Religion-based politics is the major source of militancy and close ties between Jamaat-e-Islami and militancy is quite lucid in this country, speakers at a views exchange meeting said yesterday. Punishing a few of the militants cannot uproot militancy. Rather, an ideological battle against militancy needs to be launched, they added.
Bangladesh Heritage Foundation and Democracy and Human Rights Research organised the discussion at Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs (Bilia) auditorium titled 'Militancy in Bangladesh: Against Democracy, Rule of Law and the Spirit of Liberation War'. While presenting the keynote paper based on a recent study, former ambassador and Bilia director Wali-Ur Rahman said there is no other alternative but to restrain militancy to upholding the spirit of Liberation War, good governance and strengthening of democratic culture.
Rahman added that even during the state of emergency, Jamaat is still continuing its clandestine activities to spread religion-based politics through 42 organisations. Jamaat at present controls around 60 percent mosques and mosque-based educational facilities in the country. The party has already set up at least one madrasa in every village to provide Islamic education, Rahman pointed out. He also added that Jamaat has established a strong network of followers across the country by investing a huge amount of money in the transport sector. Besides, it has organised a large number of party activists through mosques and madrasas in villages all over the country.
Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat, has made a strong presence in five universities and 12 colleges in the country. Dhaka University is their next target. Shibir has also been spreading its control in rural areas with the help of Islamic NGOs. It even opened up operational cells in different parts of the country to organise militant activities, he added.
Though the law enforcement agencies are trying to bring the militants behind bars, the policy makers should put their emphasis on capturing patronizers as well as financiers of militancy, the speakers said. They also stressed the need for timely action against the militants with a specific strategy while upholding the constitution. Among others, Dr Syed Anwar Husain of University of Dhaka, Ambassador Arshaduzzaman, Abdul Ahad Chowdhury of Muktijoddha Sangsad and Kamrul Hasan Khan of Peshajibi Samannay Parishad also spoke at the meeting.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
JOHN CANDY > STRIPES movie > "I'm sorry, but its/thats the Rulez" [of Radical Islam], which is what attracted the love of anti-God Secular Communism in support of Radic Islamist-based Terror.
The US-led and British-backed war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions rather than on root causes, a think tank warned on Wednesday.
And you can never think too much about root causes. Soon as I hear 'root causes', I know exactly with whom I'm dealing.
The war on terror is failing and actually increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks, the Oxford Research Group said in its study, titled Beyond Terror: The Truth About The Real Threats To Our World.
Frustrated academics strike again. We can never measure up.
It said Britain and the United States used military might to try to keep the lid on problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism.
Turns out that 'keeping the lid on' is a pretty good way to uproot terrorism, so long as you squash a lot of hard boyz with that big heavy lid ...
It said such an approach, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, had actually heightened the risk of further terrorist atrocities on the scale of September 11, 2001.
After all, look how many 9/11's we've had in the U.S. since 9/11.
Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror only spawned new terror in the region and created a combat training zone for jihadists, the reports authors argued. It pointed out that the Taliban movement was now resurgent, six years after it was overthrown in 2001 by the US-led invasion in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
The Taliban is so resurgent that it can briefly hold a district or two in a region near the Pak border. Until the Canadians come looking for them.
Sustainable approaches to fighting terrorism ...
Is that like 'sustainable agriculture'?
... will involve the withdrawal of US-led forces from Iraq and their replacement with a United Nations stabilisation force, it said.
And exactly where will we find a UN force to do that? Iran? Syria? Bangladesh? We can't get a UN force into Somalia or Darfur. Talk is cheap which is why it's so prevelant on campus.
It also recommended the provision of sustained aid for rebuilding and developing Iraq and Afghanistan as well as closing the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where most suspects are held without charge or trial.
All the usual progressive buzz words right there.
And it called for a genuine commitment to a viable two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Of course. Silly us, why hadn't anyone thought of this before?
The study warned that military intervention in Iran over its nuclear ambitions would be disastrous, calling instead for a firm and public commitment to a diplomatic solution.
'Firm' should never be used by a Y'urppeon academic. It's a foreign word to them.
The study also said the British governments plans to upgrade the submarine-based Trident nuclear deterrent could produce international instability.
After all, look how destabilizing the Trident is today.
Nuclear weapon modernisation is likely to serve as a substantial encouragement to nuclear proliferation as countries with perceptions of vulnerability deem it necessary to develop their own deterrent capabilities, it said.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/12/2007 00:00 ||
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It's true, the Japanese fought a lot harder after Pearl Harbor than they did before, so I guess declaring war just created more militarists. So what?
The idea is not to deprive people of their incentive to be terrorists, it is to destroy ALL of those who respond to such incentive. The central fallacy of the defeatist meme that fighting back "only creates more terrorists" is that the terrorists have always had more recruits than they could possibly use.
Lying media beasts will provide them with the incentive they need regardless of what we do. The objective is to kill as many of them as necessary to discourage the others from acting on this incitement and to convince their sponsors and apologists that their goals cannot be achieved through terror.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
04/12/2007 0:54 Comments ||
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Frustrated academics strike again. We can never measure up
No truer words have been written. Most of these academics are frustrated marxists that are perpetualy disappointed that the real world does not co-operate with their beutiful theorys.
Posted by: Helmuth, Speaking for N guard ||
04/12/2007 1:26 Comments ||
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A few years back, I was in a meeting with a few folks from our very own spiffy intel community, and the "counter-terrorism" guy actually came out with the "root causes" incantation. When I picked my jaw up off the table, I exercised olympian restraint and mumbled something vague.
Excellent fisking, Fred, and great comment, Atomic. I'd add that in addition to destroying and deterring actual terrorist nitwits, a primary goal of some operations is to deny such groups state sponsors or sanctuaries, and esp. state-provided WMDs (thus Iraq). This stuff ain't that hard to understand. The existence of the sort of infantile confusion exhibited by the "study" is astounding enough, its popularity and resilience is beyond comprehension.
#6
There are root causes, but they are unacceptable to the progressives.
For example, the root cause of the Palestinian 'problem' is the river of cash that perpetuates an essentially indolent population, with unlimited free time to plot, seethe, etc. Were they to have to work for a living and run a real state raising its own revenues and provide its own services, the Palestinian problem would dissapear overnight.
#8
"It said Britain and the United States used military might to try to keep the lid on problems rather than trying to uproot the causes of terrorism."
I agree. And I note that terrorism these days seems to have one "root cause" that makes all others pale to insignificance: a fanatical devotion to Islam.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
04/12/2007 7:00 Comments ||
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And we have a winner! David D hits it square on the nose.
Terrorism.RootCause = Islam
Islam.God(Allan) = Monster
When a peoples' god and prophet are monsters -- we should expect them (as a whole) to become a monster.
Posted by: Captain Lewis ||
04/12/2007 8:48 Comments ||
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I'm a big believer in sorting out root causes.
Those would be the ROP and MSM / LLL / Marxist academics enabling the dissemination of its various memes.
Whilst I am realistic enough to recognize that this is unlikely to happen before the next Hadean Glacial Maximum, it seems reasonable enough to suggest that were there a greater awareness of these issues, and a stronger general resolve, military actions could once again be effective deterrents, rather than (at best) partially effective solutions.
Whilst it is true that the military defeat of the Ottoman empire brought about a massive decline in Jihadist fervour and Khalifatist bandwagoning, this time it is more a failure of the ideologies underlying our own civilisations than the limited material successes emanating from their own closed system that provides the motivating factor.
This programme contains projects which focus on security threats that are global in their causes and impact. The solutions to these threats will require fundamental shifts in the way that organisations, governments and peoples think about, and legislate for, war and peace.
Central to this programme is an ongoing critical analysis of the current war on terror which shows how acutely the current approach to security is failing, and how it is in danger of distracting world leaders from the far more deadly and unavoidable threats posed by climate change, resource competition, poverty and marginalisation, and global militarisation.
Linked to this analysis are a range of initiatives to shift thinking towards non-military conflict prevention, and the protection of innocent life.
Sound like a bunch of British hippies got together and started up a "think tank"...
#16
The study warned that military intervention in Iran over its nuclear ambitions would be disastrous, calling instead for a firm and public commitment to a diplomatic solution.
Neville Chamberlain couldn't be reached for
comment.
..a think tank warned on Wednesday.
How can I get a gig like that - getting paid for thinking up (or even just repeating) inanities?
The Rantburg Center for Civil, Well-Reasoned Discourse opened this week by issuing a study showing that the use of the Logan Act to prosecute US citizens, including politicians, who had attempted to circumvent US foreign policy abroad was long overdue. The Center, long known for its' conservative and right wing views, issued its report and specifically cited House Leader Nancy Pelosi's recent so-called "fact finding" visit to Syria as a key point.
...wait, that's not stupid...though it might seem so to those on the left...
Communists always make the French elections interesting. The upcoming presidential election, for which the first round of voting will commence on April 22, promises more of the same.
Most of the press attention thus far has focused on the top three candidates. These include frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy, the tough-talking former prime minister; Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate running on the partys traditional anti-capitalist platform; and dark horse Francois Bayrou, about whom no one seems to know anything other than that hes a centrist.
Of course, centrist is a relative word -- whether or not one is a centrist depends on the positions of the other candidates. And what are these? According to the Associated Press,
the field of 12 presidential hopefuls contains six candidates to the left of the Socialist Royal, including three Trotskyists [and] a Communist. You know a country is serious about Marxism when there are so many Marxist candidates that the Trotskyists are listed separately from the garden-variety Communists.
But these fine distinctions are apparently still taken seriously on the far left. The World Socialist Web Site, for example, published a broadside against Olivier Besancenot, the presidential candidate of the Revolutionary Communist League. Accusing him of denying Marxism by publicly disassociating himself from Trotsky, the website quoted Besancenot as voicing tolerance for different strands of communism such as libertarianism and syndicalism.
Its certainly touching to see that French presidential candidates are so inclusive, embracing everything from communist libertarianism to communist syndicalism. Amazingly, thats not even the full extent of the anti-capitalist choices on the French ballot. Voters can also choose Jose Bove, a sheep farmer and anti-globalization crusader. Candidate Bove preaches ''an electoral insurrection against economic liberalism'' and ''a social, feminist, democratic, anti-racist and ecological revolution'' -- a program rarely advocated outside American university classrooms.
A die-hard opponent of genetically modified crops, Bove became a folk hero in France after leading an attack on a McDonalds restaurant in 1999, an act for which Bove received one of his several jail sentences. Apparently, French prison food is purely organic.
And Frances red-tinged slate of candidates this year is no anomaly -- French Communists still carry real electoral clout. The Communists were members of the governing coalition led by former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a former Communist himself. The far left received an incredible 19% of the vote in the last election.
The only thing preventing a red from becoming a legitimate presidential contender is the perpetual tendency of Communist leaders toward vicious infighting -- a grand tradition dating back to Marx himself. A Communist candidate that could unite the fifth of the electorate that votes the far-left ticket would currently poll third, and could probably pick off many additional votes from most other candidates except for Sarkozy.
In fact, it was the diffusion of the far-left vote among the various Communist candidates that famously allowed far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen into the second round of voting in 2002. News of Le Pens first-round victory provoked hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen to take to the streets in protests that often degenerated into rioting and clashes with the police.
Think about that for a second. The French were engaging in mass demonstrations and riots to protest their own vote. There were no allegations of electoral fraud or disenfranchisement -- just disgust at how they, themselves, had voted. News reports related that protestors held signs reading, Im ashamed to be French. While one can only sympathize with that particular sentiment, its hard to understand all the hubbub against Le Pen -- this being France, even a right-wing extremist like Le Pen makes opposition to capitalism a primary plank of his program.
Unfortunately for the neo-communists, Marx didnt leave much in the way of instructions for dealing with Frances current spate of existential problems. During Karls days, Frances cities were not ringed with teeming slums of Islamic immigrants in which car burnings by rioting youths was the most popular sport.
So why the abiding fascination with Communism -- a governing philosophy that has brought nothing but economic ruin and secret police goon squads everywhere it has been tried? Has socialism really been that good to France, where chronic unemployment is increasingly leaving the youth with little to do except to riot, as they did last spring in response to a modest government attempt to loosen up the labor markets?
Perhaps the allure of Communism stems from the glorified memory of the French Revolution. But recalling how that episode ended at Robespierres guillotines, one would think France, of all nations, would recognize the historical tendency of militant egalitarianism to degenerate into mass murder.
George Schultz once described the plan for the Iran-Contra deal as the snake that wouldnt die. That is an apt description of French Communism. No matter how many mass graves are uncovered in Cambodia, the former Soviet Union, and elsewhere; no matter how many citizens of Communist countries risk death to escape from their workers paradise; and no matter how many times the newly freed victims of Communism across the world emerge into the free world blinking, hungry, and with a terrible sense of fashion, the ideology somehow cannot be discredited.
Royal recently received some criticism for allegedly trying to expropriate the symbols of the far right. Her transgression? Suggesting that the French put national flags in their windows and sing the national anthem at her rallies. In a country whose sense of national identity is so shallow that these acts are considered to be the exclusive domain of the far right, perhaps its not all that mysterious why the Communist snake never quite slithers away.
Mr. Langer is a book editor for Regnery Publishing (a HUMAN EVENTS' sister company) and a freelance journalist. He can be reached at jlanger@eaglepub.com.
#1
Btw, orthodox marxists should do about 2-3% this time (but in the later parliament election, they should retain their caucus, due to the stranghold of the system on french politics, whereas the 18% FN has not had a single MP since 1988 IIRC), and overall, assorted commies should get 10% or so; according to polling, about 60% of the voters will vote conservative, which is in the range of the usual results.
As a matter of fact, France is a conservative country, the reds have not a long history of presiding over the country's destiny; current problem is, the whole post-WWII structure of power has been co-designed by the commies, who have entrenched themselves in the public sector and most notably the education, and in the intellectual spheres (thanks in large part to the "epuration", which was a God-given gift to them). On top of that, you've got the 60's student revolution by the maoists, and the trotkysts (who now dominate the MSM and the socialist party, since mitterrand used trostkyst entrism to gain the upper hand in his bid to socialist leadership in 1971), and the 1981 socialist victory, conforted by the "antifascist" and anti-liberal (as in "anglosaxon free market") yacoub ben shiraq.
Of course, there's a long tradition of leftist totalitarianism dating back to 1793, and an assorted (free-masonry based) tradition of anti-christianity, plus a very deeply rooted centralism.
#2
You know a country is serious about Marxism when there are so many Marxist candidates that the Trotskyists are listed separately from the garden-variety Communists.
Doesn't surprise me from the land that educated Pol Pot and his henchmen.
#3
Agree, Grunter. After all that money flushed away on European-only defense projects, they couldn't spare enough coin for a sufficient number of helicopter gunships.
That's all the incentive I need to read the article. I'm always impressed by his keen wisdom and smooth prose. Here's an example: "It hasn't been always brilliant, this campaign waged in Iraq. But its mistakes can never smother its honor, and no apology for it is due the Arab autocrats who had averted their gaze from Iraq's long night of terror under the Baath."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
by Jack Langer
