Rohingya and the Myth of Buddhist Tolerance

Posted on September 28, 2017 by kf1

When old and young are systematically rounded up and shot. When women are gang raped and their babies thrown into waterways to drown. When their homes and businesses are burned. When all the atrocities of ethnic cleansing are plain to see, international law leaps into action. Global bodies and their constituent states work to simultaneously put an end to the atrocities, provide refuge for survivors and bring perpetrators to book, no matter the identity of the offender or the victim. Or so we are told. For as the on-going slaughter and displacement of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims reveals, international law is not so blind. Continue reading →

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The veil in anxious times

Posted on August 20, 2017 by kf1

An Australian MP’s burqa-wearing stunt this week won’t be last time this issue will come up. But under the veil of the Western preoccupation with head covering, what is this really about?

This week, Australia’s far-right One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson walked into the Senate wearing a black burqa to demonstrate that it’s a security risk as it conceals a person’s identity. The stunt was part of the party’s call to ban the burqa.

In theatrical fashion, Hanson removed the veil to declare her identity as if it wasn’t already clear from the security process to enter parliament. But when it comes to the veil and the Muslim it conceals, emotions trump facts.

This is, of course, not the first time – and certainly won’t be the last time – the issue of head covering has been raised here. Just last month at its convention in Queensland, the Australian Liberal Party (LNP) rejected a ban on Muslim immigration, but did call for a ban on headscarves for children under the age of 10 in some schools. Continue reading →

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India and Pakistan: Forever rivals?

Posted on August 20, 2017 by kf1

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Witness – Going Back to Pakistan: 70 Years After Partition

Posted on August 20, 2017 by kf1

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Israel’s 6th War on Lebanon: What Price Will Hezbollah Pay? by FRANKLIN LAMB

Posted on August 17, 2017 by kf1

The price Hezbollah will pay during Israel’s coming 6th war on Lebanon will likely be less militarily consequential long term, than the near certain acceleration of the Party of God’s loss of its “Resistance” brand. The latter already being eschewed by much of its Shia base for economic, social and political reasons.

Hezbollah will quite likely survive Israel’s 6th War on Lebanon militarily, even though Israel will destroy much of South Lebanon, South Beirut, and the Bekaa valley while simultaneously carpet bombing dozens of other areas on both sides of the Syria-Lebanon border from Al Quneitra in South Syria near the Golan Height to Tartus in far North Syria.

These being areas where Israel claims to know the location of Hezbollah’s rumored 150,000 missiles and other weapons. Hezbollah would presumably be rearmed by Iran unless Israel, the US and the Saudi block also decides to attack the Islamic Republics IRGC and more than a dozen Shia militia (basij) that Tehran has brought into Syria from seven countries and which the Party of God helps train, arm, command and increasingly fights alongside of.

Why the “Resistance” has lost much of its Palestinian support.

A much greater threat to Hezbollah’s future and to Iran’s goals in the region is the fact that it’s claimed raison d’etre of resisting Israel’s occupation of Lebanon and championing the Palestinian cause are increasingly ridiculed even in the Shia community as well as across sectarian lines as being irrelevant and viewed with growing disdain. Moreover, Israel’s occupation of Lebanon ended 17 years ago and it’s increasingly claimed even in Shia neighborhoods that Hezbollah’s arms should be turned over to the Lebanese army. Continue reading →

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India Celebrates Democracy, Kashmir Cries Hypocrisy by PRITI GULATI COX

Posted on August 17, 2017 by kf1

India wants to reap the benefits of Islamophobia from which the world is suffering…. the Indian government has to reconcile its own people to body bags coming from Kashmir…. If the Indian people were told the truth that Kashmiris don’t want to be with India, and the struggle here is sustained by them primarily…. the public opinion in India too would change. To not allow the public opinion to change, these lies about Pakistan-sponsored proxy war are told. For us, the Indian media is clearly a part of India’s military industry in Kashmir.

— Khurram Parvez, Scroll.in, July, 2016.

India, you will be celebrating your 70th year of Independence from British rule on August 15. All over the country all of you will be remembering the fallen, hoisting flags, and singing songs of freedom. Meanwhile in Indian-administered Kashmir — the largest militarized zone in the world — the Indian state and its military and paramilitary forces will continue to carry on with their sustained human rights abuses aimed at the regions indigenous population. Continue reading →

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White Skin Privilege by RICHARD MOSER

Posted on August 17, 2017 by kf1

White privilege is a thing. It’s just not the same thing the corporate Democrats use to boss us around with. The concept of white privilege was not invented by some liberal university professors.  In fact, the concept of white privilege was created by a white man: a radical activist and historian who barely attended college.

Writing for the John Brown Commemoration Committee in 1965,  Theodore Allen innovated the discourse on white skin privilege. In 1967 he co-authored “White Blindspot” and in 1969 published “Can White Workers Radicals Be Radicalized?”

According to Jeffrey B. Perry:

Allen’s work influenced the Students for a Democratic Society and sectors of the “new left” and it paved the way for the “white privilege” “race as social construct” and “whiteness studies”academic fields.[1]

In our deep past, white privileges were granted by a “presumption of liberty” to white people that was simultaneously denied Blacks. Continue reading →

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“Thus Spake Nehru” – Greater Kashmir 2010 – Interesting Nehru Quotes

Posted on August 15, 2017 by kf1

Yes Roy is right, if New Delhi is serious in filing a case against her and Geelani, they must first file it against the first prime minister of India, Hashim Qureshi quotes Nehru’s speeches which, by today’s New Delhi logic, can be easily dubbed as `seditious’. He is the first to commit the crime which now Roy and Geelani have committed

What is said here is not my statement but that of Arundhati Roy. A case has been filed in the court of law against Roy and Syed Ali Shah Geelani in Delhi on their demand for freedom of Kashmiris.  With reference to it, she said, “If a case is to be filed against me then first of all a case should be filed against India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. But as he is no more in this world, and filing case against him is impossible, therefore a case should be filed against his Samadhi or resting place.”

Arundhati Roy is not a lady from Sopor or Kupwara or Shupian who would be beaten with batons, whose clothes would be torn or in certain cases subjected to rape, and then the culprits would be given promotion instead of punishing them. Arundhati Roy is a person known globally whose articles are published in New York Times, Washington Post and in the newspapers appearing from London. Her demand for the freedom of Kashmir falls under the right of speech. Therefore filing a case against her tantamounts to giving wider publicity to the Kashmir issue on international platforms. Filing case against her and also Geelani Sahib is not in the interests of India; it goes in the interests of the struggle of Kashmiris. She has also said that a case should be filed against Nehru because he had promised with Kashmiris that their opinion would be sought.

Let’s go back to the what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon  said at UNO from 26 October 1947 till 24 January 1959. Pandit Nehru had also stated about self-determination of Kashmiris from the time of accession of the state to the role of the assembly and of the United Nations. We have also given authentication of these statements. In the light of these statements we would like to ask if in the cases of youth and politicians of Kashmir, PSA and other black laws are invoked on their demand for freedom, then why are flowers offered on their Samadhi of those who had made solemn promises with Kashmiris which are violated. With their statements listed below, we need not to say anything more on Kashmir issue. Therefore we are enlisting here the statements of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru that can be useful for those who evince interest in the Indian nation and the movement of Kashmiris. Below are the statements of Pandit Nehru: Continue reading →

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Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru’s Tryst With Destiny Speech (English)

Posted on August 15, 2017 by kf1
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How Sunil Dutt’s uncle and Inzamam-ul-Haq’s family were saved during Partition violence

Posted on August 12, 2017 by kf1

During the dark years of Nazi rule in Germany, there were Germans who overcame their fears of the Schutzstaffel, or SS – a paramilitary organisation under Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party – and Gestapo, the state secret police, to save many Jews from certain death.

Theirs was a show of human solidarity against a rabid ideology that sought to inculcate in the Germans hatred against the Jews.

This is best symbolised in popular imagination by Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved more than a 1,000 Polish Jews. His life was fictionalised by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally in Schindler’s Ark, which, in 1993, was turned into a film – Schindler’s List – by Steven Spielberg.

The film turned Schindler into a global epitome of humanism that is forever under stress from the brutality of the bad.

Two years after World War II ended in Europe in May 1945 – and the Jews whom Schindler had protected were set free – India too was caught in a swirl of hatred even as it gained independence from British rule.

Sixty-nine years ago, the chimes of freedom seemed more a death knell to lakhs who perished in the veritable ethnic cleansing undertaken in east and west Punjab as India was partitioned and Pakistan was born. The brute in us stalked the country with death and devastation.

Yet, as was true of Nazi Germany, there were also people in India and Pakistan whom the virus of communal hatred did not infect. Not only did they refuse to join the murderous mobs, some took enormous risks to save people of other religious communities. They were India and Pakistan’s Schindlers – but largely unknown, mostly unsung and barely finding a mention in the footnotes of our history. Continue reading →

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