Featured Post

SalaamOne NetWork

SalaamOne سلام   is   a nonprofit e-Forum to promote peace among humanity, through understanding and tolerance of religions, cul...

World must start preparing for strategic terrorism

 Free-eBook            

Several powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way the world works. Technology allows stateless groups to organise, recruit and fund themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That, coupled with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that such groups are positioned to be lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own or as proxies for nation-states that wish to duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are a force to be reckoned with.

Meanwhile, a different set of technology trends means that small numbers of people can obtain incredibly lethal power.

Throughout history, the lethality of weapons technology has inexorably increased. Bronze weapons were better than those made of stone; steel later outdid bronze; guns replaced bows; and so forth. Each new generation of weapons technology was deadlier and more lethal than its predecessor. Yet a general rule prevailed: successively more lethal weapons required successively larger investments and industrial bases. Making a bronze sword involved mining, smelting and casting. Steel required forced-air furnaces and forging techniques to shape the blade. Nuclear weapons were the zenith of this arc of increasing lethality and effort. A single device could destroy an entire city, but it also cost as much as a city and was far more difficult to build.

Advances in our understanding of biology mean that, for the first time in human history, the curve of lethality and cost has been turned on its head. Biological weapons can be incredibly dangerous, but they can also be cheap to produce and deploy. In a world where former superpowers have fallen on hard times and states such as Pakistan and North Korea have nuclear weapons, another path to cheap lethality is simple theft: a terror group could steal a nuclear bomb. A small group can now be as lethal as the largest superpower and could execute a strategic terror attack that could kill millions of people.

An attack of that magnitude differs in a fundamental way from the typical, tacticallevel terrorism suicide bombings that kill tens of people. It even dwarfs a Sept. 11-scale attack that kills thousands. However horrible, the body count and total harm from tactical terrorism is limited. In contrast, a single nuclear or bio-terror attack could kill more people than all previous terrorist attacks put together. The threat posed by this sort of large-scale strategic terrorism is fundamentally different in many respects from tactical terrorism.

Our defence establishment was shaped over decades to address what was, for a long time, the only strategic threat our nation faced: Soviet or Chinese missiles. More recently, it has started retooling to address tactical terror attacks, such as those launched on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, but the reform process is incomplete and inconsistent. A real defence will require rebuilding our military and intelligence capabilities from the ground up.

Yet, so far, strategic terrorism has received relatively little attention in defence agencies, and the efforts that have been launched to combat this existential threat seem fragmented.

That`s a natural human reaction. Nothing like this has happened yet, so it is hard for people to take it seriously. That is exactly the sort of complacency that preceded Sept. 11, Pearl Harbour and other great defence disasters.

Shutting your eyes to unproven future threats is a strategy that leads to decades of calm punctuated by extreme disappointment.

History suggests that the only thing that shakes the United States out of complacency about defence is a direct threat from a determined adversary that confronts us with our shortcomings by repeatedly attacking us or hectoring us for decades. The Cold War is an excellent example; and for all its excesses, the defence establishment we built in response largely worked, and nuclear war was avoided.

Unfortunately, present and future foes are unlikely to follow this playbook. Instead, they wait patiently between attacks. For now, they are satisfied with tactical terrorism, but at some point they will have the means, opportunity and motive to turn to strategic terror weapons.

The most likely scenario is that the United States will continue to lumber along on its current path, addressing some issues and ignoring others. Then terrorists will launch their next attack. With luck, we will detect it in time to prevent a major disaster, but it`s quite possible that a strategic terror attack in the next decade or so will kill 100,000 to one million Americans. Surely, we then will get serious about strategic terrorism. Or we could start now.

By Nathan Myhrvold: http://epaper.dawn.com/~epaper/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=22_09_2013_014_001
By arrangement with the Washington Post/Bloomberg News Service

Related:
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Hindu Nationalism versus Indian Nationalism & Narendra Modi

By Ram Puniyani:

The debate around Hindu Nationalism and Indian Nationalism is not a new one. During colonial period, when the rising freedom movement was articulating the concept and values of Indian nationalism, the section of Hindus, keeping aloof from freedom movement asserted the concept of Hindu Nationalism. The debate has resurfaced again due to the one who is trying to project himself as the Prime-Ministerial candidate of BJP-NDA, Narendra Modi. In an interview recently (July 2013) said very ‘simply’ that he was born a Hindu, he is a nationalist, so he is a Hindu Nationalist! His Party President Rajnath Singh also buttressed the point and took it further to say that Muslims are Muslim nationalists, Christians are Christian Nationalists. So one has a variety of nationalisms to choose from!

Modi’s putting 2+2 together and claiming to be a Nationalist and a Hindu and so a Hindu nationalist is like putting the wool in others eyes. Hindu nationalism is a politics and a category with a specific meaning and agenda. This is the part of the ideology and practice of Modi’s parent organizations, BJP-RSS. During colonial period the rising classes of industrialists, businessmen, workers and educated classes came together and formed different organizations, Madras Mahajan Sabha, Pune Sarvajanik Sabha, Bombay Association etc.. These organizations felt for the need for an over arching political organization so went in to form Indian National Congress in 1885. The declining sections of society, Muslim and Hindu landlords and kings also decided to came together to oppose the all inclusive politics of Congress, which in due course became the major vehicle of the values of freedom movement. These declining sections were feeling threatened due to the social changes. To hide their social decline they projected as if their religion is in danger. They also did not like the standing up to the colonial masters by Congress, which had started putting forward the demands for different rising social groups and thereby for India. Congress saw this country as ‘India is a Nation in the making’.

As per declining sections of landlords and kings; standing up to, not bowing in front of the ruler is against the teachings of ‘our’ religion so what is needed according to them is to promote the loyalty to the British. They, Hindu and Muslim feudal elements, came together and formed United India Patriotic Association in 1888. The lead was taken by Nawab of Dhaka and Raja of Kashi. Later due to British machinations the Muslim elite from this association separated and formed Muslim league in 1906, while in parallel to this the Hindu elite first formed Punjab Hindu Sabha in 1909 and then Hindu Mahasabha in 1915. These communal formations argued for Muslim Nationalism and Hindu nationalism. Hindu nationalists also developed the political ideology of Hindutva, articulated particularly by Savarkar in 1923 in his book ‘Hindutva or Who is a Hindu?’ This was an enviable situation for British as such groups would weaken the rising national movement. On one side they quietly supported the Muslim League and parallel to this they handled Hindu Mahasabha with velvet gloves.

Taking a cue from the ideology of Hindutva, RSS came up in 1925, with the path of Hindu Nationalism and goal of Hindu Nation. The values of rising classes embodied in the persona of Bhagat Singh, Ambedkar, Gandhi, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and many others mainly revolved around Indian Nationalism, built around the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The ideology of Muslim League selectively drew from some Muslim traditions to assert the caste and gender hierarchy of feudal society. While Hindu Mahasabha and RSS had tomes like Manusmriti to talk about similar graded hierarchies of caste and gender. Muslim and Hindu communalists were not part of freedom movement as freedom movement was all inclusive and aimed at secular democratic values. Muslim and Hindu communalists drew from glories of respective Kings of the past and kept aloof from anti British struggle, some exceptions are always there to show the evidence of their participation in the freedom struggle.

Gandhi’s attempt to draw the masses in to anti British struggle was the major point due to which the Constitutionalists like Jinnah; traditionalists of Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha further drifted away and consolidated themselves after 1920s. The trajectory of Hindu Nationalism from the decade of 1920 becomes very clear, to be on the side of British to oppose the Muslim Nationalists. Same applies to Muslim League, as it regarded Congress as a Hindu party. The Freedom of the country and tragic partition led to Muslim Leaguers going to Pakistan while leaving sufficient backlog to sustain Muslim communalism here. Hindu Nationalists in the form of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS gradually started asserting themselves, beginning with murder of Mahatma Gandhi, who surely was amongst the best of the Hindus of that century and probably of many a centuries put together. Hindu Nationalists formed first Jan Sangh and later present BJP. The major issue taken up by these nationalists was opposition to cooperative farming, public sector and undertook a program called ‘Indianization of Muslims’.

The identity related issues have been the staple diet for religious nationalist tendencies. ‘Cow as our mother’, Ram Temple Ram Setu, Abolition of article 370 and Uniform civil code has been the foundation around which emotive hysterical movements have been built. While they keep bringing to our notice as to under whose rule more riots have taken place, one forgets that the root of communal violence lies in ‘Hate other’ ideology spread by communal streams. And most of the communal violence led to coming to power of communal party. Its major offshoot is polarization of communities along religious lines. Modi’s claim the democracy leads to polarization is misplaced wrong as in democratic politics the polarization is along social issues, like Republican-Democrat in America. Polarization around social policies-political issues is part of the process of democracy. The polarization brought about by the politics of Hindu nationalism or Muslim nationalism is around identity of religions. This is not comparable to the processes in US or UK. The polarization along religious lines is against the spirit of democracy, against Indian Constitutions’. Major pillar of democracy is Fraternity, cutting across identities of religion caste and region.

Modi himself, a dedicated RSS swayamsevak has been steeped in the ideology of Hindu nationalism. He glosses over the fact that the large masses of Indian people, Hindus never called and do not call themselves Hindu nationalists. Gandhi was not a Hindu nationalist despite being a Hindu in the moral and social sense. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was not a Muslim nationalist, despite being a devout Muslim, being a Muslim scholar of highest caliber. During freedom movement also most of the people of all religions’ identified with Indian Nationalism and not with religious nationalism as being projected by Modi and company. Even today people of different religions identify with Indian nationalism and not with religious Nationalism on the lines of Modi and his ilk.

Hindu nationalism will require a Ram Temple; Indian nationalism requires schools, universities and factories for employing the youth. Hindu nationalism is exclusive and divisive, Indian Nationalism is inclusive; rooted in the issues of this world, and not the identity related ones. Unfortunately Hindu nationalists have been raising the pitch around identity issues undermining the issues of the poor and marginalized. The Indian Nationalism, the product of our freedom movement is being challenged by the Hindu nationalism in India, Buddhist Nationalism in Myanmar and Sri Lanka and is a major threat to the process of democratization in those countries, Muslim Nationalism has wrecked havoc in Pakistan, and many other places.

This is the dark tunnel of History, where such invocations of religion in the arena of politics take a semi respectful place, as being witnessed in many parts of the World and more so over in India. One hopes the distinction between religious nationalism and Indian nationalism will not be lost focus of!

Hindu nationalism, does not subscribe to the affirmative action, so the term appeasement of minorities has been floated. For Hindu nationalists, the proactive supportive action for vulnerable religious minorities is a strict no, while for democratic nationalism, this is the norm. One has to see the clever ploy of the Prime Minister aspirant, to call himself a Hindu nationalist. This is one more attempt to indulge in dividing the Indian society along religious lines.

By Ram Puniyani: He was a professor in biomedical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and took voluntary retirement in December 2004 to work full time for communal harmony in India. He is involved with human rights activities from last two decades.He is associated with various secular and democratic initiatives like All India Secular Forum, Center for Study of Society and Secularism and ANHAD.
http://www.countercurrents.org/puniyani240713.htm
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Narendra Modi : The Controversial Indian PM candidate

Narendra Damodardas Modi (born 17 September 1950), popularly known as NaMo, is the 14th and current Chief Minister of Gujarat, a state in western India, representing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He is the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP and the centre-right National Democratic Alliance for the upcoming 2014 Indian general elections.
Mr Modi is undoubtedly controversial. As a Hindu nationalist, he is accused of turning a blind eye to the slaughter of Muslims in communal riots in Gujarat back in 2002 (though he denies responsibility). Congress party leaders hope that by having him as their candidate, the BJP will alienate India’s Muslim and secular voters.

From humble roots as the son of a tea-shop owner to running for leadership of the world's biggest democracy, Modi has methodically built a fervent fan base. But, a deeply polarizing figure, he has made many enemies along the way, even within his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Supporters believe he has the drive needed to salvage a sagging economy and make India a regional superpower. Detractors see an authoritarian extremist who could fan sectarian tension in the religiously diverse nation.

India is due to hold its largest-ever general election within eight months. Modi's elevation means the poll will pit the business-friendly chief minister of Gujarat state against the centre-left Congress party, which critics say looks jaded after a decade at the head of a fractious ruling coalition.

Modi's success at chaperoning Gujarat's economic growth was for years overshadowed by religious riots just months after he took office in 2002. At least 1,000 people died in the violence, most of them Muslims at the hands of Hindu mobs.

Modi, anointed as candidate just days before his 63rd birthday is known for rousing speeches and biting attacks on the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that leads the Congress party. The government's final years have been tarnished by graft scandals and the poor performance of Asia's third-largest economy.

Modi's main opponent may be Rahul Gandhi, an establishment insider who represents the fourth generation of a dynasty that has governed India for more than two-thirds of the 66 years since independence from Britain in 1947. Gandhi's late father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers.

By comparison, Modi is a self-made success who has presided over a decade of double-digit growth in Gujarat, bolstering a thriving manufacturing sector and earning a reputation as efficient administrator who speaks the language of business.

Gandhi sought to diminish Modi's achievements at a rally this week, contrasting the Congress party's welfare programs for farmers and the poor with Modi's business focus.

"The opposition says that infrastructure of roads, airports, bridges is needed to take the country forward. These alone can't take the country ahead unless those who work to make these are taken care of too," Gandhi said.

Carmakers Ford, Maruti Suzuki and Tata Motors have been drawn to Gujarat which, unusually in India, enjoys regular electricity supplies and smooth roads.

"The Indian stock market's greatest hope ... is the emergence of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate," Christopher Wood, chief equity strategist at CLSA Asia Pacific Markets told the Economic Times newspaper this week.

"SOCIALLY POLARISING"

An opinion poll published last week found that three-quarters of Indian business leaders believe the government of 80-year-old Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has mismanaged the economy and they want Modi to lead the country.

Modi's star appeal convinced the BJP to anoint him well ahead of the election. But his rise came only after a power struggle in the party. Other leaders' ambitions were crushed by Modi's sharp elbows, while others in the party worry that he is a divisive figure who will make it harder to form a coalition government.

"A socially polarizing leader has polarized his own party. Can he run a smooth, stable and effective government at the Centre? Think seriously!" Sudheendra Kulkarni, a close aide of Modi's main opponent in the BJP, posted on Twitter.

Opinion polls consistently rank Modi as the favorite potential candidate for prime minister, but the complexity of India's political equations and a first-past-the-post system mean victory is by no means assured.

The party has little support in several important states and its Hindu nationalist philosophy is a turn-off for many Indians, especially among non-Hindu minorities - limiting Modi's appeal to potential allies who rely on those voters.

And while the Congress and the BJP remain the country's two largest parties, the rise of regional political movements mean both will have to woo smaller parties to win the 272 seats needed to form a coalition government.

Human rights groups and political rivals have long alleged that Modi allowed or even actively encouraged the 2002 attacks on Muslims in his state. Modi has always vehemently denied the accusation, and a Supreme Court inquiry found no evidence to prosecute him. After the riots, the European Union shunned Modi and the United States denied him a travel visa. But as he has grown in political importance, foreign envoys have begun to cautiously woo him, helping his political rehabilitation at home.

Opponents still accuse the BJP of playing on religious tension to consolidate the Hindu vote, most recently after a spasm of religious violence in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh that killed at least 37 people.

From related links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narendra_Modi
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4beff3f0-1f90-11e3-aa36-00144feab7de.html#axzz2fEO1EWXR
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/13/us-india-modi-idUSBRE98C0JZ20130913

Narendra Modi and India
RESULTS of the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Gujarat were long awaited because Chief Minister Narendra Modi had acquired considerable notoriety over the last decade. He had presided over the pogrom of the ...
Mr Modi is a polarising figure, Is India's most controversial and divisive politician emerging as a prime ministerial candidate? Supporters of Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, believe so. For evidence, they point to his ...

At the time, the BJP government in the western state was then, and also now with additional strength, led by chief minister Narendra Modi, who is said to have turned a blind eye to these riots that took a heavy toll on the ...
The man responsible for the Godhra tragedy was Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujrat, who exploited burning of the S-6 to retain his power which otherwise he was sure to lose. And the man mostly responsible for the ...
 Verdict on Godhra गोधरा पर फैसला
... from Ayodhya were travelling — which was followed by … brutal anti-Muslim violence in the state … and was widely alleged to have been facilitated with the complicity of the state government headed by Mr Narendra Modi.
Even 10 years after the killings, there is no real punishment. How does the Muslim community put faith in the polity? Thetamasha that chief minister Narendra Modi puts up every now and then does not impress anyone about ...
The long arm of law could not even touch Bal Thackeray and Narendra Modi, who have been the main architects of Mumbai and Gujarat riots respectively. On the contrary they landed up increasing their political clout after ...
In January 2011 in the Mahatma (Gandhi) Mandir, Gujarat's Chief Minister Narendra Modi, presided over a meeting of 10,000 international businessmen from 100 countries. According to media reports, they pledged to invest ...
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

West, Breeding Ground for Terrorism

Powered by Peace-Forum
Let’s make no bones about it, the menacing threat of ‘nuclear terrorism’ does not come from some ruthless jihadist cluster, but from the hard-nosed Western nuclear powers who form the core of the NATO alliance, and keeping intimidating and threatening the non nuclear weapon states.

The history of US imperialism is replete with stories of unilateral belligerent military strikes, gory massacres and socio-cultural aggression. In this no-holds-barred brinkmanship, the US and its allies have sought to impose their writ on other nations, more so on those who have refused to swear allegiance to Uncle Sam’s hegemony. The blatant war-mongering and sinister desire to inflict suffering on others is best explained by these words of American writer Andre Vltchek.

“West has always behaved as if it had an inherited, but undefined, right to profit from the misery of the rest of the world. In many cases, the conquered nations had to give up their own culture, their religions, even their languages, and convert to our set of beliefs and values that we define as ‘civilized’.

Guatemala Civil War that continued from 1960 to 1996 was bitterly fought between the government of Guatemala and ethnic Mayans, in which the government of Guatemala committed worst human rights abuses and engineered genocide of Mayan population of Guatemala. Historical Clarification Commission set up under the Oslo Accords of 1994 concluded that the Guatemala military committed murder, torture and rape with the tacit support of CIA. The commission stated the “government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations.” Noam Chomsky in his book What Uncle Sam Really Wants writes, “Under Reagan, support for near-genocide in Guatemala became positively ecstatic. The most extreme of the Guatemalan Hitlers we’ve backed there, Rios Montt, was lauded by Reagan as a man totally dedicated to democracy. In the early 1980s, Washington’s friends slaughtered tens of thousands of Guatemalans, mostly Indians in the highlands, with countless others tortured and raped. Large regions were decimated.”

Vietnam:
Direct or indirect support for death squads has been an integral part of CIA operations. CIA’s death squad operations in Vietnam led to killing of over 35,000 people. The Vietnam War dominated 30 long years of Vietnam’s history from 1940s to 1970s. President Ford, reacting to Senate and House committee reports, conceded that the CIA had become a ‘rogue elephant’ crushing foreign citizens under foot in its bid to win the Cold War. More than 20,000 Vietnamese were killed during the CIA-guided Operation Phoenix intended to weed out communist ‘agents’ from South Vietnam.

Salvador:
American role in the violent overthrow of the democratically-elected Popular Unity government of Salvador in 1980s was a watershed moment for the country. Bush family loyalists maintain that President Bush senior’s policies paved the way for peace, turning Salvador into a democratic success story. However, it took more than 70,000 deaths and grave human rights violations, before peace was brokered. To crush the rebels, the US trained an army that kidnapped and killed more than 30,000 people, and presided over large-scale massacre of old, women and children.

In the mid-1970s, a major scandal broke out after revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to ‘make the economy scream’ in Chile and to prevent Allende from coming to power. Years later, CIA acknowledged its deep involvement in Chile where it dealt with coup-plotters, false propagandists and assassins. In a review of Lubna Qureshi’s book Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende: US Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile, Howard Doughty writes, “The United States and its allies have an unseemly history of hostility to democracy abroad that seems to conflict with their expressed political principles and their stated purpose in engaging in military and diplomatic action abroad. Not only in Latin America, but in Africa, Asia and occasionally in Europe, it has openly and clandestinely supported dictatorships.”

The US government’s cozy relationship with its illegitimate offspring Israel is no secret. It has paid Israel almost one hundred billion dollars over the years, major part of which is used for occupying Palestinian territories, in blatant breach of international laws and umpteen UN resolutions. Veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk draws parallels between Israel and apartheid regime of South Africa. “No matter how many youths are shot dead by the Israelis, no matter how many murders and no matter how bloody the reputation of the Israeli Prime Minister, we are reporting this terrible conflict as if we supported the South African whites against the blacks.”

Likewise, Columbia, arguably one of the most violent countries in the world, is the beneficiary of massive US aid. Some political observers like Professor John Barry are of the opinion that US influence has only managed to catalyze internal conflicts and substantially expand the scope and nature of human rights abuses in Colombia. And ironically, most American people remain naïve about the shady role of their country in Colombia’s historical development and the unremitting violence.

Chile:
In Cuba, America’s record is again appalling. It has been involved in attempted assassinations of state heads, bombings, military invasions, crippling sanctions et al. And, recent reports suggest that the US government’s covert attack on Cuba’s sovereignty continues unabated. Even after half a century, economic blockade remains in force. The country has been designated a ‘terrorist state’, figuring prominently on the State Department’s list of ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’. The five Cuban political prisoners are still behind bars. Now a report from the US General Accounting Office reveals that money is being pumped into projects directed at changing Cuba’s government.

Contra terrorists in Nicaragua:
Washington’s support for the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua between 1981 and 1990 is one of the most shocking and shameful secrets. The heinous terrorist activities contras engaged in had full backing of their masters in Washington. “The decision of the International Court of Justice in June 1986 condemning the United States for the ‘unlawful use of force’ and illegal economic warfare was dismissed as an irrelevant pronouncement by a ‘hostile forum’,” notes Noam Chomsky in Western State Terrorism. “The guiding principle, it appears, is that the US is a lawless terrorist state and this is right and just, whatever the world may think, whatever international institutions may declare.”

Lebanon:
On March 8, 1985, in an assassination bid on Sheikh Mohammed Fazlullah by CIA, a powerful car bomb exploded outside a Beirut mosque in Lebanon, leaving 81 civilians dead. Celebrated investigative reporter Bob Woodward says that CIA director William Casey had admitted personal culpability in the attack while he lay on his deathbed, which he said was carried out with funding from Saudi Arabia. In December 1989, almost 27,000 US soldiers invaded a small Central American country of Panama to arrest General Manuel Noriega, a CIA asset-turned-rebel. In the ‘Operation Just Cause’, bombs rained down on three neighborhoods – Colon, San Miguelito and El Chorrillo. El Chorrillo was burnt to the ground and got a new nickname – ‘Little Hiroshima’. As per conservative estimates, between 2,000 and 6,000 people were killed in the events that unfolded. Many of them were dumped into mass graves.

Congo has been through violent times since its independence. Many observers trace it to the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo, which was apparently done at the behest by the then U.S. President Eisenhower. In Haiti, the U.S. backed the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, during which the CIA worked closely with death squads, executioners, and drug traffickers. The father-son duo’s three decades at helm was marked by brutally crushing dissent with the assistance of secret police and the Haitian army. Thousands were killed and tortured – many of them dumped in mass graves. Hundreds of thousands fled the country to escape from mindless violence.

The 1983 invasion of Grenada was the first major American military assault since Vietnam War. The news was blocked as the US government didn’t want the world to witness the great superpower bashing up a small island nation. Why did the United States invade Grenada? “Many believe that Grenada was seen as a bad example for other poor Caribbean states,” opines Stephen Zunes, author of Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. “Its foreign policy was not subservient to the American government and it was not open to having its economy dominated by U.S. corporate interests.”

In Greece, America supported a coup against an elected leader George Papandreou, which followed the years of murder, torture, and fear in the late 1960s. In Cambodia, the US resorted to carpet bombing to overthrow President Prince Sihanouk, who was replaced by Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge and that led to millions of civilian casualties between mid 1950s and 1970s. In 1965, which New York Times called ‘one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history’, US embassy had compiled lists of ‘Communist’ operatives in Indonesia, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and handed them over to the army, which then hunted them down and killed.

Between 1946 and 1958, the US used the Marshall Islands to conduct nuclear tests. All the inhabitants had to flee their homes. It is still not safe to consume food grown there. In the words of Robert Alvarez, “the people of the Marshall Islands had their homeland and health sacrificed for the national security interests of the United States”.

The nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remain the darkest chapter of history. Almost 150,000 people paid for their lives instantly, while millions more died of radiation poisoning later. Truman ordered the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, followed by a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki on August 9. The same day, the Soviet Union attacked the Japanese and, in the following two weeks 84,000 Japanese were killed.
Iran:
Back in 1953, a joint British-American operation toppled the democratic government chosen by the Iranian parliament, and installed their loyal dictator. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power, initiating a period of 25 years of repression and torture, while the oil industry was restored to foreign ownership, with the US and Britain each getting 40 percent. That was before Ayatullah Khomeini mobilized masses and threw out the Western puppet.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor of international law, in an article written in November 2001 maintained that the bombings of Afghanistan by the United States were illegal. His argument was based on the premise that, according to UN Charter, disputes have to be brought to the UN Security Council, which alone may authorize the use of force. Also, if your nation has been subjected to an armed attack by another nation, you may respond militarily in self-defense. Afghanistan did not attack the United States. Indeed, the 19 men charged with the crime were not Afghans. Twelve years down the line, the foreign military troops are still stationed in Afghanistan, hundreds of billion dollars have been spent, and at least 31,000 people in Afghanistan (civilians, insurgents, Afghan military forces, and others) have been killed in the war.


The myth of the “outside enemy” and the threat of “Islamic terrorists” was the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s military doctrine, used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, writes Michel Chossudovsky, author of The Globalisation of Poverty. More than a decade after US invaded Iraq, it’s still not clear why they did it. But it’s a fact, even acknowledged by the western media, that the war for Iraq was a war for oil. “Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq’s domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms,” reads a CNN report








There is this concept of ‘good terrorism’ and ‘bad terrorism’. For the US and its closest ally Israel, the Tunis bombing was not an act of terror but justifiable retaliation for the murder of three Israelis in Cyprus. The 1985 Iron Fist operation of the Israeli army in southern Lebanon was also guided by the same logic. “From 1945 to the end of the 20th century, the USA attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the USA caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair,” writes William Blum in his book Rogue State. It will not qualify as ‘terrorism’ because the perpetrator is the world’s only super-power. In a 1986 interview, Noam Chomsky argued that the word “terrorism” had been redefined in political and popular discourse to only refer to the violent acts of small or marginal groups – what he refers to as “retail terrorism”. This is in contrast with violent acts performed by the State in its own interest which orthodox terrorism studies often exclude from consideration.

The political leaders and scholars in Muslim countries have to muster courage to condemn the so-called ‘good’ terrorism spearheaded by US and its allies like Britain, Israel, France. On May 09 this year, Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani took the lead, blaming the West for spreading terrorism across Asia, and warning that the policy will ultimately backfire. “This evil phenomenon is the gift of the West to the region, but nurturing terrorist and extremist groups is bad and worrying even for the future of Western countries, notably the United States,” said Larijani.

Today, the war drums are beating again, and this time the target is Syria. “By ordering air strikes against Syria without UN Security Council support, Obama will be doing the same as Bush in 2003,” writes Hans Blix, Swedish diplomat and politician. Blix was the head of United Nations monitoring, verification and inspection commission from March 2000 to June 2003, which searched Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, ultimately finding none.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/west-breeding-ground-for-terrorism/5349739?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=west-breeding-ground-for-terrorism

Related:
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

US Imperialism, Hegemons, Hypocrisy & History

As the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, imperialism has carved up whole continents while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilisations. Related to power, it may be an individual endeavour where talent, skill and professionalism are deployed to achieve greatness and glory through conquests and occupation. An imperialist nation uses military power to defeat other nations and assert its greatness.

The US claims to be a democratic government, but its foreign policy has little tolerance for democratic values, rights or economic and political freedom. The American invasion of the Philippines, Mexico, Vietnam, and political intervention in Asian and African countries is well known. How the US overthrew the governments of Iran and Chile are also on record.

Another example is the United States` fight for independence against Britain. When the war was over, a Declaration of Independence was immediately issued and the constitution drafted with an amendment of the Bill of Rights, but the slaves and their rights remained unmentioned.

Whether achieved by an ambitious individual or with the unanimous consent of the majority of people, past experiences show that in both cases imperialist forces slaughtered people, and looted and plundered their resources. Land would be occupied, people enslaved and even sold in markets.

When the Athenians defeated the Persians, several Greek cities were freed from Persian control. After the Persians were driven away, the Athenians, returned to the ruins of their city, proud to have fought for freedom. So triumphant were they that they hardly noticed their losses and began to rebuild their homes and the city walls.

Eventually the Delian League was formed in 478 BC with a goal to make Persia pay and to free the Greeks under Persian dominion. The member states of the league could either offer armed forces or pay a tax to the joint treasury.

When the Island of Samos rebelled against Athenian domination, the Spartan assembly voted for all men to be killed, and women and children to be enslaved.

Later, the Assembly realised the harshness of their decision and reversed their vote.

Another case was the Island of Milos. The Melians claimed Spartan descent but remained neutral throughout this conflict.

When the Island of Milos was invaded by the Athenian armies, it is said that the general wanted the people of Milos to surrender to the Republic of Athens. The rulers of Milos asked the general that if they were neutral and harmless for the Athenians, why were they were being forced to surrender? The general responded that the Athenians wanted their surrender because they were weak and Athens was powerful, and as per the rule of nature, the weak should succumb to the powerful. Eventually, their refusal to surrender led to a war in which they were defeated. The Athenians slaughtered the male population, while women and children were enslaved.

The arrogant attitude of the Republic of Athens raises a number of questions. On the one hand, the Athenians valued freedom but on the other hand, they deprived other nations of it. An invasion was always supported by a majority vote all perfectly legal and democratic. When the victors returned home, the entire population welcomed them with jubilation. There was no regret for the massacre committed and the blood spilt.In another example of imperialism, the French Revolution raised slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity and the leaders of the Revolution tried to establish a society based on these concepts, yet failed to abolish slavery in the Caribbean islands where France had an economic interest. When the slave revolution broke out in the French colony of Tahiti, it was brutally crushed. Napoleon emerged out of debris of the revolution and built an empire after bloody wars and conquests, trampling revolutionary ideas without any remorse.

If powerful democratic countries continue to value freedom within their system but violate it in other countries, it is a contradiction of their moral values. Freedom should be recognized as the fundamental right of all nations. Only then, imperialism can be prohibited.

By Mubarak Ali : http://epaper.dawn.com/~epaper/DetailImage.php?StoryImage=15_09_2013_424_002

Related:
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75

Why & How to Be a Skeptic?

Sometimes in this world the best defense from spammers, misinformation dispatchers, rumor-mongers, and their ilk is to take a skeptical perspective. According to dictionary Skeptic is:
  • a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual. 
  • a person who maintains a doubting attitude, as toward values, plans, statements, or the character of others. 
  • a person who doubts the truth of a religion, especially Christianity, or of important elements of it. 
Philosophy
  • a member of a philosophical school of ancient Greece, the earliest group of which consisted of Pyrrho and his followers, who maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible. 
  • any later thinker who doubts or questions the possibility of real knowledge of any kind.

The adage if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, does not offer the same protection it once did, with the modern age's offerings of computer generated images and the like.

How to be Skeptic!


  1. Listen closely or read carefully if the information you are offered that seems to go against your common sense or reason. There are lots of people who make up stories for the sake of doing it, but few who are really talented at keeping the manufactured facts straight for any length of time.
  2.  Ask pointed questions, and expect specific answers. If someone tells you they heard or read something in the media, ask when, where, and in what context. You can often go directly back to their purported sources and see if the story pans out.
  3. Check other reliable sources of information. If you have access to the Internet, search the topic, and look for authentic links like university websites, or other institutions.
  4. Find the bottom line of what you are being told. In email circles, often you will see the potential for someone to benefit by convincing you to believe something. An example would be the proverbial (almost) free laptops. Most people are automatically skeptical of these offers, but enough people fall for the sales pitch to make continuing to send them profitable.
  5. Listen to the news and read periodical publications. These sources are supposed to be dependable, with the possible exception of the news figures caught in recent times going a little over the line with "confidential" sources, maybe the supermarket rag?
  6. As a news consumer, be sure to write to newspapers, magazines and broadcasters correcting mistakes and demanding that they keep a certain quality of coverage. There are campaigns going on against "copy and paste" journalism and to get newspapers to cite and link to the original scientific papers used in their coverage of scientific stories.
  7. Decide if the issue is worth generating skepticism. If someone tells you the Martians landed in Manhattan, and you live in Fiji, it would make little difference to you. But when someone tells you to spend your life savings on a start-up company, skepticism can be a valuable asset.
  8. Cultivate a skeptical mindset. Even in the academic world, there have been innumerable instances of accepted facts being exposed over time as ridiculous. We once thought the world was the center of the universe but skeptical thinking people overcame this accepted "fact".
  9. Use the reason test as a habit. This goes back to listening to, and thinking about what you are hearing. If someone tells you something, and it slips into your subconscious, you are more likely to accept it as fact if you hear it mentioned again somewhere else. The idea is planted in your mind, and if it is not challenged, it may become more reasonable to accept it when it is repeated later on.
  10. Test statements for yourself when it is practical. If someone tells you driving with the windows down will save gas, try it out. This may not be a good idea when some television pitchman is selling a $79.99 gadget that can be installed in ten seconds and double your mileage, but often there is little risk if no investment or potential for embarrassment exists. This doesn't mean you should believe someone who tells you poison ivy makes an excellent herbal tea.
  11. Never imagine yours or anyone's understanding to be wholly objective. Remember there is no such thing as a truly infallible source, and that your own interpretation of even a very reliable source is necessarily subjective, and therefore subject to error. You should consider your own experiences, if only because they are occasionally all you have to rely on. Even the statements of a highly reputable source should not be taken as writ, while those of a disreputable source should not be dismissed automatically.
  12. Remember the results of these suggestions. The object of the requested topic is how to be a skeptic. Listening, checking, and testing will probably open your eyes and show you just how much myth and misinformation is being spread in our daily lives, and when you find this out, presto! You will become skeptical.
  13.  If you think this article is BS, congratulations! You're already a skeptic!

Tips

  • Listen to Skeptic podcasts. Podcasts like "The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe", "Skep-chick" and "Skeptoid" will keep you in the know and point you toward reliable information sources. 
  • There are great websites devoted to urban legends, email scams, and other misinformation. Snopes.com has a huge data base and great search link, and it is free! Make a habit of checking out generic warnings your friends send you by email. Snopes will have researched many of these and will tell you when they are unfounded. 
  • Join the Skeptical Community and keep abreast of the latest in hokey fads and dubious claims. Most major cities have annual Skeptic's conferences and there are a number of skeptic's forums online that will help you weed out the fact from the drivel. 
  • Look for friends whom you respect as authorities on the topic you are questioning. If they don't decide to "snow" you for the fun of it, they can be excellent resources.


Edited by Bob Robertson,  http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Skeptic

Related:
Free-eBooks: http://goo.gl/2xpiv
Peace-Forum Video Channel: http://goo.gl/GLh75