten and killed. Considering how many American, French, British, Qatari and other special forces have been there, commanding the Libyan “rebels”, it is significant that the body of the dead man was never taken away from the milling “rebels”. Christof Heyns, the U.N. Special Rapporteur, seems to be clear on this point: “The Geneva Conventions are very clear that when prisoners are taken they may not be executed wilfully and if that was the case then we are dealing with a war crime, something that should be tried.”
The complication, however, is that the Western alliance had previously announced an award of $20 million to anyone who kills (or helps kill/capture) Qaddafi. So, here is a test for Western values: should the man who killed Qaddafi be tried in a court of law? Should he be awarded $20 million and celebrated as a hero? Or should he be allowed to slip out of the grip of the law, history and public memory – and settled, with a handsome settlement, in Miami, southern California or a villa on the Rhine?
Qaddafi's own tribe issued this statement: “We call on the U.N., the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and Amnesty International to force the [National] Transitional Council to hand over the martyrs' bodies to our tribe in Sirte and to allow them to perform their burial ceremony in accordance with Islamic customs and rules.” But there was no such luck! NATO's mercenaries displayed Qaddafi's body, along with that of his son Mutassim, naked to the waist, in freezers in a meat store in Misrata, inviting souvenir photographs.
Human rights imperialism seems to be inventing a brand new entertainment industry: that of necrophilic tourism.
Be that as it may. President Obama is right in claiming that the event proved “the strength of American leadership”. U.S. Special Forces and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) teams were on the ground since before the beginning of the rebellion and made sure that those who were destined to be NATO's mercenary army on the ground were armed from the start; they were then joined by their French and British counterparts and backed by armed groups from Qatar, the Emirates and the like. Bombings were left largely to the Franco-British component of NATO but much of the high electronics and infrastructural nitty-gritty was handled by the U.S. forces: collecting electronic intelligence and smashing the Libyan anti-aircraft systems, for example, and blockading the coast. NATO warplanes used U.S. bases for refuelling and these bases supplied munitions when their European counterparts ran low. In an important sense, the military operation in Libya was a highly successful experiment in an assault coordinated between AFRICOM – the U.S. Command for the control of Africa – and its European partners.
If President Obama was cryptic, his icy Vice President, Joe Biden, was precise: “In this case, America spent $2 billion and didn't lose a single life. This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past.” By “life”, Biden obviously means American life, considering that even the most conservative estimates suggest that the war in Libya has led to the loss of at least 50,000 lives, mostly at the hands of NATO bombers and their local allies.
More broadly, what is at issue is a U.S. objective, first conceived during the Vietnam War, to develop an “automated battlefield” with technologies so advanced that wars may be won and entire countries conquered without any significant ground deployment. Across the Atlantic, that same idea was invoked by people like Paddy Ashdown, who once served for four years as E.U. High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina, who said that from now on the West should adopt the “Libyan model” of intervention rather than the “Iraqi model” of massive invasion.
This kind of hard-boiled Anglo-Saxon pragmatism can easily be translated by an ambitious politician like Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French President, into the sophistries of a high-minded Gallic discourse on history and civilisation. Pierre Lévy, a former editor of L'Humanité, recently recalled a passage from a speech Sarkozy delivered in 2007 in which he glorified “the shattered dream of Charlemagne and of the Holy Roman Empire, the Crusades, the great schism between Eastern and Western Christianity, the fallen glory of Louis XIV and Napoleon…” and then went on to declare that “Europe is today the only force capable of carrying forward a project of civilisation.” This claim to a unique civilisational mission then led quickly to an ambition to conquer: “I want to be the President of a France which will bring the Mediterranean into the process of its reunification after 12 centuries of division and painful conflicts…. America and China have already begun the conquest of Africa. How long will Europe wait to build the Africa of tomorrow? While Europe hesitates, others advance.”
Lévy then goes on to quote Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a senior leader of the Socialist Party (much in the news recently for alleged sexual misdemeanours), who matched Sarkozy's bombast with his own desire for a Europe stretching “from the cold ice of the Arctic in the North to the hot sands of the Sahara in the South (…) and that Europe, I believe, if it continues to exist, will have reconstituted the Mediterranean as an internal sea, and will have re-conquered the space that the Romans, or Napoleon more recently, attempted to consolidate.”
In this world view, then, NATO is seen as having inherited a mission from the Roman Empire and the Napoleonic conquests, which then involves the “re-conquest” of North Africa. It was, after all, only about 50 years ago that France finally relinquished its claim that Algeria was not a foreign colony but an “outlying province” of France itself. What is very striking in any case is how closely the rhetoric of “civilisation” is woven into the rhetoric of “conquest” and even “re-conquest.”
Obama, Africa and the Imperial Project
Poor little “Olde Europe”! Even in its wildest civilisational ravings, all it can imagine is the re-conquest of its colonial empire in North Africa. By contrast, the U.S. knows how to get directly to the point. In the second week of October, when the war against Libya had been won but Qaddafi yet not assassinated, President Obama announced: “I have authorised a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces…. On October 12, the initial team of U.S. military personnel with appropriate combat equipment deployed to Uganda. During the next month, additional forces will deploy…. These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA [Lord's Resistance Army]…. Subject to the approval of each respective host nation, elements of these U.S. forces will deploy into Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
So, in the wake of the Libyan conquest, U.S. troops are to be immediately deployed to countries across the middle of Africa, in four countries and in cooperation with regimes that have hideous records of dictatorship and human rights abuses, not the least on the part of Uganda's “President-for-life”, Yoweri Museveni. Obama justified this newly minted “humanitarian mission” in Uganda in the name of eliminating the LRA. This is odd. The LRA has actually been around for almost a quarter century and has never been weaker than it is today. Why, suddenly, such an operation across a huge part of Africa? Paul Craig Roberts, a former Under Secretary of State for Treasury under President Ronald Reagan (and thus not a left-winger by a long shot), put the matter succinctly: “With Libya conquered, AFRICOM will start on the other African countries where China has energy and mineral investments…. Whereas China brings Africa investment and gifts of infrastructure, Washington sends troops, bombs and military bases.”
Even this recent deployment may be just the tip of an oncoming iceberg. For many years now, the U.S. has been building up a special Command for Africa, the AFRICOM, in tandem with CENTCOM that is responsible for operations in the Middle East (West Asia). As part of this imperial mission in Africa, the U.S. is actively engaged in training the militaries of Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Uganda, Senegal, Mozambique, Ghana, Malawi and Mauritania. Together with other NATO countries, the U.S. has staged numerous military exercises in Africa with the ostensible purpose of preparing contingency plans for “protecting energy supplies” in the Niger delta and the Gulf of Guinea. Aside from Libya, major oil producers in the region include Angola, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Mauritania. All these, and many others besides, are to be “protected” – pretty much on the “Libyan model” if need be.
This is not the place to go into details. Suffice it to say that the fall of Libya is likely to serve as the first major step in the offensive to capture Africa's plentiful natural resources. In the fullness of time, as multiple insurgencies and bloodlettings are let loose across the continent, we are likely to see the erection of many new bases for the AFRICOM-NATO combine, very much on the model of Iraq and Afghanistan. The objective is not only to reserve African resources for the Euro-American imperium as much as possible but also to deny those resources to China, which gets about one third of its oil from Africa – Angola and Sudan in particular – in addition to important materials like platinum, copper, timber and iron ore. Some 75 Chinese companies were working in Libya with 36,000 personnel, not so much in the oil sector as in infrastructural development projects; and China accounted for about 11 per cent of Libya's pre-war exports. It evacuated its personnel and complained that NATO had unilaterally changed the U.N. resolution from protecting civilians to regime change.
The U.S. would like to see this eviction of China from Libya to become permanent and for such evictions to be repeated across Africa. Will that happen? Too soon to tell. The U.S. has the military might and the impatient arrogance of a declining superpower, but China is the one that has the cash and the almost glacial patience of a rising economic power. A confrontation is on, and it will take decades to settle.
Conclusion
Major issues pertaining to the significance of the Libya war have not been addressed here: the meaning of all this for the so-called “Arab Spring”; the nature of the fallen Qaddafi regime; the likely composition of the emerging dispensation; the social disintegration and multiple internal conflicts that are now likely to ensue; the destabilisation and the prospect of multiple civil wars across the Sahel region caused by the war on Libya; and so on. Other contributors to this issue of Frontline may clarify these issues, or this author may return to them in a future contribution.
So, let me conclude this piece by noting that Qaddafi did leave a brief will, and it is important that we recall some of his last words:
“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personally secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour. Even if we do not win immediately, we will give a lesson to future generations that choosing to protect the nation is an honour and selling it out is the greatest betrayal that history will remember forever despite the attempts of the others to tell you otherwise.”
That is true. Friendly African countries had offered him safe sanctuaries, while some European countries would have preferred to have him as a neutralised client rather than a celebrated martyr in (at least parts of) Libya. Offers were indeed made. Given the choices, he preferred to die. In that brief will, he also expressed a simple wish:
“Should I be killed, I would like to be buried, according to Muslim rituals, in the clothes I was wearing at the time of my death and my body unwashed, in the cemetery of Sirte, next to my family and relatives. I would like that my family, especially women and children, be treated well after my death.”
In Islamic custom, the stipulation that the body be washed and wrapped in a fresh shroud is lifted in the case of martyrs. Right or wrong, Qaddafi did think of his own impending death as martyrdom. We may not think so, but many others probably will. Qaddafi was quite largely a buffoon, in many ways brutish, more so as he grew older and more egomaniacal, but not everyone is going to forget that he also had a visionary side to him and built for his people the most advanced welfare state on the continent. His is a contradictory legacy. We have described earlier in this piece what the winners did to his corpse. Not just the members of his own family or his tribesmen, but many, many others might not so easily forget all that.

Political Islam will have to deal with clashing interests - By Tariq Ramadan - Gulf News

2011-11-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

It is regrettable that Tariq Ramadan has restricted the recent Middle East upheaval to only Arabs and most grudgingly injected Islam into the equation. In fact, as the developments are fast assuming distinct nuances, the Islamist part is becoming more pronounced by the day and at least Muslim intellectuals should have the courage to claim the revolution in the name of Islam, rather than Arabdom. At one level, the conspiracies of the West are relentless and a new covert face of colonialism is never off the mirror. Only a steadfast reference to Islam will fortify and anchor the movement to the wider reality of anti-colonialism.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/political-islam-will-have-to-deal-with-clashing-interests-1.921436

gulfnews.com

Political Islam will have to deal with clashing interests

Religion remains an unavoidable reference for the Arabs and as such will be critical in building the future

By Tariq Ramadan, Special to Gulf News

Published: 00:00 November 1, 2011

Over the last few weeks the new Libyan leader, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council (NTC), has been repeating, "Sharia will be the main reference and will be implemented in Libya." Several of his references to Islamic legislation came in the presence of western politicians and intellectuals like the pro-Israel French self-styled philosopher Bernard Henri Levy, who, surprisingly, did not react with any shock whatsoever. Surprising indeed! It was as if Abdul Jalil was determined to show that the ‘Libyan revolutionaries' were truly independent and not supported or protected by France, the US, or the West. The West kept silent, though some media have asked pointed questions about whom the French, the Americans and the British were supporting.

Given Libya's extremely complex political situation, Abdul Jalil's statement was timely and very smart. He referred intentionally to concepts seen as very controversial in the West to make it clear to the Libyan people he was not a western puppet. In a way that seemed weird to a western ear, he spoke of Sharia and polygamy, knowing that for the emotionally wrought Libyan Muslims he was offering proof of his complete independence (such references are of course demonised in the West). For France, Britain and the US it was a way to show the world that Libya was now "on its own;" time for Nato to allow the new Libya to build its future by relying on its own traditions. The religious and political reference to Islam thus serves to appease the Muslims and lend traditional and religious legitimacy to the NTC while concealing the West's tri-dimensional — military, geopolitical and economic — penetration of Libya.

The Arab uprisings are showing that the peoples of the region are drawn to freedom, dignity and justice but are not prepared to betray their traditions and religious beliefs. The recent victory of Tunisia's Islamist party, Al Nahda, in that country's constituent elections, underlines a historical reality: Islam remains an unavoidable reference for the Arabs and as such will be critical in building the future, especially through the democratic process by which peoples are now able to express their political demands, their concerns about identity and their economic hopes. The conservative parties that invoke Islam in one way or another (hence the Islamists as well) are gaining ground and achieving greater political legitimacy. They are operating on three distinct levels: acceptance of democratic rules, preservation of the nation's Islamic identity and readiness to open their markets to the dominant economic powers and the multinational corporations.

The Turkish example has set a precedent: no one can deny that the AKP — coming from an Islamist background — is proving its leadership's success in these very three fields: they are religiously conservative, geopolitically prepared to deal with all the western powers (including, until recently, Israel), and economically integrated into the dominant capitalist system. They have shown great openness (with the EU) and demonstrated considerable flexibility. The West can indeed do business with any Islamist party that evidences a similar willingness to adapt and to collaborate, from Al Nahda to the Muslim Brotherhood. Things are moving fast in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena); the new political strategies are based on new economic and geopolitical concerns, driven by the active presence of new state actors in the region: Brazil, Russia, India and China (Bric). The West has no time to waste in the race to win Arab minds, hearts and money.

In these highly complex political and economic games, one issue stands out as crucial. The western countries have shown in the past that they have no major problem in dealing with political Islam to protect their interests. Given the presence of the Bric's countries, they have no choice as the latter are ready to establish strong political and economic ties whatever the situation in the respective Arab countries.

Stance against Israel

The key factor will be Israel. All the Islamist parties have taken strong position against the Zionist state (even Turkey recently), which is the reason for their broad popular support (including the current Iranian regime). The Islamists may well be ready to promote the democratic process and to participate fully in the dominant economic system (the great majority of the Islamist parties accept it today) but they remain quite explicit in their stance against Israel. Here lies the core of the acute tensions and contradictions in the US and the European countries: they need to be involved in Mena but they cannot distance themselves from Israel. Meanwhile, the Bric countries do not have the same historical alliance with Israel and they seem ready to challenge the western bias towards the Middle East conflict.

The Islamic reference is at the heart of the debate in the Arab world. Political Islam is at the crossroads: it faces numerous challenges and must deal with conflicting interests. Only a comprehensive approach can give us a sense of what is at stake. Many trends — even some Islamist parties — are playing with Islam in an attempt to gain legitimacy. There can be no doubt that politics corrupts. Who, in the Arab countries, will be able to hold power while respecting the Islamic imperatives of dignity, justice and transparency — let alone truly supporting the just cause of Palestine?

Tariq Ramadan is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University and a visiting Professor at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Qatar. His new book Islam and the Arab Awakening will be out this month.

Media deliberately dividing people: PRESS COUNCIL OF INDIA Chief, Justice Katju to Karan Thapar, CNN-IBN

2011-10-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/media-deliberately-dividing-people-pci-chief/197593-3.html?from=nl

India | Updated Oct 30, 2011 at 07:36pm IST

Media deliberately dividing people: PCI Chief

Karan Thapar, CNN-IBN

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New Delhi: Speaking to Karan Thapar, the new Chairman of the Press Council of India Markandey Katju slammed the media saying that he is very disappointed with the way in which the Indian media works. Katju also said that the media is not working for the interest of the people and sometimes divide the people of the country.

Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to Devil's Advocate. How does the new chairman of the Press Council of India view the media? That's the key issue I shall discuss with Justice Markandey Katju. Justice Katju recently while discussing with some newspaper and television editors you said, 'The media have become irresponsible and wayward.' Then you added, 'The time has come when some introspection by the Indian media is required.' Are you disappointed by the media?
Justice Markandey Katju: Very disappointed.
Karan Thapar: And therefore, do you have a low opinion of the media?
Justice Markandey Katju: I have a poor opinion about the media.
Karan Thapar: And you really mean this?
Justice Markandey Katju: I mean this. They should be working for the interest of the people. They are not working for the interest of the people. And sometime they are positively working in an anti-people manner.
Karan Thapar: Now, in that same address to editors you said, 'One of the basic tasks of the media is to provide truthful and objective information, that will enable people to form rational opinions.' Is that not happening altogether, or is it not happening sufficiently and effectively.
Justice Markandey Katju: See you must first understand the historical context in which we are living. India is passing through a transitional period in our history -transition from feudal, agricultural society to modern industrial society. This is a very painful and agonising period in history. When Europe was going through this period the media played a great role, it was of great help in transforming the European society from feudalism to a modern society.
Karan Thapar: Is that not happening in India?
Justice Markandey Katju: No, just the reverse. In Europe, great writers like Rousseau, Thomas Paine and Diderot. Diderot said, 'Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.'
Karan Thapar: Compared to them, what is the role the Indian media is playing during this transition India is going through?
Justice Markandey Katju: Indian media is, very often, playing an anti-people role. Let me give you that in three respects. Number one, it often diverts the attention of the people from the real problems which are basically economic. 80 per cent of the people are living in horrible poverty, unemployment, facing price rise, healthcare etc. You divert attention from those problems and instead you project filmstars and fashion parades and cricket as if they are the problems of the people.
Karan Thapar: So the media uses fashion, film stars and cricket almost as an opium?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes. Cricket is an opium of the masses. The Roman emperors used to say 'if you cannot give the people bread, give them circuses'. In India, send them to cricket if you cannot give them bread. Many channels, day and night, are showing cricket as if that is the problem of the country.
Karan Thapar: You said there were three respects in which the media is being anti-people, to use your phrase. You've given me one, what are the other two?
Justice Markandey Katju: Second is, very often the media divides the people. You see, this is a country of great diversity because it is a country broadly of immigrants. We must, therefore, respect each other and we must remain united. Take for example, whenever a bomb blast takes place, in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, within a few hours almost every channels starts showing that an e-mail has come or a SMS has come that Indian Mujahideen have claimed responsibility or Jaish-e-Mohammad or Harkat-ul-Jihad, some Muslim name. You see e-mail or SMS any mischievous person can send, but by showing it on the TV channels and next day in print, you are in a subtle way conveying the message that all Muslims are terrorists and bomb throwers and you are demonising the Muslims. And, 99 per cent people of all communities, whether Hindu, Muslim, are good people.
Karan Thapar: Is this an instance of the media being careless or the media deliberately not using its guard and not using its intelligence to double check? Which is it?
Justice Markandey Katju: I think it is even worse. I think it is deliberate action of the media to divide the people on religious lines and that is totally against the national interest.
Karan Thapar: You are saying the media is deliberately diving people?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, because what else is this? When you are demonising the Muslim community within a few hours of a bomb blast showing that SMS has come, e-mail has come from some Muslim organisation, what does it imply?
Karan Thapar: You said you had three examples of the media being anti-people. You've given me two, what's the third?
Justice Markandey Katju: Third is, as I said India is passing in a transitional period from feudal society to modern society. So the media must promote scientific ideas to help the country move forward, like the European media did in the period of transition in Europe. Here the media promotes superstition, astrology and so on. You know, 80 to 90 per cent of the people in the country are mentally very backward, steep in casteism, communalism, superstition and so on. Should the media uplift them and bring them up to a higher mental level and make them part of enlightened India or should the media go down to that level and continue and perpetuate their backwardness? The media through many TV channels show astrology which is pure humbug. Astrology is total superstition that if you wear this colour shirt today it will be very good for you, what is all this?
Karan Thapar: You began by saying that you had a very low opinion of the media, that you were deeply disappointed by the media. I get the impression that, in fact, you don't think very much of the media at all.
Justice Markandey Katju: There are some very respected media people I can tell. For example, Mr P Sainath, I have very high respect for him. He has written many articles showing the farmer suicides. In fact in The Hindu, that quarter million farmers have committed suicide.
Karan Thapar: You're talking about the front page article in Saturday's Hindu?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes.
Karan Thapar: But apart from naming a few individuals, of the media as a whole you don't think very much of them?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, the general rut is very low and I have a poor opinion of most media people. Frankly, I don't think they have much knowledge of economic theory or political science or literature or philosophy. I don't think they have studied all this.
Karan Thapar: So the media, in effect, is not just living up to its expectations, you would say it is letting down India?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, absolutely because the media is very important in this transition period. As I said, the media deals with ideas. It's not an ordinary business dealing with commodities, it deals with ideas. Therefore, people need modern and scientific ideas.
Karan Thapar: And that's not happening?
Justice Markandey Katju: The reverse is happening.
Karan Thapar: The media is making India more superstitious, more casteist, more communal; you really mean that?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, absolutely. You see the TV channels, so many of them showing astrology 'yeh raashi hai, wo raashi hai', what is all this?
Karan Thapar: Alright. I've understood and heard your attitude and opinion of the media, let me now put to you one of the common complaints made of the media by ordinary people and ask to what extent as the Chairman of the Press Council you agree with those complaints and to what extent you disagree. People often say that the media is not always accurate, worse they say the media distorts facts; it twists people's opinions and quotations. Do you hold that view as well?
Justice Markandey Katju: Absolutely, if you've heard of the scandal of paid news in the year 2009 elections, you know what happened. You know earlier the journalist would go to the candidates in elections and ask for money, 'You give me Rs 10,000 and I will publish news in your favour'. Then it appears that the proprietors got a wise idea that why should these working journalists make money why should we not make money. Then they came forward saying 'you give me one crore and a package will be given to you, front page headline news will be in your favour'. And an astounding thing happened in 2009 elections. Candidate A in the front page of the newspapers says he's winning by a large number of votes, by a large majority; and the lower part of the front page paid for by the rival candidate says that candidate A is losing his security deposit. So you see on the same page he's winning by a thumping majority and he's also losing his security.
Karan Thapar: So what you're saying to me, whether we are talking about paid news, whether we are talking about your claim that the media distorts and twists facts ; you're saying the media can't be relied upon when they claim something to be true – it may not be true, it may just be false?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes absolutely because if you are paid to write something you are not writing something which you factually observed. You are being paid to write whatever you are told to write.
Karan Thapar: Now a second criticism made by ordinary people of the media is that it frequently damages the reputation of innocent people by either misrepresenting them or, worse, by suggesting or claiming or proclaiming that they are guilty without reason and without evidence. Again, is that a view you agree with?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes and may I give you an example? In one TV channel, which is a reputed TV channel so I will not name it, on two consecutive days the photograph of a high court judge, where I had been Chief Justice, had been shown next to the photograph of a notorious criminal. The allegation against the high court judge was that he had illegally grabbed some land. I made personal enquiries and I found it was totally false. He had brought land in a rural area, in the open market at the market price, I have all the documents, and this man was weeping when I went there. He said he was going to resign, I said, 'Please don't resign. I will try to do something'. Just see this, you condemn a corrupt judge, I am with you, but why should you condemn an honest judge when he is totally upright?
Karan Thapar: So you're saying the error in this instance was the publication of an honest judge's picture alongside that of a criminal and the suggestion that the two are similar?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, just see how demoralising it is for a judge who is honest. You condemn a corrupt judge, I am fully with you, I have done it myself. Why should you condemn an upright judge?
Karan Thapar: And you're saying that often the media, through carelessness or maybe deliberately damages the reputation of innocent people?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes. You want to sensationalise something you want to capture without proper investigation. You must do proper investigation and research before you publish all this.
Karan Thapar: So the media does no research, no investigation?
Justice Markandey Katju: Well sometimes it may be doing but sometimes it doesn't. in this case evidently they had not done.
Karan Thapar: Let's focus a little on news television. There is a lot of concern about the quality of debates on television channels. Are you an admirer of those debates or are you a critic?
Justice Markandey Katju: See very often I find those debates totally frivolous. First of all there is no discipline. If there are four people on the panel, all speaking at the same time, is this the way disciplined people should behave? When you speak, I will never interrupt you. But why should you interrupt me when I am speaking?
Karan Thapar: You think anchors are always interrupting rudely?
Justice Markandey Katju: Not anchors, the panellist, the four persons. One person is speaking, the other simultaneously starts speaking, whom are you to hear?
Karan Thapar: People often say that the big problem with debates on television is that they only generate heat, they don't shed light, yet their job is to shed light.
Justice Markandey Katju: That's quite often correct. You should shed light in this age, you should educate people, you should express rational opinions. It's not a shouting contest.
Karan Thapar: So all this criticism that the ordinary people have for the media, whether it's to do with accuracy, whether it's to do with damaging reputation, whether it's to do with the quality of rebates, do you as Chairman of the Press Council agree with all of them?
Justice Markandey Katju: Not all of them. As I told you there are some very upright media people. I named Mr P Sainath and there are many other names.
Karan Thapar: But the generality of the media you believe is falling?
Justice Markandey Katju: The majority, I'm sorry to say, are of a very poor intellectual level, media people, I doubt whether they have any idea of economic theory or political science, philosophy, literature, I have grave doubts whether they are well read in all this, which they should be.
Karan Thapar: More often than not, media people are of a very ordinary level.
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, that's right.
Karan Thapar: Justice Katju, let's talk about steps that you believe are necessary to improve news television. Primarily you believe news television and the electronic media as a whole must be brought under the ambit of the Press Council. Why do you think the media's attempt at self regulation by the News Broadcasters' Association headed by Justice Verma is not good enough?
Justice Markandey Katju: I don't see any effect of that move. The media has to be educated They must be told that you are living in a poor country where you have to address the problems of the poor people. What do you show? Lady gaga has come. Yesterday I saw it on TV, read it in papers. Is this the problem of the country? Kareena Kapoor has seen her Madam Tussauds statue and she says she loves it. This is what is on TV and in the headlines.
Karan Thapar: So you're saying that the News Brodcasters' Association's attempt to self regulate under Justice Verma simply isn't working?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, it is not working at all. One of the reasons is there must be some fear in the media.
Karan Thapar: Absence of a stick means the media gets away with it?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, absolutely. As I said in many interviews, stick will be used only in some extreme situations.
Karan Thapar: But the need for the stick is there?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, the fear must be there. Bin bhay hot na preet, Swami Tulsidas has said in Ramcharitmanas.
Karan Thapar: So in other words, there must always be a sanction the media fears. Otherwise the media will not fulfil its role and act, in your eyes, properly?
Justice Markandey Katju: Absolutely.
Karan Thapar: Now, so far what steps have you taken or what steps do you propose to take to bring news television or the electronic media as a whole under the ambit of the Press Council?
Justice Markandey Katju: Well, I have written to the Prime Minister that electronic media should be brought under the Press Council. It should be called the media council and also should be given more teeth. Those teeth will be used in an extreme situation. I met Mrs Ambika Soni, the minister of Information and Broadcasting, to whom I gave the letter addressed to the Prime Minister and I have received a reply from the Prime Minister that they are considering it. On Friday, I met Mrs Sushma Swaraj, the leader of the Opposition, and I gave her the copy of the letter and I said unless there is consensus between both the national parties, the bill will not go through.
Karan Thapar: What response did you get from Mrs Swaraj?
Justice Markandey Katju: She said in this case, probably there will be a consensus.
Karan Thapar: Now, you said that you've received a response from the Prime Minister. What did he indicate in his response? Is he open to your idea?
Justice Markandey Katju: No, he just wrote that we are considering it. I got a written letter, I haven't met him. I have sought an appointment with him.
Karan Thapar: But the Prime Minister has said that he's considering it?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, he's considering it and Mrs Sushma Swaraj, in fact, when I met her yesterday, I told her that look, this was your suggestion in Parliament. She said, 'Yes it was my suggestion that electronic media should be brought under Press Council.'
Karan Thapar: So the position is as follows: the Prime Minister is considering your suggestion, which suggests, that perhaps he's open to the idea.
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes.
Karan Thapar: Mrs Swaraj has in a sense endorsed it, which suggests that the BJP supports it. Have I summed it up correctly?
Justice Markandey Katju: Yes, that's right.
Karan Thapar: Now you've also asked for greater teeth for the Press Council. You think it needs to be able to bite more effectively. I know you are going to use it only in extreme situations, but what sort of additional powers do you want?
Justice Markandey Katju: I want powers to stop government advertisements, I want powers to suspend the license of that media for a certain period if it behaves in a very obnoxious manner. I want powers to impose fines, all this in extreme situations. Normally, if a media commits a mistake, I'll call them, I'll discuss with them that this is not proper and 80 per cent people can be reformed by persuasion.
Karan Thapar: But this is to be used if the media proves to be, to use your phrase, 'incorrigible'?
Justice Markandey Katju: That's right.
Karan Thapar: Now in fact your exact phrase was if the media proves to be incorrigible, harsh measures may be required, some people think that's a threat to the Freedom of Press.
Justice Markandey Katju: Listen, everybody is accountable in a democracy. No freedom is absolute. Every freedom is subject to reasonable restrictions. I'm accountable, you are accountable. We are accountable to the people.
Karan Thapar: And the media must be accountable as well?
Justice Markandey Katju: Absolutely.
Karan Thapar: And that means the media must accept and respect restrictions?
Justice Markandey Katju: That's right.
Karan Thapar: Justice Katju, a pleasure talking to you.
Justice Markandey Katju: Thank You.

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The decline of Western power in the Arab world is no bad thing : The Economist

2011-10-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.economist.com/node/21534782

The Arab world

Crescent moon, waning West

The decline of Western power in the Arab world is no bad thing

Oct 29th 2011 | from the print edition

AFTER a slow summer, the Arab spring has turned into a turbulent autumn. The past few days have seen the gruesome end of Muammar Qaddafi, the more edifying spectacle of an orderly and open election in Tunisia (see article) and the death of Saudi Arabia’s ancient crown prince Sultan amid demands for the kingdom to modernise faster. Egypt, by far the most populous Arab country, is poised to hold its first proper election next month. Revolts and civil strife continue across the region, from Syria to Yemen and Bahrain.
For the West, whose ties to Arab dictators once gave it great clout in the Middle East, events in the region have spun way out of control. That fact was underlined this week by the Iraqis’ insistence that all American forces must quit the country by the end of the year. Yet the West should not regret this turn of events. The power that it has lost in the short term should, in the long run, be replaced by influence born of good relations with decent governments.

It’s still on course

On balance, the Arab world is in far better shape than it was less than a year ago. For sure, the economies of all the countries affected by the democratic upheavals have slumped. That is true even of Tunisia, which has the best education and skills in the region. But dictatorship and state control suffocated the Arab economies—even those awash with oil. Once Arab countries’ borders open up and their governments become accountable to their citizens, they are likely to grow faster. And that will not happen until they have put in place a system of government that gives a far wider degree of participation than before.

It is beginning to happen. Tunisia has led the way. Egypt promises to follow, though the generals in charge of its transition have been horribly inept of late, raising fears that the country may slip backwards to disorder or military control. But a parliament is due for election next month. It is to choose an assembly that may take a year or so to write a constitution providing for the election of a new Egyptian president. Libya, too, should have elections within a year. Everywhere risks lapsing into bouts of chaos and strife. But this trio of north African states looks set to give a democratic fillip to other Arab countries, including those such as Syria that seem destined for a time to be soaked in blood while they strive for liberation.

The rise of political Islam is not necessarily cause for alarm among democrats in the West and the Arab world. In Tunisia an Islamist party, Nahda (“Renaissance”), that was brutally banned for decades has won a stunning victory at the polls. Egypt’s Muslim Brothers are likely to do well too. In Libya the Islamists may also be gaining ground. This rattles secular-minded Arab liberals and many well-wishing Westerners. But a more open and tolerant brand of political Islam better suited to the modern world seems to be emerging, especially now that its proponents must compete for the favours of voters who admire the Islamists’ hostility to corruption, but dislike the sectarian and conservative attitudes that many of them expressed when they were underground.

No one can be certain that if Islamists gain power they will give it up at the ballot box, but secular rulers sometimes fail that test. And, on the whole, the threat of religious extremism with which strongmen used to justify repression has not materialised. Barring a few ungoverned pockets in Yemen and on the fringes of the Sahara, al-Qaeda has failed to benefit from the democratic wind.

It’s a local show these days

The strength of these revolutions is that they have been almost entirely home-grown. Those in Egypt and Tunisia had no outside help. Syria’s brave protesters are on their own and may, in time, triumph. Libya’s new rulers could not have succeeded without NATO’s bombers, but the absence of Western ground troops and of proconsuls telling the locals what to do has been in salutary contrast to what happened in Iraq eight years ago, where democracy was crudely imposed on an unprepared people (see Lexington).

After the deaths of some 150,000-plus locals and around 5,000 Americans and other foreigners, Iraq has a freely elected government. But it has not developed the habits of tolerance between communities and the independent institutions that underlie all truly successful democracies. A decade of American hard power has been less effective than a few months of peaceful protest in setting countries on the road towards representative government.

Partly because of the Iraqi adventure, America—at least its foreign policy—remains heartily disliked by Arabs across the region. That is only slightly less true under Barack Obama than it was under George Bush. America’s unpopularity stems partly from its backing of Israel and the continuing humiliation of the Palestinians, partly from its willingness to use force to get its way and partly from its history of supporting useful Arab dictators. Prince Sultan’s death may make this last point particularly salient. If the reactionary Prince Nayef becomes the crown prince and de facto regent,
America may struggle to maintain an alliance with him alongside friendships with the Arab world’s nascent democracies.

Yet in the decline of Western power lie the seeds of hope for healthier relations in the future. Although the Arab world’s revolutionaries in general, and the Islamists in particular, are unlikely to hail the West as a model, they seem to be moving towards open political and economic systems. Nobody in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya is arguing for a Saudi Arabian, Iranian or even Chinese model. Arab students, businessmen and tourists in their thousands still choose to go to the West for their studies, their deals and their fun.

The prospects for Western influence in the Arab world are good. But in the future it will be won through education, investment and, when requested, advice on building up institutions. Such levers do not work as quickly as those that were forged from deals with unpopular and unstable dictators. But, in the end, they are likely to prove more reliable.

Death of an Anti-Imperialist - By Yusuf Ansari - TEHELKA - Magazine - New Delhi - INDIA

2011-10-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Op051111Death.asp

Death of an Anti-Imperialist

Muammar Gaddafi’s killing will prove to be more beneficial to western
powers than Libyans

End of an era Fighters of the interim government celebrate Gaddafi’s death at Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli

Photo: Reuters

EXACTLY 100 years ago, Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy began its invasion and subjugation of Libya. On 23 October 1911, Italian warships and land forces began the assault of towns like Benghazi and Misrata, names that have once more become familiar. For the first time, tanks were deployed in the desert and aerial bombing followed. The Italians engineered the construction of concentration camps, into which the largely nomadic tribals of Libya were herded.

Changing equations Gaddafi exchanged pleasantries with heads of state like US President Barack Obama only a couple of years ago

Photo: AP

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The Libyans retreated into their desert hinterland. Despite the fact that thousands of Libyans were killed, the Italians had to face a 20-year-long insurgency, waged by an impoverished but highly respected teacher of the Quran from Cyrenaica, Omar al-Mukhtar. It was not until 1936 that the Italians managed to catch up with the 74-year-old guerrilla hero. He was hanged following a three-day trial. Libya did not achieve independence until 1951. When it did, Libya was among the poorest nations on earth. In 1969, Capt. Muammar Gaddafi deposed the ruling Senussi monarch Emir Idris ina a bloodless coup and assumed control. His power did not appear to be in jeopardy until six months ago.

For many, Gaddafi’s name was synonymous with outlandish, even weird behaviour, accentuated by exasperating diplomacy wound up in dazzling costumery and dizzying dithyrambs. Once regarded as a rogue, a menace to global peace, the western world had begun to see him in a favourable light of late. In 2004, Tony Blair rowed out across the Mediterranean to shake hands with Gaddafi in his tent in Libya. Nicolas Sarkozy visited Tripoli in 2007. In 2008, the Italians signed a cooperation treaty with Libya. The same year, Gaddafi met US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. The next year, he participated in the G8 summit meeting where US President Barack Obama shook hands with him.

For many, Gaddafi was a dogged anti-imperialist and fervent nationalist, in the correct understanding of the term. He consistently and — with the exception of Fidel Castro — individually for the longest time, stood up to the will of the US in particular and western domination in general. He was the last of the pan-Arab leaders.

In his final public testament, Gaddafi wrote, “Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American-style thievery, called ‘capitalism’. But all of us in the Third World know what that means. It means corporations run the countries and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me. I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following his path.”

NATO and its ‘alliance of the killing’, which disgracefully includes the Arab League in its ranks, would have the world believe that the Gaddafi regime was overthrown by the people of Libya, a la Tahrir Square. Obama has tried to present this as another moral undertaking, underwritten by the US, to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Libya. Libya is the bloom, we are told, of the so-called Arab Spring.

FIRST SOME facts about Libya: At its independence, Libya was one of the poorest countries on the planet. Life expectancy in the 1960s was only 46 years. There was no health system to speak of (King Idris was, in fact, on a routine medical check-up abroad when he was deposed). Most Libyans lived in tents around the few pastures that dotted the desert. Nearly the entire population of Libya was agrarian. For the past 40 years, Libya faced economic sanctions from most of the western world. Tribal tensions were rampant and water was scarce. Literacy was less than 20 percent.

Gaddafi was the last of the pan- Arab leaders and a leading financier of development across Africa

Cut to 2010, the last year of the Gaddafi regime in office: Compared to the health status of the population of the rest of West Asia (including Saudi Arabia), Libya’s healthcare was above average. Life expectancy in Libya before the recent conflict began was 77.65 years. Literacy was at 82.6 percent and over 97 percent of the population had access to sanitation facilities. In the 1980s and ’90s, Gaddafi undertook what is to date the world’s largest drinking water project: 6,000 km of pipelines carried water under the Sahara to disparate corners of Libya. Libya ranks 58 out of 177 on the 2004 United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report, which measures quality of life.

In addition to the projects and development he carried out using his country’s petro-dollars, Gaddafi was a leading financier of development across Africa. The manner of his removal from power prompted a diplomatic backlash from South Africa and the wider African Union, with good reason.

Plans to oust Gaddafi had been in the making for decades. In the end, it was not hugely difficult. How could it have been? After four decades of demonising Gaddafi, the mass brainwashing that accompanied the 21,090 air sorties, the indiscriminate strafing and carpet bombing of civilians, the laying to waste of a national infrastructure built up over 40 years convinced many in the West that this was a war worth fighting. In a single sortie alone, 85 members of 12 families, including 33 children and 32 women, were pounded to dust in Zlitan, a few days before Eid-ul-Fitr. Whole villages were bombed to clear a sanitised corridor for the advance of the so-called ‘rebels’ who were armed with shiny new FN-FAL assault rifles, the standard issue of NATO forces. These were not patriotic rebels of a deprived Libya. They are auxiliaries of an empire whose future depends on the exploitation of sovereign states, to ensure a steady supply of the economic means of production.

Vladimir Putin, aware of Russia’s own oil contracts at stake, nevertheless stood up to the aggression and stated, “Who gave them (NATO) that right? Did he have a fair trial? The bombings are destroying the country’s entire infrastructure. When the so-called civilised world uses all its military power against a small country destroying what has been created by generations, I don’t know if that is good or bad. I do not like it.”

To the Russian leader, and to many others, Gaddafi was a man who built his country over four decades — from the sand and vestiges of tribal society — well by well, road by road, brick by brick.

Everyone on the street knows that the killing of Gaddafi was only about oil and, perhaps, banking

Nevertheless, why be sentimental about it? Everyone on the street knows this was only about oil and, perhaps, banking. Until last year, Libya was producing nearly two million barrels of oil a day. To put that in perspective, India’s daily national consumption of oil is approximately three million barrels per day. In addition, Libya sits on one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world. The trouble with the Colonel was, he had sat there far too long for a fuel-hungry Europe and North America to remain patient. More worryingly for the West, Gaddafi, not unlike Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, was actively seeking to delink the price of oil from the dollar and float a new bullionbased currency, in this case, a gold African dinar. This prompted Sarkozy to call Libya, “a threat to the financial security of mankind”.

More alarmingly, writing in the Tehran Times, Chandra Muzaffar commented, “This is the second time that NATO is involved in a military adventure outside its geographical zone. Is this going to become a pattern in the future — whereby NATO obtains UN Security Council mandate to employ its massive air power to conquer some resource rich or strategically critical State in the Global South?” There is a fear that having failed to control Iraq and Afghanistan, the West is targeting Africa with its abundant natural resources.”

Finally, to come to the new dispensation that is going to be running Libya at face value. The provisional government is headed by Mustafa Abdul Jalil who, until this February, was law minister. Ali Abd-al-Aziz al-Isawi, a former minister of economy, trade and investment in the erstwhile Libyan government, once bizarrely stated, “Blacks are a burden on healthcare, they spread disease, crime. They are illegal.” He then faded into oblivion but now NATO has brought him back as the international liaison of the transitional government, a position of considerable importance.

A sinister man called Khalifa Belqasim Haftar has been vying for the position of commander of the forces since the beginning of the conflict. He returned to Libya after decades spent around Langley, Virginia — along with dozens of handlers, trainers, contractors and all those other denominations that are used to describe members of special forces or private security personnel — to take charge of Libya. To his annoyance, he found another officer and former minister of the interior in Gaddafi’s government, Maj Gen Abdal Fatah Younis had been made commander of the rebel forces. It was not until Younis was mysteriously assassinated in July that Haftar was able to resume control.

Abdul Hakim Belhaj is one of the founders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, listed by both the US State Department and the British Home Office as an international terrorist organisation. Gaddafi treated this organisation perhaps almost as badly as American soldiers treat their prisoners at the infamous Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq. Belhaj was hunted in Libya (MI6 and the CIA did not support Gaddafi for nothing) and spent a few years in Abu Selim Prison. Upon release, he returned to plot the demise of the Libyan government and was among the first to charge through the gates of the Bab el Aziziyah compound in Tripoli. He is now commander of the newly created Tripoli Military Council, with 8,000 armed men.

THE COST of the human tragedy, like in all wars, is incalculable. Some of the private stories that have found their way out are heart-wrenching, the images extremely disturbing. For those of us, who live in what is called the Third World, the fate of Libya is something from which to take heed. In his last address to the UN Security Council, in 2006-07, Gaddafi had asked, “What was the reason to invade Iraq? We want to know because it is mysterious and ambiguous and we may face the same destiny. The invasion in itself was and is a serious violation of the UN Charter.”

In the 16th century, Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli argued that “whenever men cease fighting through necessity, they go to fighting through ambition, which is so powerful in human breasts that whatever rank men climb to, never does ambition abandon them…”

Gaddafi’s life and times may not appear to contradict this view of human nature, but the actions of the leaders of the western powers and of the new rulers of Libya certainly reconfirm it.

The views expressed here are the writer’s own

Yusuf Ansari is Writer and political activist.
yusufpur@hotmail.com

AMU [Aligarh Muslim University] team winds up Maharashtra tour; to decide on location : ummid.com

2011-10-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

http://ummid.com/news/2011/October/27.10.2011/amu_team_visits_maha_tour.htm

AMU [Aligarh Muslim University] team winds up Maharashtra tour; to decide on location in few days

Thursday October 27, 2011 06:50:32 PM, ummid.com Staff Reporter

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Malegaon/Aurangabad: The high level AMU expert team which was in Maharashtra on a three day tour to inspect the land for its proposed centre in the state left for Aligarh via New Delhi today morning. During its stay in Maharashtra, the team inspected the lands in Aurangabad and Malegaon that were identified for the purpose. Flowers and protests both greeted the team during its three-day stay in team.

After arriving in Aurangabad from New Delhi by air, the team led by AMU Vice Chancellor Prof PK Abdul Aziz inspected the lands located at two different places near Aurnagabad on October 26 in the morning.

According to Mrs Fauzia Khan, Minister of State for Primary Education and Awkaf, the AMU team visited two locations - one around ten kms to Aurangabad and the other at Khuldabad around 30 kms away.

Principal Secretary of Minority Development Department Mrs Thekkekara and Secretary of Minority Commission, Govt. of Maharashtra Syed Hashmi were also present in Aurangabad for the land inspection.

Aurangabad district officials assisted Minister Mrs Fauzia Khan and others for AMU team's smooth land inspection.

Later, after visiting Tomb of Great Moghul Emperor Aurangazeb the team left for Malegaon.

The ummid.com staff reporter who was travelling with the team from Aurangabad to Malegaon said that a huge crowd which comprised of heads of local educational institutions, teachers, social activists and leaders from all political parties including Nasik MP Sameer Bhujbal, local MLAs Mufti Mohd Ismael and Dada Bhuse greeted the team when it entered Malegaon at around 01:15 PM.

Some of the people had traveled from neighboring and faraway places to meet the AMU team. Prominent among them were Students' Islamic Organization (SIO) Zonal Secretary Irshad Khan who traveled from Nagpur to Malegaon and various heads of education institutes of Yeola, Nasik, Dhule and Manmad.

"The enthusiasm can be gauged from the fact that people from all walks of life literally lined up to greet the AMU team and to stress the need for establishment of the AMU off-campus centre near Malegaon so that they also get access to higher education", Dharma Anna, Sarpanch of Daregaon said while speaking to ummid.com.

In Malegaon, the AMU team visited two spots that were identified for the proposed AMU sub centre. The District Magistrate P Velrasu said that the AMU team visited two spots in Malegaon - one at Rampura some 30 kms from Malegaon and the other 22 kms to Malegaon at Jalgaon-Chondi near Manmad - the major railway junction which connects North and South India.

After having lunch at Jamia Mohammadia Mansoora rest house, the team held a prolonged discussion with Nasik MP Sameer Bhujbal, local MLAs Mufti Ismael and Dada Bhuse, District Magistrate P Velrasu, and office bearers of Noble Education & Welfare Society (NEWS) and Citizens for Development & Peace (CDP).

During the meeting, Vice chancellor Prof PK Abdul Aziz and team members Prof. Anwar Jahan Zuberi, Prof. Jawaid Akhtar, Prof. Ekram Husain, Prof. N. A. K. Durrani and Prof. M. Saud Alam Qasmi explained in detail the motive behind establishment of this centre and its expected impact on the overall development of the region.

Protests

Meanwhile, in an unpleasant incident during AMU team's visit to Maharashtra, the team also had to face besides flowers protests both in Aurangabad and Malegaon.

While Shiv Sena-BJP activists camped near the Khuldabad location carrying saffron and black flags, at Rampura site of Malegaon, the team was stopped just near the proposed land. Local MP Sameer Bhujbal and DM P Velarsu talked to the protesting crowd of around 500 villagers, but they were not ready to allow the AMU team to visit the proposed site.

The AMU team however peacefully inspected the other site located 14 to Manmnad Railway junction.

Later while addressing the press conference with District Magistrate P Velrasu, AMU VC said, "Some forces are opposing tooth and nail the establishment of the AMU centres. First they opposed when we visited other states and now they are doing the same in Maharashtra."

"However", he added, "The project has the backing of the majority of the people in the country including Hindus, Muslims and people from other religions and classes wnd we are trying our best to make these centres a success."

In reply to a question, the Vice Chancellor said that the AMU team few days after after reaching Aligarh will hold a meeting and decide on the final locations.

Refuting the media reports which were appearing in a section of the media since last few weeks, the Vice Chancellor said, "At this stage I can't say anything about the final location. I can only assure you that an AMU centre will be established in Maharashtra very soon and we are all set to start the academic activities from the next academic year".

The killing of Qadhafi - HINDU Editorial + Comments by Ghulam Muhammed

2011-10-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

COMMENTS POSTED on Hindu Editorial: Killing Qadhafi ---

The West and with them the captive world audience are shedding crocodile tears on the killing of Gaddafi, while nobody can deny that the Western powers had left no stone unturned to see that Qaddafi if eliminated. They had been at it for a long time. So why now such a shock and change of tune. The real reason as some analysts have pointed out is the fate of 160 billion dollars that the West got frozen through UN sanctions and if they had caught Qaddafi alive, it would have made their job easier to get hold of that treasure by torturing and/or making deal with imprisoned Qaddafi. With his death, their urgent plans to inject money into the fast deteriorating situation in Eurozone, have gone awry. The new National Transitional Council, has shown no willingness to even pay for the war efforts that the West has invested in their bombing raids. So now all of a sudden the West has found sympathy for the assassinated Qaddafi. Who said, you cannot fool all the people all the times.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article2559752.ece

The killing of Qadhafi

The violent death of Col. Muammar Qadhafi is the worst possible beginning for a new Libya where 42 years of dictatorial and whimsical rule by a strongman are supposed to make way for democratic structures. The exact circumstances in which Col. Qadhafi was killed are unclear. It is known that NATO bombed a convoy in which he was trying to flee a blockade of his hometown Sirte by forces allied to the National Transitional Council government. He might have been wounded in the bombing; subsequent video footage shows him asking for mercy from his captors. The NTC, which took power after over-running the Qadhafi regime two months ago with NATO's assistance, has said he was shot in crossfire between its forces and his loyalists. But reports from the ground suggest he was executed in cold blood. Libya has failed its first democratic test, with vengeance and bloodlust triumphing over due process, the rule of law, and justice. NATO is deeply complicit in this. The role of western powers, especially the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, through this sorry saga of violent regime change reiterates the question that has been asked ever since NATO began bombing Libya, ostensibly as a “humanitarian intervention” authorised by the United Nations Security Council: does the West want democracy in Libya or just any friendly regime that will give it access to the country's oil? It is disappointing that India, which opposed external intervention in Libya, has expressed no concern at Qadhafi's violent end.

Muammar Qadhafi will certainly not be mourned as a great leader of his people. His rule did bring about positive changes for his country, notably in health, education, and infrastructure development. In contrast to other Arab states, it also gave Libyans a consciousness about their oil wealth as a national resource. But he was a ruthless dictator, and his regime was infamous for crushing dissent by imprisoning, torturing, and killing a large number of political opponents. Qadhafi's Libya was also associated with deadly terrorist acts in Europe, including the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland, for which the world imposed sanctions on the country. It was only after 9/11 that both the West and Qadhafi saw opportunities in compromise: after condemning Osama bin Laden, he gave up Libya's nuclear programme and surrendered two suspects in the Lockerbie bombing, in return for a lifting of international sanctions. With Qadhafi gone, the NTC will no doubt move to cement its hold on power. But if it genuinely wants to set Libya on the right path, it would do well to begin by conducting an honest and impartial investigation into Qadhafi's killing.

Keywords: Libya, Muammar Qadhafi, political crisis, death, Qadhafi killing, National Transitional Council government

We Can All Become Job Creators By JOE NOCERA - The New York Times

2011-10-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

An private initiative to become Job Creators, that can be duplicated in all communities facing credit crunch and unemployment
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/opinion/nocera-we-can-all-become-job-creators.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

We Can All Become Job Creators

By JOE NOCERA

Published: October 17, 2011

Howard Schultz. God bless him.

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Earl Wilson/The New York Times

By Joe Nocera

When last we left the chairman and chief executive of Starbucks, in mid-August, he had written a widely publicized e-mail lamenting the poisonous state of our nation’s politics. That led him to his first big idea: a call for a boycott of political contributions until Democrats and Republicans began to act in a nonpartisan way for the good of the country.

The idea had undeniable appeal. But it was also — let’s face it — pretty quixotic, fun to dream about but impossible to turn into reality.

Here we are two months later, and Schultz is back with Big Idea No. 2. It is every bit as idealistic as his first big idea, but far more practical. Starbucks is going to create a mechanism that will allow us citizens to do what the government and the banks won’t: lend money to small businesses. This mechanism is scheduled to be rolled out on Nov. 1. This time, Schultz is not tilting at windmills.

From the start, Schultz’s crusade has been focused on the need for jobs, or, as he likes to say, “the jobs emergency.” Should the government finance a sustained infrastructure program to create jobs? Of course. Should it give tax breaks to companies that hire the unemployed? Yes again. But with an election coming up, nothing of the sort is likely.

With the government a nonfactor, Schultz began mulling other ideas. He knew that small businesses created most new jobs, but that many small businesspeople couldn’t hire because they had lost access to credit after the financial crisis. He thought about Starbucks’s involvement in microlending programs in some of the countries where it bought coffee. He wondered if there was some way that that could be applied to small business lending in this country.

Finally, he thought about the nearly 7,000 Starbucks stores in the United States, and its tens of millions of customers. Surely, he mused, there must be some way to take advantage of Starbucks’s sheer size.

In late August, Schultz invited a handful of employees to his home. He told them that they were not there to discuss Starbucks business. “Let’s try to take a big swing at job creation that will be unprecedented and unorthodox,” he said. The meeting went well into the evening. Schultz served pizza.

Here’s the idea they came up with: Americans themselves would start lending to small businesses, with Starbucks serving as the middleman. Starbucks would find financial institutions willing to loan to small businesses. Starbucks customers would be able to donate money to the effort when they bought their coffee. Those who gave $5 or more would get a red-white-and-blue wristband, which Schultz labeled “Indivisible.” “We are hoping it will bring back pride in the American dream,” he says. The tag line will read: “Americans Helping Americans.”

It didn’t take long for Starbucks to find the perfect financial partner: Community Development Financial Institutions, or CDFIs. These are lenders, mostly under the radar, that specialize in underserved communities. Most, but not all, CDFIs are nonprofit, and their loan default rates are extremely low. “We specialize in expending credit, getting paid back, and paying back our investors,” says Mark Pinsky, whose organization, Opportunity Finance Network, acts as an umbrella group to the best of them.

Pinsky served on a board with a Starbucks executive. Schultz didn’t know that — indeed, he said he had never heard of a CDFI. But the young Starbucks executives charged with turning the idea into a reality soon found Pinsky — and realized that his organization was tailor-made for their project. Within a matter of days, he had met Schultz, and they had struck a deal.

Starbucks and the Starbucks Foundation will pay for the marketing costs, the wristbands and every other cost associated with the new program — which will be called Create Jobs for USA — out of its own coffers.

Here is the most beautiful part about the whole arrangement. The donations to Create Jobs for USA will not be loaned to the CDFIs. They will be turned into capital — equity that can be leveraged. Pinsky and others told me that that equity can be leveraged 7 to 1, meaning that if 10 million Starbucks customers donate $5, that will support $350 million worth of lending. That’s real money.

The Starbucks Foundation is starting things off with a $5 million donation. Schultz is hoping to convince other national retail chains to participate as well — so that Starbucks isn’t the only place people can join in the effort. And, of course, he is hoping that Starbucks customers will flock to it in droves.

So am I. With the government and banks unwilling or unable, it’s time we took matters into our own hands. At this point, who else can we count on?

Amnesty Calls on Canada to Arrest Bush - By Michel Comte -AFP

2011-10-13T22:48:00.000-07:00

Amnesty Calls on Canada to Arrest Bush

By Michel Comte

October 13, 2011 "AFP" - Amnesty International called on Canadian authorities Wednesday to arrest and prosecute George W. Bush, saying the former US president authorized "torture" when he directed the US-led war on terror.

Bush is expected to attend an economic summit in Surrey in Canada's westernmost British Columbia province on October 20.

In a memorandum submitted last month to Canada's attorney general but only now released to the media, the London-based group charged that Bush has legal responsibility for a series of human rights violations.

"Canada is required by its international obligations to arrest and prosecute former president Bush given his responsibility for crimes under international law including torture," Amnesty's Susan Lee said in a statement.

"As the US authorities have, so far, failed to bring former president Bush to justice, the international community must step in. A failure by Canada to take action during his visit would violate the UN Convention Against Torture and demonstrate contempt for fundamental human rights," Lee said.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blasted Amnesty for "cherry picking cases to publicize, based on ideology."

"This kind of stunt helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International," he said.

Kenney said it will be up to Canadian border officials to decide independently whether to allow Bush into the country.

Bush canceled a visit to Switzerland in February, after facing similar public calls for his arrest.

Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International's Canadian branch, told a press conference the rights group will pursue its case against the former US president with the governments of other countries he might visit.

"Torturers must face justice and their crimes are so egregious that the responsibility for ensuring justice is shared by all nations," Neve said.

"Friend or foe, extraordinary or very ordinary times, most or least powerful nation, faced with concerns about terrorism or any other threat, torture must be stopped.

"Bringing to justice the people responsible for torture is central to that goal. It is the law... And no one, including the man who served as president of the world's most powerful nation for eight years can be allowed to stand above that law."

Amnesty, backed by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, claims Bush authorized the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and "waterboarding" on detainees held in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency between 2002 and 2009.

The detention program included "torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (such as being forced to stay for hours in painful positions and sleep deprivation), and enforced disappearances," it alleged.

Amnesty's case, outlined in its 1,000-page memorandum, relies on the public record, US documents obtained through access to information requests, Bush's own memoir and a Red Cross report critical of the US's war on terror policies.

Amnesty cites several instances of alleged torture of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, by the US military.

The cases include that of Zayn al Abidin Muhammed Husayn (known as Abu Zubaydah) and 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, both arrested in Pakistan. The two men were waterboarded 266 times between them from 2002 to 2003, according to the CIA inspector general, cited by Amnesty.

U.S. Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy - The New York Times

2011-10-12T01:22:00.000-07:00

Comments posted on The New York Times website over article:

U.S. Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/us-accuses-iranians-of-plotting-to-kill-saudi-envoy.html#preview.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011..

1:32 PM

Thank you for your submission. Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive. An email will be sent to you at ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com (Change e-mail)

Your Submitted Comment

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Ghulam Muhammed

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Comment

Prima Facie, this could be the long-awaited conspiratorial move by neo-cons in various branches of US administration, to fine-tune a pretext, opening the first salvo against Iran, now that Israel is facing isolation of the worst kind ever experienced in its history. The time is now ripe to flex new muscles and move to start another crisis in the region to remain relevant to US warmongers. Obama is a helpless prisoner in the White House and hostage to Zionists as far as his reelection prospects are concerned. The ultimate irony is dragging of Saudi Arabian Ambassador in the conspiracy loop, to divide the region first before carrying out a war campaign against Iran. The world has seen all this coming. The news of the sting operation is patent US operation when it wants to fool its people and succumbs to Jewish Neo-con agenda to wage war in the name of security.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

--------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/us-accuses-iranians-of-plotting-to-kill-saudi-envoy.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2&pagewanted=all

U.S. Accuses Iranians of Plotting to Kill Saudi Envoy

Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador, was said to be the target of an assassination plot involving a Mexican drug cartel.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and SCOTT SHANE

Published: October 11, 2011

comments (295)

WASHINGTON — The United States on Tuesday accused Iranian officials of plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used-car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million.

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The alleged plot also included plans to pay the cartel, Los Zetas, to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina, according to a law enforcement official.

The plotters also discussed a side deal between the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Los Zetas to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico, the official said. The plans never progressed, though, because the two suspects — the Iranian-American and an Iranian Quds Force officer — unwittingly were dealing with an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who announced the murder plot at a news conference in Washington, said it was “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds Force.” He added that “high-up officials in those agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot.”

The charges heightened tensions in an already fraught relationship between Iran and the United States.

The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, said his nation was “outraged” about the accusations. In a letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Mr. Khazaee said that Iran “strongly and categorically rejects these fabricated and baseless allegations, based on the suspicious claims by an individual.”

Saudi Arabia and Iran are locked in a bitter regional rivalry, one that has intensified as they have jockeyed for influence since the political upheavals of the Arab Spring. The Saudi Embassy in Washington denounced the plot against the ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, as “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions.”

Mr. Holder’s assertion and the F.B.I.’s account of official Iranian involvement in the plot, reportedly code-named “Chevrolet,” provoked puzzlement from specialists on Iran, who said it seemed unlikely that the government would back a brazen murder and bombing plan on American soil.

Investigators, too, were initially skeptical about ties to Iran, officials said. They said, though, that the F.B.I. monitored calls to Iran about the plot and found money had been wired from a Quds Force bank account. In addition, the Iranian-American accused in the scheme, Mansour J. Arbabsiar, correctly identified a known Quds Force officer from a photo array, and his cousin — who he said recruited him for the plot — is another Quds official.

It remained unclear, though, whether the plot was conceived by a rogue element or had approval from top officials of the Revolutionary Guards or the Iranian government.

“It’s so outside their normal track of activity,” said a senior law enforcement official who had been involved in the investigation and would speak only on the condition of anonymity. “It’s a rogue plan or they’re using very different tactics. We just don’t know.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed her incredulity in an interview with The Associated Press.

“The idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?” she asked, also saying that the plot “crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.”

The State Department issued an alert on Tuesday for Americans traveling or living abroad regarding “the potential for anti-U.S. actions following the disruption” of the plot, which it said “may indicate a more aggressive focus by the Iranian government on terrorist activity.”

Mr. Arbabsiar, 56, a naturalized American citizen who lives in Corpus Christi, Tex., was named in a federal criminal complaint in New York along with Gholam Shakuri, whom the Justice Department identified as a member of the Quds Force.

Mr. Arbabsiar, who one official said sold used cars for a living, was arrested Sept. 29 at Kennedy International Airport in New York; Mr. Shakuri remains at large and is believed to be in Iran.

Minutes after the Justice Department laid out the charges, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against five people — including four “senior” members of the Quds Force, which the United States designated as a terrorist group in 2007.

White House officials said President Obama called the Saudi ambassador on Tuesday to express solidarity, saying the president “underscored that the United States believes this plot to be a flagrant violation of U.S. and international law, and reiterated our commitment to meet our responsibilities to ensure the security of diplomats serving in our country.”

Mr. Arbabsiar, who has lived in Texas for many years, made a brief appearance in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, dressed in a blue checked shirt and with a pronounced scar on his left cheek. He did not enter a plea, but his lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said after the hearing that “if he is indicted, he will plead not guilty.”
The case began in May, when a Drug Enforcement Administration informant with ties to high-level leaders of Los Zetas told agents of a bizarre conversation. He had been approached, he said, by an Iranian friend of his aunt’s in Corpus Christi — Mr. Arbabsiar — with a proposition to hire the cartel to carry out terrorist attacks inside the United States. Mr. Arbabsiar believed that the informant was an actual member of Los Zetas.

Over the next two months, Mr. Arbabsiar and the informant worked out a deal under which Mr. Arbabsiar would pay $1.5 million to Los Zetas to kill the Saudi ambassador at a restaurant in Washington, officials said.

The complaint quotes Mr. Arbabsiar as making conflicting statements about the possibility of bystander deaths; at one point he is said to say that killing the ambassador alone would be preferable, but on another occasion he said it would be “no big deal” if many others at the restaurant — possibly including United States senators — died in any bombing.

There was never any risk, officials said, because the informant was working for the drug agency, and their meetings in Mexico and telephone conversations, were being recorded by law enforcement authorities.

In early August, on a visit to Iran, Mr. Arbabsiar wired nearly $100,000 to the informant’s bank account as a down payment, according to court documents. In late September, he flew to Mexico City from Iran, intending to serve as human “collateral” to ensure that Los Zetas would be paid the rest of their money after killing the ambassador.

But the government of Mexico, at the request of the United States, denied entry to Mr. Arbabsiar and put him on a commercial flight with a stopover in New York, where he was arrested.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department released a letter to the court saying Mr. Arbabsiar had repeatedly waived his right to be quickly brought before a judge and to have a lawyer present during questioning. The letter said he had confessed to his role in the plot and had provided “extremely valuable intelligence.”

Mr. Holder said the United States “is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions” but declined to answer a question about Iranian officials’ motivation for the alleged plot.

Experts on Iran expressed astonishment at both the apparently clumsy tradecraft and the uncertain goal of the intended mayhem on United States soil.

Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian-American scholar who studies the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, said he thought it unlikely that the plot was approved at a high level by Iranian officials. “It’s not typical of the Quds Force or the I.R.G.C. to operate in the U.S., for fear of retaliation,” Mr. Nafisi said. Iran’s last lethal operation on American soil, he said, was in 1980, when a critic of the Islamic government was murdered at his Bethesda, Md., home.

Mr. Nafisi said it was conceivable that elements of the Revolutionary Guards might have concocted the plot without top-level approval, perhaps to prevent reconciliation between Iran and the United States.

But Iran’s Islamic government has a long history of attempts to eliminate enemies living overseas, said Roya Hakakian, author of “Assassins of the Turquoise Palace,” a book on the murder of four Iranians in a Berlin restaurant in 1992. A German court found that the murders were approved at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

The gunman in the Berlin killings was also accused of plotting to kill the Saudi ambassador to Sweden, Ms. Hakakian said.

Reporting was contributed by Anthony Shadid from Beirut, Lebanon; Eric Schmitt, Steven Lee Myers and Mark Landler from Washington; J. David Goodman and Benjamin Weiser from New York; and Randal C. Archibold from Mexico City.

2011-10-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

http://twocircles.net/2011oct08/islamic_exhibition_dussehra_fair_kota.html

Islamic Exhibition at Dussehra Fair in Kota

Submitted by admin7 on 8 October 2011 - 10:54pm

Indian Muslim

By TCN News,

Kota (Rajasthan): The National Dussehra Fair in Kota city of Rajasthan started with traditional zeal after burning the statue of Ravana. At the ongoing fair (5th Oct-24th Oct 2011), there is a big exhibition of Islamic books and Multimedia.

There are thousands of books in this exhibition covering different topics related to Islam. It comprises different sections like English, Urdu, Hindi and Arabic. Besides, the holy Quran is available here at least in 10 languages.

The most important part of the exhibition is that organizers display the translations of Quranic verses and Ahadees on the board in different languages, then they invite the present people --Muslims, non-Muslims -- to ask any question about Islam and if any question comes, they answer it in the light of these verses. Besides, non-Muslims buyers of the books are given 10% discount and also Hindi and English translations of the Quran are given to them.

The exhibition opens everyday at 6:00 pm and closes at 1:00 am where more than twenty five volunteers offer their services daily.
The exhibition was inaugurated on 5th Oct by Er. Khursheed Hussain, president, Jamaat-e Islami Hind Rajasthan.

Addressing a gathering on the occasion, Mr. Hussain highlighted the importance of Dawah work. “It is our primary duty to convey the message of Islam to mankind. We should adopt all resources like literature, multimedia and dialogues for this pious purpose,” he said.

The keynote speaker Dr. Mohammed Naeem Falahi said that Allah is the only creator of this universe so all of us should obey His orders. Allah has created us and the people who were before us, he added.

The function was presided over by the renowned personality of Kota, Qazi Anwaar Hussain, Chief Qazi of Kota. He threw light on Surah Al Asr and explained the basic four qualities of a successful person here and hereafter.

-------------

اگرچہ بت ہوں جماعت کی آستینوں میں
تجھے ہے حکم اذاں لا الہٰ الاللہ

The Dussehra Fair is organized by Municipal Corporation of Kota city every year since long just after Dussehra festival and ends before Diwali festival. This year it started on 5th Oct and will end on 24th Oct 2011.

Modi is anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit...and now anti-Brahmin - By Amaresh Misra

2011-10-08T07:40:00.000-07:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Modi is anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit...and now anti-Brahmin

By Amaresh Misra

Bizarre developments keep taking place in Gujarat. IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt has been arrested. Previously, on 5 February 2011, the Gujarat government issued a show cause notice to senior IPS officer Rahul Sharma.

Why did Sharma suddenly become persona non grata? Sharma, a 1992 batch IPS officer, now posted as DIG Rajkot, was DCP (control room), Ahmedabad, in April 2002. He investigated the violence at Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society. He made CDs, from AT&T and Cel-Force mobile service provider data.

These CDs contained phone records of senior ministers, police officers, and members of RSS and VHP during the 2002 riots. They disappeared mysteriously; But Sharma preserved a copy.

Interestingly, these phone records played a significant part in the arrest and the cancelling of anticipatory bails of Gujarat VHP president Jaideep Patel and minister Maya Kodnani for their role in killing Muslims during 2002 riots. They are important also in the investigation into the brutal killing of Congress ex-MP Ehsan Jafri and 30 others at Gulberg Society. The CDs also provide important pieces of evidence in the Naroda Patiya violence in which 105 Muslims were killed.

Here is a sample of what the CD contains:

12:20 HRS: Police Inspector KG Erda of Meghani Nagar sends a message to Ahmedabad police control room that a mob of around 10,000 has surrounded Gulberg Society and was pelting stones and also trying to set it on fire. Erda requests for additional forces.

12:38 HRS: A police mobile van stationed near Meghani Nagar sends a message to Ahmedabad police control room that Gulberg Society had been surrounded by a mob of 4,000 to 5,000 people.

14:05 HRS: Joint Commissioner Sector 2, MK Tandon sends a message to police control room that Ehsan Jafri has been surrounded by a mob and additional forces should be dispatched.

14:14 HRS: KG Erda sends another message to Ahmedabad police control room that a mob of 10,000 people was about to set Gulberg Society on fire and ACP, DCP and additional forces be sent immediately.

14:45 HRS: KG Erda sends yet another message that the society had been surrounded from all sides and the mob was about to set it on fire.

15:45 HRS: Tandon sends a message to control room enquiring if there was any incidence of violence at Gulberg Society (by this time the carnage was in full swing).

All this is mentioned in the SIT report submitted to the Supreme Court. The SIT states explicitly that the Gujarat Government destroyed crucial records and that Modi is “immoral” and “communal”.

The SIT report states that Sanjiv Bhatt, the deputy commissioner intelligence during 2002, admitted off the record that Modi asked government officials to let “Hindus vent their anger” in the 27^th February 2002 meeting. Modi should have been arrested and paraded in Ahmedabad as a criminal for these unconstitutional remarks. On the contrary, after arrest, Bhatt is being treated like a criminal. Mrs Shweta Bhatt, his wife, fears for his life—all this, because he would have gone on record had criminal proceedings been initiated against the Gujarat CM.

Can things get more, weird than this? Hemant Karkare, the officer who first unmasked the real, RSS face of terrorism in India was killed in mysterious circumstances, possibly by Sangh Parivar terrorists, during 26/11 in Mumbai. He was a Brahmin. Rahul Sharma and Sanjiv Bhatt are also Brahmins. Other persecuted Gujarat officers, like Satish Verma also belong to the upper caste.

Ideologically, fascism as a phenomenon seeks to re-invent tradition. Both Hitler and Mussolini were upstarts who usurped respectively, the authority of the traditional German and Italian elite. Anti-Semitism was a smokescreen for the larger agenda by these two figures to kill both the ruling and the working classes of their countries.

In a similar manner, anti-Muslim rhetoric is a smokescreen for upstart-fascist Modi to target Dalits, Adivasis and poor on one hand and Brahmins on the other. Remember, RSS and Bania-Marwari-Sindhi leaders of the BJP were never comfortable with Atal Behari Vajpeyi, the man who chided Modi for not following `Rajdharma’ in 2002.

Modi draws most of his support from refugee Punjabis, Parsis, Banias, Marwaris—forces who have money but who resent secretly, Sanatan Dharma Brahmins and their socio-political clout, and who, at the same time, are afraid of Dalits-OBCs-Adivasis one day asking for real socio-economic justice.

Since coming to power, Modi has targeted Sanatani Brahmins systematically. First RBC Kumar, a now retired IPS Brahmin officer, was persecuted. Then Pradeep Sharma, IPS, and Kuldeep Sharma, IAS, were harassed. Hiren Pandya, another Brahmin, was killed in broad daylight by assassins sent by Narendra Modi.

In an unprecedented move, Jagdish Dave, Nanu Vaidya, Pravin Raval, Deepak Bhatt, Rashmikant Trivedi and Hemang Raval—all leading luminaries of the Brahmin Ekta Samaj, an umbrella organization of 84 Gujarati Brahmin communities—have called Modi a tyrant and condemned the arrest of Sanjiv Bhatt. While calling out an all out war against Modi, these figures have welcomed efforts by secular/civil society forces/students to take up cudgels against fascism in Gujarat.

Indian fascists resent Congress because it is the only party that brings together Brahmins, Dalits and Muslims and tries, despite several mistakes, to further the difficult task of nation building in a humungous, diverse society. Recently, on the occasion of Modi completing ten years of his reign as Gujarat’s CM, the media put out the message that he is invincible. The Brahmin alienation may well start the beginning of the end of the Modi factor by 2012, when elections become due in Gujarat.

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Islamic Exhibition at Dussehra Fair in Kota

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Get out, leave Af to Pak
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