My first reaction upon hearing that North Korea had agreed to take steps toward nuclear disarmament was: not again! Hadn't Pyongyang promised Jimmy Carter, during his ill-advised 1994 "peace" mission, that it would freeze its nuclear weapons program and dismantle existing nuclear facilities? Didn't North Korea break that promise? In 2000, hadn't Secretary of State Madeleine Albright toasted the "dear leader" Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang only to be disappointed later? When will these people realize that communists lie?
Now comes the Bush administration's announcement of what appears appears to be a breakthrough. This time things might might be different, especially because the initial agreement does not rely solely on Kim's word or on U.S. pressure. As outlined to me in a telephone conversation with Deputy National Security Adviser J.D. Crouch, this agreement is the result of pressure exerted by five countries the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea something critics said would never happen.
Critics said the Bush administration was making a big mistake in not accepting Kim's demand for bilateral negotiations. President Bush held out and, so far, his strategy seems to be working.
Crouch says the Chinese government deserves credit for pressuring Pyongyang to reach an agreement on its nuclear weapons. And he tells me that in order to get the energy, humanitarian and other economic aid that has been promised, North Korea must comply with a two-phase process that will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to Crouch, North Korea will get an initial tranche of emergency humanitarian and energy aid up-front, but they will not get the remainder unless they fully declare and disable their nuclear programs, including uranium enrichment. Phase one will take place over the next 60 days. North Korea has agreed to stop the operation of and seal its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, stop the operation of and seal their plutonium reprocessing facilities and allow the IAEA to come back into those facilities to verify those actions. Additionally, North Korea has agreed to do an initial accounting of its nuclear program. In exchange for honoring those promises, North Korea will receive about 5 percent of the energy aid promised to them. That amounts to 50,000 tons of a promised aid package that is equivalent to 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil.
Phase two leads to the disablement of North Korean nuclear facilities, which, says Crouch, goes beyond anything envisioned during the Clinton administration. The benefit of disablement, he says, is that "it would take them a lot of time and cost them a lot of money to bring those facilities back to where they would be useful again." As part of the agreement, North Korea is also required to account for all nuclear weapons, which they must dismantle, and take inventory of its plutonium stockpile, something else the Clinton administration was unable to achieve.
Incentives for North Korea to live up to its promises include: refusal by the co-signing nations to deliver the promised energy if there is no compliance, keeping the U.N. sanctions in place until there is full compliance and the continued use of financial levers that have prompted the Treasury Department to pressure governments not to do business with North Korea, pressure that has apparently worked, says Crouch.
Much remains to be worked out in the various "working groups" before this deal is final, but the Bush administration is guardedly optimistic that the conditions point to a greater likelihood of compliance by North Korea than with previous agreements, which were being violated even as they were written.
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is skeptical about the agreement. He told Bill Gertz of The Washington Times that the deal rewards "bad behavior" by North Korea and sends a "bad signal" to Iran. Bolton could be right, but if the agreement works, the threat from a major player in "the axis of evil" will have been substantially reduced. In an increasingly troubled and chaotic world, that is a blessing.
The threat from Al Qaeda to the United States since the Sept. 11 2001 attacks has been overblown by officials, with the chances of becoming a victim the same as being killed by a comet, a US academic contends.
Professor John Mueller, chairman of National Security Studies at Ohio State University, says in a new book that politicians and security officials overreacted to the threat and exaggerated what was really a small risk. The threat is overblown. It doesnt mean it doesnt exist but I dont think its of a cosmic nature. Its not a threat to survival, Mueller told Reuters at a high-profile security conference in London where he was one of the guest speakers.
"You know, it's not until al-Qaeda kills 3 million of us that your risk of dying is even one percent. What are we worried about?" he added.
In his book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them, Mueller analysed public statements from senior politicians and security officials since Sept .11.
He questioned why Al Qaeda had failed to attack the United States again since then, despite numerous grim warnings that had suggested that Osama bin Ladens group was active and on the verge of attacks.
Certainly he won't buy the idea that perhaps, maybe, just possibly, the FBI, CIA and US military have put a big dent on al Qaeda's capabilities since 9/11. Nah, that can't be it. The US never gets anything right, we all saw that movie.
He cited comments such as those made by FBI director Robert Mueller who said in 2003: The greatest threat is from Al Qaeda cells in the US that we have not yet been able to identify.
The reason nothing had come to pass, he argued, was because the threat was nowhere near as serious as claimed, and that Al Qaeda probably had little or no US presence. If the FBI says we cant find any Al Qaeda cells one reaction is, why are we giving you so much money? said Muller, whose The Remnants of War won an award for best book on international relations in 2004. Its to your advantage to exacerbate the threat and say its really out there.
Mueller said the Department for Homeland Security had identified 80,000 potential targets from shopping malls to the Weeki Wachee Springs water park in Florida. But the chances of being killed by an act of terrorism are 80,000 to 1, he contends, the same as being killed by a comet or an asteroid.
According to his calculations, about 200 people worldwide have died in non-combat areas as a result of Al Qaeda action since Sept. 11. Thats 200 too many but not a threat to an international system or any modern state, he reasoned. Two to three hundred die every year in the United States alone from drowning in a bath tub.
So who cares if a bunch of terrorists blow up a subway tube in London or Madrid, or a beach bar in Bali? Your odds are still less than 1%, right? Where's that meteor?
Mueller stressed that there was a threat from a small group of extremists but he argued they were not as sophisticated, and so not as much of a risk, as the authorities made out. More and more when you look at these cases you do find they are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, said Mueller, who is familiar with militant attacks after two of his students were killed in the bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Many of them seem to clearly be nut cases, probably more dangerous to themselves, but they might blow something up.
He's even worse: he knows people who have died at the hands of terrorists and he still doesn't get the message.
Nutty people have done horrible things before. But while he accused politicians and officials of racheting up fear and security costs, he didnt doubt their sincerity. However, he doubted they would ever publicly support his views. Then theyd be soft on terrorism. Theyre afraid to say what Ive said in case they are going to lose votes. Maybe theyre right.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/17/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Overblow me, asshole.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/17/2007 0:15 Comments ||
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#2
So.... Just a guess, but I'm going to assume he considers the entire Middle East a combat area. along with Indonesia, Malaysia and that school in Beslan was such a heavy combat area. What a Phuckin moron.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/17/2007 0:46 Comments ||
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#3
After he dies, let him try to explain that away.
#4
You think the Prof lives in the neighborhoods of Columbus or its suburbs with a high degree of crime? Even on those streets its probably 'statistically' secure to live day to day. So why doesn't he put into practice what he preaches? Most like because he is a member of the inner party - one set of rules for me and a separate set of rules for thee.
#5
Lee Harris has a superb response to Mueller's nonsense here.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/17/2007 10:49 Comments ||
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#6
the herpetic troll outbreak occurs again!
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2007 11:56 Comments ||
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#7
Truth seems to bother JUSTICE a lot.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/17/2007 12:02 Comments ||
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#8
See ya made the news, Justice...
Lab test confirms that a man sexually assaulted goat
JILL NOLIN
2007-01-31
A lab test has confirmed that a man sexually assaulted a dead female goat found recently. Its definitely human DNA that were working with, said Dee
Thompson-Poirrier, director of animal services with the Panhandle Animal Welfare Society.
The test indicated that semen found in the goat belonged to a man.
A suspect has still not been named, but the goats owners in north.
Okaloosa County have tentatively identified someone who may be responsible for sexually assaulting the animal, Thompson-Poirrier said.
And it may not have been the first time the goat was sexually assaulted. Its previous owners live nearby and reported noticing a swelling similar to the swelling noted at the time of the goats recent death, said Thompson-Poirrier
It does not appear that the individual intentionally killed the goat, which was pregnant with two kids, she added. The complication of the pregnancy the goat had almost carried the kids full term caused an additional strain that was too much for the goats heart, Thompson-Poirrier said.
A curious delay in proclaiming into law changes aimed at shutting down the use of sharia law in this province is cause for alarm for one Muslim spokesperson and an MPP demanding to know why the government is dragging its feet.
Amid a furor over a proposal to allow sharia law to settle civil disputes, more than a year ago Attorney General Michael Bryant issued a press release saying proposed amendments to the Abitration Act would mean there would be "one law for all Ontarians."
Oddly, although the changes were passed Feb. 14, 2006 and given royal assent shortly thereafter, they have not formally been proclaimed into law.
Continued on Page 49
At the end of each witness's testimony in the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, after prosecutors and defense attorneys examined and cross-examined, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton asked jurors to write down any questions they had. Walton would then look through the papers, decide which questions were appropriate and pose them to the witness. Now, as the case heads to the jury, those queries are our best hints about what jurors are thinking.
But last week there was a moment when we got a hint not from a question that Walton asked, but from one he refused to ask. After the testimony of star prosecution witness Tim Russert, Walton scanned the jurors' queries and announced, "There is going to be one question I'm not going to ask. I've concluded that that question is not appropriate and therefore you should not speculate as to what the response would have been."
What was he talking about? A moment later, Walton told the jurors: "What Mrs. Wilson's status was at the CIA, whether it was covert or not covert, is not something that you're going to hear any evidence presented to you on in this trial."
"Whether she was, or whether she was not, covert is not relevant to the issues you have to decide in this case," he said. It is The Thing That Cannot Be Spoken at the Libby trial.
From the first day, Walton has said that jurors will not be allowed to know, or even ask, about the status -- covert, classified or otherwise -- of Valerie Plame Wilson, the woman at the heart of the CIA leak case. "You must not consider these matters in your deliberations or speculate or guess about them," he told jurors in his opening instructions.
A few days later, on Jan. 29, Walton told everyone in the courtroom that the jurors are not the only ones in the dark about Mrs. Wilson's status. "I don't know, based on what has been presented to me in this case, what her status was," Walton said. Two days later, he added, "I to this day don't know what her actual status was."
Walton's reasoning is this: The trial is about whether Libby lied to the grand jury in the CIA leak investigation. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald never charged anyone with leaking the identity of a covert or classified agent. Libby isn't on trial for that, so jurors -- and judge -- don't need to know.
The problem is, the entire case stems from accusations that the Bush White House illegally leaked Mrs. Wilson's identity in an effort to get back at her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, for his high-profile criticism of the administration's case for war in Iraq. That's why the CIA leak investigation began, and it's why Libby appeared before a grand jury, leading to the perjury charges against him. It's what the CIA leak case is about. Yet Walton has told jurors to put it out of their minds.
However well-intentioned, the prohibition isn't working; the question of Mrs. Wilson's status came up in court virtually every day. Take, for example, the time prosecutors played tapes of all eight hours of Libby's grand jury testimony. And what was Libby asked about?
"Did you have any sense that if you revealed the person's identity out at the CIA you may be compromising the identity of a covert person?" Fitzgerald was recorded as asking Libby. "No, sir," Libby responded. "I mean, my, my understanding is that most of the people at the CIA are not covert . . ."
"You didn't consider that there might be a risk that a person working at the CIA might be overt to other CIA employees and even sometimes to the government, but may be operating undercover -- or might otherwise be a covert person?"
"I had no sense that it was something classified."
The jury heard it all, aided by their own copies of the transcript and exhibits. Of course, if they thought about Mrs. Wilson's status, they would have been violating Judge Walton's order.
Then there was the argument Fitzgerald had with defense lawyer Ted Wells over Fitzgerald's theory that Libby lied because he was afraid for his job after President Bush announced that anyone who leaked classified information about a CIA agent would be fired.
Wait a minute, said Wells. "The jury has been instructed that the issue of whether it was classified or whether she was covert will not be presented in this case."
"I'm not going to tell the jury the information was classified," Fitzgerald responded. "I will tell the jury that there was an investigation into whether the law was violated."
Of course, we all knew -- and the jury knew too, since it was discussed in Libby's grand jury testimony -- that the law to which Fitzgerald referred was the one barring disclosure of a covert agent's identity.
Outside the courtroom, Fitzgerald has said that Mrs. Wilson's status was in fact classified. The Libby indictment says that, too. But the judge has not allowed the jury to see the indictment, either.
The result is that jurors have heard constant suggestions that some sort of crime, committed by the administration and perhaps by Libby himself, lies at the bottom of the case. An air of accusation hangs over the courtroom. But the accusation can't be discussed.
Maybe in the end, jurors will be able to make sense of it all. But it's more likely that even after the trial ends, they'll still have one question they want answered.
The writer is White House correspondent for National Review.
#2
if Fitzgerald had any ethics or class, he would drop the case, resign and lay low for a decade. Fitzmas never happened
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2007 8:54 Comments ||
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If I was on the jury, my question would be, "Can we sentence the prosecutor and the journalists to death? Along with the traitors Plame and her hubby?
#4
How --by common law-- can one justify withholding facts or evidence from a jury? if a witness does that, it's unacceptable, but if a judge does, it's fine?
#6
Allow me to defend the judge: it's the judge's job to ensure that a fair trial is presented. The judge has to allow all the facts in that are relevant, but keep out facts that are irrelevant, to the case. In the Libby trial it was stipulated beforehand that the release of Plame's identity wasn't be tried and wasn't to be an issue. So all mention of it has to be kept out.
One could see a juror, hearing (as if they hadn't already) that Libby was involved in the 'outing of an American cover agent', would vote to convict on perjury regardless of the facts.
So the judge is right.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/17/2007 20:52 Comments ||
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#7
Under common law it's not up to the judge to decide what facts the jury may or may not consider.
One could see a juror -- upon hearing that there was absolutely no crime in the first instance of prosecution activity -- figure out that Libby is a scapegoat who may have been scared into somewhat misrepresenting his earlier actions because he was under threat for a crime that never happened.
This is a witch hunt and the judge has no legitimate power to hide from the jury that the initial attempt to frame Libby was based on false accusations. If the judge is allowed to act like that, hiding facts from jurors, then NOBODY CAN EVER BE SAFE from government persecution. They'll just keep going after you until they destroy your life, and meanwhile you will never be allowed to tell the jury the truth: there never was a crime in the first instance, which is all the jury really needs to know.
If I were a juror, and I'm told Libby is accused of lying, but he did it in order to evade a false accusation -- I'd free him and ask that the prosecutor and judge be tried and executed for abuse of government power. That's what it will take to preserve our liberties.
The fact that Plame was not a covert agent is crucial to the case. That's why they're actively hiding it from the jury.
. . . Mr. Murtha has a different idea. He would stop the surge by crudely hamstringing the ability of military commanders to deploy troops. In an interview carried Thursday by the Web site MoveCongress.org, Mr. Murtha said he would attach language to a war funding bill that would prohibit the redeployment of units that have been at home for less than a year, stop the extension of tours beyond 12 months, and prohibit units from shipping out if they do not train with all of their equipment. His aim, he made clear, is not to improve readiness but to "stop the surge." So why not straightforwardly strip the money out of the appropriations bill -- an action Congress is clearly empowered to take -- rather than try to micromanage the Army in a way that may be unconstitutional? Because, Mr. Murtha said, it will deflect accusations that he is trying to do what he is trying to do. "What we are saying will be very hard to find fault with," he said.
Mr. Murtha's cynicism is matched by an alarming ignorance about conditions in Iraq. He continues to insist that Iraq "would be more stable with us out of there," in spite of the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies that early withdrawal would produce "massive civilian casualties." He says he wants to force the administration to "bulldoze" the Abu Ghraib prison, even though it was emptied of prisoners and turned over to the Iraqi government last year. He wants to "get our troops out of the Green Zone" because "they are living in Saddam Hussein's palace"; could he be unaware that the zone's primary occupants are the Iraqi government and the U.S. Embassy?
It would be nice to believe that Mr. Murtha does not represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party or the thinking of its leadership. Yet when asked about Mr. Murtha's remarks Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered her support. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
02/17/2007 12:51 ||
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#1
Just read this--left a comment thanking them for the momentary lapse of bias, and YIKES - judging from the other comments they sure have upset the moonbats. They adore that pathetic, treasonous bastard Murtha.
#4
I love the "We Support the Troops" from the likes of Murtha and Pelosi, a representative of a city that ran the troops out of their district, the disctrict of San Francisco...
So far, there's no way to tell for certain what made Sulejman Talovic start shooting up a mall in Salt Lake City this past Monday. Talovic, 18, killed five people and injured nine before he was shot dead by police.FBI agent Patrick Kiernan said there was no known reason to think Talovic, a Muslim immigrant from Bosnia, was motivated by religious extremism, i.e., was committing a terrorist act.
But whatever his motives were, what Talovic committed was in fact an act of terrorism. He shot innocent civilians with the obvious intent of inspiring terror.
The question of why he did it may never be answered satisfactorily, since Talovic is dead. His family claims to be totally dumfounded. "We're Muslims but we are not terrorists," his aunt said. Neighbors described him as a loner who typically dressed in black. The police say there's nothing to tie Talovic to terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. But it sure looks like another case of what Daniel Pipes, founder and director of the Middle East Forum, calls "Sudden Jihad Syndrome."
In an article published March 14, 2006 on www.frontpagemag.com, Pipes cited an incident in which Iranian immigrant Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV into a crowd of people, injuring nine of them. Taheri-azar had just graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was his high school student council president. An acquaintance said he was "kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent," though the university chancellor said Taheri-azar was "a loner."
After his arrest, Taheri-azar told the courts that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah." He said he had acted to "punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world," and "to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world." He'd been planning his jihad for more than two years. Pipes says that Taheri-azar "represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims."
There have been several similar incidents. A couple examples: Last August an Afghani Muslim killed one person and injured 14 more as he drove through San Francisco, deliberating hitting pedestrians on sidewalks and in crosswalks. He said he was a terrorist. Last July a Muslim entered the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, announced that he was a Muslim American and "I'm angry at Israel," and opened fire, killing a woman and injuring five others.
The police often don't tag such incidents as acts of terrorism because there's no discernible association with al-Qaeda. But that connection is not really necessary. There is plenty of encouragement for jihad being preached in many mosques, as well as on the Internet. It doesn't take an organization to plot the sort of personal jihads being carried out by these individuals, though it's possible that Talovic (if he really was one of them) had assistance. He somehow came up with an illegal handgun.
If Pipes is correct, and "sudden jihad" is a syndrome, we can expect to see more of these attacks. Nobody wants to suspect his Muslim neighbor or fellow student or co-worker of plotting terrorism, and of course most of the time it's not the case. But it remains a fact that jihad is being preached and taught to Muslims the world over. All it takes is a disaffected young man looking for a mission, and it can happen. Until Muslims as a whole decide to reject violent jihad and adopt peaceful ways of spreading their beliefs, it will continue to happen.
#1
He'd been planning his jihad for more than two years. Pipes says that Taheri-azar "represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims."
But it wasn't a sudden decision if he'd been planning it for two years while he completed his university studies. It merely was a sudden execution by an individual jihadi, as compared to the organization men belonging to one of the many Al Qaeda affiliates.
#5
With the local police and FBI's refusal to inspect this terrorist's computer, we will never know. Shades of Mussuie (sp).
What we do know is that the mullah of his mosque was convicted of beating his wife. Something that muhammad instructs husbands to do. We also know he murdered his victims execution style, shot in the back of the head. They were in the gift shop buying Valentines. Something forbidden under Sharia law.
Pipes is correct, we will see many more of these kind of islamic murders here in the USA. 80% of the mosques in the United States are Saudi funded, with Bush planning on bringing in 10,000 so called "students" from Arabia. The only thing we can do is try and make this information public.
Anyone remember the "student" Hinrich in the Midwest, converted to islam and tried to blow himself up in a football stadium? They found additional explosives in his room and yet the FBI blew smoke up our collective asses calling his death a suicide. Not a chance. The muslim was trying to mass murder just as he was taught in his mosque.
All I can say is fuck the FBI and the muslims it protects. Hell their translation department is so full of islamics that this department is called the mole hole.
I'm afraid it is going to take a nuke in this country before we throw these people out.
Oh and the next time someone calls someone a "moderate" muslim ask them this. What is moderate about following a cult personality founded by a terrorist who was a pedophile and demands our forced conversion, enslavement or murder. More often than not the response will be, "islam is peaceful". Then look them in the face and ask them if they even know what century muhammad was spawned in. I can pretty much guarantee they won't know.
Regardless I'm fucking glad Talovic is death. The kind of sentence out courts have refused to hand out to one single muslim terrorist animal. But right now the FBI is shitting on his victims graves.
in March 2002, Amir Omerovic was convicted of mailing the jihadist death threat to Rowland. From the March 5, 2002 New York Times account:
A man pleaded guilty yesterday to mailing letters falsely threatening to infect their recipients with anthrax. The defendant, Amir Omerovic, a 28-year-old naturalized citizen from Bosnia now living in Derby, admitted in Federal District Court that in late October he sent such letters to the offices of Gov. John G. Rowland, the United States Coast Guard and Marines in Connecticut, and the Judicial Review Council in Hartford.
John A. Danaher III, the United States attorney, said that Mr. Omerovic, who faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, is to be sentenced on May 17.
Prosecutors said the letters contained a note that read: 09.11.01. Anthrax is deadly. You breathe and die. This is only the beginning. Americans will die. Death to America and Israel.
Posted by: IS THIS THING ON ? ||
02/17/2007 18:30 Comments ||
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RESULTS ON LAST WORDS BY GUNMAN AT TROLLY STATION
In a statement on the Senate floor today concerning the non-binding Iraq resolution, Senator Lieberman stated:
"The non-binding resolution before us today, we all know, is only a prologue. That is why the fight over it - procedural and substantive - over these past weeks has been so intense. It is the first skirmish in an escalating battle that threatens to consume our government over many months ahead, a battle that will neither solve the sprawling challenges we face in Iraq nor strengthen our nation to defeat the enemies of our security throughout the world from Islamist extremists. That is to say, in our war against the terrorists that attacked us."
Senator Lieberman argued that the non binding resolution, "proposes nothing. It contains no plan for victory or retreat... It is a strategy of "no," while our soldiers are saying, "yes, sir" to their commanding officers as they go forward into battle."
#1
I keep thinking loserman is going to become a trunk.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
02/17/2007 0:56 Comments ||
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I don't think he will become a trunk, but I think he will decide not to caucus with the Dems - which switches the control over to the Repubs because of the Vice-President's vote. If Lieberman caucuses with the Repubs, the Senate is then split, and the VP is the determining vote on bills.
#3
Or when South Dakota gets tired of only having one Senator representing them. Johnson still is out, and they keep giving bogus updates to mollify the citizens.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/17/2007 8:15 Comments ||
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#4
If the Democrats really think we were just p'd off by Bush's incompetence in handling the war, wait til they see how we react to Democratic incompetence.
#5
Still waiting for Sulla. With a system in which the choice is incompetent crooks or crooked incompetents, what difference does it make? Remember who they turned to when both screwed up disaster relief in Katrina?
A challenge the the sanitized marxist view of muslim rule taught to Indian children
By Francois Gautier
FACT, the Trust which I head, is holding an exhibition on 'Aurangzeb as he was according to Mughal documents', from February 16 to 20 at New Delhi's Habitat Center, the Palm Court Gallery, from 10 am to 9 pm.
Why an exhibition on Aurangzeb, some may ask. Firstly, I have been a close student of Indian history, and one of its most controversial figures has been Aurangzeb (1658-1707). It is true that under him the Mughal empire reached its zenith, but Aurangzeb was also a very cruel ruler � some might even say monstrous.
What are the facts? Aurangzeb did not just build an isolated mosque on a destroyed temple, he ordered all temples destroyed, among them the Kashi Vishwanath temple, one of the most sacred places of Hinduism, and had mosques built on a number of cleared temple sites. Other Hindu sacred places within his reach equally suffered destruction, with mosques built on them. A few examples: Krishna's birth temple in Mathura; the rebuilt Somnath temple on the coast of Gujarat; the Vishnu temple replaced with the Alamgir mosque now overlooking Benares; and the Treta-ka-Thakur temple in Ayodhya. The number of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb is counted in four, if not five figures. Aurangzeb did not stop at destroying temples, their users were also wiped out; even his own brother Dara Shikoh was executed for taking an interest in Hindu religion; Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded because he objected to Aurangzeb's forced conversions.
Yet, Percival Spear, co-author with Romila Thapar of the prestigious A History of India (Penguin), writes: 'Aurangzeb's supposed intolerance is little more than a hostile legend based on isolated acts such as the erection of a mosque on a temple site in Benares.' L'histoire de l'Inde moderne (Fayard), the French equivalent of Percival Spear's history of India, praises Aurangzeb and says, 'He has been maligned by Hindu fundamentalists'. Even Indian politicians are ignorant of Aurangzeb's evil deeds. Nehru might have known about them, but for his own reasons he chose to keep quiet and instructed his historians to downplay Aurangzeb's destructive drive and instead praise him as a benefactor of arts.
Since then six generations of Marxist historians have done the same and betrayed their allegiance to truth. Very few people know for instance that Aurangzeb banned any kind of music and that painters had to flee his wrath and take refuge with some of Rajasthan's friendly maharajahs.
Thus, we thought we should get at the root of the matter. History (like journalism) is about documentation and first-hand experience. We decided to show Aurangzeb according to his own documents. There are an incredible number of farhans, original edicts of Aurangzeb hand-written in Persian, in India's museums, particularly in Rajasthan, such as the Bikaner archives. It was not always easy to scan them, we encountered resistance, sometimes downright hostility and we had to go once to the chief minister to get permission. Indeed, the director of Bikaner archives told us that in 50 years we were the first ones asking for the farhans dealing with Aurangzeb's destructive deeds. Then we asked painters from Rajasthan to reproduce in the ancient Mughal style some of the edicts: the destruction of Somnath temple; the trampling of Hindus protesting jaziya tax by Aurangzeb's elephants; or the order from Aurangzeb prohibiting Hindus to ride horses and palanquins; or the beheading of Teg Bahadur and Dara Shikoh.
People might say: 'OK, this is all true, Aurangzeb was indeed a monster, but why rake up the past, when we have tensions between Muslims and Hindus today?' There are two reasons for this exhibition. The first is that no nation can move forward unless its children are taught to look squarely at their own history, the good and the bad, the evil and the pure. The French, for instance, have many dark periods in their history, more recently some of the deeds they did during colonisation in North Africa or how they collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War and handed over French Jews who died in concentration camps (the French are only now coming to terms with it).
The argument that looking at one's history will pit a community against the other does not hold either: French Catholics and Protestants, who share a very similar religion, fought each other bitterly. Catholics brutally murdered thousands of Protestants in the 18th century; yet today they live peacefully next to each other. France fought three wars with Germany in the last 150 years, yet they are great friends today.
Let Hindus and Muslims then come to terms with what happened under Aurangzeb, because Muslims suffered as much as Hindus. It was not only Shah Jahan or Dara Shikoh who were murdered, but also the forefathers of today's Indian Muslims who have been converted at 90 per cent. Aurangzeb was the Hitler, the asura of medieval India. No street is named after Hitler in the West, yet in New Delhi we have Aurangzeb Road, a constant reminder of the horrors Aurangzeb perpetrated against Indians, including his own people.
Finally, Aurangzeb is very relevant today because he thought that Sunni Islam was the purest form of his religion and he sought to impose it with ruthless efficiency -- even against those of his own faith, such as his brother. Aurangzeb clamped down on the more syncretic, more tolerant Islam, of the Sufi kind, which then existed in India. But he did not fully succeed. Four centuries later, is he going to have the last word? I remember, when I started covering Kashmir in the late '70s, that Islam had a much more open face. The Kashmir Muslim, who is also a descendant of converted Hindus, might have thought that Allah was the only true God, but he accepted his Kashmiri Pandit neighbour, went to his or her marriage, ate in his or her house and the Hindu in turn went to the mosque. Women used to walk with open faces, watch TV, films.
Then the shadow of Aurangzeb fell on Kashmir and the hardline Sunnis came from Pakistan and Afghanistan: cinemas were banned, the burqa imposed, 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits were chased out of Kashmir through violence and became refugees in their own land and the last Sufi shrine of Sharar-e-Sharif was burnt to the ground (I was there). Today the Shariat has been voted in Kashmir, a state of democratic, secular India, UP's Muslims have applauded, and the entire Indian media which went up in flames when the government wanted Vande Mataram to be sung, kept quiet. The spirit of Aurangzeb seems to triumph.
But what we need today in India -- and indeed in the world -- is a Dara Shikoh, who reintroduces an Islam which, while believing in the supremacy of its Prophet, not only accepts other faiths, but is also able to see the good in each religion, study them, maybe create a synthesis. Islam needs to adapt its scriptures which were created nearly 15 centuries ago for the people and customs of these times, but which are not necessarily relevant in some of their injunctions today. Kabir, Dara Shikoh and some of the Sufi saints attempted this task, but failed. Aurangzeb knew what he was doing when he had his own brother beheaded. And we know what we are saying when we say that this exhibition is very relevant to today's India.
May the Spirit of Dara Shikoh come back to India and bring back Islam to a more tolerant human face.
Posted by: John Frum ||
02/17/2007 11:33 ||
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Yep, the world was safer under Bill Clinton when Osama, etal. was only attacking America - all Amer saw the world's = UNO's rush to stop Osama then.
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