You are currently browsing the Jay’s Blog weblog archives for October, 2009.
31. October 2009 by admin.
” This is not a book about Islam or Muslims in general. It is about the threat from Shariah Islam and violent jihad propagated by a criminal class of Muslims known as the Muslim Brotherhood or the “Ikhwan mafia”. This secretive organization dominates most established Muslims groups and mosques in America while exploiting, manipulating, and even victimizing law-abiding Muslim Americans. Only a small share of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are part of this dangerous group.This book is about them.”
(Note of caution from the authors in the front of the book.)
I have just finished the controversial new book entitled: “Muslim Mafia-Inside the secret underworld that’s conspiring to Islamize America”. It is written by P. David Gaubatz and Paul Sperry. It is a book that should be read by every American. The allegations contained therein are alarming, to say the least.
David Gaubatz, a former agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations has centered this book around the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the most well-known Muslim advocacy group in America. As part of the research, Gaubatz’s son, Chris, posing as a Muslim convert, went to work as an intern in CAIR’s national hqs, where he came into possession of numerous documents he had been assigned to shred. It is this book that has led to a group of Republican congressmen and women to demand an investigation into the organization. One of the congresswomen, Sue Myrick, wrote the foreword to the book.
According to the authors, CAIR is one of several subversive organizations in this country-along with the Islamic Society of North America and the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, that is trying to bring about an Islamic nation in America under Shariah law through a variety of long-term methods, including phony out-reach programs, education, political connections, lawsuits, intimidation and infiltration of American institutions. CAIR was identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the recent Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas, which exposed certain Islamic charities as fronts for transferring money to Jihadist groups oversees as well as Hamas.
The book is also based on interviews with numerous law enforcement agencies, on and off the record.
CAIR denies the content of the book and has launched a public relations drive to discredit David Gaubatz as an Islamophobe, which can be found on their website.
Of course, a book does not constitute a criminal conviction in a court of law, and the reader should keep that point in mind. But if there is anything to the book’s allegations, then it would be incumbent for the government to investigate CAIR and its associates as a matter of urgent national security. If the allegations are untrue, I have faith in our institutions that this would come out. I would also add, as a responsible citizen, that this should be no reason for anyone to harass or otherwise victimize innocent Muslim Americans.
However, there must be an investigation.
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31. October 2009 by admin.
Note the egregious, completely gratuitous attack on Rifqa Bary and defense of Islam at the end of this story. The mainstream media continues to feel itself compelled to run interference for Muslims as a group whenever a Muslim behaves badly — a courtesy they never accord to other groups. An update on this story.
“Muslim Father Arrested for Running Over ‘Westernized’ Daughter: Cops Capture Iraqi Immigrant Accused of Attempted Honor Killing,” by Sarah Netter for ABC News, October 30 (thanks to Paul):
A 10-day manhunt ended when police arrested an Iraqi immigrant accused of running over his 20-year-old daughter to punish her for becoming “too Westernized” and rebuffing the conservative ways he valued. Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled from Peoria, Ariz on Oct. 20. He was arrested by U.S. Marshalls in Atalanta when he arrived at the airport there, according to the Associated Press.
His daugher Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, remains hospitalized in critical condition after her father hit the young woman and her boyfriend’s mother with his Jeep Cherokee on Oct. 20 in the parking lot of theDepartment of Economic Development in Peoria.
Noor Faleh Almaleki is in “life-threatening condition,” Peoria Police spokesman Mike Tellef told ABCNews.com last week soon after the incident.
Her boyfriend’s mother, 43-year-old Amal Edan Khalaf, is also still hospitalized, but with non-life threatening injuries. “It occurred because her not following traditional family values. We’ve been told that by everybody,” Tellef said. “He felt she was becoming too westernized and he didn’t like that.”…
“Traditional family values.” As if Noor Almaleki were a wayward Methodist. And of course, Christian fathers run down their daughters regularly for not following “traditional family values,” don’t they? What’s that? They don’t? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?
Noor Almaleki had backed out of an arranged marriage about a year ago, police learned, and had been living with Khalaf and her son in a nearby town. Tellef said the young woman dressed in American clothing and was wearing typical Western attire when she was struck….
Honor Killings Unfairly Cast Negative Light on Islam
The notion of an honor killing — Muslim men murdering female relatives for dishonoring the family by violating Islamic tenets — made the news over the summer when 17-year-old Rifqa Bary ran away from her parents in Ohio and turned up in the Florida home of Christian pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz. Rafqa Barry claimed that her Muslim father had threatened to kill her for converting to Christianity.
Rifqa made tearful television appearance, crying on the Lorenzes shoulders, describing how she had to sneak around to attend church.
“They have to kill me because I’m a Christian. It’s an honor [killing]. If they love me more than God, then they have to kill me,” she told ABC’s Orlando affiliate WFTV last month.
Blake Lorenz pointed to other honor killings, including the January 2008 murders of two Texas sisters who were believed to have been murdered by their Muslim father in a religion-fueld rage.
But Rifqa’s father, Mohamed Bary, denied the accusation and said that while he preferred his daughter be a Muslim, she was free to practice whatever religion she chose.
“I don’t believe my daughter would say this,” Bary told “Good Morning America.” “She’s completely being coached — I mean trained, influenced by these people. It’s so sad.”
A Florida judge this month said he planned to send Rifqa back to Ohio after determining there was no evidence that her life was in danger.
Why is this in this article? And what is the evidence that anyone who investigated the threat to Rifqa even knew what to look for in terms of evidence that her life was in danger? As Pamela Geller shows here, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement was outstandingly clueless when interviewing Rifqa.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/10/caught-muslim-father-who-attempted-honor-killing-in-arizona.html
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31. October 2009 by admin.
By Scott Stewart
The Islamabad office of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) was struck by a suicide bomber just after noon local time Oct. 5. The bomber, who wore an improvised explosive device (IED) concealed under his clothing, was wearing the uniform of the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary force, and reportedly made his way past perimeter security and into the facility under the ruse of asking to use the restroom. Once inside the facility, he detonated his explosive device, killing five WFP employees — one Iraqi national and four locals — and injuring six others.
The attack, claimed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), would be the first successful TTP attack in Islamabad since June 6, and the first attack against Western interests in a Pakistani city since the June 9 attack against the Pearl Continental hotel in Peshawar using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED).
In his Oct. 6 call to The Associated Press and other media outlets to claim responsibility for the attack, TTP spokesman Azam Tariq said the group is planning additional attacks against similar targets. “The WFP is promoting the U.S. agenda,” Tariq said, and “such types of suicide attacks will continue in the future. We will target all people and offices working for American interests. We have sent more suicide bombers in various parts of the country and they have been given targets.”
The WFP office in Islamabad is located in an upscale part of town but outside of the diplomatic enclave. While the roads leading into the area are blocked by police checkpoints, the sector is not nearly as heavily locked down as the diplomatic enclave, which made it easier for an attacker to approach the WFP office. The office does have an exterior security wall, but that wall provides very little standoff — in other words, there is not much distance between the building and the road. From an attacker’s perspective, the WFP is a far softer target than a facility such as the U.S. Embassy, which has a significant standoff.
The only thing that provides protection from a large explosive device is distance, and due to the small amount of standoff at the WFP office, if that office had been attacked using a large VBIED like the one used in the September 2008 attack against the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, the attack would have been devastating. However, the attack against the WFP office was not conducted with a massive device but with a small one. It appears that the pressure the Pakistani government has placed upon the TTP (with U.S. assistance) has reduced the group’s ability to conduct high-profile attacks. Indeed, following the attack on the Pearl Continental hotel, there had been a noticeable lull in the TTP’s operations — even before the Aug. 5 death of TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. missile strike. The WFP bombing serves as a message that while the TTP is down, it is not yet out and more low-level attacks can be expected in the near term.
Small-scale attacks like the one the TTP launched against the WFP office are relatively easy to conduct and require very few resources. This makes them far easier to sustain than large-scale VBIED attacks. The approximately 2,000 pounds of explosives used in the massive VBIED deployed against the Islamabad Marriott could be used to create scores of suicide IEDs like the one used against the WFP. There has been a trend in the last few years in which militant groups have shifted away from larger devices in favor of smaller ones.
This trend is especially noticeable when the group is under intense pressure, like Tanzim Qaedat al-Jihad in Indonesia (and the TTP at the present time). Small-scale attacks require fewer resources, and smaller devices can be built and transported more clandestinely than huge VBIEDs. They can also be manufactured more quickly, which allows for a higher tempo of operations. However, these smaller devices must be used in a different type of attack and are often taken into the targeted site using a ruse, like a Frontier Constabulary uniform in Islamabad; posing as hotel guests and workers in Jakarta; or even hidden inside the bomber’s body, as we saw in Saudi Arabia on Aug. 28.
In the wake of the WFP attack and the TTP’s warning that more attacks are coming, security measures at the offices of humanitarian aid, intergovernmental, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are certain to be inspected and tightened up (at least until complacency sets in) to protect against this type of ruse attack using a small suicide device.
One of the other advantages of using these small devices is that they provide attackers a great deal of flexibility in employing them — a flexibility that is often used to bypass security measures. However, identifying gaps in security requires surveillance — often extended surveillance — and during that surveillance attackers are susceptible to being identified.
Historically, aid organizations simply do not have the security budget to afford the types of physical security equipment and guard coverage afforded to embassies or even commercial establishments like large hotels, and this makes them relatively soft targets. But even if these offices are hardened by increased security and by proactive measures such as employing countersurveillance teams and the offices thus become more difficult to strike using small devices, the employees of these organizations will remain vulnerable as they do their work in the field.
By its very nature, the work conducted by an aid group is very different from that conducted by a diplomatic mission. While diplomats like to travel to different parts of the country they are assigned to and meet with a variety of people, their primary mission is to be the representatives of their home government to the foreign government where they are assigned and accredited. This means that, while they may balk at strict security measures, they can still perform many of their functions in dangerous locations like Islamabad or Baghdad, even though their movement outside of the embassy is tightly restricted and requires considerable security. The same is simply not true for organizations like the WFP, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Doctors Without Borders or the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), among others. These organizations exist to bring shelter, food and medicine to refugees and displaced people, and such people are often found in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. This means that aid employees are very vulnerable to being targeted when they are outside of their offices.
Last October, STRATFOR discussed the growing trend of jihadists attacking aid workers and the tension the trend was creating among jihadist ideologues. Some ideologues, such as Isam Mohammed Taher al-Barqawi, more popularly known by the nom de guerre Abu-Muhammad Asem al-Maqdisi, have taken a clear stand against targeting “genuine” humanitarian organizations. In his writings, al-Maqdisi has specifically referred to the International Committee of the Red Cross, noting how it is a legitimate humanitarian organization with no hidden agenda and that its valuable services to the poor and dispossessed should be appreciated.
However, many jihadist leaders do not differentiate between the political aspect of the United Nations and the separate organizations that operate under the aegis of the United Nations for humanitarian purposes, such as the WFP, UNHCR, UNDP and UNICEF. In addition to the Oct. 6 message from the TTP spokesman who noted that the WFP is an infidel organization that promotes the U.S. agenda, other jihadist leaders have also spoken out against the United Nations. In an April 2008 speech, al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said, “The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: It is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims’ lands.”
Clearly, over the past year this ideological battle inside jihadist circles has been decided in favor of those who advocate attacks against humanitarian workers, since such attacks are increasing — and the problem is not just confined to Pakistan. A recent report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office noted that attacks against aid workers in Afghanistan are twice as frequent as they were last year — and 2008 had seen significantly more fatalities than 2007 — so things are clearly getting worse there, and the Afghan Taliban are launching more frequent ambushes and roadside IED attacks against clearly marked white aid vehicles. In Pakistan, at least three UNHCR employees have been assassinated so far this year, and a UNHCR employee and UNICEF employee were among those killed in the June bombing of the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar. The Pearl was essentially the headquarters for many of the aid organizations in Peshawar. Outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, aid workers also have been attacked in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, among other places.
For these aid workers, the perception by groups like the Afghan Taliban, the TTP and al Qaeda that they are a part of the U.S. agenda — and this translates into a war against Islam — means that they will be targeted for attacks.
The increase in attacks has often led to the drawdown of Western aid employees in a given country, and this has forced these organizations to rely heavily on local, mainly Muslim, employees to conduct most of the relief work in the most dangerous places. However, the track record over the past few years has demonstrated that local employees are every bit as likely to be targeted as their Western colleagues. This is in part due to the fact that jihadists declare that all Muslims who work with infidels are apostates and therefore no better than infidels themselves. (This is called the doctrine of Takfir, or apostasy, and the fact that the jihadists claim to have the ability to declare another Muslim an apostate is very controversial within Islam, as is the killing of non-combatants such as humanitarian workers.)
In Pakistan, local aid workers are dedicated to reaching the hungry, sick and dispossessed people they serve, and this makes them extremely vulnerable to attack because they operate in some very remote and dangerous places. They are far more likely to be working outside of the larger, more secure organizational offices and in smaller, more vulnerable clinics and food distribution points. Because of this, there is a high likelihood that if the organizational offices present too hard a target, these lower-level aid workers and smaller aid distribution points could be targeted in lower-level TTP attacks. This would be part of the TTP effort to derail what it perceives as the U.S. agenda to stabilize (or, in the TTP’s eyes, influence and control) Pakistan by providing aid to the people displaced by the fighting between the government of Pakistan and the TTP and its foreign allies.
Such attacks will hurt the TTP as far as public opinion goes, as have its attacks in Islamabad, Peshawar and elsewhere. But in light of the losses it has taken on the battlefield in places like Swat and in light of the coming offensive in South Waziristan, the TTP’s priority is to prove that it is still a force to be reckoned with — and more important, negotiated with. So the attacks will continue, and we can anticipate that many of them will be against humanitarian workers.
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29. October 2009 by admin.
Godse (Gandhi’s assassin) is often a misunderstood character. He is referred to as a Hindu fanatic. It is often hard to understand Godse because the Government of India had suppressed information about him. His court statements, letters etc. were all banned from the public until recently.
Judging from his writings one thing becomes very clear - He was no fanatic. His court statements are very well read out and indicate a calm and collected mental disposition. He never even once speaks ill about Gandhi as a person, but only attacks Gandhi’s policies which caused ruin and untold misery to Hindus. Another interesting point to note is that Godse had been working with the Hindu refugees fleeing from Pakistan. He had seen the horrible atrocities committed on them. Many women had their hands cut off, nose cut off, even little girls had been raped mercilessly. Despite this Godse did not harm even single Muslim in India which he could easily have.
So it would be a grave mistake to call him a Hindu fanatic.
Let us start by studying the motive behind Godse’s act. By seeing the nature of the assassination in public space and Godse’s act of turning himself over to the Police, we can see that Godse did not do this for personal reasons. He very well knew that he would be hanged and his name would be disgraced as Gandhi was considered a saint. And again Godse could have ran away and escaped punishment. But he did the reverse. He called a police officer and courted arrest. Before we proceed, it would be wise to understand the backdrop of the assassination.
The central government had taken a decision — Pakistan will not be given Rs 55 crores. On January 13 Gandhi started a fast unto death that Pakistan must be given the money. On January 13, the central government changed its earlier decision and announced that Pakistan would be given the amount. On January 13, Nathuram decided to assassinate Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was a learned man, very sharp and intelligent - editor of “Agrani” (one of the most famous newspaper of that time - with Nana Aapte). In his last editorial of “Agrani” which he changed overnight - he said “Gandhi must be stopped - at any cost” and he justified why Gandhiji’s assassination was not only inevitable but also a delayed action, that shud’ve happened LONG AGO. In Nathuram’s words - “ I don’t refute Gandhi’s theory of non-violence. He may be a saint but he is not a politician. His theory of non-violence denies self-defence and self-interest. The non-violence that defines the fight for survival as violence is a theory not of non-violence but of self-destruction.The division of the nation was an unnecessary decision. What was the percentage of the Muslim population as compared to the population of the nation? There was no need for a separate nation. Had it been a just demand, Maulana Azad would not have stayed back in India. But because Jinnah insisted and because Gandhi took his side, India was divided, in spite of opposition from the nation, the Cabinet. An individual is never greater than a nation. In a democracy you cannot put forward your demands at knife-point. Jinnah did it and Gandhi stabbed the nation with the same knife. He dissected the land and gave a piece to Pakistan. We did picket that time but in vain. The Father of our Nation went to perform his paternal duties for Pakistan! Gandhi blackmailed the cabinet with his fast unto death. His body, his threats to die are causing the destruction — geographical as well as economical — of the nation. Today, Muslims have taken a part of the nation, tomorrow Sikhs may ask for Punjab. The religions are again divided into castes, they will demand sub-divisions of the divisions. What remains of the concept of one nation, national integration? Why did we fight the British in unison for independence? Why not separately? Bhagat Singh did not ask only for an independent Punjab or Subhash Chandra Bose for an independent Bengal? I am going to assassinate him in the open, before the public, because I am going to do it as my duty. If I do it surreptitiously, it becomes a crime in my own eyes. I will not try to escape, I will surrender and naturally I will be hanged. One assassination, one hanging. I don’t want two executions for one assassination and I don’t want your involvement, participation or company. (This was for Nana-Apte and Veer Savarkar as they were against ghandhi’s policies too, Godse wanted to assassinate gandhi all by himself and took promise from Nana Apte that he will continue helping Veer Savarkar in rebuilding India as a strong free nation.) On January 30, I reached Birla Bhavan at 12 pm. Gandhi was sitting outside on a cot enjoying the sunshine. Vallabhbhai Patel’s granddaughter was sitting at his feet. I had the revolver with me. I could have assassinated him easily then, but I was convinced that his assassination was to be a punishment and a sentence against him, and I would execute him. I wanted witnesses for the execution but there were none. I did not want to escape after the execution as there was not an iota of guilt in my mind. I wanted to surrender, but surrender to whom? There was a good crowd to collect for the evening prayers. I decided on the evening of January 30 as the date for Gandhi’s execution. Gandhi climbed the steps and came forward. He had kept his hands on the shoulders of the two girls. I wanted just three seconds more. I moved two steps forward and faced Gandhi. Now I wanted to take out the revolver and salute him for whatever sacrifice and service he had made for the nation. One of the two girls was dangerously close to Gandhi and I was afraid that she might be injured in the course of firing. As a precautionary measure I went one more step ahead, bowed before him and gently pushed the girl away from the firing line. The next moment I fired at Gandhi. Gandhi was very weak, there was a feeble sound like ‘aah’ (There are proof that Gandhi did NOT say “Hey Raam” at that time - it’s just made up stuff ) from him and he fell down. After the firing I raised my hand holding the revolver and shouted, ‘Police, police’. For 30 seconds nobody came forward and I scanned the crowd. I saw a police officer. I signalled to him to come forward and arrest me. He came and caught my wrist, then a second man came and touched the revolver… I let it go…” Forgotten Heros: [Veer Savarkar, Lala lajpatrai, Subhashchandra Bose, Bhagatsingh, Rajguru, Tansirani, Shivaji, Rana Pratap and thousands of other freedom fighters] Dirty politicians will only teach us only about gandhi and one sided ahimsa.
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28. October 2009 by admin.
Image courtesy: ZIM/Offstumped.
The recent elections in Maharashtra which the secular parties won, brought out in full view the malignant tumor that is growing across the country. The poster above was used in election campaign by one Sayyad Abdul Qadir Aamir (Qadir Maulana) - who stood on a Cong/NCP ticket from Aurangabad. His message promises to bring back the era of Amanulla, erase the signs of Shiv Sena from the city (with “Hindus” in parenthesis to avoid any confusion). He also claims to have been sent by Allah to hoist the Islamic flag over the land of Aurang(abad) - perhaps the last point refers to the Mughal emperor after whom the city was named. At this point the clueless types will ask: what was the Election Commission doing? While Qadir Maulana did not win the election, another Imam did:
The electorate at Malegaon, terror struck or otherwise, certainly was not lovestruck with the secular party despite the party’s constant overtures to them. Despite being Muslims, the candidates from two secular parties lost out. Another way of looking at it is that the electorate chose a candidate who is fundamentally closer to religion, being an Imam and all that. While the TV pundits etc. continue to peddle English press friendly analysis, the sad reality is that we may not really have the right conditions for the sort of secular society they have in mind. The secular party is just an interim arrangement of convenience - |
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http://barbarindians.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html
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28. October 2009 by admin.
Have you ever wondered what are Sachar Committee recommendations for Indian Muslim Here are the detail are as written by Arun Shourie Read it. It will blow you away!!!
Note: The Rajinder Sachar Committee, appointed by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India was a High Level Committee For Preparation of Report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India. It prepared its report in November 2006 and tabled it in Parliament on 30 November 2006.[1] It has come-up with this report with suggestions and solutions to include and mainstream Indian Muslims. Headed by Justice Rajinder Sachar, there were six other members : Shri Sayyid Hamid, Dr T.K. Ooman, Shri M.A. Basith, Dr Akhtar Majeed, Dr Abu Saleh Shariff and Dr Rakesh Basant. Dr Syed Zafar Mahmood was the civil servant appointed by the PM as Officer on Special Duty to the Committee. (wikipedia)
The full article is here from Arun Shourie in Indian Express. The mind boggling level of muslim appeasement by Congress led UPA can be seen by the recommendations below by the Sachar Commission:
•‘Recognition of the degrees from madrassas for eligibility in competitive examinations such as the civil services, banks, defence services and other such examinations’!
•It recommends that government use public funds to encourage formation of Muslim NGOs and their activities. •It recommends that government provide financial and other support to occupations and areas in which Muslims predominate. •It recommends that Muslims be in selection committees, interview panels and boards for public services. •It recommends that a higher proportion of Muslims be inducted in offices that deal with the public — ‘the teaching community, health workers, police personnel, bank employees and so on.’ •It recommends ‘provision of ‘equivalence’ to madrassa certificates/degrees for subsequent admissions into institutions of higher level of education.’ •It recommends that banks be required to collect and maintain information about their transactions — deposits, advances — separately for Muslims, and that they be required to submit this to the Reserve Bank of India! •It recommends that advances be made to Muslims as part of the obligation imposed on banks to give advances to Priority Sectors. •It recommends that government give banks incentives to open branches in Muslim concentration areas. •It recommends that, instead of being required to report merely ‘Amount Outstanding’, banks be told to report ‘Sanctions or Disbursements to Minorities’. •It recommends that financial institutions be required to set up separate funds for training Muslim entrepreneurs, that they be required to set up special micro-credit schemes for Muslims. •It recommends that all districts more than a quarter of whose population is Muslim be brought into the prime minister’s 15-point programme. ‘There should be transparency in information about minorities in all activities,’ the Committee declares. ‘It should be made mandatory to publish/furnish information in a prescribed format once in three months and also to post the same on the website of the departments and state governments…’
•It recommends that for each programme of government, data be maintained separately about the extent to which Muslims and other minorities are benefiting from it. But it is not enough to keep data separately. Separate schemes must be instituted. •It recommends that special and separate Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Central Plan Schemes be launched for ‘minorities with an equitable provision for Muslims.’
•It recommends special measures for the promotion and spread of Urdu. •It recommends the adoption of ‘alternate admission criteria’ in universities and autonomous colleges: assessment of merit should not be assigned more than 60 per cent out of the total — the remaining 40 per cent should be assigned in accordance with the income of the household, the backwardness of the district, and the backwardness of the caste and occupation of the family. •It recommends that grants by the University Grants Commission be linked to ‘the diversity of the student population.’ •It recommends that pre-entry qualification for admission to ITIs be scaled down, that ‘eligibility for such programmes should also be extended to the madrassa educated children.’ •It recommends that ‘high quality government schools should be set up in all areas of Muslim concentration.’ •It recommends that resources and government land be made available for ‘common public spaces’ for adults of — its euphemism — ‘Socio-Religious Categories’ to ‘interact’.
•It recommends that incentives to builders, private sector employers, educational institutions be linked to ‘diversity’ of the populations in their sites and enterprises. For this purpose it wants a ‘diversity index’ to be developed for each such activity. •It recommends changes in the way constituencies are delimited. •It recommends that where Muslims are elected or selected in numbers less than adequate, ‘a carefully conceived ‘nomination’ procedure’ be worked out ‘to increase the participation of minorities at the grass roots.’ It notes that there already are the Human Rights Commission and the Minorities Commission ‘to look into complaints by the minorities with respect to state action.’ But these are not adequate as the Muslims still feel that they are not getting a fair share. The solution? Here is its recommendation, and a typical passage:
•‘It is imperative that if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ notice the touchstone — ‘if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved’ — ‘all efforts should be made by the state to find a mechanism by which these complaints could be attended to expeditiously. This mechanism should operate in a manner which gives full satisfaction to the minorities’, notice again the touchstone — not any external criterion, but ‘full satisfaction to the minorities’ — ‘that any denial of equal opportunities or bias or discrimination in dealing with them, either by a public functionary or any private individual, will immediately be attended to and redress given. Such a mechanism should be accessible to all individuals and institutions desirous to complain that they have received less favourable treatment from any employer or any person on the basis of his/her SRC [Socio-Religious Category] background and gender.’
Cantwell Smith gave in his book, Modern Islam in India, published in the 1940s, of the effect that the British stratagem of instituting separate electorates for Muslims had had on the Muslim mind.
The separate electorates led Muslims, as they had been designed to lead them, he observed, ‘to vote communally, think communally, listen only to communal election speeches, judge the delegates communally, look for constitutional and other reforms only in terms of more relative communal power, and express their grievances communally.’ [Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, Second Revised Edition, 1946, reprint, Usha Publications, New Delhi, 1979, p. 216].
Exactly the same consequence will follow from implementing the Sachar proposals — and the reason for that is simple: the essential point about the proposals is the same — that is, the Muslims can obtain them by being separate from the rest of the country.
The reaction cannot but set in. ‘As Muslims are being given all this because they have distanced themselves from the rest of us, why should we cling to them?’ the Hindus are bound to ask. ‘On the contrary, we should learn from them. Governments and political parties are pandering to Muslims because the latter have become a bank of votes. We should knit ourselves into a solid bloc also.’
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28. October 2009 by admin.
Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it Gandhi’s Muslim Appeasement It is now well known that Muslim appeasement was an inseparable part of Gandhi’s quack doctrine of Non-violence. But many do not know why he, while he was in South Africa, adopted, or compelled to adopt this dirty policy in 1908. At that time the South African government imposed an unjust tax of £3 on every Indian living in South Africa and Gandhi initiated talks with South African government on this matter. But the Muslims did not support this move and were displeased with Gandhi. In addition to that Gandhi, in one occasion, made some critical comments on Islam while he was speaking at a gathering. Furthermore, he tried to make a comparative estimate of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, which made the Muslims furious. A few days later, on 10th February 1908, a group of Muslims under the leadership of a Pathan called Mir Alam entered Gandhi?s house and beat him mercilessly. When Gandhi fell on the ground the Muslim attackers kicked him right and left and beat him with sticks. They also threatened to kill him. From this incident onward, Gandhi stopped to make any critical comment on Muslims as well as on Islam. According to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, this incident was a milestone in Gandhi’s life and afterwards Gandhi began to over look even the most heinous crime committed by the Muslims. An example would help the reader to understand the matter. On 23rd December 1926, a Muslim assassin called Abdul Rashid stabbed Swami Shraddhananda to death, when the swami was ill and lying on his bed. The reader may recall that Swami Shraddhananda was a pracharak (whole time worker) of Arya Samaj and he started a Suddhai Yajna to bring the converted Muslims of this country back to Hinduism. But his activity was detested by the Muslims. A couple of months earlier a Muslim woman came to the Swami and expressed her desire to return to Hinduism with her children. However her husband brought an allegation of abduction in the court of law against the Swami. But the court quashed the allegation and set the Swami free. The incident turned the Muslims extremely furious and within a few days Abdul Rashid assassinated him. After a few days of this incident, Gandhi went to Gauhati to deliver his speech at the national conference of Indian National Congress. The atmosphere was depressed and gloomy due to unusual death of Shraddhananda. But Gandhi made everyone dumbfounded and began his speech by addressing the assassin Abdul Rashid as “Bhai Abdul Rashid”. Without caring for the reaction of the listeners, he continued, “Now you will perhaps understand why I have called Abdul Rashid a brother, and I repeat it. I do not even regard him as guilty of Swami’s murder. Guilty indeed are those who excited feeling of hatred against one another.” Thus he indirectly held Swami Shraddhananda responsible for his murder, as he was propagating hatred through his Suddhi Yajna. Moreover, he wrote in the obituary note, “He (the Swami) lived a hero. He died a hero.” In other words, if a Hindu falls victim to the knife of a Muslim’s assassin, Hindus should consider it a heroic death. It should be pointed out here that the said policy of Muslim appeasement originated by Gandhi, under the garb of (pseudo) secularism was responsible for the Partition of the country in 1947. Many of our countrymen, still today, firmly believe that Gandhi was against partition as in the public meetings, he used to say, ?Vivisect me, before you vivisect India?. When he was saying this in public meetings, he was expressing just the opposite view through his writings. The reader may recall that, on March 26, 1940, the leaders of the Muslim League raised the issue of creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for them. Hardly a couple of weeks later, supporting demand, Gandhi wrote, ?Like other group of people in this country, Muslims also have the right of self determination. We are living here as a joint family and hence any member has the right to get separated.? (Harijan, April 6, 1940). A couple of years later, he also wrote, ?If majority of the Muslims of this country maintain that they are a different nation and there is nothing common with the Hindus and other communities, there is no force on the earth that can alter their view. And if on that basis, they demand partition that must be carried out. If Hindus dislike it, they may oppose it?, (Harijan, April 18, 1942). The reader should also recall that the Congress Working Committee, in its session on June 12, 1947, decided to place the partition issue to be placed before the All India Congress Committee (AICC) for a debate and the AICC approved the issue in its session held on June 14-15, 1947. In the beginning of the debate, veteran Congress leaders like Purusottamdas Tandon, Govindaballav Panth, Chaitram Gidwani and Dr S Kichlu etc. placed their very convincing speeches against the motiom. Then Gandhi, setting aside all other speakers, spoke for 45 minutes supporting partition. The main theme of his deliberation was that, if Congress did not accept partition (1) other group of people or leaders would avail the opportunity and throw the Congress out of power and (2) a chaotic situation would prevail throughout the country. Many believe that, in the name of “chaotic condition”, he tacitly asked the Muslims to begin countrywide communal riot, if the Congress did not accept the partition. Till then, Sardar Patel was on the fence regarding the partition. But Gandhi’s speech turned him into a firm supporter of partition and he influenced other confused members to support the issue. In this way, Congress approved the partition issue (History of Freedom Movement in India, R C Majumdar, Vol-III, p-670). It may appear to many that, up to partition, Gandhi?s policy of nonviolence and Muslim appeasement in the name of secularism indeed harmed the country a lot. But a close look will reveal, it has done severe damage even after partition, or to speak the truth, it is causing serious damage even today. During independence, the Muslim population in undivided India was 23 per cent and this 23 per cent Muslims, got 32 per cent land area as Pakistan. The most appropriate step after partition was to carry out population transfer, or send the entire Muslim population of the divided India to Pakistan and bring all Hindus from Pakistan to India. This population transfer was included in the proposal for Pakistan by the Muslim League and after communal riot in Bihar, M A Jinnah requested the Government of India to carry out population transfer as early as possible. But Gandhi was hell bent not to undertake out the process and said that it was an impractical and fictitious proposal. Mountbatten, the then Governor General of India, was a staunch supporter of the said population exchange and advised Jawaharlal Nehru to do the same without delay. But Nehru submitted to the will of Gandhi and refrained from doing so. It is needless to say that, from the practical point of view, the said population exchange was urgently necessary and had it been carried out at that time, many problems of today would not have arisen. But due to the policy of Muslim appeasement of Gandhi, Muslims happily stayed back in this country, while Hindus had no alternative but to come to India as refugees or penniless beggars. Many of us perhaps do not know that due to strong opposition by Gandhi, “Vande Mataram” could not be accepted as the National Anthem of this country. In his early life, Gandhi had a great affinity for the song and while he was in South Africa, he wrote, “It is nobler in sentiment and sweeter than the songs of other nations. While other anthems contain sentiments that are derogatory to others, Vande Mataram is quite free from such faults. Its only aim is to arouse in us a sense of patriotism. It regards India as the mother and sings her praise.” But later on when he could discover that the Muslims dislike the song, he at once stopped singing or reciting the same at public places. Hence ultimately the “Jana Mana Gana” was selected as the National Anthem. During the debate over the matter in the Constituent Assembly, Nehru argued that Vande Mataram is not suitable to sing along with military band while Jana Gana Mana is free from this difficulty. In the present context, it should also be pointed out that Gandhi was not pleased with Tri Color, the National Flag of today’s India because the Muslims disliked the same. In this regard, Sri Nathuram Godse has narrated an incident in his “Why I Assassinated Gandhi”, which deserves to be noted in this context. During his Noakhali tour in 1946, a Congress worker put a tricolor over the temporary house where Gandhi was staying. One day an ordinary Muslim passer by objected to it and Gandhi immediately ordered his men to bring flag down. So, to please an ordinary Muslim, Gandhi did not hesitate to disgrace and dishonor the flag revered by millions of Congress workers. (pp-75-76). It should also be pointed out here that in his early life, Gandhi was very fond of the Hindi language and used to say that it was the only language having the potentiality to play the role of the national language. But to please the Muslim, he, later on tried his best to make Urdu, under the garb of Hindustani, the National Language of India. (Koenrad Elst, Gandhi and Godse, Voice of India, p89). A few months before the partition, when Hindu and Sikh refugees started to come from West Punjab in droves and crowding the refugee camps of Delhi, one day Gandhi visited a refugee camp and said, “Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo their (Hindus) existence. If they put all of us to the sword, we should court death bravely. We are destined to be born and die, then why need we feel gloomy over it? (speech delivered on April 6, 1947). In a similar occasion he said, “The few gentlemen from Rawalpindi who called upon me, asked me, What about those who still remain in Pakistan?? I asked, why they all came here (Delhi)? Why they did not die there? I still hold on to the belief that we should stick to the place where we happen to live, even if we are cruelly treated, and even killed. Let us die if the people kill us, but we should die bravely with the name of God on our tongue.? He also said, “Even if our men are killed, why should we feel angry with anybody? You should realize that even if they are killed, they have had a good and proper end? (speech delivered on November 23, 1947) In this context, Gandhi also said, “If those killed have died bravely, they have not lost anything but earned something.” They should not be afraid of death. After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers.” (Shri Nathuram Godse, Why I Assassinated Gandhi, p-92,93; as quoted by Koenrad Elst in Gandhi versus Godse, Voice of India, p-121). In another occasion when he was talking to a group of refugees, said, “If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing (a single Muslim), Punjab will be immortal. Offer yourselves as nonviolent willing sacrifices.” (Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, p-385). There is no doubt that if someone reads all these utterances of Gandhi, he would take him either a fool or a lunatic, but we are worshiping him as a Mahatma or a Great Soul. Gandhi believed that Muslims were brothers of the Hindus and hence they should never take arms or wage a war against the Muslims. He used to say that the foreign policy of independent India should always be respectful to Islam and the Muslims. Moreover, independent India should never invade a Muslim country like Arabia, Turkey etc. Gandhi also said that Rana Pratap, Guru Govinda Singh, Raja Ranjit Singh and Raja Shivaji were misguided patriots because they fought war with the Muslims. In his eyes Goerge Washington, Garibaldi, Kamal Pasha, D Valera, Lenin etc. were misguided patriots as they encouraged violence. Gandhi”s utterances painting respected Hindu heroes as misguided patriots aroused widespread commotion among the Hindus. Most importantly, calling Shivaji a misguided patriots put entire Maharastra on boil. Later on, Nehru could pacify their anger partially by begging apology on behalf of Gandhi. The Muslims whenever attack a Hindu settlement, they, in addition killing innocent people, setting their houses on fire, loot and burglary as their routine work, rape Hindu women. It is evident that, they commit all such oppressions according to the instructions of the Koran, revealed by Allah. During the Muslim rule that lasted for nearly 800 years, raping Hindu women became a common affair. To save their honour and sanctity from the lecherous Muslims, millions of Hindu women used to sacrifice their lives in flames. In the wake of partition most of the Hindu families became victims of Muslim oppression and raping Hindu women was an inseparable part of their attacks. When Hindus were butchered in Noakhali in 1946, thousands of Hindu women were raped by the Muslims. Many Hindus of this country do not know, what Gandhi, the Great Soul and the Apostle of nonviolence, thought about this behavior of the Muslims. In the 6th July, 1926, edition of the Navajivan, Gandhi wrote that ?He would kiss the feet of the (Muslim) violator of the modesty of a sister? (Mahatma Gandhi, D Keer, Popular Prakashan, p-473). Just before the partition, both Hindu and Sikh women were being raped by the Muslims in large numbers. Gandhi advised them that if a Muslim expressed his desire to rape a Hindu or a Sikh lady, she should never refuse him but cooperate with him. She should lie down like a dead with her tongue in between her teeth. Thus the rapist Muslim will be satisfied soon and sooner he leave her. (D Lapierre and L Collins, Freedom at Midnight, Vikas, 1997, p-479). From the above narrations, it becomes evident that Gandhi was never moved by the sufferings and miseries of the Hindus and, on the contrary, he used to shed tears for the Muslims. His idea of Hindu-Muslim amity was also extremely biased and prejudiced. Only Hindus are supposed to make all sacrifices for it and they should endure all the oppressions and heinous crimes of the Muslims without protest. And that was the basis of Gandhian nonviolence and secularism. So a Muslim called Khlifa Haji Mehmud of Lurwani, Sind, once said ?Gandhi was really a Mohammedan? (D Keer, ibid, p-237). It should be mentioned at the very outset that Gandhi never fought for India’s freedom. The reader should recall that Gandhi was brought from South Africa by the British to sabotage India?s freedom movement and hence it was not possible for him to fight the British for freedom. On the contrary, his intention was to prolong British rule in this country and to hoodwink the Hindus, he used to say that he was fighting for Swaraj. But his concept Swaraj was entirely mystical and vague and he used equate Swaraj with Ramrajya (or the rule of Lord Ram). According to him, termination of British rule was not at all necessary to establish Swaraj and Swaraj could function well even under the British rule. So he always opposed any move for demanding complete independence from the British rule and reproached the leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose and others because they were in favour of demanding independence, One of the basic preconditions of his Swaraj was the amity between the Hindus and the Muslims. It has been pointed out earlier that his idea of Hindu-Muslim amity was extremely biased and prejudiced ? Hindus were supposed to make every sacrifice and silently endure all the oppressions and crimes of the Muslims for the sake of this unity. It is well known that, for the sake of this Hindu-Muslim unity, Gandhi supported the KHILAFAT MOVEMENT, and extremely communal agitation launched by the fanatic and orthodox Muslim leaders, the Ali brothers. In his personal capacity, Gandhi once wanted to translate Spirit of Islam by Syed Amir Ali and Muhammad?s biography Life of Mahomet by Sir W Muir, to win the hearts of the Muslims. To appease them, he used to overlook and ignore even heinous crimes committed by the Muslims and considered ?Allahu Akbar? as a national slogan. He held the view that, Hindus should die but never should kill a Muslim. Many used to consider him a more devout Muslim than even Mohammad Ali Jinnah. To many. it would appear unbelievable that Gandhi used to advise the Amir of Afghanistan not to make peace with India and, on the contrary, instigated him to launch jihad against India or invade India. Moreover, he advised the Muslims of this country that, at such a situation, they should join the Afghan army and fight against India. He used to say that “Muslims are bullies and the Hindus are cowards” and advise the Muslims to be more cruel and violent during their attack on the Hindus. On the other hand, he suggested the Hindus to remain non-violent and not to defend their attack. He used to maintain the view that Hindus must not strike a Muslim even to save their lives. In the wake of partition, when the Muslims started slaughtering the innocent Hindus of Punjab, Sardar Vallabbhai Patel asked the Hindus to defend their lives. But that displeased Gandhi and he reproached Patel for his advice. In 1946, Gandhi did not go to Noakhali when the Hindus were being butchered there and he went there when the bloodshed was over. On the contrary, when the Hindus of Bihar started retaliating the Noakhali killings, he at once went to Bihar to save the Muslims.. Due to his extraordinary affection for the Muslims, many used to mention him as Mohammad Gandhi. To many, it would appear unbelievable that Gandhi used to advise the Hindus (for the sake of nonviolence) not to take part in any short of physical exercise and body-building activities as, in that case, it would have been difficult for the Muslims to oppress and massacre the physically strong Hindus. In fact, he closed most of the gymnasiums and other body-building centres in Gujarat. Gandhi strongly believed that Muslim rule was better for India than the British rule and in the wake of independence, he requested the British to transfer the power to the Muslims. At the same time, he started to look for an efficient Muslim emperor to rule this country. But doing so much for the Muslims, he remained a loathsome kafir in the eyes of the Muslims as Koran does not advocate Hindu-Muslim unity. On the contrary, Allah advises the Muslims to kill non-Muslim kafirs whenever and wherever they could be found (Koran ? 9:5). So the Muslim leader Mohammad Ali said, “In my eye, Gandhi is worse than a fallen Mussalman.” It has been pointed out earlier, what kind of vile and treacherous role Gandhi played during independence. After independence, both Gandhi and Nehru started vehemently to erase all the symbols that carry Hindu heritage. They declined to rename divided India as ?Hindustan? and started to mention it as non-Pakistan and ultimately they settled at ?Indian Republic.? But most of the countries in the world are known according to the name of the majority of the population, e.g. France, Germany, England, Ireland, Turkey, Afghanistan and so on. While commenting on Gandhi and his policy of Muslim appeasement, in the name of nonviolence, Sri Aurobinda once said, “India will be free to the extent it succeeds in shaking off the spell of Gandhism.” The present topic will remain incomplete if we do not discuss Gandhi’s deeds during the jihad launched by the Moplahs in Kerala in 1920, against the Hindus. At that time Kerala was a Princely state called Travancore under the Madras Presidency. Malabar was a small district of Travancore having a population of 3 million out of which 1 million were Muslims known as Moplahs, which was a corrupt Mollah. Historians believe that once upon a time Arab traders and their sailors and crews settled in the district, who married local women and grew into a sizable population of Muslims. These Moplahs were mostly illiterate and poor and nearly all of them used to earn their bread as agricultural labourers in the fields of well off Nambudri Brahmins. Like Muslims of other parts of the world, they were extremely cruel and used to declare jihad against the Hindus on flimsy ground and attack Hindus of the locality. From the beginning of the English rule, they launched 35 attacks within 1920 AD. In August, 1921, when Gandhi was touring Assam, Silhet and Silchar, Moplahs organized a severe and unprovoked attack on 20th August on the Hindus. Large scale slaughtering the Hindus, looting their properties, setting their houses on fire, raping Hindu women, desecration of Hindu temples and forceful conversion went on without any respite. The cruelty, brutality and horridness of the attack were far-reaching and incomprehensible. At that time, there were two options before the Hindus ? either conversion to Islam or death. A Muslim called Ali Musaliar was leading the attack. To bring the situation under control, British government declared martial law in the district but the rampage continued up to December. So the British had to prolong the martial law up to February 24, 1922. According to government records, 2300 Hindus were dead and 1650 Hindus were severely wounded, although the actual figures were more than double of the above account. In many occasions, Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolence, decried forceful conversion as a terribly violent act. But regarding the forceful conversion by the Moplahs, he preferred to remain mum. Moreover, he propagated the lie in Young India that the Moplahs, during the said rampage, had converted only a single Hindu to Islam. Most shamefully he described the killing of the innocent Hindus by the Moplahs as a heroic deed and he repeatedly said, ?Muslims are bullies and the Hindus are cowards.? Moreover, he used to say that the Moplahs were not guilty of killing the Hindus and, guilty were the Hindus who infuriated and provoked the Moplahs who had had no other option but to kill the Hindus. In addition to that, he asked the Hindus, for the sake of humanity, not to retaliate. There is no doubt that Gandhi, by safe guarding the Moplahs, instigated the Muslims to launch attacks on the Hindus in Punjab, Bengal and in other places in the wake of partition. More shamefully, Gandhi deplored the British administration for taking stern action to suppress the jihad by the Moplahs. Moreover, he declared Moplahs, who fought with the British army, as freedom fighters and said, ?The Moplahs are among the bravest in the land. They are god-fearing. Their bravery must be transformed into purest gold.??Thus ?He represented the perpetrators of vile deeds as god-fearing people! Was it not a travesty of religion to described men who murder and rape in the name of religion as god-fearing? ? Gandhi thus described the Moplah ferocity as the ignorant fanaticism of the Moplah brothers, and the Hindu mentality as cowardliness.? (Mahatma Gandhi, D Keer, ibid, pp-402). The matter did not end here. Due to perpetual insistence by Gandhi, the Moplah rogues, who died in police encounter, were later on declared martyrs of the freedom struggle and were allowed to receive allowance, like other freedom fighters, from the government exchequer, after independence and the practice is still in vogue. After the carnage by the Moplahs, Gandhi started raising money from common people to help, not the Hindu victims, but for the Muslim perpetrators. Following the tradition set by Gandhi, the so called secular politicians and secular media in Mumbai observe Moplah Day every year and take out procession and hold public meetings. Many believe that it would have been immensely beneficial for the country, had Gandhi been assassinated at that time. So, it is not difficult to understand that, had Gandhi been alive today, he would declare the killing of innocent Hindus in Kashmir, bombing the Hindu temples and killing innocent devotees, killing the Hindu pilgrims at Amarnath etc. as the bravery of the Muslims and cowardliness of Hindu victims. It also becomes evident that why today?s so called secular politicians and their media held the Hindu victims of Godhra responsible for their own death and remained silent about the Muslims criminals, as a policy of Muslim appeasement. And by following the foot-steps of Gandhi, these secular and leftist political leaders raised money for the Muslims of Gujarat, not for the Hindu victims of Godhra. Therefore many believe that Gandhi?s naked Muslim appeasement during the Moplah incident was enough to assassinate him in 1920s and that would have saved this country from many misfortunes, later on brought by Gandhi.
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26. October 2009 by admin.
Fall Of The Republic documents how an offshore corporate cartel is bankrupting the US economy by design. Leaders are now declaring that world government has arrived and that the dollar will be replaced by a new global currency. President Obama has brazenly violated Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution by seating himself at the head of United Nations’ Security Council, thus becoming the first US president to chair the world body. A scientific dictatorship is in its final stages of completion, and laws protecting basic human rights are being abolished worldwide; an iron curtain of high-tech tyranny is now descending over the planet. A worldwide regime controlled by an unelected corporate elite is implementing a planetary carbon tax system that will dominate all human activity and establish a system of neo-feudal slavery. The image makers have carefully packaged Obama as the world’s savior; he is the Trojan Horse manufactured to pacify the people just long enough for the globalists to complete their master plan. This film reveals the architecture of the New World Order and what the power elite have in store for humanity. More importantly it communicates how We The People can retake control of our government, turn the criminal tide and bring the tyrants to justice.
http://www.infowars.com/
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25. October 2009 by admin.
Chennai Silks , a textile unit has come up with one of its kind and it is seeking an unmistakable entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most unique and expensive sari.
The exceptionally stunning sari is meticulously woven with 12 precious stones and metals to depict 11 of Raja Ravi Verma’s popular paintings. Explicitly projected is ‘Lady Musicians’, it is one of the painter’s very famous works that displays women belonging to diverse cultural backgrounds.
Besides, the border of the sari pictures 10 other paintings of the artist that pays tribute to the 20th century artist.
The best part of the sari being that the women in the paintings are intricately hand-woven and beautified with jewels of gold, diamond, platinum, silver, ruby, emerald, yellow sapphire, sapphire, cat’s eye, topaz, pearl and corals.
Already in the Limca Book of Records, this Rs.40-lakhs (approx.$80,000 USD) sari will be the first silk sari that required the use of 7,440 jacquard hooks and 66,794 cards during the weaving process. Moreover, a group of consummate workers took nearly 4,680 hours to complete the job.
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25. October 2009 by admin.
By George Friedman
U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize last week. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prize, which was to be awarded to the person who has accomplished “the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the promotion of peace congresses.” The mechanism for awarding the peace prize is very different from the other Nobel categories. Academic bodies, such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, decide who wins the other prizes. Alfred Nobel’s will stated, however, that a committee of five selected by the Norwegian legislature, or Storting, should award the peace prize.
Related SeriesSpecial Series: Obama’s Foreign Policy Landscape
The committee that awarded the peace prize to Obama consists of chairman Thorbjorn Jagland, president of the Storting and former Labor Party prime minister and foreign minister of Norway; Kaci Kullmann Five, a former member of the Storting and president of the Conservative Party; Sissel Marie Ronbeck, a former Social Democratic member of the Storting; Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, a former member of the Storting and current senior adviser to the Progress Party; and Agot Valle, a current member of the Storting and spokeswoman on foreign affairs for the Socialist Left Party.
The peace prize committee is therefore a committee of politicians, some present members of parliament, some former members of parliament. Three come from the left (Jagland, Ronbeck and Valle). Two come from the right (Kullman and Ytterhorn). It is reasonable to say that the peace prize committee faithfully reproduces the full spectrum of Norwegian politics.
A Frequently Startling Prize
Prize recipients frequently have proved startling. For example, the first U.S. president to receive the prize was Theodore Roosevelt, who received it in 1906 for helping negotiate peace between Japan and Russia. Roosevelt genuinely sought peace, but ultimately because of American fears that an unbridled Japan would threaten U.S. interests in the Pacific. He sought peace to ensure that Japan would not eliminate Russian power in the Pacific and not hold Port Arthur or any of the other prizes of the Russo-Japanese War. To achieve this peace, he implied that the United States might intervene against Japan.
In brokering negotiations to try to block Japan from exploiting its victory over the Russians, Roosevelt was engaged in pure power politics. The Japanese were in fact quite bitter at the American intervention. (For their part, the Russians were preoccupied with domestic unrest.) But a treaty emerged from the talks, and peace prevailed. Though preserving a balance of power in the Pacific motivated Roosevelt, the Nobel committee didn’t seem to care. And given that Alfred Nobel didn’t provide much guidance about his intentions for the prize, choosing Roosevelt was as reasonable as the choices for most Nobel Peace Prizes.
In recent years, the awards have gone to political dissidents the committee approved of, such as the Dalai Lama and Lech Walesa, or people supporting causes it agreed with, such as Al Gore. Others were peacemakers in the Theodore Roosevelt mode, such as Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger for working toward peace in Vietnam and Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin for moving toward peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Two things must be remembered about the Nobel Peace Prize. The first is that Nobel was never clear about his intentions for it. The second is his decision to have it awarded by politicians from — and we hope the Norwegians will accept our advance apologies — a marginal country relative to the international system. This is not meant as a criticism of Norway, a country we have enjoyed in the past, but the Norwegians sometimes have an idiosyncratic way of viewing the world.
Therefore, the award to Obama was neither more or less odd than some of the previous awards made by five Norwegian politicians no one outside of Norway had ever heard of. But his win does give us an opportunity to consider an important question, namely, why Europeans generally think so highly of Obama.
Obama and the Europeans
Let’s begin by being careful with the term European. Eastern Europeans and Russians — all Europeans — do not think very highly of him. The British are reserved on the subject. But on the whole, other Europeans west of the former Soviet satellites and south and east of the English Channel think extremely well of him, and the Norwegians are reflecting this admiration. It is important to understand why they do.
The Europeans experienced catastrophes during the 20th century. Two world wars slaughtered generations of Europeans and shattered Europe’s economy. Just after the war, much of Europe maintained standards of living not far above that of the Third World. In a sense, Europe lost everything — millions of lives, empires, even sovereignty as the United States and the Soviet Union occupied and competed in Europe. The catastrophe of the 20th century defines Europe, and what the Europeans want to get away from.
The Cold War gave Europe the opportunity to recover economically, but only in the context of occupation and the threat of war between the Soviets and Americans. A half century of Soviet occupation seared Eastern European souls. During that time, the rest of Europe lived in a paradox of growing prosperity and the apparent imminence of another war. The Europeans were not in control of whether the war would come, or where or how it would be fought. There are therefore two Europes. One, the Europe that was first occupied by Nazi Germany and then by the Soviet Union still lives in the shadow of the dual catastrophes. The other, larger Europe, lives in the shadow of the United States.
Between 1945 and 1991, Western Europe lived in a confrontation with the Soviets. The Europeans lived in dread of Soviet occupation, and though tempted, never capitulated to the Soviets. That meant that the Europeans were forced to depend on the United States for their defense and economic stability, and were therefore subject to America’s will. How the Americans and Russians viewed each other would determine whether war would break out, not what the Europeans thought.
Every aggressive action by the United States, however trivial, was magnified a hundredfold in European minds, as they considered fearfully how the Soviets would respond. In fact, the Americans were much more restrained during the Cold War than Europeans at the time thought. Looking back, the U.S. position in Europe itself was quite passive. But the European terror was that some action in the rest of the world — Cuba, the Middle East, Vietnam — would cause the Soviets to respond in Europe, costing them everything they had built up.
In the European mind, the Americans prior to 1945 were liberators. After 1945 they were protectors, but protectors who could not be trusted to avoid triggering another war through recklessness or carelessness. The theme dominating European thinking about the United States was that the Americans were too immature, too mercurial and too powerful to really be trusted. From an American point of view, these were the same Europeans who engaged in unparalleled savagery between 1914 and 1945 all on their own, and the period after 1945 — when the Americans dominated Europe — was far more peaceful and prosperous than the previous period. But the European conviction that the Europeans were the sophisticated statesmen and prudent calculators while the Americans were unsophisticated and imprudent did not require an empirical basis. It was built on another reality, which was that Europe had lost everything, including real control over its fate, and that trusting its protector to be cautious was difficult.
The Europeans loathed many presidents, e.g., Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter was not respected. Two were liked: John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. Kennedy relieved them of the burden of Dwight D. Eisenhower and his dour Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who was deeply distrusted. Clinton was liked for interesting reasons, and understanding this requires examining the post-Cold War era.
The United States and Europe After the Cold War
The year 1991 marked the end of the Cold War. For the first time since 1914, Europeans were prosperous, secure and recovering their sovereignty. The United States wanted little from the Europeans, something that delighted the Europeans. It was a rare historical moment in which the alliance existed in some institutional sense, but not in any major active form. The Balkans had to be dealt with, but those were the Balkans — not an area of major concern.
Europe could finally relax. Another world war would not erase its prosperity, and they were free from active American domination. They could shape their institutions, and they would. It was the perfect time for them, one they thought would last forever.
For the United States, 9/11 changed all that. The Europeans had deep sympathy for the United States post-Sept. 11, sympathy that was on the whole genuine. But the Europeans also believed that former U.S. President George W. Bush had overreacted to the attacks, threatening to unleash a reign of terror on them, engaging in unnecessary wars and above all not consulting them. The last claim was not altogether true: Bush frequently consulted the Europeans, but they frequently said no to his administration’s requests. The Europeans were appalled that Bush continued his policies in spite of their objections; they felt they were being dragged back into a Cold War-type situation for trivial reasons.
The Cold War revolved around Soviet domination of Europe. In the end, whatever the risks, the Cold War was worth the risk and the pain of U.S. domination. But to Europeans, the jihadist threat simply didn’t require the effort the United States was prepared to put into it. The United States seemed unsophisticated and reckless, like cowboys.
The older European view of the United States re-emerged, as did the old fear. Throughout the Cold War, the European fear was that a U.S. miscalculation would drag the Europeans into another catastrophic war. Bush’s approach to the jihadist war terrified them and deepened their resentment. Their hard-earned prosperity was in jeopardy again because of the Americans, this time for what the Europeans saw as an insufficient reason. The Americans were once again seen as overreacting, Europe’s greatest Cold War-era dread.
For Europe, prosperity had become an end in itself. It is ironic that the Europeans regard the Americans as obsessed with money when it is the Europeans who put economic considerations over all other things. But the Europeans mean something different when they talk about money. For the Europeans, money isn’t about piling it higher and higher. Instead, money is about security. Their economic goal is not to become wealthy but to be comfortable. Today’s Europeans value economic comfort above all other considerations. After Sept. 11, the United States seemed willing to take chances with the Europeans’ comfortable economic condition that the Europeans themselves didn’t want to take. They loathed George W. Bush for doing so.
Conversely, they love Obama because he took office promising to consult with them. They understood this promise in two ways. One was that in consulting the Europeans, Obama would give them veto power. Second, they understood him as being a president like Kennedy, namely, as one unwilling to take imprudent risks. How they remember Kennedy that way given the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the coup against Diem in Vietnam is hard to fathom, but of course, many Americans remember him the same way. The Europeans compare Obama to an imaginary Kennedy, but what they really think is that he is another Clinton.
Clinton was Clinton because of the times he lived in and not because of his nature: The collapse of the Soviet Union created a peaceful interregnum in which Clinton didn’t need to make demands on Europe’s comfortable prosperity. George W. Bush lived in a different world, and that caused him to resume taking risks and making demands.
Obama does not live in the 1990s. He is facing Afghanistan, Iran and a range of other crises up to and including a rising Russia that looks uncannily similar to the old Soviet Union. It is difficult to imagine how he can face these risks without taking actions that will be counter to the European wish to be allowed to remain comfortable, and worse, without ignoring the European desire to avoid what they will see as unreasonable U.S. demands. In fact, U.S.-German relations already are not particularly good on Obama’s watch. Obama has asked for troops in Afghanistan and been turned down, and has continued to call for NATO expansion, which the Germans don’t want.
The Norwegian politicians gave their prize to Obama because they believed that he would leave Europeans in their comfortable prosperity without making unreasonable demands. That is their definition of peace, and Obama seemed to promise that. The Norwegians on the prize committee seem unaware of the course U.S.-German relations have taken, or of Afghanistan and Iran. Alternatively, perhaps they believe Obama can navigate those waters without resorting to war. In that case, it is difficult to imagine what they make of the recent talks with Iran or planning on Afghanistan.
The Norwegians awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the president of their dreams, not the president who is dealing with Iran and Afghanistan. Obama is not a free actor. He is trapped by the reality he has found himself in, and that reality will push him far away from the Norwegian fantasy. In the end, the United States is the United States — and that is Europe’s nightmare, because the United States is not obsessed with maintaining Europe’s comfortable prosperity. The United States cannot afford to be, and in the end, neither can President Obama, Nobel Peace Prize or not.
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