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Saturday 29 October 2011

PRICE OF DEMOCRACY - The Arab Spring may turn into a turbulent summer

PRICE OF DEMOCRACY
- The Arab Spring may turn into a turbulent summer
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray
Habib Bourguiba
The Arab Spring is sweeping away some of West Asia’s most egregious dictators. But political trends in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere suggest that the vacuum might be filled by forces that draw inspiration from the “Islam is the Solution” slogan with which Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is wooing voters for next month’s parliamentary elections.
This was inevitable. Ismail Sallabi, a cleric and military commander in eastern Libya, is quoted saying, “It is the people’s revolution, and all the people are Muslims, Islamists.” Islamization is the other side of the democracy coin. Tunisia’s founding father, Habib Bourguiba, who called the hijab an “odious rag”, was probably one of the few genuine secularists among the region’s absolute rulers. Others, Muammar Gaddafi or Saddam Hussein, were secular because they feared rival centres of power under clerics with pretensions of access to a higher court, as Reza Shah Pahlavi feared the ayatollahs.
The outcome of last Sunday’s constituent assembly election in Tunisia — the first since French rule ended in 1956 and the first, too, anywhere in the region since a vegetable seller’s protest self-immolation sparked the Arab Spring — is a straw in the wind. Tunisia has an educated population. Given Bourguiba’s legacy, a large number of Tunisians take a relaxed view of religion, drink alcohol, wear revealing clothes and rarely visit mosques. The liberal atmosphere is essential for Tunisia’s buoyant tourist industry. Western diplomats hope that being largely funded by businessmen, Rachid Ghannouchi’s Ennahda Party, which attracted the highest number of votes, will reject radicalism for pro-market economic policies. Ennahda is also expected to have to form alliances with secularist parties which may further dilute its influence.
In those years when it was forced to operate underground, Ennahda wooed ordinary Tunisians chafing under aggressively enforced secularism by promising that Islam would have a greater presence in public life. How far that legacy will force Ghannouchi’s hand (assuming he is not personally committed to Islamization though lower-level provincial leaders might be) remains to be seen but the nomination of a woman who doesn’t wear the veil to preside over the constituent assembly is regarded as an encouraging sign.
Egypt is West Asia’s next marker. Although the Muslim Brotherhood was banned in 1954, it has been allowed to operate within limits since the 1970s. Greater permissiveness since 2005, largely due to American support for domestic democracy lobbies, allowed Brotherhood members to contest elections as independents. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party hopes to win at least 40 per cent of the seats next month. Its platform seeks to quell concerns by saying it wants a pluralist democracy without seeking to impose Islamic law. Candidates are very properly committed to a “comprehensive vision” for the “Second Republic”. No one mentions a return to the Brotherhood’s fundamentalist agenda… as yet.
But even the United States of America seems reconciled to the shift for which it is largely responsible. While Hillary Clinton told Egyptian television that the US would be “willing” and “open” to working with a government that includes the Brotherhood, another American diplomat made a virtue of necessity by dwelling on the importance of being “in touch with all the emerging political forces… across the board”. Knowledge and contact help “to understand Egypt and the way the political system is developing”. He is right of course, but much more than Egypt’s future hangs in the balance.
Next door in Libya, the provenance of those who led the revolt against Gaddafi is shaping the future just as the US and Pakistan sowed the seeds of today’s violence in Afghanistan by arming and training the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets. The National Transitional Council and its chairman, Mahmoud Jibril, an American-trained economist, basked in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s embrace, while other tribal leaders proclaimed “No Foreign Intervention — Libyans Can Do It Alone.” A Muslim Brotherhood worthy led Tripoli’s municipal council. Qatar sent money and arms to Abdel Hakim Belhaj who has renamed his Islamic Fighting Group (accused of al Qaida links) the Islamic Movement for Change. Called Libya’s most powerful military leader, Belhaj now heads the Tripoli Military Council. Outlawed and persecuted under Gaddafi, his organization built up a network through mosques that no secular party can match. Jibril’s resignation after criticizing the Islamists, albeit obliquely, is attributed to Belhaj’s displeasure.
A shadowy Islamist umbrella group, Etilaf, is said to pull all the strings. Its proposedfatwa sought to bar women from driving. Some Tripoli council members want to ban theatre, cinema and arts that represent the human form. Islamists are suspected of the July murder of Abdel Fattah Younes, one of Gaddafi’s military comrades in the 1969 coup that brought him to power, who defected to the rebels in February.
Islamization is the price of democracy, but what kind of Islamization? West Asia’s dictators found it expedient from time to time to play footsie with fundamentalists but, on the whole, it was in their interest to keep Islamic militancy under stern control. Not even the most devoutly Muslim government will support al Qaida whose radical philosophy is to replace established rulers with its own caliphate. The US chose to disregard this inherent contradiction in its chargesheet against leaders who qualified for regime change for other reasons, whether for overrunning Kuwait or, as David Cameron recalled the other day, arming the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Al Qaida and the Taliban dominate one end of the Islamist spectrum. At the other is the Justice and Development Party which has governed Turkey since 2003. In between are insurgent and revolutionary groups like Jemaah Islamiah, the Salafis, Hamas and Hezbollah. None of them claims an evangelical agenda; the purpose in each case is political though with the politics often spilling across frontiers.
Not that the world needs to sit up in alarm at the prospect of a revitalized ummahcombining the prestige of the Sublime Porte with the malign effectiveness of al Qaida or the Taliban. Not yet. As Faisal Devji, the Oxford historian, points out, “[T]oday there exists no great power in the Muslim world and no centre of gravity for its politics….” Iraq and Libya — and the threat to Syria — bear out his warning that the “Ottoman Empire’s successor states would be too small and weak to stand on their own in the international arena, becoming therefore clients and proxies of distant powers, plunging the entire region into a morass of petty squabbles and descending finally into rapacious and repressive regimes”. That also applies to Afghanistan though it was never an Ottoman province.
Devji’s novel suggestion that India “as the region’s only great power, has a particular role to play as far as the politics of Islam is concerned” — meaning it should assume the mantle of successor state also in respect of David Lloyd George’s claim of British India (whose head was styled Kaiser-i-Hind against the Ottoman emperor’s Kaiser-i-Rum) being “the greatest Mahomedan power in the world” — may be for the longue durée. What is of concern is the immediate fallout. Some apologists argue that while the West associates “religious freedom” with freedom from religion, in West Asia the phrase means freedom to practise religion. So an Islamist party can be as much about rejecting Bourguiba-style forced secularism as about promoting one religion.
The politicization of religion in West Asia is bound to impact on South Asia and farther afield. In a last fling of Ottoman grandeur, the last Caliph, who was a pensioner of the Nizam of Hyderabad, wrote in 1942 applauding “the re-establishment of the sovereign rights of my disciples, the Sultans of Johore and Malacca”. Southeast Asia’s Jemaah Islamiah testifies to the linkage. Even if cross-border aggression is ruled out, the combination of politics, religion and regional, tribal and personal rivalries threatens to turn the Arab Spring into a turbulent summer. The consequences could be far-reaching.

Meet the 0.01 Percent: War Profiteers

Meet the 0.01 Percent: War Profiteers


There's the top 1% of wealthy Americans (bankers, oil tycoons, hedge fund managers) and there's the top 0.01% of wealthy Americans: the military contractor CEOs.
If you've been following the War Costs campaign, you already know that these corporations are bad bosses, bad job creators and bad stewards of taxpayer dollars. What you may not know is that the huge amount of money these companies' CEOs make off of war and your tax dollars places them squarely at the top of the gang of corrupt superrich choking our democracy. These CEOs want you to believe the massive war budget is about security -- it's not. The lobbying they're doing to keep the war budget intact at the expense of the social safety net is purely about their greed.
In many areas, including yearly CEO salary and in dollars spent corrupting Congress, these companies are far greater offenders than even the big banks like JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America.
Egregious Military Contractor CEO pay
The top 0.01% of earners make at least $9.14 million per year, a rarefied strata of income that includes defense company CEOs and Wall Street bank chieftains alike. But a deeper dive demonstrates how defense companies outpace the big banks' knack for enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Military Contractor CEO Pay in 2010
Just to put that in context, consider how these annual payoffs compare to the people we're used to thinking of as poster children for the top 1 percent:
Financial Sector CEO Pay in 2010
Considering how they stack up to financial sector heads, war industry CEOs aren't just members of the 1%; they're the super-elite among them, the one-hundredth of a percent.
Lobbying Domination
Disgusted by the overwhelming corporate influence in Congress? Look no further than the big military contractor companies, whose flagship companies spend enough on lobbying to dwarf even financial sector titans.
War Industry Lobbying Expenditures for 2010
Again, just to provide some context, here are the same lobbying totals for some of the most recognized names in the financial sector.
Financial Sector Lobbying in 2010
The war industry gets away with blowing our money on job-killing spending because it can bend Congress to its whim. In the process, the industry is like a vacuum sucking up brain power and engineering resources that could and would establish and grow entirely new wholesome industries. It's no surprise that Americans confront a 9.1% unemployment rate and an under-employment rate flirting with 20 percent this year.
Want to know where all the money went that could be putting people back to work or keeping U.S. manufacturing industries competitive? The war industry CEOs dumped lobbying cash on Congress and diverted all that wealth to their private bank accounts.
Striking a blow for democracy
The war contractors' iron grip on the wealth and politics of our country has caught the attention of our friends at Occupy Wall Street, who are targeting war profiteers in its draft list of demands with a call to bring home "all military personnel at all non-essential bases" and to end the "Military Industrial Complex's goal of perpetual war for profit."
We're allies of the Occupy movement, which swells from the 99%'s disgust and dysfunction with our system. A democracy for and of the people that favors the 0.01% at the expense of the 99.99% of us is no democracy at all.
We here at Brave New Foundation and the War Costs campaign have been inspired by the incredible work of the Occupy movement, so we created our latest video to help push this critical piece of their message: war for profit has to end. We're asking viewers to share our video with their local Occupy groups and organize a guerrilla screening at an Occupy protest in your city.
The Occupy protests have a lot to teach us, and the leaderless movement is at minimum an indictment of our political system. They've stopped whispering, and we've all started shouting.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/27/1030632/-Meet-the-001-Percent:-War-Profiteers
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India Decision To Stop Nuclear Program May Trigger Problems – Analysis


India Decision To Stop Nuclear Program May Trigger Problems – Analysis

Written by: Ria Novosti
October 28, 2011
By Konstantin Bogdanov
India is experiencing a wave of protests against the construction of Russian nuclear power plants. Public fears, fuelled by the Fukushima accident and exacerbated by the regional politicians’ populist slogans, may provoke a chain reaction of problems, hampering power generation development and depriving the Indian economy of its critical advantages over China.
Russian and Indian nuclear experts cannot meet to discuss the launch of Kudankulam NPP’s first unit because of public protests, Alexander Glukhov, the head of the Russian contractor, Atomstroyexport, told the media. This could set back the deadline for the launch of the plant, which is being built with Russia’s assistance.
Tensions in Tamil Nadu, where the nuclear power plant is being built, started growing early this year and resulted in a public blockade of the construction site by local public activists in the fall. They are protesting for environmental reasons, and their concerns have only grown following the Fukushima tragedy in Japan. Unsure of what would happen next, the Indian regulators are procrastinating with the issue of permits to commission the power plant.

Delegation Of Responsibility

The situation is further complicated by political maneuvers in Indian parliament, which has been amending and augmenting the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill for years. The current wording includes unusual provisions, in particular on the division of responsibility for the plant’s hypothetical operational accident between the operator and the general contractor. In other words, reactor suppliers will have to pay damages in case of a nuclear or radiation accident even though they have no connection to the causes of the accident.
This provision has caused great irritation among foreign operators on the Indian nuclear market, including Russia, the United States and French group Areva. The three parties, once bitter rivals on the Indian nuclear market that is too big to be serviced by any one supplier, are now unanimous in their refusal to acknowledge additional expenses.
The Indian government is advocating a balanced approach to the bill based on respect for international law, but the opposition-led parliament is unlikely to approve amendments beneficial for foreign businesses.
Indians have been eco-conscious since one of the world’s worst industrial accidents at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984, when over 3,000 people were killed on the spot and at least 15,000 died from diseases caused by chemical poisoning.
The Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill may become effective in December 2011.
The Indian government claims that the bill will not affect nuclear power plant projects, but the international nuclear businesses have hinted broadly that India will have to pay for its decision – construction costs will have to be raised to include payment for potential damage.
“To a large extent it’ll come down to individual companies making individual decisions – to evaluate the risks in this market and whether they want to be in this market or not,” The Wall Street Journal quotes Vijay Sazawal, director of government programs at the U.S. Enrichment Corp. and also a member of the U.S. Civil Nuclear Trade Advisory Committee.

Selective Anti-Nuclear Panic

Anti-nuclear sentiments started growing in India in spring 2011, when the world was shocked by reports from the Japanese Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant damaged by a tsunami after a destructive earthquake. At that time, people in Kudankulam elected a new mayor, who promised to stop the construction of the nuclear plant.
Tensions came to a head in the fall, when protesters barricaded the construction site and local workers started leaving the unfinished plant. This has had a sobering effect, because local residents’ incomes from renting out housing and selling basic necessities to the plant’s workers have plummeted over the past few months.
It is interesting that public wrath in Tamil Nadu is highly selective: people are barricading the unfinished Kudankulam power plant but feel quite indifferent about the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS), which has been in operation in Kalpakkam since the mid-1980s.
The MAPS has two heavy-water CANDU type reactors that are not as safe as Russia’s AES-92 pressurized light water reactors built for Kudankulam. It appears that people in Kalpakkam have grown used to the benefits of having a nuclear power plant, the taxes it pays to the local budget and its positive influence on the region’s economy.
Nevertheless, anti-nuclear protests in India have almost provoked a chain reaction. The authorities of West Bengal, which Communists had governed for more than three decades until May 2011, have been fighting against the Russian nuclear project in Haripur since 2009. According to the latest media reports, the West Bengal government has announced that it will not allow the construction of nuclear power plants in the province.

Everyone Will Suffer, But To A Different Degree

The local authorities, which are using populist slogans to stop the construction of nuclear plants, are depriving municipal governments of potential tax revenues and stunting economic growth in their far from rich provinces.
Refusal to modernize the nuclear industry could have far-reaching consequences for the whole of India, such as growing system-wide disproportions in the economy due to the hampered development of the power industry.
The world’s nuclear corporations will lose a prized client. What other country will have enough funds to build several dozen power units? But a much stronger blow will be delivered to India’s interests.
India has set the goal of priority industrial development, in particular in high-tech sectors, which is impossible without modern power generation, especially amid growing rivalry with China for influence in South Asia and in the global division of labor.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

Why does Spain need Morocco to free the hostages in Western Sahara?

From Pambazuka News:

Why does Spain need Morocco to free the hostages in Western Sahara?
Malainin Lakhal
2011-10-27
Surrounding the efforts to locate the two Spaniards and the Italian nationals, kidnapped last Saturday 22 October 2011 from the Sahrawi refugee camps by an unidentified group, the Spanish minister for Foreign Affairs, Trinidad Jimenez, paid a sudden visit to Morocco on Tuesday and Wednesday, to meet with her Moroccan counterpart, El Fassi El Fehri and to meet the Moroccan prime minister and the king of Morocco, Mohamed VI, according to the Moroccan newspaper Al Alam, one of the monarchy�s state media outlets. The aim of the visit was to �debate about the bilateral relations, especially in relation to the cooperation in the field of security, illegal migration, and the international narcotrafficking�.

The Spanish minister further declared that her country relies on the solidarity of the Moroccan government. According to Jimenez, Rabat expressed willingness to cooperate in the efforts to rescue the three kidnapped victims, adding that the Spanish government �is building with Morocco wide relations of coordination with regards to the war against terrorism, and this is something that can be of a great help� in this week�s unfolding events.

But of course, the very fact of organising such a visit (Jimenez�s first to Morocco and probably the last before the next elections) to discuss the mentioned subjects, and the choice of Morocco as a destination in the light of the recent kidnappings, supports the analysis we did in a previous article [Arabic], in which we wondered about the possibility of the involvement of the Moroccan secret services in this kidnapping that did not target the three kidnapped friends of the Sahrawi people as much as it targets the Sahrawi refugee camps and Polisario Front � especially that the latter is preparing its 13th Congress to take place in the liberated region of Tifariti this coming December.

Jimenez�s choice of Morocco to seek the help for the release of the three kidnapped Europeans cannot be coincidental. The current Spanish government is well positioned to know of the dubious relations that Morocco holds within the circles of the international crime and terrorist groups in the Sahel and abroad. Everyone will remember the accusations that were addressed to the Moroccan regime after the terrible terrorist attacks in Madrid that caused the defeat of the Popular Government of Jose Maria Aznar and his party in Spain. And that the Spanish Popular Party paid a heavy price for its opposition to the Moroccan thesis in Western Sahara because of its relatively active neutrality in the issue. And most important, everyone will remember that the government of Zapatero was then the biggest beneficiary of that tragic terrorist operation committed by some Moroccan terrorists. After all, Zapatero�s party won the elections mostly because of that terrible act.

On another hand, it has been widely written about following WikiLeaks� revelations regarding the suspicious ties that the generals of the Moroccan king and his close circles have with the international networks of narco-trafficking and money laundering, linking criminal groups from Colombia and other Latin America countries to Moroccan authorities, crossing North Africa and Europe to reach Egypt and Israel passing through the countries of the Sahel, especially Mali and Niger. These networks, as many security experts say, are well used by the Moroccan secret services, which operate using many Moroccan terrorists and �connections� to infiltrate terrorists groups stationed in the North of Mali.

From our perspective, one of the main goals of the Moroccan services from this peculiar relation with terrorism is to infiltrate the Sahrawi liberation movement, the Polisario Front, and the Sahrawi refugee camps, with the aim of generating problems for the Sahrawi authorities in these camps, which have been safe from any kind of security problems for the last three decades. Sahrawi refugees receive thousands of foreign visitors every year, from families to humanitarian aid workers, artists and musicians, academics and politicians from all over the world.

This said, we believe that this latest terrorist operation is aimed at targeting the Sahrawi national project, and targeting the humanitarian friends of the Sahrawi people so as to terrorise them and to force them to stop their support, humanitarian aid and political efforts in favour of the people of Western Sahara, the last colony in Africa.

We are concerned that this terrorist attack against the three friends of the Sahrawi people could be a first step in a set of ongoing operations to target Sahrawi refugee camps, and may target in a future stage not only our foreign visitors, but also some leaders and Sahrawi cadres, even ordinary citizens and refugees in an attempt to propagate fear and terror among the Sahrawi population, planting cynicism, doubt and pessimism in the hearts of the people to try to force us to give up fighting for the freedom of our country illegally occupied by Morocco.

On another hand, one can rightly say that this terrorist operation is no more than one aspect of the psychological war Morocco is waging against the Sahrawi people aiming at shaking their confidence in their political vanguard, the Polisario Front, but also shaking the confidence and maybe even belief in the reliability of the Sahrawi national goal � independence of our country, which is supported by the international solidarity movement and human rights campaigners. Morocco has repeatedly worked on aggravating tribalism/regionalism amongst Sahrawis, using all kinds of dirty tactics such as buying the allegiance of weak individuals, spreading inaccurate and poisonous information to discredit Saharawi activists, feeding individual struggles between Saarawis to create an atmosphere of disorder and lack of confidence, encouraging narco-trafficking and organised crime in addition to the regular spreading of inaccurate propaganda. All of these tactics, as it is well-known, have historically been used by all colonising powers against colonised and resisting nations.

Another indicator on the Moroccan-Spanish complicity in targeting the Polisario Front was proved when, on Tuesday in Rabat, Mrs Jimenez called on the UN to �assess the measures of security in the Saharawi refugee camps�. This claim was also echoed by her Moroccan counterpart, El Fassi El Fehri, who attributed to Algeria the full responsibility of the terrorist attack, and claimed that the region of Tindouf could not be reached by the terrorists unless Algeria and Polisario had allowed the attackers to cross the borders.

Perhaps El Fassi El Fehri means the Spanish authorities allowed the Moroccan terrorists to operate in Spain in the many terrorist attacks committed there during the last ten years? Or, that all the countries that were victim to terrorist attacks by al Qaeda or other groups were accomplices with the perpetrators? Claims such as El Fehri�s can only be qualified as absurd and unacceptable, besides the fact that experience has proved that no nation is safe from terrorist attacks, and no country can pretend to be able to face it alone or to fight against it and erase it.

Going back to the case of the three kidnapped Europeans, Spain will certainly opt for negotiations with the terrorists so as to release them, thanks of course to the �Moroccan connection�. Madrid will surrender to the conditions of Rabat as usual, and will start attacking Polisario Front and the Saharawi Republic in an attempt to show it as a weak political entity that is unable to protect its own territory. And this is a constant idea that has been defended by the Moroccan propaganda for many years, with the aim of selling to the world the story that Western Sahara can only be safe if Morocco controls it. Zapatero�s government owes to the Moroccan king such a service after all. We shall not forget that the Socialist Party will not win the coming elections, so it must end its term giving Morocco something.

Further, it is far probable that Spain will be forced to lay down arms in the future, even if the Popular Party wins. The Spanish governments knows well that the Moroccan monarchy can launch a real war against its European neighbours using narco-trafficking, terrorism and smuggling thousands of African illegal-migrants (tolerated in all the cities of Morocco waiting for the right moment to use them).

Nonetheless, the Sahrawi Republic should not be excused from failing its duty to protect its own friends, who visit our refugee camps throughout each year. The Sahrawi authorities know well that Morocco is waging a dirty war against the Sahrawi national political project and for this Polisario must adopt more vigorous measures of security to be ready for all possible scenarios that Morocco might be working on. In this respect, it is probable that the current terrorist attack is no more than a prelude to numerous other operations and propaganda to hinder the organisation of the Polisario Front�s 13th Congress in the liberated zone of Tifariti. The choice of attacking foreign aid workers is not a coincidence, Morocco wants to scare the friends of the Saharawi people from participating in the congress this December 2011.

Moreover, it is unacceptable to allow Morocco to commit all these crimes in total impunity. The international movement of solidarity ought to wage its own war of information to raise awareness about the conflict, and uncover the different Moroccan plans. Morocco must be brought to justice on its bad records of human rights violations, natural resources plundering, political oppression against Sahrawis and Moroccans. And before El Fassi El Fehri or Jimenez give advice and lessons to Sahrawis on how to protect their territory, they should first deal with their own internal failures and incompetence as two economically failed-states in the region and two States that failed to respect the international law in Western Sahara, which is another attack they make against the Sharawi�s hopes for independence of Western Sahara.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Malainin Lakhal is secretary general of the Saharawi Journalists and Writers Union, based in Rabuni, Sahrawi Refugee Camps
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/77453

THE LOKPAL BILL MAY NOT PROVIDE THE BENEFITS TOUTED BY THE ANNA BRIGADE

THE LOKPAL BILL MAY NOT PROVIDE THE BENEFITS TOUTED BY THE ANNA BRIGADE
Dr Navdeep Singh Khaira
While the Tihar Jail plays host to many VIPs on charges of corruption, the 'anti-corruption' Anna Brigade has received its fair share of controversy.
As expected, their opponents have stepped up the offensive with renewed vigour in the hope it will provide them an excuse to dilute the Lokpal Bill. Whether you are for or against Anna for his methods, no one can deny the fact that but for Anna, corruption would not have received the attention it deserves. The voices against an all-inclusive Lokpal mainly come from people who want to be excluded from scrutiny in the name of 'institutions of democracy', 'independence of judiciary', 'freedom of press', etc.
The bill may not provide the benefits touted by the Anna Brigade but the debate around it has already benefited a large number of people.
Experts are having a field day debating the pros and cons of the Anna movement.
Politicians in the opposition, who never bothered to have a Lokpal during their tenure, are attacking the UPA with the 'Anna missile'. The 'grave threats' posed by this movement to the very foundations of democracy are being highlighted by others. Those who defile Parliament day in and day out are harping on 'parliamentary supremacy'.
Politicians, who hire 'mobs' to provide 'audience' for their
political masters, are calling the movement a mobocracy.
Like the proverbial blind men, different people are interpreting the Anna elephant in different ways. Some perceive them as the RSS while others think they are leftists and Maoists.
Another set of people trying to benefit from the movement are those who are not themselves above board. They are jumping on to the Anna bandwagon to extract mileage for themselves. There are godmen, who advertise false claims about curing cancer, kidney failure. The journalists and
media are in the forefront with their 'expert' comments and 'advice'. The film stars who have no hesitation advertising goods of doubtful value just for money have not lost the opportunity to hog the limelight. LK Advani, the original 'charioteer' has started another yatra. Most such people are supporting the movement for self-projection.
And now Kiran Bedi has been found fudging figures.
The critics of Anna have not lost the opportunity to hit back once again in order to weaken the anti-corruption sentiment.
In such a situation, it is important to identify what exactly is corruption and be vigilant about people who try to use such movements for personal or political gains. Whereas it is imperative that those who talk about eradicating corruption
have to be above board, it is also important that mistakes or misdeeds of individuals are not used for weakening the movement.
The detractors of the anticorruption sentiment will do well to remember that the public anger against mismanagement and misappropriation of their wealth is not the 'creation' of Team Anna; it is the other way round. Also, neither Anna nor the public anger against the system is the creation of the media as some would have us believe. If the present leadership is not up to the mark, public sentiment will produce a new leadership sooner than later. Therefore, the time has come to tell everyone that the public sentiment cannot be wished away.
(The writer is a Ludhiana-based surgeon)

Friday 28 October 2011

MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE KASHMIRIS AND THE SIKHS


MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE KASHMIRIS AND THE SIKHS

The Consulate General of India
365 Bloor Street (East), 7th Floor
Toronto, ON
M4W 3L4

COMMEMORATION OF OCTOBER 27 AS “BLACKDAY BY THE INTERNATIONALLY DISPUTED AREAS OF JAMMU AND KASHMIR (IDA: JK) & THE SIKH NATION, PUNJAB KHALISTAN”

This is with regard to the October 27, 1947, the Black day when the Indian forces, against the wishes of the citizens of the IDA:  JK, forcefully captured and occupied the territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Consequently, on behalf of Friend of Kashmir, we would like to draw attention of the international community to the grave humanitarian crisis in the IDA: JK (occupied by the Indian administration, along with the occupation of The Sikh Nation, Punjab, 'robbed' by the 'Brahmins-Hindus' Congress Party in the late morning hours of 15th August, 1947. Since the illegal occupation, October 27, 1947 it is considered as the Black day by the citizens of the IDAJK:  the oldest, unresolved, international disputes in the world, as an agenda item of the United Nations (UN). With the passage of time, instead of finding out the will and aspirations of the  IDA:JK and The Sikh Nation, PUNJAB, through the plebiscites, India kept on cementing its illegal occupation through a fraudulent accession and military occupation, which changed this paradise on earth into a bleeding valley of Kashmir. Today, the land is referred to as the land of atrocities, brutalities and sufferings around the world. We would like to let the world know that we are determined to live freely and not under the occupation of the Indian administration as "we are not a part of India, never have been and would never be." Consequently, a tyrant unresolved dispute has resulted in immense gross human rights abuses of inhabitants of IDA: JK and The Sikh Nation, PUNJAB.

Recently, the Indian administration blessed the ISA: JK with the 'Brahmins-Hindus' Human Rights Commission, which announced 2,730 bodies have been found in unmarked graves in Kashmir. This officially confirms earlier findings by the international human rights groups. Security forces once claimed any such graves were those of unidentified militants (freedom fighters) killed in military encounters. The commission says 574 bodies have already been identified, however, as those of local villagers, and DNA tests will expose many more. This was genocide as outlined by the United Nations resolution, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group, as such”; (i) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (ii) killing members of the group; (iii) causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group; (iv) the deliberate and systematic destruction and elimination  of the group.

A government commission in IDA: JK has called for a fresh probe into the alleged mass rapes in two remote villages by Indian army personnel twenty years ago, a report said Saturday. Kashmir's State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has recommended that the government (tyrant Indian administration) set up a special team to re investigate the alleged mass gang rape of at least 31 women by Indian army personnel in 1991. In other words, it is like to "re-invent wheel." The women from the villages of Kunan and Poshpora in northern Kupwara district had claimed that these victims had been gang raped by soldiers during the night of February 23-24 in 1991, at the peak of the insurgency that erupted in 1989.

For instance, on the legal aspects of forcible occupation, Article 7 of the Indian Independence Act and Article 25, very clearly states that from 15th August 1947, “the suzerainty of His Majesty over the Indian states lapse and with it lapses all treaties and agreements enforce at the date of the passing of this Act between His Majesty and the rulers of the newly born Indian Union.” Consequent, all powers and functions, which were to be exercised by the British India Empire, in relation to the Princely States, also ceased. All agreements of British India Empire and princely states also lapsed on 15th of August 1947, following handing over executive political power to the leaders of the Indian Congress Party, then led by the Brahmins-Hindus. Since the state of Jammu and Kashmir was a Princely State with a special autonomous status, therefore, it can be very conveniently said, that on 15th day of August 1947, the Maharaja Sir Hari Singh was not the permissible ruler of the state of Jammu and Kashmir as all his treaties with British India Empire lapsed by handing over the political power. Once he (Hari Singh) was not a ruler of the state, he had no right to sign the accession document, had he signed that at all.

Additionally, the IDA: JK shares 5% of its border with the 'Brahmins-Hindus' India and Kashmir has a majority of Muslim population (more than 80%). As such, there are no similarities between the Muslims and Hindus. The latter is "neither a religion nor a culture," according to several Hindu and non-Hindu academics whereas, the followers of Islam (Muslims) are the world's third largest religion. Further, for a cow-worshipper the animal is sacred and the Muslims are 'meat-eaters, including the cow'. Muslims as against Hindus are strictly prohibited.Since 27th October, 1947 and since the deployment of the 'Brahmins-Hindus' demoncracy/democracy's armed forces, it was illegal in the State of Kashmir. Instead of nurturing the citizens of the IDA: JK, they are kept under subjugation and have been committing severe and inhuman crimes, pogroms, massacre, fake-encounter killings, rapes, dehumanization and humiliations. To say the least, the 'Brahmins-Hindus' armed forces have failed to win the hearts and minds of the citizens of the ISA: JK.

India territory of the IDA: JK and Pakistan 'agreed' to allow the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide their future in a UN supervised plebiscite. India has since gone back on that agreement. Clearly, it has done so because of certainty that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would vote against India. By going back on this ‘undertaking of the UN: SC resolution of 1948’, India has conceded that the people do not want to stay with India.

Last but not the least, in order to stop further bloodshed, India Government is asked, through Honorable Consulate General, Toronto, to vacate the IDA:JK to preserve peace, It must respect the aspirations of the citizens of the IDA:JK and the withdrawal of its army from the illegally occupied.

URGENT 25 HRDs (Save Sharmila) are in detention in police station at Manipur

Ms. Irom Sharmila Chanu, is a woman from Manipur. She is on hunger strike since the Year 2000 in Manipur against draconian law AFSPA.
SSSC (Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign) has organized a Srinagar to Imphal – Save Sharmila Jan Caravan covering 4,500 km across 10 states. The Caravan that started on Oct 16 from Srinagar and reached Manipur yesterday.
Today, 28th October about 25 people of the caravan, mainly from Gujrat, Maharastra, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh were assembled before the hospital at about 8am where Ms. Sharmila was kept. They sent request to the authority well before for permission to meet Ms. Sharmila. The request letter neither accepted nor rejected.
The police party present there did not allow them to enter the hospital. Then those people sat down in front of hospital on silent protest. But the police did not allow them to stay there. All the 25 people were arrested at about 11 am and took them Imphal East Porompat Police station under arrest.  Thre were 8 senior citizen (more than 70 years) out of them 6 were women.
As usual, Police did not issued any Memo of Arrest. Those arrestees were in complete dark about their future. Till now no case has been registered against them. Completely illegal detention in the name of “Security of the STATE”

How the Brahmins caused Downfall of Hindus

All the Hindus should Know
How the Brahmins caused Downfall of Hindus
 
    The Brahmins proudly claim that their caste was mainly responsible for propagating and preserving the glorious traditions of culture, religion and other elements of the Hindu civilization. All the bogus claims of Brahmins about their great glory are based on blatant lies and exaggerations. Actually, the defeat and downfall of the Hindus, leading to the rule of foreigners over India for many centuries, was mainly due to Brahminism or the evil ideology of the bigoted Brahmins.
 
    The Brahmins still have many superstitious beliefs and primitive practices. They falsely claim to make the exact predictions about the future with the help of astrology, palmistry and numerology. The Brahmins practise the world's most massive idolatry with the worship of 330 million Gods and Goddesses. Many Brahmins have even encouraged pornography in temples, which have nude and erotic statues of the Hindu deities. Other Brahmins have practised adultery and debauchery in the temples with the Devdaasis kept there as their prostitutes. 
 
    While pretending to be poor beggars from ancient times, the bigoted Brahmin hypocrites, had given to themselves the absolutely divine rights of the Gods on Earth, who can practise wholesale treachery to usurp the power and thrones of the Kshatriya kings, to steal the wealth of the rich Vaishyas, and to turn all the workers into Shudras or hereditary slaves.
 
    The Shudras are also considered unclean by the bigoted Brahmins, which belief gave rise to their obnoxious practice of untouchability. Shockingly, these extremely "clean" Brahmins also want all the Hindus to follow their horribly dirty and disgusting practices of drinking cow's urine and eating cow-dung and bullshit!
 
    The bigoted Brahmins favor the extremely cruel custom of Sati because they believe in constructing more and more temples to worship more and more women who burn themselves to become Satis. If there are more and more temples, the extremely greedy Brahmins can earn massive amounts of money.
 
    Even in modern times, the bigoted Brahmins still dare to shout at the top of their voices that the extremely evil caste system is one of their greatest contributions to the whole world! The bigoted Brahmins have been responsible for bringing many misfortunes to the Indian people with their unwarranted massive interference in the affairs of other castes. They don't want the other people to know that the Brahmins were mainly responsible for the defeat and downfall of the Hindus many times in India's history. The bigoted Brahmins are still stubbornly against the reforms in their beliefs and practices.
 

Extreme Debauchery of Temple Priests
 
    Most of the modern Hindus do not know that a rich Brahmin in the past, who owned a big temple, was a highly polygamous man, as he could have many wives and hundreds of concubines, including the Devdaasi prostitutes, who gave birth to his many legitimate and many hundred illegitimate children. Such debauchee Brahmins were much more polygamous than the Muslims who are allowed to have only four wives at any one time.
 
    The Brahmins had sanctioned unlimited debauchery for their own divine caste. Nothing that the Brahmins do is considered sinful or criminal by them because they claim to be divine like the Gods and Goddesses, who cannot be punished by human beings. The Brahmins believe that they cannot be accused of the crime or sin of adultery by the other Hindus, even when they are proved to be the most adulterous debauchees in the world. They can thus never commit any sin or crime, and they cannot be punished. The Brahmins have defined the sins and crimes which only the Hindus of other castes can commit, and for which the other Hindus can be punished.
 
    Nathuram Godse, who killed Mahatma Gandhi, is worshipped by the bigoted Brahmins as one of their most patriotic heroes. The bigoted Brahmins believe that it was not a crime or sin for any Brahmin like Nathuram Godse to kill a Vaishya, even if he were great or important like Mahatma Gandhi. So, the bigoted Brahmins insist that the Indian Courts had wrongly ordered the hanging of Nathuram Godse. 
 
Raavan Symbolizes Debauchery of Brahmins
 
    We must remember that in the great epic, Raamaayan, the most evil Brahmin King Raavan is described as the descendant of Brahma, whom all the Brahmins worship as their God and ancestor. The Brahmin King Raavan symbolizes the worst debauchees among the bigoted Brahmins who believe in and practise polygamy, abduction, rape, adultery, fraud,  murder and other crimes.
 
    There are many cranks among the Brahmins who still want all the Hindus to believe that their debauchee Brahmin ancestors were  responsible for saving and preserving the great culture and spiritual heritage of the Hindus! Could such debauchee Brahmins have provided the proper leadership to the Hindus? Yet, these Brahmin debauchees have the great gumption to give sermons on the lofty virtues and benefits of Brahmacharya, which is the name they use for celibacy that they themselves don't practise.
 
Fighting was very Profitable for Islamic invaders 
 
    The extremely stupid customs and practices of the Brahmin priests in the Hindu temples had made the invasion of India by the Islamic hordes a highly profitable business. In the thousands of Hindu temples, the installation of many very COSTLY idols, whose worship was preferred by the extremely GREEDY bigoted Brahmins, was one of the most important causes for the defeat of Hindus.
 
    The looting of idols made of gold, silver and precious stones gave huge funds to the Islamic invaders. The costly idols of the Hindu temples, which were not properly guarded by the cowardly Brahmins, could not have been removed in a short time during a surprise invasion.  It was easy for the invaders to attack suddenly, loot the idols and get away. The idols made ONLY from clay, stone or wood would not have provided any funds to the looting invaders. The idiotic Brahmins still don't want to accept the responsibility for causing the defeat and humiliation of the Hindus.
 
    The costly idols of numerous Hindu Gods and Goddesses in the temples contributed hugely to the defeat and downfall of Hindus in India. Again and again, the costly idols made of gold and silver, studded with precious stones, were installed in the Hindu temples, even though the Muslim invaders came again and again to loot them. The Hindu temples were like banks whose massive wealth was looted by the invaders, who used such funds later to finance the massive expansion of their armies. 
 
    It was the looted wealth which could make the Muslim invaders go on increasing the number of their soldiers to build huge armies. The invaders then used their huge armies to capture and loot more and more regions of India. In short, the Muslim invaders were cunning enough to loot the massive wealth of Hindus and later use the same looted wealth to build huge armies for defeating even the most powerful Hindu kings. Even the ordinary Hindu men, women and children were captured and sold as slaves by the Islamic invaders to make money.  
 
Cowardly Brahmins Ran Away to Save their Lives
 
    From very ancient times, the Brahmins have advocated Idol Worship and Polytheism, which have been practised on the most massive scale in India. The magnitude of such practices has never been seen or heard anywhere else in the world. It was, and it still is, an extremely profitable business for the Brahmins to have millions of temples for worshipping the 330 million Hindu Gods and Goddesses.
 
    The Brahmins of the ancient and medieval periods only knew how to enjoy at the cost of money and lives of the other Hindus. They wanted many costly idols in their temples to attract more and more rich devotees to get vast amounts of money from them. But enough money was not spent by the greedy Brahmins to hire more soldiers as guards and to buy more arms. Instead, many Brahmins had turned their temples into brothels by keeping many Devdaasis as their prostitutes to satisfy their lust at a huge cost recovered from the devotees visiting the temples. The erotic statues in many old temples clearly suggest what exactly the Brahmins were doing in them, and how they were enjoying with their Devdaasi prostitutes for producing many illegitimate children.
 
    There could not have been large standing armies to defend all the temples all the time. When the temples came under a sudden attack, the debauchee Brahmin priests did not themselves fight to guard the temples. They just ran away to save their lives and expected only the few Kshatriya guards to die for defending the temples. The cowardly Brahmins left even the Devdaasis to their fate, only to be captured and raped by the Muslim invaders. Even the wives and concubines of the polygamous Brahmins got raped if they lacked the courage to commit Jauhar or mass suicide to avoid being captured by the Muslim invaders.
 
    There are many instances in Indian history, when many cowardly Brahmin priests even became Muslim and Christian priests who pretended to believe in the Quran and the Bible. It is commonly known that such bigoted Brahmins even took their evil caste system to the Muslim and Christian communities. They have continued to call themselves Brahmin Muslims and Brahmin Christians, as their bigoted Brahminism dies very hard.
 
Brahmins made Victory Easy for Muslim Invaders  
 
    To raise an army, huge funds are required for hiring the soldiers and for buying arms, ammunition and food. By installing the costly idols, the Brahmin priests had made the thousands of temples of medieval India very lucrative sources for the Muslim invaders to get such funds quite easily.
 
    It did not matter to the ruthless Islamic invaders whether they won their battles and wars by fair means or foul. Only the victory mattered to the Muslim invaders who did not believe in following any principles or morals. So the Islamic invaders launched many sudden attacks, without any warning, and also resorted to looting, abducting and raping.  
 
    The Hindus could never launch sudden attacks against the Muslims because the Hindu kings had to wait for the stupid Brahmins, who used their most idiotic astrology for the determination of auspicious time for the attacks. While the invaders could launch their surprise attacks on any day or night at the time most favorable for giving them victory, the Hindus had to wait indefinitely to get the sanction from the stupid Brahmins for launching an attack. Before deciding the auspicious time for an attack, the crazy Brahmins would first make many complicated astrological calculations, recite many stupid mantras for long periods, and perform unnecessary Havans just to extract the maximum amount of money from the Hindu kings. It was also very difficult to keep secret any attack planned by a Hindu army, especially if any Havan was performed before launching such an attack. 
 
    Even as the scorched-earth policy during any war, the Hindus were not allowed to kill the cows and other domestic animals, which were like mobile food factories readily available to the Islamic invaders. The Islamic invaders could always get plenty of highly nourishing protein-rich food for their armies, without much effort, just by killing the cows and other animals.
 
    The Brahmins had sanctioned Jauhar or the mass suicide of Hindu women belonging to the losing Hindu kingdoms. The Hindu women could be burned by the losing kingdoms, but the cows would not be killed even to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Islamic invaders. Because of the religious injunctions of the stupid Brahmins, the cows had to remain alive till they were killed by the Islamic invaders to be eaten as beef.
 
Chhatrapati Shivaji & Maharaja Ranjit Singh
 
    Only in later period, came the great Shivaji who could launch sudden guerrilla attacks at the time of his choosing against his targeted enemies. Shivaji employed very effective tactics against the Muslim rulers and succeeded in ransacking their forts and palaces to get large funds for his Maratha army.
 
    Shivaji would not wait to consult the Brahmins for knowing the auspicious time based on their stupid astrological calculations and for the prolonged chanting of their stupid mantras during the Havans. He did not believe in the never-ending mantras and Havans, which the extremely greedy Brahmins had been using to loot the other Hindu kings of their wealth. That was the reason why the Maratha Brahmins did not like the great warrior. The Maratha Brahmins had even refused to conduct the ceremony of Shivaji's coronation as the Chhatrapati.  
 
    Like Chhatrapati Shivaji, Maharaja Ranjit Singh also succeeded precisely because he too did not depend on the Brahmins and their idiotic astrology to launch his military campaigns.
 
Treacherous Divide & Rule Policy of Brahmins 
 
    For their own extremely selfish interests, the bigoted Brahmins have followed the Divide and Rule Policy ever since they created the caste system in ancient India many thousand years back. It does not matter for the bigoted Brahmins whether the highly divisive caste system has always weakened the Hindu community and even brought India under the rule of foreigners for many centuries. 
 
    The caste system of the bigoted Brahmins had prevented the Vaishyas and Shudras from fighting against the invaders. For thousands of years, the worst atrocities were committed against the untouchable lower castes at the behest of the extremely arrogant Brahmins. The bigoted Brahmins want to continue the highly divisive hereditary caste system because they staunchly believe that their caste is divine, and they must be worshipped as the Gods on Earth by all the other castes of the Hindu community.
 
Brahmins caused Decline & End of Maratha Empire
 
    With their Divide and Rule policy, the treacherous Brahmins had shamelessly usurped the power of Maratha kings and established the rule of Peshwas over the Maratha empire. During the rule of the Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao, the incompetent and arrogant Brahmin Sadashiv Rao Bhau, who was the Chief of the Maratha army, caused the most humiliating defeat of the Marathas in the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, which they fought against Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan.
 
    The Brahmin commanders had gone to fight the Third Battle of Panipat in grand style, as though they were going for a great picnic for enjoyment. They had even taken their wives and mistresses along with all their gold jewellery and best dresses. The Brahmin commanders had taken along about 300,000 non-combatant civilians, which included singers, dancers, musicians, jokers and flatterers of all types, to make such huge crowds wittness their brave deeds and the great and magnificent victory, which they were absolutely certain of getting as their divine right! 
 
    In the Third Battle of Panipat, the Brahmin military commanders brought to the Marathas their most disastrous defeat in history because of the stupid military strategy based on their extreme Brahmin arrogance. As they believed in having divine intelligence, the bigoted Brahmins stubbornly refused to listen to the sound advice given to them even by many Kshatriya leaders who were highly experienced experts in military strategy.
 
    The rout of the Marathas was so complete in the Third Battle of Panipat due to the extremely bad leadership of the Brahmins like Sadashiv Rao Bhau that many Maratha soldiers had to flee the battlefield leaving all their arms and clothes behind. The Maratha soldiers and generals captured by the Afghans were all mercilessly slaughtered. The Marathas had to pay a terribly heavy price for their extremely stubborn Brahmin commanders who had rejected the sane advice of their Kshatriya friends and well-wishers.
 
    What happened to the 300,000 Maratha civilians who had gone to cheer and clap for the spectacular deeds of divine heroes of the Brahmin caste? Some of the civilians escaped, but many of them got killed. Many others, particularly women and children, were captured and taken as slaves to Afghanistan. That was really a very massive human tragedy, which was caused by the bigoted Brahmin commanders who vainly tried to prove themselves as some type of powerful Gods on Earth.
 
    The bigoted Brahmins reversed for ever the glorious tradition of great victories that the Marathas had won on the battlefield for many decades. The decline which in some years led to the end of the Maratha power, and also the Hindu power, in India was definitely caused by the bigoted Brahmin Peshwas and Brahmin commanders of the Maratha army. 
 
Bigoted Brahmins Practise Character Assassination
 
    To denigrate the royal family of Marathas, some bigoted Brahmins had even dared to cast aspersions on the character of Jijabai, the revered mother of Chhatrapati Shivaji who had founded the Maratha empire. In recent times also, the Brahmins have deliberately and maliciously resorted to their evil practice of character assassination of the great leaders from other castes such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and many others.
 
    Even if they have the most pleasant manners, the bigoted Brahmins are mentally and ideologically some of the most merciless fascists and totalitarians in the world. What can the Hindus expect from the Brahmin community which proudly worships the bigoted Brahmin Nathuram Godse who murdered Mahatma Gandhi? Why did Godse kill Mahatma Gandhi? The bigoted Brahmin Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi only because he was a Vaishya who had become too important and too popular for the comfort of all the bigoted Brahmins. By killing Mahatma Gandhi, Godse helped a fellow Brahmin, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, to consolidate the rule of Brahmins over India.
 
    The corrupt, depraved and inferior ideology of Brahmins cannot save the Hindus from defeat and downfall even in the modern times. However, the bigoted cranks still bask in their false glory and want to grab power again by any crooked means to bring more problems and misery to all the Hindus. The bigoted Brahmins have again started talking proudly of their evil caste system, which they claim to be one of their greatest contributions to the whole world.
 
    The bigoted Brahmins still want to justify the Devadaasi system, their practice of adultery and polygamy, the custom of sati, idolatry and the massive polytheism involving the worship of 330 million Gods and Goddesses. They continue to believe in their divinity and advocate the worship of Brahmins as the Gods on Earth who can treat all the working class people as Shudras or hereditary slaves. They also want all the Hindus to drink cow's urine and eat bullshit. In short, the bigoted Brahmins want to bring back the same old fascism and totalitarianism of their bigoted ancestors. If they have their way, such bigoted Brahmins can only bring many more misfortunes and disasters to India.