#2
Apparently this was more a history lecture of a sort. I don't think he has a solution, except for mentioning this:
The United States and NATO are fast approaching decision time to take the war to Taliban's safe bases in FATA, with or without Pakistani consent. A larger aid package than the current $750 million for FATA's 3.5 million people also would have to be voted by the new U.S. Congress.
Then again he blows it with this observation:
Congress, in a classic case of cutting off its nose to spite its face, decided to cut off all military aid to South Vietnamese and Cambodian allies.
IMNSHO, it wasn't a matter of "cutting off its nose"; Congress knew what it was doing.
#5
Despite recognizing the looming CONVENTIONAL + POTENS NUCLEAR ISLAMIST THREAT to its own national security and integrity, RUSSIA STILL DESIRES TO EMPOWER AND USE A NUCLEAR IRAN AGZ THE US-WEST/NATO-EU + MAJOR WORLD STATES vv THE "GREAT GAME". Russ is making a dangerous, potens catastrophic gamble for itself and all Asia iff its wrong, ESPEC > JAN 2009 AS PER THE POST-DUBYA NEW US NATIONAL ADMIN.
GOTTA RESPECT THE RUSS GONADS IN THEIR SITUATION.
ION Not-Necessarily-Unrelated, WAFF > THE FUTURE OF THE RUSSIAN NAVY. Return to desired NEW GREATNESS-POWER, versus FAILURE + ABSOLUTE UNSTOPPABLE GEOPOL DECLINE, IRRELEVANCE + DISAPPEARANCE???
KYIV, Ukraine -- The conflict in Georgia revealed problems that extend well beyond our region. Recent events have made clear how perilous it is for the international community to ignore "frozen conflicts." The issues of breakaway regions in newly independent states are complex; too often, they have been treated as bargaining chips in geopolitical games. But such "games" result in the loss of human lives, humanitarian disasters, economic ruin and the collapse of international security guarantees.
Ukraine has become a hostage in the war waged by Russia. This has prompted Ukrainian authorities and all of our country's people, including those living in the Crimea, to ponder the dangers emanating from the fact that the Russian Black Sea fleet is based on our territory.
The tragic events in Georgia also exposed the lack of effective preventive mechanisms by the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other international organizations.
We in Ukraine hope that the Russian Federation will heed the opinion of the global community so that the issues at hand can be settled through negotiations. We want an end to the looting and destruction of Georgian infrastructure. We must do everything possible to prevent provocations and avoid further massacres.
The ongoing conflict between Russia and Georgia affects my country's interests. Military operations have taken place close to our borders, and the Russian Black Sea fleet was directly involved. The question of Ukraine's national security was acutely raised. Given the activities of the Russian fleet, I had to issue a decree regulating its functioning on the territory of Ukraine.
Under these circumstances, Ukraine could not stay silent. We, along with other nations, engaged to seek resolution of the conflict. From the first day of hostilities, Ukraine called for an immediate cease-fire by all parties and dispatched humanitarian aid to victims regardless of their ethnicity.
Ukraine upheld its firm support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia.
On Aug. 12, I, together with my colleagues from the three Baltic states and Poland, visited Tbilisi. Our proposals seeking a solution to the conflict were in harmony with the European Union settlement plan. We highly praise the efforts of the United States and the E.U. presidency, led by the French, to achieve a cease-fire. Their actions proved efficient in putting a halt to war and bloodshed.
Ukraine favors a wider international representation in the peacekeeping force in the conflict area. A new multilateral format mandated by the United Nations or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is the only way to guarantee security in the conflict zone.
I strongly hope that that plan will be strictly implemented by the conflicting parties. We are ready to join international efforts to provide relief and help victims resume their peaceful lives. Ukraine also stands ready to take part in the U.N. or OSCE missions by sending peacekeepers.
It is clear that in addition to the political dimensions of issues involving breakaway regions, we need to cope with the social and economic aspects of this phenomenon. Many of these provinces are beyond the control of the respective governments or the international community. In many cases, the absence of monitoring has turned these territories into havens for smuggling as well as illegal trafficking in arms, people and drugs. Corruption and human-rights abuses are rampant. These areas are marked by their lack of democratic electoral procedures and their unfree or biased media. The ethnic dimension of the problem is often exaggerated to help conceal the criminal practices.
Moreover, an area home to such activities poses a threat to the prosperity and development of adjacent nations. Official authorities are compelled to counter attacks from separatist paramilitaries. But they are not always successful. Before large-scale combat erupted in Georgia, Russian peacekeepers failed to prevent the shelling of Georgian territory by South Ossetian separatists. Indeed, that activity intensified in the days before the greater conflict.
This weekend Ukraine celebrated the anniversary of its independence. This conflict has proved once again that the best means of ensuring the national security of Ukraine and other countries is to participate in the collective security system of free democratic nations, exemplified today by NATO. In accordance with national legislation and its foreign policy priorities, Ukraine will continue following the path of Euro-Atlantic integration. This is the path of democracy, freedom and independence.
DENVER Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) told convention-goers Monday that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is like baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson enduring jeers without the ability to hit back.
"Barack Obama has the capacity to hit," Jackson said a breakfast panel just before the opening of the Democratic National Convention. "But he is in the situation where he can't hit back, which Jackie Robinson could not do. He had to be able to run the bases, even though the crowd was jeering the first African American on the field."
Jackson, son of the civil-rights leader, said Obama is in the same situation: "He has to keep smiling, because no one wants an angry African American in the White House."
Speaking at a panel presented by Yahoo! News, Politico and The Denver Post, Jackson added that party skeptics need to have "a Pee Wee Reese moment" a reference to the Kentucky-born Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop who famously embraced Robinson on the field when the African-American broke baseball's color barrier in 1947.
"When they have a camera put in their faces, they will have an opportunity to put their arm around our guy so that he can run the bases," Jackson said. "Hillary Clinton will have a Pee Wee Reese moment. Bill Clinton will have a Pee Wee Reese moment. Ed Rendell will have a Pee Wee Reese moment."
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) added that Obama has "got to show he's able to hit. He's got to show he's capable of running the bases. That's whether the rubber meets the road."
Jackson also attacked Obama's opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for having "so many keys" to so many houses that "he doesn't know where he is at any given moment" which could be taken as a reference to McCain's age.
Former Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who endorsed Obama during the primaries, expressed frustration with foot-dragging by the Clintons and their supporters.
"What does Barack Obama have to do to convince Clinton supporters that he's capable of being president of the United States?" Wilder asked.
Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, drew laughter by adding: "You want to speak? Fine. You want to speak, Bill? Fine. You want to be vice president? No. Beyond that, what else can I do? What do you want me to do?"
Wilder said Obama's election would "provide a new era for America to assert its leadership in the world."
The pioneering politicians who were speaking at the panel examined the implications of the campaign by the nation's first African-American presidential nominee, and whether or not the country is ready for a black president.
Another panel member, radio and television host Tavis Smiley, said expectations for Obama have become so high that "even Jesus Christ himself might not be able to respond."
"I think we have really missed the boat in this campaign on covering race," Smiley said. "I look at how quick we were to jump on the language of 'post-racial,' the language of 'race transcendence.' That's not possible yet in America."
Smiley also criticized the media's tendency to sugarcoat coverage: "Nobody's lying, nobody's flip-flopping everyone's pivoting."
Clyburn said an Obama victory "will be a redefinition of politics in America, it will be a redefinition of the Democratic Party."
Wilder said Obama "has a shot in Virginia," which has voted Republican in the presidential races, "to the extent that he continues to meet with people let them look him in the eye, shake hands, let them ask him a question, answer that question."
"I think you're going to have a number of people who give you an excuse for not voting for a person," Wilder said. "I'm not at all suggesting race. But I'm not eliminating race."
#1
Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) told convention-goers Monday that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is like baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson -- enduring jeers without the ability to hit back.
No actually Jackie could hit. He could deliver. That's why he was added to the roster. He'd already proven himself. It's also why he was able to 'pioneer' the effort. Jackie wasn't an equal opportunity quota. He wasn't an empty suit.
#2
So the "reverend's" gone from wanting to cut his balls off to sticking his tounge up his ass?
How typically...Jesse. And Barry don't even own a beer distributorship....
If the Republican Party is to be a majority party again, it must reach across lines that have divided us for years and take the Republican message of a strong national defense, lower taxes, and preserving the family to the black community.
Black Republican PAC exists to do just that by directly contributing to African American candidates for office and via independent expenditures.
#1
They also need to send the message out to the community that it was the Republican Party that put the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments into the US Constitution, not the party of the Copperheads. It was the resurgence of that Copperhead party that removed the federal troops from the polling station in the south ushering in nearly a hundred years of exclusion before enabling legislation was passed with the Republicans providing the critical support that was lacking in that other party. It needs to set the record straight and loud. It has not been the Republican Party that has saddled the community with substandard education opportunities by sacrificing their children to the adults of the unions which pay off the other party for power and control over function and results. Your past, your future, your choice.
he past few weeks have seen the most vile assaults on Indian nationhood. In the Kashmir Valley, emboldened separatists have desecrated the Indian tricolour with glee. The hitherto ambivalent slogan of azadi has become a defiant, full-throated acceptance of Pakistan. "We are Pakistanis and Pakistan is us because we are tied with the country through Islam," the Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani told a mass rally in Srinagar on August 18, adding, "Hum Pakistani hain, Pakistan hamara hai." Simultaneously, the assumptions on which Indian democracy rests have been challenged by a Taliban-like advocacy of Nizam-e-Mustafa (state based on divine law).
Police investigations in another part of India have revealed the murderous conspiracy of a group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen. Made up of educated, lower-middle class Muslims, these ideologically-driven fanatics have made it their life's mission to wage a bloody jihad against non-believers. They too, have openly debunked the principles on which the Indian political order rests. According to the boastful email the IM sent minutes before the Ahmedabad blasts on July 26, "The terms democracy, secularism, equality, integrity, peace, freedom, voting, elections are yet another fraud with us." The group has also directed its ire at the "faithless infidels and their hypocrite allies from amongst the so-called Muslims...who have bartered their faith in return of just one seat in the Parliament."
A striking feature of these threats is the resulting disarray in the liberal establishment. While the more weak-kneed and cosmopolitan intellectuals have advocated total surrender, others have fallen back on denial. The ruling Congress Party, for example, has equated demonstrators waving the national tricolour with those flaunting the Pakistan flag. Cabinet ministers have defended the terrorist SIMI and new-found allies of the UPA have rushed to console the family of the man the police believes was responsible for the murder of some 150 innocent Indians. Most important, homilies apart, there has been no meaningful intervention by those who felt that the Nehruvian ideal was the last word in India's political evolution.
This disoriented silence is understandable. The Nehruvian project rested on the assumption that the emotional foundations of India would become unshakeable if the Muslim minority were allowed a generous measure of separateness and firewalled from the intrusions of both the secular state and civil society. Nehru believed that "temporary provisions" giving a special status to J&K in the form of Article 370 would reconcile Kashmiri sub-nationalism with Indian nationhood. A common civil code was also put on hold because he felt that in time Muslims would voluntarily accept the idea of non-religious personal laws.
While Nehru viewed separateness as a temporary balm on the scars of Partition, his successors elevated it to a non-negotiable tenet of Indian secularism. The results have been hideous. Far from nurturing a Amar-Akbar-Anthony form of multi-culturalism, separateness nurtured both ghettoisation and separatism. The perverse mindset of SIMI and IM activists, for example, is almost entirely a creation of the ghetto and centred on an abstract ummah that takes precedence over actual neighbours. The similarities between the IM mindset and the radical Islamism of the Pakistani ghettos in Britain are striking. And the problem in both countries has been encouraged by an intelligentsia that equates liberty with licence and turns every complaint into victimhood.
Likewise, the dispute over 40 hectares of land was rapidly politicised and projected as a conflict between Kashmir and India. The transformation was possible because Article 370 had created the emotional space for separatism. Nowhere else in India have laws for the protection of 'locals' become a ruse for open secessionism.
Nehru's multicultural brainwave was opposed by many nationalists at the time. To them, emotional separatism was the precursor to actual separation as happened in 1947. They were right. Today, India is paying the price of Nehru's monumental folly.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/25/2008 14:25 ||
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#1
Pakistan itself stands as the acceptance by India that Muslims refuse to coexist. Therefore, those Muslims of India who openly refuse to coexist should be forcibly deported to Pakistan, and their lands revert to Hindu or Sikh ownership.
The stench of rotten politics is wafting down the Kashmir Valley but the nausea has gripped the whole nation. Defiance without logic is the reigning dialect and stridency bordering on lunacy the calling card.
Sloganeering has replaced dialogue, the Valley's leaders have been found to be duplicitous and the King called Singh has no new ideas. Typically of the UPA, everyone has someone to blame but nobody is responsible.
A decade of hard work has been reversed in hours in the quest for votes. It is as if time has stood still. Lone, Mirwaiz, Abdullah, Mufti are still the names that ring in the Valley but the face of the rebellion is the new generation. Tragically, even they choose to articulate in the old language of separatism. The failed state of Pakistan is yet deemed a "friend".
Last week Kashmiris mindlessly marched again calling for azadi. It was as if the arithmetic of economics didn't apply to Kashmir. As if someone will always pick up their bills.
In October 2002, India Today computed that in 12 years between 1990 and 2002, Jammu and Kashmir got Rs 35,571 crore in grants assistance. I revisited the numbers. Grants from the Centre doubled to touch Rs 38,156 crore in five years between 2003 and 2008. The extent of pampering is revealing.
In 2007-08 the state contributed a princely sum of Rs 533 crore as direct taxes to the Centre and received Rs 1,471 crore from the Central tax kitty and Rs 8,962 crore in grants. Its own revenue of Rs 2,299 crore will not cover the salary bill of Rs 4,389 crore.
Even without Jammu and Ladakh, azadi unsustainable. To sum up, of Rs 16,267 crore spent last year, two-thirds or 65 paise out of every rupee came from the Centre. This year the state will spend Rs 17,354 crore of which Rs 11,510 crore or Rs 11,510 per person will come from the Centre.
Compare this with the Rs 700 per capita that Uttar Pradesh gets. Worse, Uttar Pradesh will return 70 per cent of the grant while Jammu & Kashmir only 10 per cent.
You could ask where has all this money gone? But that is not the question separatists want to ask either the PDP or National Conference. That would mean looking first for the enemy within.
Azadi sounds more romantic and many across the border will revel in the rebellion. But those chanting and echoing slogans in the Valley need to wake up to one critical question: Can they afford the delusion of azadi?
Posted by: john frum ||
08/25/2008 13:37 ||
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#1
Nice racket they're running...
Representation without taxation. Kashmir sends representatives to the Indian parliament but the Indian parliament cannot levy any taxes or pass any law that has effect in Kashmir unless the state legislature also enacts it.
No Indian may purchase land in Kashmir but Kashmiris may freely purchase land or reside anywhere in India.
No Kashmiri woman married to a non-Kashmiri man may inherit or own land in Kashmir.
The relatives of slain 'militants' are paid a pension by the Indian government.
The Indian government pays for the security cover for separatist leaders - millions of dollars a year.
2/3 of the Kashmiri budget is provided by Delhi.
Kashmiris have the best socio-economic indicators in all of India - education, health etc.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/25/2008 13:51 Comments ||
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Posted by: john frum ||
08/25/2008 17:36 Comments ||
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#3
Is that a picture of Hezbollah's Nasrullah that the Kashmiri crowd is displaying?
Posted by: john frum ||
08/25/2008 17:38 Comments ||
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INTERVIEW with LT GEN. (RETD) S.K. SINHA, FORMER GOVERNOR, JAMMU & KASHMIR
By Kallol Bhattacherjee
As Governor of Jammu and Kashmir from June 2003 to May 2008, Lt Gen. (retd) S.K. Sinha aimed at industrial development, winning of hearts and greater openness. It was during his term that Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board was allotted land for putting up temperory shelters for pilgrims. Excerpts from an interview:
- Why did you increase the Amarnath yatra's duration?
In 2003, the pilgrimage lasted a month. The year 2004 had what on Hindu calendar is known as a mall mass. That means it had two Shravans. Therefore, it was natural to extend the pilgrimage as the yatra usually takes place in Shravan. But a large number of pilgrims had been coming to Amarnath every year and it was more useful for the administration to stretch the period to administer the flow of pilgrims better. The Nitish Sengupta committee (1996) and Lt Gen. J.R. Mukherjee committee (2000) had suggested increased duration for the yatra.
- Did your principal secretary behave arrogantly to the local leaders of Jammu?
He did not. He was completely misinterpreted and the local Kashmiri press put words in his mouth. There is a taped version of his press conference in which he is supposed to have suggested that the land for Amarnath shrine would have permanent structures. He did not say that and the cabinet in Jammu and Kashmir was presented a copy of that tape.
- Karan Singh wants the removal of N.N. Vohra as Governor. Do you support him?
Vohra is a friend but the truth is all these problems started in his tenure, and it was he who rescinded the land transfer. After all it was not an exceptional land transfer. Many people have acquired forestland in Kashmir. Even Reliance has acquired land for building communication network. But Kashmiri separatist leaders feel that religious Hindus cannot get land in Kashmir for religious purpose. All over the country, Hajj complexes are coming up but why not have a facility to make the pilgrims comfortable at Amarnath?
- Are Kashmiri Muslims completely radicalised now?
There is an environment of religious intolerance in Kashmir. There was ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits from the state but no one talks of them. Kashmir has been Talibanised by the separatists. The secular lobby never condemns the communal politics of Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
= Would inviting the Hurriyat to Delhi for talks help the situation?
There are supposed to be two groups in the Hurriyat; the so-called moderates and the so-called extremists. In effect they are all communal and anti-national. They have nothing against foreign tourists coming to the valley but they are allergic to Hindu Indians visiting the valley.
- Would the PDP grow mellow?
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed of the PDP is an anti-national and a communal man. Even before he became chief minister, he had a dubious reputation. He did not do anything when Hindu temples were vandalised in Kashmir in the late 1980s. Even his daughter's kidnapping was not exactly a real kidnapping.
- Was Rubaiya Sayeed not kidnapped by the militants?
Many believe that it was a stage-managed affair and not an authentic kidnapping by militants.
- But it was the PDP that cleared the land for Amarnath pilgrims. Did they suddenly go secular before the issue blew up?
The PDP is a separatist and anti-national organisation and it will play dubious politics always. It is Mufti who carried out the healing touch policy in Kashmir. As a result, India has emerged as the only country that gives pensions to the family of slain militants. Mufti also talked of putting Baglihar power project under the joint control of India and Pakistan, which is simply not acceptable to us.
- How do you rate Mehbooba Mufti, who opposes security operations yet celebrates August 15?
She, like her father, is communal and anti-national, and plays opportunistic politics.
- Do you think the Nehruvian approach to Kashmir dispute has crumbled?
Nehru was a great man but he had many failures. Thrice we were in a position to capture Muzaffarabad but each time Nehru asked us to withdraw.... Nehru's interventions in military and political affairs were failures.
- Do you support a greater say for the armed forces in public life?
I do not want the armed forces to be involved in politics. But I want the excess bureaucratic control to end. The bureaucratic control had ensured that even our only Field Marshal, Sam Manekshaw, did not get the full pay due between 1973 and 2007, when he was counting his last days. Last year, a bureaucrat went to Sam with a cheque for Rs 1 crore in his hospital. When I met Sam, he said, "A babu from Delhi had come and he delivered a cheque for a crore. But I do not know if the cheque would be honoured." These are extremes of bureaucratic control and they should end for the welfare of this country.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/25/2008 13:12 ||
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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.
