Article

2007-05-06 India-Pakistan

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Posted by John Frum 2007-05-06 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 In striking a balance between civil liberties and national security, the authorities have a daunting task.

Or you can stop pretending that Islam is just another religion like Christianity or Buddhism.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-05-06 01:40|| 2007-05-06 01:40|| Front Page Top

#2 Arguably, many of those incarcerated by the Americans without trial in Guantanamo Bay were harmless cranks. Yet, can we honestly say that the world would have been a better place if Taliban-trained radicals were roaming free, plotting vengeance?

So, which are they? Harmless cranks or vengeful and plotting Taliban-trained radicals? This is pure journalistic double-speak. It's long past tea for these scribbling assclowns to finally realize that anyone infected by Islamic indoctrination poses a direct threat to society.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-05-06 04:52|| 2007-05-06 04:52|| Front Page Top

#3 . . . it is entirely possible that had Khan and Tanveer been detained by the authorities in a pre-emptive move, there would have been charges of human rights abuse by the same people who are today demanding an inquiry . . .

Sadly true. Some people aren't antiwar, they're on the other side.

Posted by Mike 2007-05-06 07:26|| 2007-05-06 07:26|| Front Page Top

#4 The system, it would seem, proved incapable of distinguishing between normal circumstances and conditions of war.

Terrorism can't be fought by the Queensbury rules.

This should sound familiar to Americans, Canadians, British, French, German, etc. readers. Not only is it absurd to apply due process to foreigners whose only "right" was to be hanged as pirates, our domestic traitors use the law to hamstring every effort to defend civilization against nihilism (be it Marxist or muslim).

Posted by Excalibur 2007-05-06 09:07|| 2007-05-06 09:07|| Front Page Top

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Posted by Testervsf">Testervsf 2007-05-06 09:25|| http://testeraeo.com]">[http://testeraeo.com] 2007-05-06 09:25|| Front Page Top

#6 A self-trap. Man bots are geting so mannerly.

Posted by Shipman">Shipman 2007-05-06 10:23|| 2007-05-06 10:23|| Front Page Top

#7 The title should read:

Heros make nations. Wimps give nations away.

Posted by DarthVader">DarthVader 2007-05-06 10:41|| 2007-05-06 10:41|| Front Page Top

#8 from another Indian journalist...

Police: our willing executioners

Encounters are almost as old as independent India. They began in the 1950s when policemen who were fighting the dacoit menace in the Chambal ravines discovered that the best way to destroy the power of the daku gangs was to murder their leaders. Because dacoits held entire districts in their thrall (a phenomenon celebrated in Hindi cinema from the 1950s to the 1970s), policemen would shoot the outlaws dead and then line up their bodies for villagers to view. Triumphant cops would be photographed with their feet on the heads of dacoits in imitation of pictures of great white hunters and the word would go out: do not be frightened of these thugs; the police will kill them one day.

Though we romanticise the early days of independent India, the truth is that this policy had widespread public sanction even in that era. The political class wanted it known that nobody could escape the power of the Indian state and law-abiding citizens were entirely pleased to see the dacoits shot dead without the inconvenience of the judicial process.

In the 1960s, the same approach was followed in fighting the Naxalites and in combating insurgencies in the Northeast. By the 1970s, police forces in the cow belt regarded it as totally legitimate to shoot mafia leaders dead in bogus encounters. Many will argue that militancy in the Punjab would not have ended without the fake encounters that were the hallmark of the state polices fight-back against terrorists (the so-called bullet-for-bullet policy) in the 1980s. And by the 1990s, every police force in India was cheerfully bumping off gangsters in cold blood.

Each time the policy of bogus encounters was questioned by human rights activists, the same arguments were trotted out. It was not that the police enjoyed murdering people, we were told. It was that the judicial process was so slow, corrupt and time-consuming that it was almost impossible to bring hardened gangsters to justice. Far easier to just shoot them dead.

Perhaps these arguments were valid when it came to fighting terrorism. But as a means of imposing law and order? Surely, it was not that difficult to persuade judges to deny bail to gangsters? Was it really impossible to find evidence against hardened criminals?

Posted by John Frum 2007-05-06 12:04|| 2007-05-06 12:04|| Front Page Top

#9 Arguably, many of those incarcerated by the Americans without trial in Guantanamo Bay were harmless cranks.

Well armed 'Harmless Cranks' are NOT "Harmless."

Posted by Redneck Jim 2007-05-06 12:30|| 2007-05-06 12:30|| Front Page Top

#10 I understand that some of those that were released from Gitmo showed up in battles again.

Posted by JohnQC 2007-05-06 15:09|| 2007-05-06 15:09|| Front Page Top

#11 I have long advocated both a low threshold for arrest of terrorists, and reverse onus in Habeas Corpus hearings. Terrorism is about taking away rights. Ergo: defend rights by imposing obligatory harsh treatment of terrorists, onto government agents. Frankly, a good terrorist is a dead one.

Posted by Sneaze 2007-05-06 20:17|| 2007-05-06 20:17|| Front Page Top

#12 Quite a few of them, actually, JohnQC.

Posted by trailing wife 2007-05-06 20:43|| 2007-05-06 20:43|| Front Page Top

#13 I understand that some of those that were released from Gitmo showed up in battles again.

More precisely, some have already been bagged. The rest are still running around making trouble.

Posted by gromgoru 2007-05-06 21:01|| 2007-05-06 21:01|| Front Page Top

23:46 Zenster
23:46 tu3031
23:43 tu3031
23:40 Zenster
23:34 Zenster
23:26 Zenster
23:16 Zenster
23:16 JosephMendiola
23:11 gorb
23:08 JosephMendiola
23:07 gromgoru
23:05 gromgoru
23:03 Angaiger Tojo1904
22:57 Barbara Skolaut
22:56 gorb
22:56 JosephMendiola
22:51 USN, ret.
22:50 JosephMendiola
22:43 gorb
22:31 JosephMendiola
22:30 Seafarious
22:21 JosephMendiola
22:17 Old Patriot
22:06 Verlaine