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| << July27, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]Human rights posts 1-5 |
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[6] From: yogi sikand <ysikand@yahoo.com> Date: Tue Jul 26, 2005 Subject: American Imperialism and the Weapons' Trade US dominates arms sales to Third World countries By Kaleem Omar [http://www.cobrapost.com/documents/Usarms.htm] America accounted for close to 50 per cent of all new arms transfer agreements concluded worldwide during the year 2002, as well as half of all actual arms deliveries, according to a report prepared by the US Congressional Research Service. Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002, according to the report, which is based on the most comprehensive data compiled by the US government ------------------------------------------------- [7] COMMENT: The Madrassa industry ??”Ishtiaq Ahmed http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp? page=story_26-7-2005_pg3_2 The international jihad recruited idealist young Muslim men from all over the world for the Afghan war. Some of them went to the madrassas. This industry has now gone bust. Those who needed its products for fighting Communism are now selling off their shares. The Pakistani investors should watch out The bomb blasts of July 7, 2005 have been connected to religious schools known as madrassas in Pakistan which, according to the British police, three of the four suicide bombers visited recently. Their families have also confirmed that the visits did take place. For once the market for conspiracy theories about a Jewish-Hindu-Christian diabolical plot to defame Islam and Muslims may have a short life-span, although I have already received a barrage of emails, denying with amazing bull-headed obstinacy that the suicide bombers were British Muslims of Pakistani origin. Some totally wacky theories suggest that the three men of Pakistani-origin worked for the British intelligence which orchestrated the attacks to create a scare of Muslim terrorism. One of the suicide bombers, Muhammad Siddiq Khan, left behind a 14-month old daughter and a young wife. There is little doubt in my mind that Siddiq and his three younger comrades were idealists who had been brainwashed to believe that their faith and the ummah needed their supreme sacrifice. Whereas their mentors have yet not been traced and the entire network has not been uncovered, the fact remains that the jihadi factories (called madrassas) churning out a nihilistic worldview are still in business in Pakistan. We were told by no less than President Pervez Musharraf in January 2002 when he first publicly announced his about-turn on jihad that the madrassas had been doing useful work, providing shelter, food and religious education to children from poor families who had no means of supporting themselves. Consequently he did not plan to dismantle them, but that those which preached extremism and terrorism would be closed down. On the surface, such a description sounded sympathetic. Of course the general and his buddies never thought that it is not written in the stars that millions of Pakistani families should continue to remain poor and destitute so that they can only turn to the madrassas for help. Neither did he mention that until the Afghan jihad was taken up by Pakistan, there were few madrassas in Pakistan and they took in only as many pupils as were needed by the mosques. Caring for the poor was not their agenda. The madrassas corresponded roughly to the number of mosques under the control of different sub-sects of Deobandis, Barelwis, Ahl-e-Hadith, Shia and so on. In 1956 there were only 244 madrassas in Pakistan. Recent estimates range from 13,000 to 15,000 with an enrolment of 1.5 to two million (unpublished report by Dr Saleem Ali, Islamic Education and Conflict: Understanding the Madrassahs of Pakistan). The syllabi taught in those traditional madrassas was woefully archaic since much of it was based on assumptions that the earth was flat and the sun and moon rotated around it, while the stars were fixed lights in the seven-tier heaven. The laws and moral values taught also corresponded to a static worldview that made any notion of progress beyond the severely segregated societies of the 7th to 12th centuries impossible to grasp, much less accept. But in all honesty such madrassas produced generally decent, hardworking and frugal prayer leaders and minor and major scholars of Islam. I remember that the Maulvi Sahib in our immediate Deobandi mosque was a thorough gentleman and a good human being. The Barelwi maulvi a little further down the road was also a wonderful man. Their silly rivalries provided much amusement and both had a sense of humour. But things were never the same once the Afghan jihad started. The joint CIA-Saudi initiative resulted in a proliferation of madrassas, regardless of the genuine need for maulvis. Thanks to the CIA??™s 51 million US dollar grant to the University of Nebraska to produce pictorial textbooks glorifying jihad, killing, maiming and bombing other human beings was made sufficiently entertaining. Sadism could now be cultivated as a virtue. That was when madrassa doors were opened to the mass of the poor. The new ???education??? they received was to hate the Russians, later generalised to include any non-Muslim. Jews, Hindus and Christians figured prominently and out of it came the expression of a Yahud-Hunud-Nasara conspiracy against Islam. The phrase had never existed previously but because of its Arabic sounds, it went readily to the hearts and minds of the Islamists. The Buddhists did not fit into the Yahud-Hunud-Nasara formula. But the Taliban by destroying the Buddha statues at Bamiyan indicated that even Buddhists were against Islam and therefore their symbolic presence in Islamic Afghanistan had to be annihilated. Until then, the children of the poor were deliberately kept poor so landlords had a regular supply of rural workers whose labour and sweat could be exploited for a pittance. That??™s why establishing regular secular schools in the rural areas was strongly resisted. The urban poor also never got to school, ending up either as cheap industrial workers or as lumpen elements doing odd tasks in the informal sector of urban economies. The need for warriors against the Soviets in Afghanistan meant that a portion of the cheap but plentiful labour force of young men could easily be converted into fodder for jihad in Afghanistan or, later in the Indian-administered Kashmir or used against other targets in India and against religious and ethnic minorities in Pakistan. The poor are fodder for war and jihad anywhere in the world though they need leadership and education, technical and otherwise. So, the international jihad also recruited idealist young Muslim men from all over the world for the Afghan war. Some of them went to the madrassas and were trained to hate anyone who did not fit into a narrow and regimented worldview. This industry has now gone bust. Those who needed its products for fighting Communism are now selling off their shares. The Pakistani investors should also watch out. Some na??ve scholars believe that dismantling the madrassas is undemocratic since it violates the freedoms of association and speech and expression. I wonder if the Ku Klux Klan cannot invoke this democratic right to propagate its ideology all over the USA and establish racist madrassas. The absurdity of such arguments need not be stressed. Instead, people should demand that all Pakistani children should receive free and compulsory education based on human rights and all the literary and technical skills needed to create a humane, just and progressive Pakistan. Reformed syllabi based on both rationalist and sacred sciences monitored by the state should be taught in a reasonable number of religious seminaries. It would be best to bring all mosques and madrassas under direct state supervision. The author is an associate professor of political science at Stockholm University. He is the author of two books. His email address is Ishtiaq.Ahmed@... --------------------------------------------- [8] From: rup roy <delhigroup498a@yahoo.co.in> Date: Tue Jul 26, 2005 Subject: Fwd: Monday, July 25, 2005/"Is there any Laxman to support Sita or only Ravan are there to support Surpanakhas??" (If any one abuse your old , sick parents and sister , what you will do ? ) www.pariwariksuraksha.blogspot.com www.pariwariksuraksha.org --------------------------------------- [9] From: dnrad1 <dnrad1@sancharnet.in Date: Mon Jul 25, 2005 Subject: SUCI condemns brutal police atrocity on Haryana workers and demands exemplary punishment of the guilty police persons SUCI condemns brutal police atrocity on Haryana workers and demands exemplary punishment of the guilty police persons Shri Nihar Mukherjee, General Secretary, SUCI, in a statement issued today severely condemned the brutal and indiscriminate lathicharge by the Haryana police on the workers of Honda Motorcycle and Scooters Ltd. who were fighting for realizing most legitimate democratic demands of reinstatement of their retrenched colleagues and higher wages in light of improved company performance. This incident of bestial police atrocity, said Shri Mukherjee, that took place at Gurgaon, Haryana on July 25, 2005, once against lays bare the brazen anti-people, anti-working class fascist character of both the Congress led Haryana state government and the UPA government at the Centre supported by the CPI(M). Shri Mukherjee demanded a judicial enquiry into the incident, exemplary punishment of the guilty police persons, bearing of all expenses of proper medical treatment of the injured workers by the government, adequate compensation to the injured workers and acceptance of all their legitimate democratic demands including immediate re-instatement of the retrenched workers. News b (Asit Bhattacharyya) Office Secretary Central Committee, SUCI ----------------------------------------------- [10] From: dnrad1 <dnrad1@sancharnet.in Date: Mon Jul 25, 2005 Subject: Appeasement of US could prove costly for Dr Singh Appeasement of US could prove costly for Dr Singh Asian Age - 26-7-05 - By Siddhartha Reddy Has the Prime Minister made India the 51st state of the United States? There are reasons to think so. Till recently India was firm on the Iran-India pipeline but while in the US, Dr Manmohan Singh said that it is not such a good idea. The nationwide perception is it was almost as if he was echoing US diktat. Another perception is that the defence deal signed by Pranab Mukherjee has committed India to sending troops to Iraq. There is also this belief that Manmohan Singh has reversed India's time-tested nuclear policy without Parliament's sanction, without consulting the Cabinet, the Congress or its allies and the Opposition. He capitulated to the nuclear control regime that India has been successfully resisting for decades. In any joint communiqu?©, both countries must agree to the same conditions. This is India's first ever "joint-communiqu?©" fiasco where India has reiterated a moratorium on testing, but the US hasn't. No nuclear nation ever, in any bilateral agreement, articulated a ban on testing. Hereafter, India's scientists cannot test bombs, thus limiting nuclear research and development. The US trip is a case of the packaging being worse than the product and the package being sold without preparation. Manmohan's bureaucratic mindset is unable to conjure political articulation. Hence, even his good intentions can be perceived wrongly. China refuses to separate its civil and military nuclear infrastructure. France hasn't separated its facilities; Britain's are meant for civil, military and joint use. The US military nuclear facilities are government owned, while civil (mostly power generation) facilities are owned by the private sector. No country has separated government owned nuclear facilities. Yet Manmohan agrees to do so, though the process is cost prohibitive. In the US, environment groups are insisting on the ending of nuclear power generation. US vice president Dick Cheney's American energy lobby wants off-loading facilities in India, for power generation. They will make billions by selling power to India. It is the US that controls the IAEA. With India's nuclear facilities open for IAEA inspection, the US can shut down any Indian facility quoting safety reasons. The US' military nuclear facilities are not open to IAEA inspection. China is delighted that India has surrendered its nuclear initiative. If Communists are patriotic, they should withdraw support from the UPA government for surrendering the nation's nuclear prestige. But Communists can make dramatic noises but will not force a cancellation of the nuclear deal. India-US partnership is a must in a unipolar world order. India's economy needs vital American cooperation. India needs US support to fight the Chinese threat of destabilisation through Maoist insurgency from Burma, Bangladesh and Nepal. India needs the US to force the dismantling of Pakistan's ISI. China too controls the ISI. The ISI generates millions from narcotics and gun-running which are then used to fund terrorism. The rest is pocketed by the generals in the ISI and China's People's Liberation Army. The ISI can be stopped only when India-US-Europe apply unbearable financial-trade-military pressure on China. This in turn will wipe out Pakistan's mercenary-terrorist corporations. The US too needs India's huge market for its products. India's technologists, scientists, engineers, doctors, technicians are required to run US' global corporations and governmental facilities. American insurance, banking and even property companies want to do business with Indians. India's experience against terrorism can help the US in intelligence gathering. India's geographical location is of strategic importance to US interests in Central Asia, Indian Ocean and the rest of Asia. An American adventure against China can be successful only with India's participation. The US is also desperately seeking Indian participation in Iraq. So India figures high in US world-view. The US is keen to build India as an Asian superpower to be its strategic ally, similar to the UK. So every visiting Indian PM will receive a ceremonial welcome. So the responsibility of future PMs is greater than before, to prevent India's strategic interests being compromised at the altar of festivities. The British partitioned India, engineered communal riots, divided society inflaming religious passions and killing lakhs of people over the years. So when Manmohan Singh praises British governance, it hurts most Indians. The BJP could have launched a campaign on this issue had it not been too occupied with its internal matters. In fact the Congress hasn't uttered a word on this. Sonia Gandhi should have called a Congress Working Committee meeting to atone this sacrilege. Mahatma asked the British quit India. The Congress today insults the freedom movement, proving the absence of any link with Mahatma's Congress. The RSS has approved Advani's decision to exit gracefully, after the Parliament session. The crisis in the BJP is over. It took Vajpayee just 13 months to create an electoral wave in his favour in 1999. Now 15 months have been wasted but Manmohan hasn't yet shown any sign of any economic brilliance. Across the nation, there's increased suffering and anger due to a rise in prices. The recent nationwide byelection results have indicated that voters are angry with the Congress. UPA is proving to be a replica of the NDA. When in power, it facilitates conveniences for the mega-rich but forgets the poor-middle classes. Manmohan is proving the Communist accusation of being more loyal to the US and the World Bank than India to be true. So appeasing the US could inspire Sonia Gandhi to replace Manmohan Singh, using the Communists ----------------------------------------- |
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July29, 2005 - [India Thinkers Net]India V China,Muslims memorandum & Gujarat flood >> |
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