UN says caste system is a human rights abuse

[Dalit Human Sewer Cleaning Outlawed in 2008]

UN says caste system is a human rights abuse

United Nations is to declare discrimination based on the Indian caste system is a human rights abuse.

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi

The UN’s Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva, is expected to ratify draft principles which recognises the scale of persecution suffered by 65 million ‘untouchables’ or ‘Dalits’ who carry out the most menial and degrading work

Many of them work as lavatory and sewer cleaners and in remote villages as "night-soil carriers".

They are considered unclean by many higher-caste ‘Brahmins’ who regard their presence, and sometimes even their shadow as ‘polluting’.

Many Dalits have been badly beaten or killed for ‘polluting’ Brahmin wells by drinking from them.

The UN draft, which has been opposed by India, pledges to work for the "effective elimination of discrimination based on work and descent".

The Indian government had lobbied heavily for the Human Rights Council to remove the word ‘caste’ from a draft earlier this year.

India’s opposition was undermined however by Nepal, the former Hindu Kingdom, which has supported the move. Its foreign minister Jeet Bahadur Darjee Gautam said Nepal welcomes UN and international support for its attempts to tackle caste discrimination.

The UN has now called on India to follow Nepal’s example, but New Delhi remains opposed to international interference on the issue.

Navanethem Pillay, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is a South African Tamil, said Nepal’s response marked a "significant step by a country grappling with this problem itself" and urged other states to follow its lead.

The issue is sensitive in India where untouchables and other low-caste groups wield increasing political influence, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, its most populous state, where the pro-Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party rules and its chief minister Mayawati has erected statues commemorating Dalit heroes.

Rahul Gandhi, the architect of the Congress Party’s recent general election victory, has raised the profile of the case issue recently by staying with Dalit families during visits to Uttar Pradesh.

The caste divisions have become institutionalised by quotas for Dalits in government jobs and university places, which has in turn angered higher caste groups.

Dr Udit Raj, of the Dalit-based Indian Justice Party, last night welcomed the move, which he said would focus international attention on the issue and lead to an increase in aid and government spending to improve Dalit opportunities in India.

"It’s very good. We almost lost the battle last April, but now it seems we will have our victory. This will get attention at a global level and that will focus resources from bodies like the European Union. Aid will flow to India.

"But the Indian government should have the courage to accept there’s discrimination," he said.

Touchable: The journey from Untouchable to Dali…, posted with vodpod

State Sponsored Terrorism when the State is of the People

“We either have to come out and say we Americans do NOT have a representative government, we Americans have no freedom or democracy, or, we have to readily claim our role and responsibility and say: we Americans are this representative government’s governed people who decide on, sanction, finance and implement terrorism.” Sibel Edmonds

 

“A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an Air Force” - William Blum

By: Sibel Edmonds

In our nation of ‘national security’, where everything is re-defined and justified by the notion of ‘fighting terrorism’, it would be only appropriate to revisit and examine the term ‘terrorism,’ and then go a few steps further and look into its implications.

Almost everyone thinks that they know what ‘terrorism’ is or what constitutes terrorism. There are hundreds of definitions for terrorism varied by cultural, sub-cultural, national, linguistic, political, historical, and numerous other interpretations, perceptions, factors and circumstances. I am going to use the general definition of terrorism under U.S. Law: Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.

There is another type of ‘terrorism’ with a slightly different definition which was not commonly used until recently, when our nation’s status changed to a ‘national security’ state: State Sponsored Terrorism. In general state sponsored terrorism refers to acts of terrorism conducted by a state against a foreign state or people. It can also refer to widespread acts of violence by a state against its own people. In February 2011 I wrote a commentary on the Supreme Court decision which upheld the broad application of a federal law making it a crime to provide “material support” to designated “foreign terrorist organizations” (FTOs), and I wrote:

Based on this definition and based on what the puppet court recently ruled on what constitutes ‘material support’ to terrorism, our government, those who have sanctioned US Foreign Aid to dictators inflicting violence against their own people, should be brought to trial. I am talking about Egypt. I am talking about Uzbekistan. I am talking about Jordan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Israel …To be more accurate, I am talking about Billions of dollars being continuously provided to dictators for half a century who in turn are terrorizing their own people. Egypt and where our tax dollars, US Foreign Aid, went is only one example. All you have to do is line check dozens of our foreign aid recipients against their established human rights (terrorism) record.

Many rational readers agreed with the above assessment- the fact that our government supports terrorist dictators and provides them with financial and other material support. That makes us a state that provides material support to terrorists.

Considering the escalating rate of our government’s undeclared and covert wars around the world, taking into account the tens of thousands of innocent lives lost as a result of these wars, and adding to that our intelligence agencies’ established record on rendition, torture and assassination, I believe some would agree with me on our nation’s terrorizing practices, thus its status as a terrorist state. I know some already do.

Now here comes a term that I have not seen used, written or talked about. This may be due to needed denial for a self-perceived need for national pride. This may be due to the severity of the realistic implications that only a few are capable of handling once understood and digested. This is possibly caused by externalization of already acknowledged truths of the atrocities and inhumanities that have been committed by our nation, and are still being committed.

The term I am talking about here is: Nation’s Civilians Sponsored Terrorism. You see it is too vague and abstract when we attribute the atrocious overt and covert wars, inhumane and wide-spread practices of kidnapping, rendition, torture and assassination, to an entity called a government. I believe it is self-preserving, self-serving and convenient to externalize the atrocious practices constituting terrorism to some broad entity called ‘our government.’ It is shrugging off our key role, participation and responsibility when we express our disgust with our government’s atrocities and its terrorization of people around the world.

We may say, ‘…but I don’t agree with these wars. I am against torture. I don’t approve of what my government is doing…’ We may say all that, but the facts say otherwise.

We pay our government. It is called taxes. Our government uses the money given to them by us to pay for bombs and drones that are used to kill, burn and handicap people, many if not most who are innocent civilians. Our government spends the money given to them by us to recruit and train assassins, kidnappers and torturers and send them around the globe to inflict terror. Thus, we the people provide direct financial-material support for all the terrorism inflicted by our nation around the world. Our dollars enable and sustain these terrorism practices. Period.

We may say, ‘…they collect these taxes by force and I have no choice but let them take them otherwise I’d be jailed…I don’t want my dollars to go to these terror practices…’ We may cry innocent and helpless, but again, we have no logical-rational-legal ground to stand on. Here is why:

We believe we have a representative government and a democracy. We believe we make choices when we vote. We believe we elect individuals and give them the power and the right to make decisions in our behalf and implement those decisions in our behalf. Well, ‘our’ representatives, those we have willingly given our representation to, are doing just that when they decide on and sanction overt and covert wars, rendition and torture, in short, all those terror practices. They are deciding, as ‘our’ representatives, in ‘our’ behalf to inflict terror. ‘Our’ representatives decide in ‘our’ behalf how much money to collect from us, and what to spend our dollars on. Period.

Now, we either have to come out and say we Americans do NOT have a representative government, we Americans have no freedom or democracy, or, we have to readily claim our role and responsibility and say: we Americans are this representative government’s governed people who decide on, sanction, finance and implement terrorism.

We cannot have it both ways. And there is no other way than the two. We either come out, set aside our nationalistic pride, and say that we do not have a representative government or democracy of any form when it comes to our nation’s governance, or, we proudly pretend our democratic status, and shoulder responsibility for all the terrorism being inflicted in our name. I have yet to see or hear anyone who has come out and recognized his or her status as a terrorist. It simply never happens. As they say, one group or nation’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. When you look at it from the other side, in fact, when you look at it from a logical and rational side, we sponsor and sanction our government’s terror practices, and doesn’t that make the terrorists us?

NOTE: This is a cross post from Sibel Edmonds site:boiling frogs.

The auther is publisher at “Self”. She is based in Washington and a Graduate of George Mason University.

Syria’s Assad threatens to attack Israel

“If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than 6 hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv,” Assad said

© RIA Novosti. Sergei Guneev

MOSCOW, October 5 (RIA Novosti)

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has threatened to attack Israel in the event of any Western military intervention in his country’s domestic affairs, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported.

“If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than 6 hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv,” Assad said at a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday.

The comments came after Russia and China had vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria for its brutal crackdown on protesters.

Assad also vowed to call on the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah for support.

“All these events will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf and American and European interests will be targeted simultaneously,” he said.

More than 2,700 people are estimated to have been killed across Syria since protests against the Assad regime began in March.

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Moscow vetoed the resolution – drafted by France with Britain, Germany and Portugal - because it was based on “the philosophy of confrontation.”

Russia, China Correct Their Libyan Mistake–veto UN resolution on Syria

Russia, China veto UN resolution on Syria

RIANOVOSTI

The United States and the EU have already imposed unilateral sanctions on Syria and have called for Assad to step down.

© AFP/ Ho-Sana

UNITED NATIONS

Russia and China have used their veto right and blocked a draft UN resolution that threatened sanctions against Syria if President Bashar Assad’s government continued violence against the opposition in the country.

The draft resolution prepared by the European members of the UN Security Council and supported by the United States stipulated that the Assad’s regime should face the possibility of tough sanctions if it fails to stop its crackdown on opposition within 30 days since the adoption of the resolution.

The resolution was rejected late on Tuesday by a vote of 9-2 with four abstentions.

Russia, which stands firmly against any mention of sanctions citing the example of Libya where the NATO countries largely overstepped the UN mandate in a military operation against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, said the text of the document was “unacceptable” despite several changes to the draft.

Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said at the session of the UN Security Council that the draft document reflected a “confrontational” approach toward the resolution of the political crisis in Syria.

“The document did not contain provisions on the unacceptability of an external military intervention,” Churkin said.

The Syrian government has used force to crush opposition protests, which followed a wave of uprisings in other Arab countries. The UN says over 2,000 people have died since the start of the protests in March.

The United States and the EU have already imposed unilateral sanctions on Syria and have called for Assad to step down.

On September 21, U.S. President Barack Obama urged the UN Security Council to impose new sanctions against Syria over its crackdown on opposition protesters. On September 23 the EU imposed a fresh round of sanctions.

Mideast Revolutions and 9-11 intrigues crafted in Qatar

By Kiyul Chung

Yoichi Shimatsu, Senior Advisor to the 4th Media, based in Hong Kong, covered the rise of Islamic militancy in North Africa in the 1990s for the Japan Times group.

 

In the 2005 political thriller “Syriana”, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, Qatar is at the heart of an international intrigue. The title was based on the concept of “Pax Syriana”, a secret arrangement between two mutually hostile powers to divide a region into their respective spheres of dominance.

 

Washington think-tanks use this term to describe a reshaping of the Middle East to suit American interests, but in the knowledge that this goal is attainable only through covert cooperation with the enemy, namely the elite financial sponsors of Al Qaeda and the Islamic Brotherhood.

 

The thinly veiled fiction was based on the political reality of that thumb of desert that juts out of the Arabian Peninsula into the Gulf – the emirate of Qatar. Home of the state-owned Al Jazeera network, Qatar is on the surface the pro-Western host of the U.S. Central Command and an active supporter of “democratic revolutions” now sweeping the Mideast. It is also accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism.

 

Chemical weapons looted

 

It may puzzle and perhaps dismay young protesters in Benghazi, Cairo and Tunis that their democratic hopes are being manipulated by an ultra-conservative Arab elite, which has underhandedly backed a surge of militant Islamist radicals across North Africa. Credible U.S. intelligence reports have cited evidence pointing to the emirate’s long-running support for the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and jihadist fighters returning from Afghanistan

 

The links to Qatar uncovered by anti-terrorism investigators in the wake of 9-11 need to be reexamined now that the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an on-and-off affiliate of Al Qaeda, has seized armories across half of the North African country. Libya’s well-stocked arsenals contain high-power explosives, rocket launchers and chemical weapons. LIFG is on the State Department’s terrorist list.

 

Most worrying, according to a U.S. intelligence official cited by CNN, is the probable loss of chemical weapons. The Federation of American Scientists reports that, as of 2008, only 40 percent of Libya’s mustard gas was destroyed in the second round of decommissioning. Chemical canisters along the Egyptian border were yet to be retrieved and are now presumably in the hands of armed militants.

 

After letting slip that the earliest Libyan protests were organize d by the LIFG, Al Jazeera quickly changed its line to present a heavily filtered account of “peaceful protests”. To explain away the gunshot deaths of Libya soldiers during the uprising, the Qatar-based network presented a bizarre scenario of150 dead soldiers in Sirte having been executed by their officers for “refusing to fight”. The mysterious officers then miraculously vacated their base disappearing into thin air while surrounded by angry protesters! Off the record, one American intelligence analyst called these media claims an “absurdity” and suggested instead the obvious:-that the soldiers were gunned down in an armed assault by war-hardened returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

Many Libyan Army units have “defected” to the opposition if for no other purpose than to try to recover the troves of weapons seized by the militants. Al Jazeera’s role in erasing the fingerprints of the armed militants vindicates the earlier conclusion of Western anti-terrorism experts of Qatar’s sponsorship of terrorism.

 

Payments for terror

 

According to a Congressional Research Service report of January 2008, “Some observers have raised questions about possible support for Al Qaeda by some Qatari citizens, including members of Qatar’s large ruling family. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, Qatar’s Interior Minister provided safe haven to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed during the mid-1990s, and press reports indicate other terrorists may have received financial support or safe haven in Qatar after September 11, 2001.”

 

The national security chief, Interior Minister Abdullah bin Khalid Al Thani, is further mentioned as paying for a 1995 trip by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed “to join the Bosnia jihad.” The report recalls how after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, FBI officials “narrowly missed an opportunity to capture” the suspect in Qatar. “Former U.S. officials have since stated their belief that a high-ranking member of the Qatari government alerted him to the impending raid, allowing him to flee the country.”

 

Qatar’s spymaster also “welcomed dozens of so-called ‘Afghan Arab’ veterans of the anti-Soviet conflict in Afghanistan to Qatar in the early 1990s. These ties go back to the late 1980s, when “the United States and Qatar engaged in a prolonged diplomatic dispute regarding Qatar’s black-market procurement of U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.The dispute froze planned economic and military cooperation, and Congress approved a ban on arms sales to Qatar until the months leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, when Qatar allowed coalition forces to operate from Qatari territory.”

 

The hidden connections to the terrorist network broke out into public view when an Egyptian suicide bomber attacked a Doha movie theater in 2003. Foreign Minister, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, reacted in haste and anger calling it an “act of unpardonable treachery by Bin Laden.” His slip of tongue led to the discovery that from the start of the first Gulf War Qatar had been paying millions of dollars to Al Qaeda as compensation for its hosting of the U.S. Central Command during the Iraq War. .Anti-terrorism experts allege that Doha upped its payments following the theater bombing.

 

More worrisome is the February 9, 2000 cable from the American Embassy in Doha, issuing a security alert on Qatari resident in the U.S. named Mohamed Ali Dahham Mansoori, who guided a three-man team that allegedly scouted the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and the White House for the upcoming 9-11 attack. The three suspects traveled under aliases with Qatar passports. Their air tickets to Los Angeles and hotel rooms were paid for by a “convicted terrorist,” according to the FBI asserted. The trio’s role in 9-11 was subsequently tomb-stoned with all evidence suppressed, probably due to the warming US diplomatic relationship with Qatar’s royal family.

 

Mirage or Reality?

 

Doha, a cluster of shiny towers and fountains in a peninsula that is otherwise barren,seems the unlikeliest spot for financial and institutional support for Islamist terrorists. In Qatar, however, mirages are real, and reality is a mirage. Hailed as a model of political reform by Western diplomats and think tanks like the Brookings Institution, which has a Doha center, Qatar’s legal code is nonetheless firmly based on sharia law. Its education system , with links to dozens of American and British universities, is also the academic platform for the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the intellectual champion of the Muslim Brotherhood and advocate of suicide bombings.

 

The emirate’s insistence on preserving Gulf Arab traditions stands in contrast to Qatar’s business-savvy role as the region’s biggest supplier of natural gas. Per-capita GDP is estimated at about $90,000 a year; and average income around $65,000. Excluding small tax-haven countries, its population is the richest in the world. Qataris, then, are the Swiss of the Arab world, and their small nation, like Switzerland, is a haven for arms trafficking, illicit money transfers and other skullduggery.Even something as innocuous as TGI Fridays, a struggling fast-food chain in America, is in Doha an upscale retreat for off-duty Marine officers, petroleum engineers, international weapons dealers and their incognito clients from across the Mideast.

 

Despite the many connections with terrorism, Qatar got back into the good graces of the Obama administration with donations to the Clinton Foundation, including one of up to $5 million in 2008. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reciprocated with a February 2010 visit to inaugurate the Carnegie Mellon University in Doha’s Education City complex, which also houses Qaradawai’s Islamist institute. In early January, just before the Tunis and Cairo protests, she took a longer sojourn for the Forum for the Future, co-hosted by the royal family.

 

The relations between Washington and Doha has been sold to the public as a partnership for democracy and human rights, but beneath the smiles and photo ops is the hard fact of a Syriana-type arrangement to carve up the “future Mideast” between the Anglo-American energy industry and an ultraconservative elite set on imposing sharia law. For this “enemy of my enemy” alliance, the common foes are the secular governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and next Algeria.

 

Blowback in Libya

 

Covert cooperation between the West and sponsors of Islamic extremism is not new . In the 1950s, the CIA provided money and weapons to the Muslim Brotherhood for their battle against Egyptian independence leaderAbdul Gamal Nasser. US. intelligence operatives trained and armed mujahideen insurgents in the anti-Soviet Afghan war, including Osama bin Laden, then known by his cover name Tim Osman. According to former UK counterintelligence officer David Shayler, the British MI-6 hired Libyan militant Anas al-Liby, from the Al Qaeda-friendly Al-Muqtaliya group and later linked to the bombing of US embassies in East Africa, to assassinate Colonel Muammar Qadhafi in 1996.

 

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, under the leadership of Abu al-Laith al-Libi, formally merged into Al Qaida in 2007. Two years later, Libi disowned armed violence and negotiated with Qadhafi for acceptance of LIFG as an above-ground political association. The sudden rejection of violence coincided with the Muslim Brotherhood’s makeover as a democratic force and Qatar’s advocacy of political reform across the Mideast. As a legal entity, it incited the first protests in Benghazi in mid-February. Within days of the uprising’s start, however, the LIFG reverted to its old ways, brandishing automatic weapons. What it plans to do with chemical weapons and advanced explosives is anyone’s guess, while one psychological point remains clear: The militants are eager to pay back Americans and Europeans for10 years of bombing, maiming and torture.

 

The constant temptation in a partnership between enemies is betrayal. The White House had counted on the protests to nudge Saif al-Islam Gadhafi to replace his father in a relatively smooth transition to democracy. The Gadhafi clan, however, united against the threat of an Islamist resurgence. Washington also miscalculated the potential for Al Qaeda elements and Brotherhood acting independently of high-level deals made in Doha.

 

Possible outcomes – from the collapse of the Qadhafi regime to the partition of Libya – could easily prompt Al Qaeda allies and the militant arm of the Brotherhood to establish the Libyan-Egyptian border as the next global training center for jihadists, now that the Afghan-Pakistan tribal regions no longer provide a safe platform for jihad operations. Any US or NATO intervention will only lead to a third front in the endless war. The more easily grasped alternative to a Syriana duopoly is an even older political formula: The winner takes all.

 

On this 10th anniversary year of the 9-11 attacks, Washington is staggering under a huge “blowback” from an out-of-control North Africa, self-inflicted by its own greed for oil and uranium, fears of declining influence, deceitful ambition and misplaced trust.

***

The Prince of the Gutter

An international arrest warrant has been issued for disgraced “prince” Hamad bin Abdallah bin Thani al-THANI of Qatar.

This so-called “prince” was convicted in Prague, May 2005, for having sex with four Czech girls aged 14 and younger. He paid, of course.

In addition, THANI’s case file concluded that he had been engaged in pimping and sexually abusing sixteen minors.

THANI the Paedophile was rightfully sentenced to prison. Only thirty months. He was lucky to have gotten off so easy.

Evil Qatar Corruption Al-Jazeera A and E Never mention: Qatar tops Middle East, North Africa in corruption rankings

 

Looking at Putin and seeing Lieberman

[I have been taking a little heat lately for failing to turn this website into just another raving center of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.  Normally, I try to resist feeding such notions, even though I believe that the theories are based on elements of truth, especially theories about the carefully planned Jewish penetrations of power institutions (especially governments), for the covert purpose of instituting the radical Zionist agenda of warmongering, psychological subversion, and financial domination, as the dominant policies of most Western nations.  The major international problems caused by these covert manipulations of Nations by these Zionist sleeper agents are bringing the issue of Zionist blackmail of governments and support of terrorism out into the open.  With the failing of the "Russian Reset" of Medvedev and Obama and the return of Putin, it is vital that we now look into the issue of whether Putin really is a "Philo-Semite," or not.  Putin is not what he seems, and the large Russian emigre community that dominates the shitty little Zionist state may be prepared to force Israel into switching partners, from the two-timing, double-dealing Americans, with their dying economy, to the reviving Russian empire, "Soviet Union 2.0."  Recent moves by Russian state energy giant Gazprom to join in Israeli attempts to seize control of Mediterranean gas deposits help to validate this theory.]

In the changing regional reality, the United States is displaying weakness, while Russia is striving for assertive involvement.

By Adar Primor

The babushka doll manufacturers in Russia must be very busy these days. The “as if” era is over. Their last assembly line is no longer relevant. They must restore the dolls to their natural size. Little Putin will grow again. Big Medvedev will have to nest inside him.

The frenzy in view of the expected leadership rotation has obviously gripped the Liberals too. They hastened to print posters of Vladimir Putin – the old-soon-to-be-new-again president – in the image of Leonid Brezhnev. Wearing a military uniform and adorned with Soviet medals, he even boasted Brezhnev’s eyebrows.

“Welcome back to the USSR,” warn the commentators. “Putin 2.0″ – as some call his renewed presidency – will boost the nationalist spirits, emphasize the anti-Western reflexes and abandon the reset policy, which had brought Medvedev’s Russia and Obama’s United States closer.

Purportedly, Putin wishes to restore the superpower status his country lost after the Soviet Union’s collapse; it will be impossible not to feel it in the Middle East as well.

“The Arab spring” gives Putin a rash; NATO’s campaign in Libya makes him sick; he vehemently objects to military intervention in Syria and has even thwarted a European initiative at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Assad’s murderous regime. He determinedly oppresses any Chechneyan, Dagestani, Ingushetian or other attempt at self-determination in the Russian federation’s territories. He was then also fighting against the recognition of Kosovo’s independence.

In contrast, when it comes to the Palestinians, the “spring” is in full bloom. The Russian vote in the Security Council is Mahmoud Abbas’ sure bet. It is the same vote that prevented mentioning “the Jewish state” in the Quartet’s last gesture.

All these constitute a hub of controversies in the Mossad, defense establishment and Foreign Ministry. According to one school, “the Russians keep spitting in Israel’s face.” Advocates of this opinion cite, among other things, the advanced-weapons supply to Syria and Russia’s contacts with Hamas, contrary to the Quartet’s position. The other school says the relations have been constantly improving over the past decade. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who set upgrading the relations with Russia as a central goal, argues “they are better today than ever.” According to Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of Moscow’s Institute of Middle East Studies, Putin is a philo-semite, and if Israel had stopped behaving like the 51st state of the United States, it would have enjoyed preferential Russian treatment.–BREAK 

{EDITOR INSERT:

Yevgeny Satanovsky, the outspoken former president of the Russian Jewish Congress who is today president of the Institute for Israel and Middle East Studies, a Moscow-based think tank, is forthright in endorsing Putin’s crackdown on democracy.

“A centralized system of power is good. Otherwise, we would likely have an independent Tatarstan and an independent Siberia, and perhaps an independent Moscow fighting independent St. Petersburg.”

Satanovsky said, “Whatever else one might say about Putin, he is philo-Semitic and pro-Israel. Maybe Putin’s successor will be less friendly than he is, but the main thing is that to be anti-Israel or anti-Semitic is no longer part of acceptable political culture in Russia.”

Satanovsky predicted, “Despite the present problems, relations between Russia and the U.S. will recover. I believe Russian Jews, who have interests in Russia, the U.S., Israel and Europe, will play a bridging role in all of this. There are Jewish businessmen like [Leonard] Blavatnik, [Mikhail] Fridman and [Viktor] Vexelberg doing enormous business together in both Russia and the West. Blavatnik is a U.S. citizen and the other two are Russian citizens, but collectively they work as a bridge between the two countries.”–END QUOTE}—[This purpose of the Russian oligarchs is to ease Jewish-dominated Russia into an alliance with Jewish-dominated Amerika, the much touted "New World Order"--editor]

[EDITOR--This brings us into the most controversial implications of the preceding quote and the heart of all anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, concerning the "Jews controlling the world."--SEE following quote, taken from a "Hebrew" (their own self-description) site, written in 1928, which is the original source for the term "New World Order," referring to a world brought under the control of a network of Jewish governors and leaders.]

{BEGIN QUOTE–“The Jewish people as a whole will be its own Messiah. It will attain world dominion by the dissolution of other races, by the abolition of frontiers, the annihilation of monarchy, and by the establishment of a world republic in which the Jews will everywhere exercise the privilege of citizenship. In this

new world order

the Children of Israel will furnish all the leaders without encountering opposition. The Governments of the different peoples forming the world republic will fall without difficulty into the hands of the Jews. It will then be possible for the Jewish rulers to abolish private property, and everywhere to make use of the resources of the state. Thus will the promise of the Talmud be fulfilled, in which is said that when the Messianic time is come the Jews will have all the property of the whole world in their hands.” (Baruch Levy, Letter to Karl Marx, La Revue de Paris, p. 54, June 1, 1928)–436 QUOTES by and about Jews …Part Two of Six, number 136.  (Compiled by Willie Martin)–END QUOTE}

 

END BREAK–

Some observers look at Putin and see Lieberman; listen to Avigdor and hear Vladimir. This distinction is only partially correct, of course, because the Kremlin’s rhetoric goes something like this:

“Our concern for security and stability dictate our policy on the Arab spring. Assad might be a son of a bitch and Gadhafi might be mad, but we’ve seen what can happen when a secular-totalitarian regime is replaced by Islamic rulers and Iranian influence in Iraq. The instability in the Middle East could have repercussions in Caucasus and beyond. Russia must look after itself and Israel should be the first to be worried because Libyan weapons have already found their way back to Gaza.

“We inherited recognition of the Palestinian state from the Soviet Union already in 1988, just as we inherited recognition of the Jewish state in 1947,” the Russians continue. “The direct reference to freezing the settlements was removed from the Quartet’s outline, with our consent, as part of a deal in which the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state – a definition that is self evident – was removed also.

“In his Zionist speech at the UN, Obama proved that the United States is incapable of being an honest broker,” the Russians conclude. “We, on the other hand, have close relations with both sides, including Hamas, which is an Israeli creation anyway, and which regrettably can no longer be ignored.”

In the changing regional reality, the United States is displaying weakness, while Russia is striving for assertive involvement. The larger Vladimir’s babushka doll swells, the stronger Avidgdor’s Russian challenge will grow.

[SOURCE-- see following report]

Putin lauds Nazi Racist Lieberman

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin praised Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Friday for his rise to a senior cabinet position in Israel after having emigrated from the former Soviet Union.

“We are very happy that people from the Soviet Union build such a brilliant political career,” said Putin at a meeting in Moscow, referring to the foreign minister.

Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, was born in the former Soviet Moldova.

During the talks, the foreign minister called for closer ties and economic cooperation between the two countries. He spoke with Putin in flawless Russian, throwing in a few words of English.

Putin also praised Israel’s sizable Russian community as “something that unites us with you like no other country.”

Lieberman was visiting Moscow for a session of a Russian-Israeli Intergovernmental Commission, which mainly focuses on economic ties. He lauded the commission for establishing a visa-free system between the two countries last year. He said the measure will likely to double the number of Russian tourists traveling to Israel to 400,000 this year.

The committee will invite business communities of both countries to its next session in April 2010 to discuss news initiatives such as measures to help protect Russian and Israeli investment, Lieberman said.

Lieberman and Putin did not discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions or any other foreign policy issues on the record. After stepping down as president in 2008, Putin formally isn’t in charge of Russia’s foreign policy. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132819.html

Pakistan’s All-Parties Conference (APC) Resolution Calls the TTP Terrorists “Our Own People”

[Here, in a single sentence, we see encapsulated, everything that is wrong with Pakistan, and the reason for its inevitable break-up and possible reabsorption back into the Indian state--"The All-Parties Conference (APC) resolution that mentioned the TTP as 'our own people'." 

Here is another damning admission that the Taliban terrorists are just good old boys packing AK47s around in their poor man's "personnel carriers" (Toyota pickups), this one coming from Pakistan's chief intelligence official-- "ISI Directorate chief Lieutenant-General Shuja Pasha hailed jihadist leaders Baitullah Mehsud and Mullah Fazlullah, whose depredations have claimed the lives of thousands of Pakistanis, as 'true patriots'."  As long as so many Pakistanis honor mass-murdering marauders, instead of uniting on a national scale to ostracize them, imprison them, and flat-out wage total war against them, then Pakistan is more than just another failed state, it is destined to become an international pariah state, waiting for its eventual violent demise.]   

Talking to the Taliban

Pakistan needs to wake up and tackle the problem of the Taliban. PHOTO: AFP

After Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said that his government would talk peace with the Taliban — ‘and if they don’t talk peace we will go ahead with military operations against them’ — the deputy chief of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maulvi Faqir Muhammad issued a statement in which he said that the TTP welcomed the prime minister’s offer. However, this came with two preconditions for dialogue: the first, that the government should reconsider its relationship with the US and that Sharia be enforced in the country.

Maulvi Faqir, the most ferocious of the TTP commanders, has put paid to the All-Parties Conference (APC) resolution that mentioned the TTP as “our own people”. The fact of the matter is that the TTP deputy chief’s statement makes it all clear that what his organisation is saying is not really all that different from what Pakistan’s mainstream religious parties, as well as conservative sections of society in general, have been demanding all along. They want Pakistan to sever ties with the US and they want Sharia to be imposed. The latter is the demand of those who run and study in the country’s madrassa network. Of course, the Objectives Resolution is not enough for such elements and they want a more direct imposition. The question is that will the prime minister agree to these two conditions and if so, what would be the repercussions for Pakistan as a whole?

For better or for worse, the APC (which includes the parties that are in government) has handed over policy and its implementation to the military. Will the latter talk to the TTP from a position of weakness? It has just forced the US government to retreat; can it do the same thing with the TTP? Maulvi Faqir has already rejected the possibility, saying that the TTP will not straightaway side with Pakistan and stop killing innocent Pakistanis just because Pakistan has challenged the US through an APC and forced it to backtrack. The truth is that the APC has placed the TTP on a platform of strength in Pakistan from where, if the state negotiates, it will be tantamount to abject surrender.

Acts of high emotion — indulged in by politicians, and prompted in no small measure by sections of the the jingoist media — will not solve Pakistan’s economy and security-related problems. First reports from the captains of Pakistani industries who export to the West, don’t favour a break with the US. External friends like China are watching the scene carefully, reluctant to back Pakistan’s APC games because American presence shores up their own policy against Islamic fanaticism. Iran too prefers America to a repeat of the Taliban rule in Afghanistan backed by unthinking Pakistani soldiers of fortune; it is clearly seen as preferring India there as a make-weight against Pakistan.

As for the Haqqani network, it alone cannot ensure peace even if it responds to the APC’s resolution by acquiescing. Pakistan may not be able to repeat the example of disastrous Taliban government of 1996, which was funded by money from some Gulf states and had our solid backing. And, most importantly, it will not be able to talk to the TTP without losing its current identity as a moderate Islamic state.

The Pakistan Army got Bajaur back in 2010 by all signs after a military operation which turned violent and displaced a large portion of its residents. By June 2011, Maulvi Faqir had resurfaced, reportedly in hideouts just across the border in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, from where he was directing vicious attacks on Pakistani border posts and some villages. A FM radio station, according to several reports, was also back in operation, and this has spread fear among the local people, who may again be compelled to leave their homes. Recently, his men were the ones who had abducted several school children from Bajaur, a sign of how the TTP would rule if it were allowed to by the state: through intimidation and fear, and not via a social contract based on popular consent.

The Pakistan military has a much bigger challenge at home than it realises. It is falsely reassured by a purblind APC. A post-APC Pakistan is thrown into an unrealistic fever. It needs to wake up and tackle the problem of the Taliban, not talk to it from a position of weakness which it wishes to compensate with an illusory position of strength with America.

Published in The Express Tribune