Reciprocity & Hindu Anger

Written by Francois Gautier
Wednesday, 29 December 2010 06:37


Reciprocity & Hindu Anger

This starts as a beautiful story. Once upon a time, there was a tiny village in South Arcot’s district of Tamil Nadu, called Kuilaplayam. Now Kuilapalayam is like hundreds of villages around Pondichery: it is peopled with Hindu Vanniars, a caste slightly higher than the untouchables, poor, living off agriculture, usually a few meagre fields of cashew nuts. But then Kuilapalayam just happened to be in the midst of Auroville, the international township, founded by the Mother of Pondichery, based upon the ideals of the great yogi and revolutionary, Sri Aurobindo.

Thus Kuilaplayam prospered: its inhabitants learned trades needed for the city: carpenters, masons, craftsmen, some of its children attended Auroville's schools and were educated along with western kids and in time graduated and went into white collar jobs. From a few cycles 40 years ago, Kuilapalama has today motorcycles, tractors, cars, vans, cable TV, cell phones, etc. The main road of Kuilapalayam which used to be only shady huts, became lined-up with fancy shops which sold everything, from vegetables to handicrafts.

And then the unavoidable happened: a Kashmiri Muslim from Chennai heard about Auroville and the prosperity of Kuilapalaym and understanding that he could make a packet with so many westerners passing though Auroville, he opened the usual shawls & carpets’ shop in the village. Now Kuilapalayam never counted a Muslim amongst its population in its 1200 years of recorded history; but in the true Hindu tradition, this one was welcomed and nobody raised an objection, although he was competition for some of the other shops. Our Kashmiri Muslim, seeing his success, called his cousin in Kolkata, who came and opened another shop; and that one phoned his friend in Mumbai, who also landed-up and opened a third shop. Still nobody found anything to say. Kashmiris are sociable fellows and they quickly made friends with Westerners, most of them blissfully unaware of the political situation in India, so business was booming, till they were seven or eight Kashmiri shops in Kuilapalayam. And again nobody complained, even when the fellows started doing their naamaz openly. “Isn’t God everywhere and isn’t He Krishna, as well as Allah”, said one of the villagers?

Then Rathinam, one of the young boys of Kuilapalayam, who had gone to study in Delhi, told his parents when he came back, about the fact that not only no Hindu were allowed to buy land or start a shop in the Valley of Kashmir, where the shopkeepers came from, but that four hundred thousand Hindus, were chased out of the Valley by terror, many of them having been murdered and that they were living as refugees in Jammu and Delhi. His parents started talking to their friends and there was the first hint of resentment against the newcomers.

Fifteen days later, the Amarnath row exploded. Rathinam’s father went to see a group of Kuilaplayam Kashmiris having tea and told them that Hindus never complained about their government giving billion of rupees in subsidies to Indian Muslims so that they can visit their most Holy place, the Mecca. “But when Hindus, he continued, need shelters, toilets and basic facilities at height of 15.000 feet to worship at Amarnath, one of the holiest places of Hinduism, why do you Kashmiri Muslims deny it to us” ? The Kashmiris looked a bit uneasy, then replied “that anyway the Amarnath ice lingam had been discovered by a Muslim shepherd and that Muslims had always welcomed their Hindu brothers to Armanath”. But this did not convince the Kuilapalayam man who had heard from his son that many grenade attacks had happened over the years against the Amarnath pilgrims. And anger started mounting in Kuilapalayam.

So it is all a question of reciprocity. Most Hindus are peace-loving people. The average Hindu that you meet in a million Indian villages, such as Kuilapalayam, is easy-going and accepts you and your diversity, whether you are Christian, Muslim, Parsi or Jain, Arab, French or Chinese. He goes about his business and usually does not interfere in yours.

In fact Hindus take it a little further: they hate trouble and go out of their way to avoid it. Have you noticed how every time there is a possibility of a strike or trouble, Hindus stay home? Or how - forget about rioting - Hindus never speak-up, complain or protest in a united manner. There is a UN Human Rights conference on terrorism in New York coming-up on 9th September and they have been desperately trying to get Hindu surviving victims of recent bomb attack to testify; but none are willing to come forward for fear of reprisals.

Not only that, but everywhere in the world, Hindus are hounded, humiliated, routed, be it in Fiji where an elected democratic government was twice deposed in an armed coup, or in Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Muslims indulge in pogroms against Hindus every time they want to vent their hunger against India (read Taslima Nasreen’s book “Lalja”). In Assam, Tripura, or Nagaland, Hindus are being outnumbered by Bangladeshi illegal immigrants and terrorized by pro-Christian separatist groups, such as the Bodos or the Mizos, while local governments often turn a blind eye. Their temples are being taken over in many states like in Kerala or Karnataka, and the donations appropriated by the state governments.

Yet, in 3500 years of known existence, Hindus have never military invaded another country, never tried to impose their religion upon others, by force or even by induced conversions. No, it has rather been through peaceful invasions that Hinduism has stormed the world, whether in the East, witness Angkor Vat, or in the West today, where the by-products of Hinduism, yoga, meditation, ayurveda, pranayama have been adopted by millions.

Hindus also gave refuge to all persecuted minorities of the world from the Parsis, to the Jews (India is the only country in the world where Jews were not persecuted) to the Armenians and the Tibetans today. The first Christian community of the world, that of the Syrian Christians, flourished in Kerala, thanks to Hindu tolerance; Arab merchants were welcomed by Hindu rulers to do trade and live in India, while freely practicing their religion, from very early times. It’s a pity that these two communities turned against their Hindus brothers and sisters, the former by way of lured conversions, and the latter with bloody invasions.

Thus Hindus, who accept everybody, welcome all religions, allow Indians from other parts to trade next to them, as it happened in Kuilapalayam, do not receive in return any gratitude and the same respect. On the contrary, they get mocked at, bombs are planted in their markets, their trains; their temples get attacked, they are chased out of their homelands; television an newspapers make fun of them, their own politicians ostracize them…

So, sometimes, Enough is Enough. At some point, after years or even centuries of submitting like sheep to slaughter, Hindus, the most peace-loving people in the world, those the Mahatma Gandhi once called gently ‘cowards’, those who cringe in their houses at the least sign of riot, erupt in fury - uncontrolled fury. And it hurts. It hurts badly. It happened in Gujarat. It is happening now in Jammu. It may happen again elsewhere, as Hindus are reaching a boiling point.

Yes, one should condemn the pogrom that happened in Gujarat, but one should look also in the causes. It is not only the 36 innocent Hindu women and children who were burnt savagely in a train by a mob of criminals, worse than animals. It is also how much silent frustration and anger must have built over the years, decades, or centuries even, amongst Gujarati Hindus, that in one moment, 125.000 Hindus, normal, peaceful people, many of them Dalits, tribals, or even upper middle class, came out on the streets of Ahmedabad with such fury. Yet, 25% of the people killed during the riots were Hindus; yet, according to police records, the 157 subsequent riots which happened in Gujurat were all started by Muslims.

Instead of trying to put water overt the fire, instead of appealing for calm and communal harmony, instead of giving us all this eyewash about a 500 year old Dargah mostly patronized by Hindus (but do Muslims visit Hindu temples in return), political leaders, journalists, as well as spiritual leaders, should do well to look at the root cause of Hindu fury, and try to address their demands and frustrations.

Journalists should also do a little bit of introspection and try to think for themselves. It is unfair, as it has been done in Ayodhya and after the Gujarat riots, to put so much blame on Hindus as if they are the worst criminals in the world and the destroyers of Nehruvian secularism. Millions of temples were destroyed in India by Muslim invaders, some of them the most sacred to Hindus, like the Kashi Vishvanath, Krishna's birth temple in Mathura, the rebuilt Somnath temple and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in Ayodhya, and Hindus hardly ever protested. When they dare to destroy one disused mosque, without any human casualties, what a hullabaloo has been created year after year by journalists, Muslims and secularists. When Islamic militants plant bomb, they kill scores of Hindus every time. Do Hindus plant bombs upon Muslims? Does one journalist dare to say that? How long can Hindus accept everybody get beaten up and receive nothing in return?

Lastly, is there still a prejudice in Western society against Hindus? President Sarkozy said that he went to the Olympics’ opening ceremony because you cannot ignore a quarter of humanity. Well, can the world continue ignoring Hindus, 850 million in India, a billion worldwide, one person in six, one of the most peaceful, law-abiding, successful, tax paying communities on this planet ? Is it not time that a Hindu spiritual leader, God to tens of millions of Hindus, be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Ambani attacks Western charity ethos

AP
July 10, 2011.

India's wealthiest man Mukesh Ambani on Sunday criticised Western philanthropy as counter-productive and said his own country's approach to charity gave more self-respect to the needy.

Ambani, who heads petrochemical giant Reliance Industries, said that rapidly-growing India could create a more sustainable model in which businesses were an beneficial part of society.

Speaking in New Delhi, he described corporate charity in the West as "a system where the more privileged is able to share a certain proportion of their wealth with the less privileged".

"I fundamentally believe that that kind of charity is by and large a disempowering tool. It increases dependency and reduces initiative and enterprise," he said.

"It doesn't create the necessary human capacity to make communities self-sustaining and independent."

Ambani, whose fortune is estimated at $27 billion, said India should look instead to its own traditions of voluntary service and anonymous giving.

"Whatever we give should be for our own satisfaction, it should never be for publicity," he said. "That is where we are different from the Western world."

Ambani is known for speaking out in favour of more equal distribution of growth in India, where hundreds of millions of people still live in desperate poverty.

But critics point out that Ambani recently built a 27-storey skyscraper in Mumbai as his own private residence, thought to be the world's most expensive home.

Mukesh and his brother Anil, who have publicly ended a feud over the division of the vast conglomerate left by their father, are hugely respected figures among India's ambitious professional classes.

"There is awareness in India that growth has to be sustainable, inclusive and environmentally friendly," he said. "CRS (corporate social responsibility) has to be an integral part of every business.

"Businesses should be measured on social returns together with financial returns."

THE THING ABOUT THUGS - book review

Book Review -The Telegraph, Calcutta
Sept 10, 2010

THE THING ABOUT THUGS By Tabish Khair, Fourth Estate, Rs 399

A fairly simplistic interpretation of the concept of the ‘heathen thug’ prevalent in mid-19th century England was adequately employed to satisfy the British thirst for romantic notions with a difference. This ‘romance’ lay in embellished descriptions of the cult of the Thuggee, a movement associated with dangerous conmen from the mystical Orient, armed with rumaals, who would lie in wait to befriend unsuspecting travellers, only to loot and murder them at the opportune moment before disappearing into the night. Such, the West believed, was the mystique of the devotees of the goddess, Kali.

The deceptive casualness in the title of Tabish Khair’s book, The Thing About Thugs, is followed through into the opening pages of the narrative by the relaxed yet strangely unfathomable tone of the narrator, who sits in his late grandfather’s whitewashed ancestral house in Phansa, Bihar, and reads. He reads a myriad manuscripts and books, spanning lifetimes and languages; he reads Captain William T. Meadows’s Notes on a Thug: Character and Circumstances, chronicling the life of the thug, Amir Ali, as it was related to the captain; he reads Farsi manuscripts, written in Amir Ali’s own hand, letters addressed to Ali’s jaanam, Jenny, refuting the facts about his brutal past as recorded in the captain’s work, and telling a very different story. The narrator reads, while his reality intersects with theirs, across centuries and lands.

The casting of India and its image into a few particular moulds and then popularizing these often-misleading notions had been practices of the imperial powers in colonial and post-colonial India. Khair appears to be attempting to address and do away with some part of the problematic West European ways of viewing Eastern and African cultural mores in a one-dimensional and stereotypical manner. The character of Amir Ali begins, in the captain’s chronicles, by saying all the right self-deprecating things and behaving in a servile manner befitting a mere colonial subject. But the character of the eminent phrenologist, Lord Batterstone, is made to project an (initial) gravitas that is but natural to the superior ruling power. As the narrative progresses, however, Khair deftly makes incisions into the tough fabric of popular belief and reveals the multi-faceted, composite actuality that the Thuggee movement was. Amir Ali intrigues the reader, while Lord Batterstone remains an unevolved entity — very visible, despite the masks he wears, but nevertheless an unfortunate stock character. Khair’s skill lies in the way he projects these parallel character narratives and records their collisions without making them look like mere games of one-upmanship.

A sense of enormity of the happenings in the novel belies the casual title and the seemingly light tone that the narrator adopts. It is as though the seriousness that lies beneath is straining to break through and take over — and yet, without ever managing to do that, it makes its presence felt among the wide range of realities, recollections and personalities that dot the landscape of the book — sometimes lingering, often disappearing, only to reappear sometime later, or never again. Khair adeptly juxtaposes Meadows’s chronicles of Amir Ali’s life with Ali’s letters to his beloved, Jenny — a strategy that works perfectly to set questioning minds to investigate the contrast between the two. A perceptible rawness, however, does creep into the narrative while one is almost galloping through it, for the author struggles a little to make a number of dissimilar stories and voices converge into an interconnected entity (not a homogeneous one, for such a work cannot be homogeneous). Be it the dreadful tasks carried out by the resurrectionists, John May and Shields, the curiously empty life of Lady Batterstone or the twisted yet tragic life led by the old woman in the opium den, Khair attempts to afford importance to all that he creates, but is unable to do them equal justice.

Lord Batterstone’s ambitious plan to travel down the Congo river into the heart of Africa in search of uniquely shaped, non-white human skulls to add to his phrenological (and sometimes just plain creepy) collection and to prove to the world the infallibility of his research is somewhat reminiscent of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The latter work attempted to explore the concept, image and reality of imperialism in a detailed manner. The deep-rooted belief in the ‘darkness’ that was Africa lies at the heart of Conrad’s novella, dealt with strategically in a way that is sympathetic to West European imperial constructs. It is, however, the darkness of Kurtz’s fear of obliteration and his existential crises that remained with me as the true ‘darkness’ in the book. Like Kurtz, Lord Batterstone too can be situated in the context of a larger imperialistic convention that sought both to marginalize and condescend to ‘inferior’ cultures, the difference being that Batterstone is single-minded in his murderous intent, instead of also patronizingly undertaking the uplift of other races.

Batterstone, Daniel Oates, and to a certain degree Major Grayper, are archetypally imperialistic in their varying degrees of malevolence. Amir Ali, too, does not deviate considerably from the notion of a wronged hero. He demonstrates the traits that one would associate with a man in his misunderstood position — he is resilient, strong, flawed and very human. He learnt to believe that he “had to be like the grass”, for unlike the upright trees that storms can uproot, grass is always “wavy and green, unaffected by the storm”. Khair does not have to create radical misfits or extraordinary characters to illustrate his point. Characters within recognizable conventions work quite well for him.

For example, the tender moments that Ali shares with Jenny, mainly spoken of in his letters to her, are clichéd. Yet they are an ‘unconventional’ pair, given the time and space in which their relationship blossomed. But there is an underlying melancholy and a strange longing in the records of their time together — a sense that, irrespective of how close the two are, an endless distance separates them.

NAYANTARA MAZUMDER


_________________________

Possible misinterpretation by the British and skepticism about the existence (Wikipedia)

In her book The Strangled Traveler: Colonial Imaginings and the Thugs of India (2002), Martine van Woerkens suggests that evidence for the existence of a Thuggee cult in the 19th century was in part the product of "colonial imaginings" — British fear of the little-known interior of India and limited understanding of the religious and social practices of its inhabitants. For a comparison, see Juggernaut and the Black Hole of Calcutta.

Krishna Dutta, while reviewing the book Thug: the true story of India's murderous cult by the British historian Dr. Mike Dash in The Independent, argues:^[16]

"In recent years, the revisionist view that thuggee was a British invention, a means to tighten their hold in the country, has been given credence in India, France and the US, but this well-researched book objectively questions that assertion."

In his book, Dash rejects scepticism about the existence of a secret network of groups with a modus operandi that was different from highwaymen, such as dacoits. To prove his point Dash refers to the excavated corpses in graves, of which the hidden locations were revealed to Sleeman's team by Thug informants. In addition, Dash treats the extensive and thorough documentation that Sleeman made. Dash rejects the colonial emphasis on the religious motivation for robbing, but instead asserts that monetary gain was the main motivation for Thuggee and that men sometimes became Thugs due to extreme poverty. He further asserts that the Thugs were highly superstitious and that they worshipped the Hindu goddess Kali, but that their faith was not very different from their contemporary non-Thugs. He admits, though, that the Thugs had certain group-specific superstitions and rituals.

The many faces of a homegrown terrorist

By Dinesh Sharma

Asia Times
June 16, 2011


While American media were apoplectic over "Weiner-Gate", a global terrorism trial came to an end in Chicago.

Americans shocked by congressman Anthony Weiner's aberrant behavior, namely, the leakage of his private self

represented as tweets in the public square, may not have fully paid attention to the mind of a terrorist.

There is a common element between the aberrant and the deranged - dissociation. In the age of Twitter, where no

private transgression can remain hidden for very long, we can venture to make the linkage between the private and

the public, the individual and the collective, and perhaps better understand the psychology of terrorism.

In the age of social media, privacy as we knew it is a thing of the


past; almost everything that we define as personal can now be accessed in the public domain.

In the past week, those concerned with homegrown terrorism were shocked to learn about the tightly

compartmentalized - complex, multiple and divided - chambers inside the mind of a Pakistani-American terrorist,

David Coleman Headley, who managed to penetrate and dupe intelligence authorities across many cultural and

international borders.

When United States Federal authorities finally nabbed him in October 2009, they released a complaint against him

and his alleged accomplice, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, for plotting attacks against a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-

Posten, over the printing an inflammatory caricature.

In December 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation also accused Headley of planning the massive 2008 Mumbai

attacks in India in which 164 people were killed; of providing material support to a terrorist group, Lashkar-e-

Tayyiba (LeT), and aiding in the murder of American citizens.

Headley, who pleaded guilty to 12 counts, faces life in prison and a hefty fine. He has in turn fingered his

friend Rana for a role in the Mumbai attacks. Headley cut a plea deal to avoid extradition to India, Denmark or

Pakistan and not to face the death penalty. The trial that concluded on June 9 found Rana guilty on two counts of

plotting against the Danish newspaper and aiding the LeT, but did not find complicity in the planning of the

Mumbai attacks.

In addition to confirming the now well-publicized role of Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) in the

planning of the Mumbai attacks, the trial of Headley brought to light the "multiple personalities" or

"dissociative identities" of a home-grown terrorist, offering an object lesson to psychologists and security

experts alike. His complicated story has already generated a documentary; it might even be ideal for a HBO

docudrama.

A quick glance at Headley's profile reveals the presence of deep fissures, splits or dissociations in his

personality profile at different phases of his life. Not surprisingly, Headley was indeed diagnosed with a

multiple personality disorder (MPD) in 1992, so I learned while trying to confirm my clinical hypothesis. However,

the circumstances surrounding his illness and diagnosis remain murky.

He was known as Daood Sayed Gilani in the Pakistani-American community of New York, Chicago and Philadelphia as

well as in his ancestral homeland of Pakistan. Before turning into a terrorist, in the 1980s and 1990s Headley was

a small-business owner running mostly bars and video rental stores. In 2001, to absolve himself of multiple drug

charges for smuggling heroin from Pakistan, he became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Authority (DEA).

While conducting undercover surveillance for the DEA, Headley started to make contacts deep within LeT during 2002

and 2003. "He just turns around immediately and betrays everybody when it's convenient for him," says one

terrorism analyst.

After repeat visits with the LeT, one of the more effective step-children of the ISI, he began to assume

responsibility for the execution of the 2008 Mumbai attacks and other terrorist activities. "A dream come true for

LeT," according to another security analyst. In Headley, the LeT found "the perfect terrorist", an American guy

with money, a US passport and the ability go in and out of the country without any suspicions or interrogations.

In 2006, Headley dropped his Islamic name, adopted an American identity and his mother's surname to hide his

Pakistani-Muslim contacts and make travel to India easier. At the time, even his close friends and associates

could not have imagined what he was planning. "David Headley is insane ... no person with a brain could do these

things," said Rana's wife.

The clinical diagnosis of MPD is not easily obtained or simply doled out; it constitutes a rare psychopathological

condition in the general population. But in the case of this Pakistani-American jihadi, who was born in 1960 in

Washington DC, not too far from the steps of the Capitol, it seems to fit.

In 1992 and during other stressful life-transitions, Headley may have displayed the full-blown markers of MPD as

outlined in the diagnostic and statistical manual of the American Psychiatric Association (APA):
Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, one rooted in Pakistan and the

other in America.
Dissociation of important personal information from everyday events as a result of living two or more separate

lives
Significant distress and impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
Headley's different personalities were not seen as a "normal" part of a broadly accepted cultural framework.

Developmentally, the divided lives of Headley may have begun at the beginning. He is the son of a Pakistani

diplomat, Sayed Salim Gilani, and an American mother, Serill Headley, both of whom were employed at the Pakistani

Embassy in Washington at the time of his birth.

Headley spent part of his childhood at an elite preparatory school for the military, Cadet College Hasan Abdal in

Punjab province, after his father divorced and moved the family back to Pakistan. Raised as a devout Muslim, at

this school he may have received a strong dose of radicalization. He met his childhood friend and later apparent

accomplice, Rana, at the military academy and the two became life-long friends and business associates.

The Islamic world of his father would crash head-on with the secular lifestyle his mother offered him in the US.

In 1977, at the age of 17 due to the changing political climate in Pakistan, Headley's American mother moved him

to Philadelphia where she ran a bar called the Khyber Pass.

During turbulent teenage years, while experimenting with American values Headley began to show signs of fanaticism

by rebelling against his mother's open or "libertine" choices and professed to dislike all non-Muslims.

Headley himself could not have imagined that his hatred was so deep-seated that it would propel him so far along

the path of jihad. He managed to infiltrate the ISI, the LeT, the DEA and dodge the Indian security forces by

assuming different disguises, just as he courted and divorced a string of women in the US and Pakistan.

"Most people have contradictions in their lives, but they learn to reconcile them," William Headley, Headley's

uncle told a reporter, "But Daood could never do that. The left side does not speak to the right side."

Headley's fanaticism, rooted in a sickness, seems hidden and tucked away in the compartments of his deranged mind.

Its low-grade variant may be found at much reduced frequency and wavelength among those who live with divided

loyalties across different cultural and national boundaries.

This type of homegrown anti-Americanism may be more virulent than we think, much more dangerous than the salacious

tweets sent from a US congressman's personal blackberry.

Dinesh Sharma is author of Barack Obama in Hawaii and Indonesia: The Making of a Global President (ABC-

CLIO/Praeger, 2011).

The world's most dangerous countries for women

India Seen as Highly Dangerous for Women

India Real Time (WSJ)

By Tripti Lahiri

India is viewed as the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women because of its poor record on human trafficking and the widespread practice of female feticide, according to a poll of 213 people who work in the field of gender rights.

India fared slightly better than its neighbor, Pakistan, which was viewed as the world’s third most dangerous nation for women, while nearby Afghanistan was voted the most dangerous. The Democratic Republic of Congo was in second place, while Somalia was fifth on the list.

The poll, which was conducted by TrustLaw Women, a women’s rights information service from the Thomson Reuters Foundation, asked people in academia, journalism, development and other fields about their perceptions.

The countries that topped the list got the highest scores based on responses to two sets of questions. They were named most often in responses to a question about which were the five most dangerous countries in the world for women—that formed a quarter of the total score. The number of times a country was named in response to specific queries about where women were most likely to die from poor healthcare, suffer sexual violence or be discriminated against due to traditional factors, among other questions, made up the rest of the score.

Although only 12% of the respondents—or about 25 people—picked India as one of the top five most dangerous countries in the world, it kept cropping up in responses to danger on specific fronts.

India was regarded by 13% as one of the most dangerous countries for women on cultural and religious grounds, while 12% picked it as the most dangerous due to human trafficking and 7% of the people polled said India was the most dangerous nation for women on health. About 8% picked India as the country where women were most likely to face nonsexual violence and 4% said it was the most dangerous nation for sexual violence.

Pakistan fared better than India on health—only 2% chose it as the most dangerous on those grounds and on trafficking. But 25% of respondents chose it as the country where women were more likely to face violence for religious, tribal or cultural reasons, more than for any other country, including Afghanistan (20%).

The most worrying factors for India were human trafficking, discrimination and cultural issues, such as the preference for a son, which has led to the use of female feticide, and early marriage. Information accompanying the poll, citing India’s former home secretary, said as many as 100 million people, mostly women and girls, could be linked in some way to trafficking in India.

Some of the data in the poll were a bit puzzling. On human trafficking, 12% selected India as the worst country, while 3% chose the Democratic Republic of Congo, another 3% Afghanistan and 1% Pakistan. The report said 82% of respondents (yes, that does total 101%) had named other countries as their top concern, but didn’t elaborate. It’s not clear whether other countries weren’t named because they each scored under 1% or for some other reason—the poll results report doesn’t say and the foundation couldn’t immediately be reached for further explanation.
More In Women

While the poll is interesting, and highlights genuine concerns, the list seems a little arbitrary. There are many countries around the world that should appear up high on a list of places where it’s difficult and dangerous to be a woman and India is certainly among them. But one does wonder why other candidates around the world with similar credentials, for lack of a better word, didn’t feature higher on the experts’ radar.

China also practices widespread sex selection and is ranked on the State Department’s Tier 2 Watch List on human trafficking, same as India, while South Africa has a reputation for a high level of sexual violence. Two years ago, Amnesty International declared maternal mortality a “human rights emergency” in Sierra Leone, but the country didn’t appear among those the experts polled were most worried about on this front. Perhaps the situation there has improved dramatically since then.

Readers what do you think of this ranking? Are there other countries you might have also expected to see in the top five most dangerous countries for women? And which countries, in your opinion, are hard places to be a woman?

Trial and terror: David Headley Coleman and Pakistan's ISI

What a Chicago trial reveals about Pakistan's involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attack may force a huge shift in US foreign policy


Josh Shahryar
Guardian, Monday 16 May 2011 16.06 BST

Mumbai terror attack 2008, Chicago trial of David Headley Coleman 2011
Indian Army soldiers taking position outside the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, 28 November 2008. The Chicago trial, starting 16 May 2011, of David Headley Coleman will open a window on who plotted the Mumbai attack, which is likely to inflame tension between India and Pakistan. Photograph: AFP/Sajjad Hussain

The killing of Osama bin Laden, deep inside Pakistani territory, has sparked another vigorous debate about Pakistan's partnership with the west in the "war on terror". This time, the debate has finally gotten beyond just hints that some power-holders in Pakistan are supporting terrorism. His death has clearly swayed the American public's opinion, which by a large margin believes that Pakistan knew exactly where Osama bin Laden was, but refused to give him up.

That there are elements inside Pakistan's military that are sympathetic to al-Qaida and other terrorist organisations has been accepted for a long time. But clear evidence so far has either not been divulged to the public, or has been lacking in consistency for concrete action to be taken against those actors in Pakistan. But as important a piece of the larger puzzle as Bin Laden's death may be, the case of David Coleman Headley is likely going to remove many doubts about Pakistan's double game and may end up bringing far more dire consequences for Pakistan.

Headley, a Pakistani-American, is soon to appear in a federal court in Chicago as a prosecution witness against Rana Tawahhur Hussein, a Chicago area businessman of Pakistani descent. Hussein is accused of providing financial and logistical support to terrorists who carried out the deadly Mumbai terror attack in 2008.

A first generation immigrant, Headley was born Daood Sayed Gilani. The son of a Pakistani father and an American mother, Headley changed his name to a more non-Pakistani-sounding one to avoid suspicion and to make it easier for him to travel to south Asia, where he was recruited by the Pakistani secret service, the ISI. With help from ISI, Headley was instrumental in the Mumbai terror attack that left over 100 people dead and hundreds more injured or at least that is what he claims.

His story is not only unique, in that he managed to avoid detection for years while carrying out undercover work for terrorists – and as an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration – but also in that when arrested in 2009, he was willing to tell all about the ISI's connection to the attack. He's already divulged that several Pakistani ISI officials, including a shadowy figure named Major Iqbal, were involved with him in organising the attack. Major Iqbal and others trained him for months and funded his intelligence-gathering missions in India, during which he even stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace & Towers Hotel, which was later to be the scene of much violence during the attack.

Headley's case is far more damning for the Pakistani authorities than the case of Faisal Shahzad, who, like Headley, made his way into Pakistan to receive terrorist training, but ended up in the arms of the Pakistani Taliban. It is even more important than Bin Laden's death because dead men don't talk. Headley's testimony – if substantiated – will finally provide ample evidence to identify at least some of the men inside Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus who are cooperating with terrorists as a means to further Pakistan's military and diplomatic interests.

To be sure, Pakistan is prepared to offset the damage and deal with critical lawmakers in Washington who want more concrete action against Pakistan in the aftermath of Bin Laden's death. To soothe relations, they've managed to circulate the news that the ISI is initiating a manhunt for the capture of the Taliban's leader Mullah Omar, who is believed to be hiding in the country's southwest – many already suspect he's being sheltered by the Pakistani government. On the other hand, Pakistani lawmakers are also threatening to cut Nato supply lines into Afghanistan from Pakistan unless the US stops drone attacks on suspected terrorists targets inside Pakistani territory.

Of course, Pakistan has many more wanted terrorists inside its territory, which it can offer up to regain Washington's favour when Headley's case starts getting more coverage in the United States. The war in Afghanistan will also undoubtedly constantly remind the White House that it needs Pakistan in order to supply troops and aid into Afghanistan. But what Pakistan is not prepared for is the role India is likely to play once Headley gives his testimony at the hearing.

While Bin Laden's case was taken up mostly by the American public, which can be quietly ignored unless an election is looming, and the government of Afghanistan, which really has nothing to offer to the US government and is thus irrelevant, Headley's case is different. Not only does India – the target of the deadliest attack in which Headley was involved – is furious over Pakistan's involvement in that attack, but it is also one of the largest trading partners of the United States, with over $12bn-worth of trade in the first four months of 2011 alone.

And India is in no mood to play the peaceful neighbour when evidence keeps piling up that corroborates Pakistan's involvement in the deaths of innocent Indians.

Last week, India started large-scale military exercises close to Pakistan's borders. Over 20,000 troops were involved at a time when India has already denounced Pakistan as a sanctuary for terrorists. The countries have already fought three wars over the disputed region of Kashmir, which is currently divided between them. Just this weekend, a border skirmish between the two countries' armies left 1 dead and 15 injured.

The Indian media is already upping the ante, and coverage of Headley's case has been frenzied and almost continuous in the country's newspapers. This means that not only the government of India, but also ordinary Indians are enraged at what they deem is US inaction against an enemy they perceive to be directly involved in terrorist attacks on their soil.

What the US government faces now is a reckoning that should had been made long ago with regard to Pakistan's support for terrorists. And for Pakistan, time is running out. When Headley's testimony starts making headlines in the US media, as the case of Zacarias Moussaoui did, the Indian government is likely to start pressuring the US government to force Pakistan into purging elements supporting terrorists from the ranks of its military and intelligence service.

That pressure will not just carry the weight of truth and reason, but also the might of billions of dollars in trade and a partnership that is flourishing economically and diplomatically. Given the anger felt towards Pakistan in India after the Mumbai terror attack, there might be another confrontation looming between the two nations which the US cannot possibly afford while it is engaged in stamping out insurgency in Afghanistan and in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. The question is: does Pakistan realise that it may finally be losing its leverage with the US?

The Ugly world of Shiv Sena fixers

Praveen Swami &
Rahi Gaikwad
The Hindu
May 26, 2011

‘Tell them the money is for poverty, unemployment', Rege told Headley while demanding millions to be paid into tax-dodge trust

NEW DELHI: Late in the summer of 1998, as Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadist David Coleman Headley desperately searched for a means to assassinate Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray and hit a brick wall, he ran into a small-time party apparatchik with big dreams — and an even bigger appetite for cash.

Rajaram Rege's relentless pursuit of money, and Headley's unremitting search for a means to kill — laid bare in documents filed by prosecutors in the Chicago court where 26/11 suspect Tahawwur Rana is being tried — have provided jurors with some low farce in the midst of an otherwise grim proceedings.

But it provides riveting insights into the grim world of political operators and fixers who feed off the Shiv Sena's clout.

In a meeting with the Lashkar's supreme leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, Headley had been told the Hindutva group needed to be “taught a lesson.” He sought, therefore, to conduct reconnaissance inside the Shiv Sena's heavily guarded central office in Mumbai's crowded Dadar area.

Vilas Varkey, a physical fitness instructor Headley met at a local gym, provided an introduction to Mr. Rege, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as an information technology officer with an Indian electronics firm.

Mr. Rege was introduced to Headley as a public relations officer for Mr. Thackeray's son. The Shiv Sena and Mr. Rege both deny he held that post, but admit he is linked to the party.

“Headley told me he wanted to see Sena Bhavan. I told him it was not a tourist spot and asked him to go away,” Mr. Rege says.

That wasn't quite the whole truth. Following their encounter at Mumbai's Shiv Sena central office on May 18, 2008, documents filed by prosecutors in the ongoing trial of Chicago-based Rana show that Mr. Rege sent Headley what might be called a business plan.

His pitch was crude — and not just in its grasp of spelling and grammar.

“I am politically and socially very well connected here in Bombay (mumbai), gujarat and delhi [sic., throughout],” he wrote. “Projects worth 10,000 crores sanctioned by govt are with me. are you getting my point????”

Mr. Rege's mail sent a frisson of excitement through the ISI and the Lashkar. “How should I respond,” Headley asked in a May 19, 2008, e-mail to his ISI handler.

The man Headley knew as ‘Major Iqbal' wrote back the next day. “I red [sic] your mail and gave a cool thought to all this,” he wrote. ‘Major Iqbal' counselled Headley to “engage raja by helping him getting seminars and confesses [sic., conferences] in usa.”

The following Friday, on May 23, 2008, Headley wrote back to Mr. Rege. He promised to set up a meeting with his bosses in the United States to discuss the Sena workers' business proposals — and also his pleas for a suitable job abroad.

Headley's mail also makes it clear that the two men had discussed the prospect of a western lecture tour where Mr. Rege could raise funds for the party. He wrote: “If it is possible, you should have some big name personality from your party to accompany you to America for maximum results. Would you be able to do that? This would guarantee all fund-raising activities to be a big success.”

In his statements to Indian and U.S. investigators, Headley has said he was in fact considering the prospect of assassinating Mr. Thackeray on the tour. The plan was doomed to fail: Mumbai's would-be Führer has a deep fear of flying — a fear that has led him to never leave the city, let alone venture abroad.

But Mr. Rege replied the same day, returning, with obsessive focus, to his main theme: “How to get both of us financially benefitted.”

In India, he wrote, “there are many huge projects of constructions, dams, roads, flyovers, bridges, cannals, power, agriculture etc. these projects I have from govt. sector as well as private sector.” For a share of the pie, he explained, “we have to give under table money and manupulate the tendor.”

Mr. Rege wanted his consultancy fees, which “renges from a few hundred lacs to few hundred crores of indian rupees,” and an additional “minimum if 10 lac US$ of donations,” paid into a trust he ran in Mumbai, which “gives me saving Income Tax.”

If there were questions, he said, without the least trace of irony, “You can simply tell them you are generating funds for well fare of mumbai people for poverty, unemployment, education, medical etc.”

Mr. Rege denies his e-mail exchange with Headley was unethical. “By talking of political connections and the signing of the MoU, I was only trying to gauge his capacity to pay and undertake projects. To test how genuine this person is.”

Police sources in Mumbai told The Hindu they were unaware of any trust run by Mr. Rege, and that he was not being investigated for potential wrong-doing.

Pakistan’s ‘Blasphemy’ Laws Pose Growing Threat to non-muslims

Tuesday, 17 May 2011 04:56 AM EDT Compass Direct News News - Featured News


Pakistan’s notorious “blasphemy” laws can put even children at risk, and Christians say the days when they could teach their offspring pat answers to protect them from accusations of disparaging Islam or its prophet seem to have passed.

A 30-year-old Pakistani woman who grew up in Lahore said her Christian parents taught her formula answers to keep from falling prey to accusations under the blasphemy statutes, such as “I am a Christian, I can only tell you about Him.” But even then, before radical Islamists began influencing Pakistani society as they have in recent years, schoolchildren were taught not to discuss religion, she said.

“We knew never to get into religious discussions with others,” she said. “We had them at home – our parents would put us through the drill of asking us tough questions to see how we answered. Only now I realize that was practice for school.”

In this way, she was imbued with the fundamentals of the Christian faith and at the same time learned that she should discuss it only with her parents, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Though the Christian faith is inherently evangelistic, the need to remain silent is even more important today, she added.

“Christians constantly face questions like, ‘What do you think of the Quran, do you like it?’ and, ‘What do you think of Muhammad?’” she said. “One answer is, ‘As a Christian I have only read the Bible, I can’t read Arabic.’ These questions used to be easier to answer, we had formulas. But those are not working any more. We just tell children ‘Don’t talk about religion in school.’ This is shaky ground now.”

The blasphemy statutes signal to non-Muslims that they are second-class or “dhimmi” status citizens who must stay within narrow social boundaries, leave or be killed, she said.

“Some parents don’t even tell their children about Jesus, because they are scared they will go to school and say something wrong,” she said. “One street kid did not know anything except about the blasphemy law. When her mother was asked why she did not teach her daughter about Jesus instead of the blasphemy law, she replied, ‘If I tell her too much, she will talk about it on the street, and someone will kill her or charge her with blasphemy.’”

The street child, she said, was afraid to tell her what church she attended.

“She said the mullah in the shop behind us was listening, and as she said that, I saw the man nearly fall off his chair from trying to listen to us,” she said.

An entire generation, Christians fear, is growing up not knowing their faith for fear that it will lead to potentially disastrous schoolyard talk. Moreover, children required to take Islamic studies in school are in danger with a single misstep.

“If they write anything or misspell anything to do with the prophet Muhammad, they can be in serious danger,” the source said. “In fact, the other side of this is that they are made to answer questions saying what a wonderful man he was.”

Christian kids in predominantly Muslim areas don’t have friends to play with, as even a cricket game can be risky, she said. Adults are equally fearful.

“People in offices are silenced into submission,” she said. “The fear is creating aggression.”

Conviction under Section 295-C of the blasphemy law for derogatory comments about Muhammad is punishable by death, though life imprisonment is also possible. Curiously, accusers in blasphemy cases cannot repeat the alleged derogatory comments without risk of being accused of blasphemy themselves. Section 295-B makes willful desecration of the Quran or use of an extract in a derogatory manner punishable with life imprisonment. Section 295-A prohibits injuring or defiling places of worship and “acts intended to outrage religious feelings.” It is punishable by life imprisonment, which in Pakistan is 25 years.

Law Leading to Lawlessness
A district court judge last November stunned the nation and the international community by handing down a death sentence to a Christian mother of five for allegedly speaking ill of Muhammad.

Subsequently three politicians spoke out against the blasphemy law that put Asia Noreen (also called Asia Bibi) in prison. Two of them have been killed for standing up for Noreen and against the blasphemy law. One is in hiding for fear of her life.

Noreen, mother two children and stepmother to three others, has been in prison in solitary confinement since June 2009, accused of having blasphemed against Muhammad, after a verbal disagreement with some women in the village of Ittanwali, near Lahore. If she is released from prison, her life will be at risk. Her husband and children are on the run, receiving constant threats from Muslims who say they will take justice into their own hands.

Thousands of Pakistanis who think and believe differently than mainstream Muslims are at risk of being slandered under the blasphemy law, and those who live in poverty or are illiterate are particularly vulnerable. Personal vendettas from neighbors, co-workers and rivals are the most common reasons blasphemy law cases are filed, according to Paul Marshall of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“Most victims are Muslims, but non-Muslims or minority Muslims suffer disproportionally,” said Marshall. “Ahmadis [an unorthodox Islamic sect] are probably proportionally the greatest victims. There are more victims from mobs and vigilantes than from the government itself, but the government bears responsibility because it does not protect the victims.”

Suspected Islamic extremists in Faisalabad shot dead two Christians about to be acquitted of blasphemy charges on July 19, 2010. The Rev. Rashid Emmanuel, 32, and his 30-year-old brother Sajid Emmanuel were shot days after handwriting experts on July 14 notified police that signatures on papers denigrating Muhammad did not match those of the accused. Expected to be exonerated, the two leaders of United Ministries Pakistan were being led in handcuffs under police custody back to jail when they were shot.

Christian Lawyers’ Foundation President Khalid Gill said the two bodies bore cuts and other signs of having been tortured, including marks on their faces, while the brothers were in police custody.

Most recently, 40-year-old Arif Masih, of a village near Faisalabad, was arrested from his house on April 5 after Muslims accused him of ripping pages of the Quran and writing a threatening letter ordering them to become Christians. His brother claims that a neighbor fabricated the accusations in order to acquire property adjacent to that of Masih’s.

Though the much-abused blasphemy law is punishable by death, at times vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands. At least eight Christians accused of blasphemy are estimated to have been killed since 1986. The number of Muslims accused of blasphemy and killed extra-judicially may be twice that figure.

For secular-educated Pakistanis, the blasphemy law has come to symbolize the measure to which extreme Islam has overtaken society. In the span of three months, radical Islamists murdered two of the nation’s most outspoken leaders against the blasphemy law. On Jan. 4 Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab Province, was murdered, and on March 2 parliamentarian Shabaz Bhatti, who as federal minister for minority affairs was the only Christian cabinet member, was assassinated in Islamabad.

A third official, Sherry Rehman, a parliamentarian from Karachi, led an effort to reform the blasphemy law after Noreen was sentenced to death last year. Taseer, Bhatti and Rehman were the most vocal about injustices Noreen has suffered and their disapproval of the law. Rehman, in hiding since Taseer’s murder, is said to be next on the Islamic terrorists’ hit list.

Noreen’s case drew little attention before she received the death sentence. One advocate said he believes that had her case not drawn so much attention, she would have been quietly acquitted by a higher court without criticism abroad or at home. Now her release would look like a win for the “Christian” West, he said.

“Hence, we are not going to have any concrete benefit out of whatever decision comes on her,” said Asif Aqeel, leader of the Community Development Initiative. “I don’t see any decision having some fruitful result.”

Aqeel concurred with other Christians that the blasphemy law has led to a steep drop in freedom of expression. Mosques in neighborhoods where blasphemy cases are filed become centers for inciting people to the streets, where destruction ensues. Since Noreen’s death sentence in November, sermons against changing the blasphemy law are commonly broadcast from mosques, especially in neighborhoods where there is a Christian presence.

“People do not talk, and it is proving an embargo on thinking,” Aqeel said. “It has caused vigilante justice, and several incidents have taken place. After that, now whenever this issue arises, people become afraid that it might turn into a demolition of the entire place.”

Victims of the blasphemy law cannot hope for justice from local police, who “do not dare to declare innocent anyone accused of blasphemy,” Aqeel said, and often lower court judges and magistrates do little to give them their rights. “Now the slogan is that the one who sympathizes with the blasphemer is also a blasphemer,” he said, pointing to the deaths of Taseer and Bhatti.

Pakistan is moving increasingly towards a state driven by fear of extremists, where even moderate politicians make conservative choices to appease Islamist threats, according to Sara Taseer Shoaib, daughter of the late Taseer.

“Pakistan is definitely becoming more right-wing and extremist when it comes to religion,” she said. “Religious parties are gaining a cult following, and even moderate leaders are trying to gain popularity and votes by taking a right-wing position.”

The reasons for this shift to the ultra-right, she said, are many: conservative issues like defense of the blasphemy law serve to deflect attention from the real issues of poverty and lack of hope; there is an increasing trend to blame all woes on the West; and there is a prevailing sense of a need to defend Islam as the perception remains that it is under global attack.

Shoaib said her father spoke about Noreen as a member of Pakistan’s poor, disenfranchised minority. Determined to defend her and the rights of others like her, Taseer had visited Noreen in prison before he died.

“He felt that she was a victim of the ambiguity of this law, and [that] she was unable to defend herself fairly,” she said. “[He felt that] she was the prime candidate where the unfairness of this law could be brought to light. He wanted an amendment to the law which is man-made.”

The source from Lahore said that fear among Christians after Taseer and Bhatti’s death is palpable. Christians feel left alone, not knowing who to trust.

“Everything seems to have snowballed,” she said. “People are really, really scared. Someone who you see as out there defending you and speaking for you has been silenced; someone just goes up to him and shoots him.”

She said Christians feel that the mentality of their Muslim fellows has hardened as the Pakistani Taliban and other extremist elements seem to be holding the government and people’s minds hostage.

“For the extremists, it’s no longer making Pakistan a Muslim country, but how they use Pakistan to promote the cause of Islam across the world,” she said. “It’s not for love of the nation, or national identity, but entirely about religious identity. That completely isolates those who do not subscribe to the same views … you are on the street in terms of identity and your social belonging in the community.”

Growing Issue
Aqeel said blasphemy looms larger in Pakistani minds and anti-Christian sentiment is growing for both socio-economic and global reasons.

In today’s impoverished Pakistan, and after U.S.-led wars in Muslim-majority Iraq and Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people see even Pakistani Christians as allies of the West threatening their identity, he said. Poverty and a religion that upholds violence as a means to an end only fuel this mob mentality, he said.

“This has helped create a sense of alienating the Muslim world, and that the ‘blasphemous’ West is trying to snatch the values by movies and technology and globalization and trying to capture areas of the Islamic world,” Aqeel said. “Because of this, their sense of insecurity has made them more religious.”

As a result, blasphemy has become a larger issue, he said.

Pakistan’s law against defaming religion was amended in 1982 to include desecrating the Quran and in 1986 to include disparaging Muhammad. Since then, at least 37 blasphemy law suspects have been killed while in police custody, according to Aqeel.

On March 15, Qamar David, 55, died while serving a life sentence in a prison in Karachi for alleged blasphemy. Prison authorities claimed that David died of a heart attack, but his supporters have called for an investigation, as he had received threats and was subject to beatings and mistreatment from prison authorities. (See “Pakistani Christian Sentenced for ‘Blasphemy’ Dies in Prison,” March 15.)

While the murders of Bhatti and Taseer have helped to remove a “Defamation of Religions” resolution from United Nations consideration – for now – the assassinations have also brought any movement toward amending Pakistan’s blasphemy laws to a standstill.

“Although there is a section of media that is highlighting the issue of blasphemy, the situation hardly allows any movement or legislation on this subject,” said a Pakistani lawyer on condition of anonymity. “In my experience in the past 24 years, I have not seen [such a] stalemate condition, mainly due to the violence and terrorist threat that prevails.”

Global Terror: The British Connection

December 1, 2005
JASON JEFFREY
NewDawn


“There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge.”

– Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II speaking to Paul Burrell, former butler to the late Princess DianaOn July 7, 2005 bombings on the London subway system and a bus killed 52 people and injured 700. As the list of unanswered questions and inconsistencies about the attacks continued to grow, blame was quickly laid on ‘al Qaeda’.

The effects of the London bombings were immediate: There was a renewed commitment by Western leaders to the ‘war on terror’. Most other stories and scandals were wiped off newspaper front pages, including UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s plummeting popularity.

The bombings occurred while the G8 Summit was going on in nearby Gleneagles, Scotland. It was here the topic of terrorism was beginning to seem tired amid broadening demands for debt cancellation for impoverished countries. US President George Bush’s priority – the ‘war on terror’ – was moving out of the limelight.

Afterwards, with London smoking and bleeding, Bush and Blair were able to stand up tall and look strong as they declared the ‘war on terror’ would be won: “we will prevail and they will not,” and, “we alone are fighting” to defend “the values of Western civilisation.” Terror returned to front and centre and further debt cancellation was forgotten.The bombings were the green light for Tony Blair to introduce draconian anti-terrorism legislation which had previously been thwarted by judicial rulings designed to protect human rights.

Blair said he plans policies for deportation of people who “foster hatred.” Parliament will also be asked to pass a law against “condoning” or “glorifying terrorism” anywhere in the world, and giving the government the power to close places of worship. Lists are to be drawn up of ‘extremist’ websites, bookshops and centres.

A clampdown on words or actions likely to be seen as ‘glorifying terrorism’ could affect groups and individuals unconnected to ‘Islamic extremism’ – animal rights activists, for example, may have to change much of what they write if they are not to fall foul of the legislation. British MP George Galloway, a vocal supporter of the Iraqi resistance movement, could be charged under the new law because the government has demonised the resistance as ‘terrorists’.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard also announced a similar review to ‘tighten up’ anti-terrorism legislation.

Who was ultimately responsible for the July 7 bombings remains a mystery. But authorities seemed to know who was behind it soon after the attack. London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair had already made up his mind when he said the investigation into the bombs will uncover a “clear al Qaeda link.”

Responding to news of the July 7 bombings, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads Iran’s top legislative watchdog the Guardian Council, said the British had themselves to blame.

“One possible set of culprits is al Qaeda. But al Qaeda is Bush and Blair. Who launched al Qaeda? You must be tried, you who are the mothers of al Qaeda,” he told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.

“The other likelihood is that the British regime may have carried out the attack itself… because it benefits most… They want to justify their presence in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he added.

July 7 Anomalies

Independent researchers across the world have uncovered information which contradicts the official version of events and points to the involvement of intelligence agencies in the bombings.

Hardly any mainstream media picked up the news that ‘bombing exercises’ were being conducted in the London Underground at the same time as the actual attack.

Only hours after the July 7 bombings, in an interview on BBC radio, Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, made the extraordinary admission that at precisely the time the London bombings took place, his company was running an exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life on July 7. Visor Consultants is a “crisis management advice company” or PR firm.

Power said the drill focused around “simultaneous bombings.” Originally the London bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but later it was revealed they were in fact simultaneous. Also, they were easier to execute as Britain’s terror alert level had just been lowered.

“We had to suddenly switch an exercise from fictional to real,” said Power who is a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Responding to a deluge of emails after his admission, Power strenuously denies any truth to “conspiracy theories” tying his company to the attacks, but he does confirm the exercise involved a “short number of ‘walk through’ scenarios for a private company in London as part of a wider project that remains confidential.”

Some investigators suspicious of Visor Consultants suggest the company might have released information to the media that the bombings were a power surge. For the first hour this was the explanation given, and one that would give authorities time to manage the release of information about the explosions. Power has been hired by the British government before and has on previous occasions released information after terrorist incidents in London. This is all too close to dismiss as simply coincidence.

A news report which almost went unnoticed hints intelligence agencies had prior knowledge of the attacks.

Arutz Sheva, pegged as Israel’s national news Internet site, stated on the day of the July 7 bombing: “Army Radio quoting unconfirmed reliable sources reported a short time ago that Scotland Yard had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred. The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion, a Liverpool Street train station, where he was to address an economic summit.”

This report was subsequently refuted and changed to say Netanyahu was warned after the first blast.

The importance of Visor Consultant’s training exercise cannot be understated because the exact same scenario played out in the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The Pentagon and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) conducted drills involving multiple hijacked planes on the morning of September 11, 2001. And in what the US government called “a bizarre coincidence,” the US National Reconnaissance Office had planned an exercise for September 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into an office tower. American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, took off from Dulles at 8:10 AM on September 11 – 50 minutes before the exercise was said to begin.

On the morning of 9-11, NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time, but they had been briefed this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed. The two scenarios are comparable in that it is a tried and tested method of navigating around everyday security services, and, more importantly, if the perpetrators get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence, they can just claim they were taking part in an exercise.

What are the odds of coincidental ‘drills’ going on at the exact same time real life events were taking so many human lives in two terrorist attacks?

We are also faced with the scenario of four men, one of whom had a new family, and another whose wife was pregnant, carrying bombs set on timers and calmly waiting for them to explode.

A statement issued by the family of the so-called “fourth suicide bomber”, Jamaican-born British resident Germaine Lindsay, said he “had a kind, caring and calming presence about him.”

“He was a good and loving husband and a brilliant father, who showed absolutely no sign of doing this atrocious crime. We as a family had no idea of his plans and are as horrified as the rest of the world.”

The incongruities of the case have already prompted even some official investigators to suggest the men were not ‘suicide bombers’ but may have been duped by their “al Qaeda handler” into believing they would only place the explosive devices and not be killed in the blast. But it also makes sense if the men thought they were carrying fake bombs as part of a terror drill.

Lending weight to this theory is the fact all four men had paid up their parking tickets before boarding a train at Luton for King’s Cross and they all bought return tickets to the capital.

The lack of video taped evidence revealing the alleged bombers’ movements is also suspicious. Every London bus and Underground train carriage is said to have multiple video cameras, but the one on the bombed bus apparently “malfunctioned.” Videos of the other men have not been made available, only a few grainy images of the men at the start of their journey boarding the train at Luton.

Another piece of the jigsaw being pieced together by independent investigators is the testimony of 32 year-old dance instructor Bruce Lait, who was just metres away when a bomb ripped through his train carriage. He miraculously escaped with only minor injuries.

Speaking from his hospital bed in an interview with the British newspaper Cambridge Evening News of July 25, Lait recounts what happened after the bomb went off and how a policeman helped him out of the carriage, adding that, “The policeman said ‘mind that hole, that’s where the bomb was’. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don’t remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag.”

Then on July 21, two weeks after the July 7 bombings, four attempted bomb attacks disrupted part of London’s public transport system. By July 29, police had arrested all four of the main bombing suspects and numerous other people.

The July 21 attacks were immediately linked to the previous bombings, however it is has now been established there was no connection between the men involved in both attacks.

The police operation that quickly rounded up all the suspects of the copycat July 21 attack succeeded in monopolising media coverage and taking attention away from growing doubts about the official version of the July 7 bombings.

Hamdi Issac, one of the July 21 bomb suspects held in custody in Rome, says his backpack contained only flour and was designed merely to frighten. This explains why the so-called bombs let off a small bang followed by some smoke smouldering from their backpacks. According to Italian daily La Repubblica, he claims not to have planned to kill anybody in the attack, “let alone myself.” He added that the July 7 bombings in London, “happens every day in Iraq.”

The difference between the two bomb attacks could not be starker. The bombers of July 7 are all dead and police have made no arrests of significance in connection with it. The attacks of July 21 led to the arrest of all those directly involved including dozens of people who supposedly are ‘connected’.

Perhaps one of the biggest indicators of an intelligence agency link to the July 7 bombings is the revelation that Haroon Rashid Aswat – allegedly the “mastermind” of the attacks – is controlled by MI6, Britain’s external security service.

Speaking on July 29 to Fox News channel, former US Justice Department prosecutor and terrorism expert John Loftus discussed Aswat’s relationship to British and US intelligence, through a British based organisation Al Muhajiroun.

Loftus added that, “the entire British police are out chasing him [Aswat], and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him…” Loftus adds that Aswat’s role as an informer or a ‘double agent’ had protected him from being arrested by the CIA because he “was working for British intelligence.”

Arresting and putting Aswat on trial in a secret tribunal for organising the July 7 attacks could be turned into a two fold victory for the intelligence agencies: al Qaeda is proved to be responsible, and a blowback remnant and potential whistleblower from their past operations is taken out of circulation.

Londonistan

Space does not permit a full accounting of Britain’s creation and manipulation of certain so-called ‘Islamic’ organisations in the late 19th and early 20th century. Close to a century ago the British began cultivating Islamic groups to counter the rising tide of Arab nationalism which demanded independence from colonialism. Suffice to say, as masters of political manoeuvring and intrigue, British geostrategists have for many years struggled to control events in the oil rich Middle East.

Up until recently, this strategy allowed a flood of ‘Islamists’ from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine, to live in Britain, a safe haven where they could further promote their various causes.

By the 1980s and 90s, foreign intelligence services were complaining about the policy. The French were particularly incensed, tracing the origin of the 1995 bombings of the Paris Metro to cells operating, with apparent impunity, from London.

The Russians repeatedly expressed displeasure over Britain providing asylum for Chechen separatists, which they say is a double standard in the fight against terrorism. Two of the terrorists behind the massacre of 300 people, half of them children, in Beslan, Russia in 2004, were British citizens.

It is well known that for more than two centuries, the West has been engaged in breaking up – or thwarting – the presence and extension of Russian influence southward to the Black Sea and beyond. Destabilising the Russian republic of Chechnya is a key aspect of this strategy, part of the ‘New Great Game’.

The New Statesman revealed in December 2002 that, even a year after September 11, Britain was still seen as excessively tolerant. In a cover piece entitled ‘Londonistan’, the Statesman quoted European and American officials as suggesting the UK “had come to a non-aggression pact with Islamist oppositionists dating back to the mujahedin rebellion against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan”: a deal that might explain British immunity from ‘Islamic’ attacks.

Years before September 11 there were calls for Britain to give up harbouring certain groups, but these pleas fell on deaf ears.

Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, at the 1997 summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference decried “Western democracies,” meaning in this case, Britain, which “give refuge to those of our people who promote disruptive activities in our countries,” even while accusing Islamic nations of promoting “terrorism.”

The ‘Islamic Group’ that claimed credit for the November 1997 shootings in Luxor, Egypt which killed over 60 people, mostly foreign tourists, had its international headquarters in London.

Al Ahram, the Egyptian government daily, in a feature entitled ‘How Can We Surround and Extradite London’s Lords of Terror?’ published on December 7, 1997, documents how London became an “Islamic” terrorist haven following the war in Afghanistan, when “legions” of unemployed mujahideen, who had been drawn to Afghanistan from all over the Muslim world, flocked to London for protection, and for new assignments.

Al Ahram quotes an unnamed security source, in its analysis of British motives in making London the “world’s terror capital,” which partially describes the thinking of British intelligence. “The British expect to reap a great advantage through controlling the most dangerous terrorists on its soil,” it quotes the source as saying.

“Through this logic,” the source continues, “British intelligence works contrary to all its counterparts in the world. The information British intelligence has acquired about these groups and its members, is an invaluable card, which it can use to either negotiate, or put pressure on, Middle East states.”

Al Ahram adds that part of the purpose is to manipulate these groups and take them over, on behalf of British geopolitical aims.

Al Ahram’s source concludes: “London’s ‘permanent interests’ have always converged with the lords of terrorism who live in Britain, and who never underestimate what their existence represents for British interests.’’

After September 11, French intelligence officials again angrily accused Britain’s internal security agency MI5 of failing to cooperate in stifling ‘Islamic’ terrorist groups. The level of assistance received from British intelligence in tracking down terror cells was described as being worse than before September 11.

The mid-1990s witnessed a series of vicious wars that led to the break up of Yugoslavia. The Pakistan-based militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUA) was one of the many organisations to send a contingent to help Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. They were sent by the Pakistan government of Benazir Bhutto at the request of the US administration under Bill Clinton.

The contingent, which was raised and trained by Lieutenant General (retired) Hamid Gul, former director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), included a large number of British Muslims of Pakistani origin.

According to estimates, about 200 Muslims of Pakistani origin living in the UK went to Pakistan, received training in the camps of the HUA, and joined the HUA in Bosnia with the blessings of London and Washington. Among them was Omar Sheikh, who went on to mastermind the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

In the late 1990s, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) also attracted many foreign fighters, encouraged by an outpouring of Western support to help defeat an alleged Serbian genocide. One of those fighters was David Hicks, who is now locked up in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

In Crossing The Rubicon, investigative journalist Mike Ruppert notes: “Great Britain – one of the major players supporting the KLA in Kosovo – also maintained secret relationships with bin Laden… In 1996, Britain’s exterior intelligence, MI6, actually funded and worked with al Qaeda in a plot to assassinate and overthrow Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi. Details of the relationship emerged after a British domestic intelligence (MI5) officer, David Shayler, went public with documents detailing the relationship between Britain and bin Laden.”

A decade before Bosnia and Kosovo, the West had raised and funded a large corps of fighters – including Osama bin Laden – to help the mujahideen in their jihad against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Most of these ‘Freedom Fighters’ returned home, but many remained under Western intelligence agency control. Some were soon redeployed to North Africa and the Middle East, to carry out terrorist actions ascribed to ‘Islamic terrorist groups’, on behalf of Western geopolitical aims.

Question is: Are some of these fighters participating in the ‘war on terrorism’, and who do they work for?

Who Benefits?

After September 11, terrorism suddenly became enemy number one. The threat was conflated into the proportions of an alien invasion. However, whether it was real or not, the powers-that-be promptly took advantage of the terrorist bogeyman.

Armies could be mobilised against any country alleged to be ‘harbouring’ the new terrorist enemy (ie. Afghanistan and Iraq). An elusive enemy could strike anywhere at anytime, which meant sacrifices at home (anti-terrorism laws).

Such an enemy of vague and ambiguous proportions could be easily stage-managed. It is now irrelevant whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead, or that he controls an actual organisation with certain objectives. The myth is born. And now those with real power – military force and ‘informational dominance’ – easily direct the outcome of the new game.

With ‘jihadists’ on the loose worldwide, we would expect to see many attacks. Instead, despite the mainstream media’s duplicity, since September 11 the Western world has witnessed only a few spectacular attacks supposedly carried out by small groups ‘connected’ to ‘al Qaeda’.

With great fanfare in the corporate controlled press, large numbers of Muslims have been rounded up in raids across Britain, Europe, the US, and Australia. But most were later released and no one has been proven to be an ‘al Qaeda’ operative. For example, following the well publicised ‘ricin affair’ in the UK in January 2003, it was later established there was no ‘ricin’, no ‘cell’, and no ‘al Qaeda’ connection.

The independent British journalist William Bowles notes that, “with hundreds arrested under anti-terror laws but not a single conviction of anyone actually proved as being a member of al Qaeda or even being caught red-handed with a bomb, it’s safe to assume that it’s unlikely al Qaeda actually exists as an effective organisation, let alone operates an ‘international terror network’.”

Statements of responsibility made in the name of ‘al Qaeda’ or the fact an individual claims to be acting on behalf of it (after being ‘softened up’ at a secret prison camp), does not prove such an organisation exists.

Official briefings about terrorism, often unverified or unverifiable by journalists, have become dramatic press stories. Few of these ominous announcements are retracted if they turn out to be baseless. Almost no one questions the myth of ‘al Qaeda’ because so many people have got an interest in keeping it alive.

It is not too difficult to understand the relative ease in which intelligence agencies, with all their financial and information resources, can manipulate data (as we saw in the recent WMD justification for war on Iraq) and people to achieve objectives.

Is the ‘war on terror’ running a little flat? Let’s raid the homes of some Muslims and then leak to the press that ‘Muslim extremists’ were planning ‘terrorist attacks’ on Australia’s Sydney’s Opera House and Harbour Bridge (such raids actually occurred in Melbourne on June 22). What’s even better, the families whose homes were raided are prevented from speaking out by new anti-terrorism laws.

Thus, we never know if the raids prevented a terrorist plot or they were a publicity stunt for the ‘war on terror’. But headlines have the desired effect, the not so subtle reminder there’s a ‘war’ going on and it might one day come to your home, your office, or your child’s school – just as it did to commuters in London on July 7.

Can we say the cause of Islam benefits from terrorist attacks that kill civilians? No, of course not. The beneficiaries are governments who can ‘justifiably’ continue to support Bush’s ‘war on terror’ (which enriches the military-industrial complex) and introduce long sought laws that curtail civil liberties and limit dissent.

In London today they are now implementing intrusive surveillance and policing of Muslims and the Muslim community. The attacks have justified the introduction of ID cards, which will hold substantial personal information.

New ‘anti-terror’ laws being rushed through the UK Parliament include rules allowing the government to impose curfews and the electronic tagging of people suspected of terrorism.

A Phoney ‘War on Terror’

It goes without saying that the overwhelmingly majority of Muslim organisations are entirely legitimate and also it cannot be assumed that all groups cited in this article are simply the products of Western intelligence. What the evidence reveals is that intelligence agencies have tirelessly worked to infiltrate groups of all political and religious persuasions in an effort to achieve their objectives.

The use of agent provocateurs is a well established method that many states still use against their perceived enemies. It would be child’s play for well established spy agencies such as Britain’s MI6, America’s CIA, and Israel’s Mossad to control ‘al Qaeda’, which barely exists at all, except as an idea or a myth about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence.

Much of the currently perceived threat from international terrorism, argues the recent TV documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear’, “is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the international media.”

“In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power,” it says. A perpetual war against an invisible and entirely fictitious enemy.

Five continuous years of a ‘war on terrorism’ past the point of no return have left the line between fabricated (intelligence agency-orchestrated) terrorism and any ‘real’ terrorism (a response to the provocations and policies) irrevocably blurred.

As a willing partner in this enterprise, the mainstream media has distorted the truth by ‘pre-packaging’ language in a way that paints the world into black (‘terrorist’) and white (‘us’). Shades of grey (where truth and reality normally reside) are difficult to describe in just a few words. Terms such as ‘terrorist’, ‘act of terror’, ‘fundamentalism’ or ‘threat’ act as familiar signposts for the public, to be regurgitated in social discourse without any knowledge of the semantic meaning of the language being employed.

George Orwell warned that an individual’s thought processes were undermined by what he disparaging termed ‘journalese’ or ‘officialese’. When an individual becomes a slave to official jargon they are, in a sense, gagged. Individuals are prone to use ‘officialese’ and follow the ‘mindless thought grooves’ which, in Orwell’s opinion, could easily be replaced with more accurate and thoughtful terms.

In George Orwell’s classic novel 1984, the totalitarian state of Oceania is perpetually at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. Although the enemy changes periodically, the war is permanent; its true purpose is to control dissent and sustain dictatorship by nurturing popular fear and hatred.

Newspeak, the “official language” of Oceania, reduced the number and variety of words in use to render dissenting thought obsolete. Closely related to Newspeak is Doublethink, in which someone is conditioned to either say the opposite of what he thinks or think the opposite of what is true.

By the devious abuse of language and spreading the fear of more terrorist attacks, the government and the corporate media are numbing us into blindly accepting the emerging totalitarian state.

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Cinemagraph Gifs

How Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg Create Their Animated GIFs
By Nicholas Jackson

Apr 15 2011
The Atlantic

New York City-based photographer Jamie Beck, in collaboration with Kevin Burg, a web designer with a background in video and motion graphics, has elevated the art of animated GIFs. In a post yesterday, we showcased some of Beck's collaborations with supermodel Coco Rocha. After the post was published, Beck sent us a detailed message explaining her work process, which we've reproduced in part below.


We began seriously creating them during fashion week this past February. Our first few animated images were sequenced still shots looped in rapid succession which is a fairly common way of making an animated image. From there we began utilizing more fluid motion isolated in certain parts of an image to capture a moment of time, but also to un-freeze a still photograph by showing that moment's temporal movement. The process involves still and video photography but editing is very manual and varies greatly from one to another so we're routinely solving new problems when creating them.

We feel there are many exciting applications for this type of moving image. There's movement in everything and by capturing that plus the great things about a still photograph you get to experience what a video has to offer without the time commitment a video requires. There's something magical about a still photograph -- a captured moment in time -- that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.



To put it in less "artspeak" form: Our Cinemagraphs are a way of adding motion to a still image. On average, the more intricate ones take a day to edit and the simpler ones take 3-4 hours. It's something we'd been experimenting with for about a year but it really came together during fashion week with the post "Les Tendrils" and culminated with "Anna Sees Everything" which touches on the "ultimate portrait" -- an image that captures the essence of a person through an action or a scene they are closely associated with. Another example of that is "We all get dressed for Bill." The image format of these is .gif -- and that's been highly influential to their style since a .gif adds many interesting and archaic limitations to what is possible. The .gif format is practically as old as the internet itself and we find it interesting that as a format it's getting new life, particularly on Tumblr. But ultimately it's a delivery mechanism in the same way JPEG is to still images.

Tumblr has been integral to the success of our images, both as a publishing platform but also as a direct supporter through their fashion week initiative to the recent collaboration with Coco Rocha.



More here.

Easter logic