theguardian | Iran has already vowed to respond to a killing it described as an act of
war. The country’s ambassador to the UN said on Saturday that it would not go unanswered. “There will be harsh revenge,” Majid Takht Ravanchi told CNN. “The time, the place, will be decided by Iran.”
The US Department of Homeland Security said the response could include cyber-attacks.
More conventional targets might include US installations, diplomatic
and military personnel, or oil facilities. US citizens have been warned
to leave Iraq.
Billboards with Suleimani’s instantly recognisable face appeared on
major streets in Iran overnight, many bearing a warning from the supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that “harsh revenge” awaits the US.
The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, also said Washington did not
realise what a great mistake it had made, during a visit to pay
condolences to the general’s family. US citizens would be feeling the
impact for years to come, he said.
The Baghdad funeral procession began at the Imam Kadhim shrine, one of the most revered sites in Shia Islam.
Mohammed Fadl, a mourner dressed in black, said he had come out in a
show of loyalty and defiance. “It is a painful strike, but it will not
shake us,” he said.
Two helicopters hovered over the crowd of mourners, who included
Iraq’s prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and leaders of Iran-backed
militias.
Iran’s envoy to Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, told Iranian state media that
Abdul-Mahdi had insisted on holding a public funeral for Suleimani and
al-Muhandis in Baghdad.
scroll | Former National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon on Friday said that the Citizenship Amendment Act and the withdrawal of special status of Jammu and Kashmir
under Article 370 of the Constitution had led to India being isolated
from the international community, even by its traditional allies, the Hindustan Times reported.
“There
has been no meaningful international support for this series of
actions, apart from a few committed members of the diaspora and a ragtag bunch of Euro MPs
from the extreme right,” Menon said at an event in New Delhi. He said
many world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and even King Harald V of Norway have criticised India’s actions.
Merkel had on November 1, during a visit to India, said that the present situation in Kashmir is “not sustainable”.
“We seem to know that we are isolated,” Menon said, referring to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s
decision to skip a meeting with the foreign affairs committee in the
United States due to the presence of Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, who
has been critical of India’s actions in Kashmir.
Earlier today a U.S. drone or helicopter killed Major General Qassim Soleimani, the famous commander of the Iranian Quds ('Jerusalem') force, while he left the airport of Baghdad where he had just arrived. He had planned to attend the funeral of the 31 Iraqi soldiers the U.S. had killed on December 29 at the Syrian-Iraqi border near Al-Qaim.
The Quds force is the external arm of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps. Soleiman was responsible for all relations between Iran
and political and militant movements outside of Iran. Hajji Qassim
advised the Lebanese Hisbullah during the 2006 war against Israel. His
support for Iraqi groups enabled them to kick the U.S. invaders out of
Iraq. He was the man responsible for, and successful in, defeating the
Islamic State in iraq and Syria. In 2015 Soleimani traveled to Moscow
and convinced Russia to intervene in Syria. His support for the Houthi
in Yemen enabled them to withstand the Saudi attackers.
Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad on a normal flight from Lebanon. He did
not travel in secret. He was picked up at the airport by Abu Mahdi
al-Muhandes, the deputy commander of the al-Hashd al-Shaabi, an official
Iraqi security force under the command of the Iraqi Prime Minister. The
two cars they traveled in were destroyed in the U.S. attack. Both men
and their drivers and guards died.
The U.S. created two martyrs who will now become the models and idols for tens of millions of youth in the Middle East.
moonofalabama | The reports about the current events in Iraq miss the root cause of the crisis.
During last summer there were several large explosions on bases held
by the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU/Hashed) in Iraq. These were
either caused
by extreme summer heat or by Israeli air attacks launched from U.S.
bases in Iraq or Syria. Most PMF leaders believe that the second is the
case.
There were also drone attacks
on positions held by PMF at the Syrian Iraqi border at Abu
Kamal/Al-Qa'im. These were likewise attributed to Israel which allegedly
flew the drones from U.S. bases in northeast Syria.
The alleged aim of these operations was to disrupt the land route for
material coming from Iran and going to Syria. Several dozens PMF
members were wounded during the incidents.
It was after these attacks that a small campaign of revenge attacks
on U.S. bases in Iraq began. These were mostly wild mortar or small
missile shots which created little damage. In total some 17 such attacks
happened. The U.S. alleged, without giving any evidence, that the
missiles used were smuggled in from Iran and used by Iran supported
forces against the U.S. No evidence was ever produced to support those
allegation.
The PMF/PMU are Iraqi troops and part of the Iraqi military
establishment. They are under command of the Iraqi prime minister. The
Iraqi state pays their salaries. They have their own munition supplies
and do not depend on Iran. It is quite possible that some of the PMU
members took shots at U.S. bases in revenge for the explosions in their
bases without any order or support from Iran.
On December 12 the Carnegie Middle East Center asked several 'experts' how the U.S. should react to the attacks which it alleges come from Iran.
Michael Knights, a 'senior fellow' at the Washington Institute which is part of the Israel lobby, responded:
As mobile launch platforms may relocate or be collocated
with civilians, the United States needs to maintain updated sets of
pre-vetted “response option” targets that can be struck at a time and
place of its choosing. The United States should wait, if need be, for
militia headquarters to re-fill, not just strike empty buildings as
quickly as possible. Any target in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or
elsewhere should be considered fair game.
When on December 29 several missiles hit a U.S. base in Iraq and
killed one U.S. contractor the Trump administration did exactly that. It
bombed five sites at the Iraqi Syrian border hundreds of kilometers
away from the original attack. Some 32 people died of which only nine
were members of the of the Kata'ib Hezbollah group of the PMF. The
others killed were Iraqi border policy men and regular Iraqi soldiers.
We immediately predicted that the incident was likely to end the presence of U.S. military in Iraq.
unz |For
31 years, the Catholics protected the American people against the
weaponization of human sexuality, but in 1965, in the wake of the Second
Vatican Council, the Catholics lost their nerve and the Jews broke the
code with their Holocaust porn film The Pawnbroker. Within seven years, hard core pornography—Deep Throat, The Devil and Miss Jones, and Behind the Green Door—was being shown in first-run movie houses. In 2004, Professor Nathan Abrams wrote:
Jewish involvement in porn…is the result of an atavistic hatred of
Christian authority: they are trying to weaken the dominant culture in
America by moral subversion…Pornography thus becomes a way of defiling
Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the
American mainstream (and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs),
its subversive character becomes more charged.[4]
Which
is one more way of saying that pornography is a weapon which Jews
wielded to destroy the Christian culture of the countries which allowed
them the rights they granted to their citizens.
In
1978 Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as head of the Federal Reserve
System as a way of placating the creditor class, which felt that
inflation had gotten out of control. Volcker’s “cure” for inflation was
raising interest rates to unheard of levels. By 1980 T-bills were paying
20 percent interest. In order to lend money at these rates, banks had
to persuade legislators to abolish state usury laws. The result was the
collapse of America’s manufacturing base, low wages, and the rise of
vulture capitalism. The sexual liberation of the ‘70s along with the
de-criminalization of usury distracted workers from the fact that their
wages had stagnated. As the compound interest which drives usurious
loans kicked in and more and more money got concentrated into the hands
of fewer and fewer people, the children of the baby boomers who cheered
the sexual liberation of the ‘70s woke up to find themselves enslaved to
unrepayable student loan debt and addicted to pornography.
As Andrew Joyce pointed out in the Unz review, “Vulture capitalism is Jewish capitalism.”[5]
Vulture capitalists like Paul Singer now control the Republican Party.
The rise in vulture capitalism was closely paralleled by the rise of
pornography. Both phenomena were Jewish. The enormous amount of money
which ended up in the hands of Jewish usurers was used to fund think
tanks, non-profit corporations, and NGOs which then promoted sodomy and
pornography as a way of distracting men who should have been forming
families from their economic misery.
mintpressnews |Ben-Menashe revealed his
understanding of why Epstein was eventually shepherded into acting as a
professional sexual blackmailer on behalf of Israeli military
intelligence. Per Ben-Menashe, there were concerns among Israeli
intelligence figures that, following the Reagan Era, a new president
would push for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, something
those officials sought to avoid by any means necessary.
ABM | Here’s
the thing… Mr. Carter… as in President Carter… the Israelis feared that
Mr. Clinton, when he was campaigning for President, will be a repeat of
Mr. Carter. He wanted to press them for peace with the Palestinians and
all that stuff. They feared… Clinton wasn’t that… but they feared he
was that… And I think Mr. Epstein was sent early on to catch up with
President Clinton.
MintPress News (MPN) | Well,
that’s interesting because the first year Clinton was in office,
Epstein was already attending donor dinners at the White House and
making White House visits as well.
ABM |Yeah,
that’s right. That’s right. I believe his biggest client was Mr.
Clinton catch, or catch, or whatever, and he had a few other congressmen
and what not but Clinton was, was his biggest catch.
Thus, Ben-Menashe argues, when Bill
Clinton’s candidacy in the 1992 U.S. Presidential election became clear,
efforts were made to target him via sexual blackmail and Jeffrey
Epstein was chosen for that purpose. Bill Clinton was eventually blackmailed by the state of Israel and his administration was also targeted by Israeli espionage as part of the “Mega” spy scandal. Epstein’s involvement in the Clinton administration and his visits to the White House date back to Clinton’s first year in office. More information on the Epstein-Clinton relationship can be found in this MintPress report.
In addition, MintPress
also asked Ben-Menashe if he was aware of Ghislaine Maxwell being
directly involved with her father’s intelligence-related activities
prior to his death in 1991. Ben-Menashe noted that Ghislaine accompanied
her father so frequently, including on a now-infamous 1989 party on Maxwell’s yacht where Donald Trump and several key figures in the PROMIS software scandal
were in attendance, that she was involved in his intelligence-related
activities to some extent. However, he stopped short of saying how
involved she was or what she has specifically been involved in prior to
her father’s death.
torontosun | British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s secrets about the rich and
powerful are so explosive, her well-heeled pals are allegedly hiding her
in luxurious safe houses.
“(She is being) protected because of the information she has on the world’s most powerful people,” a source told the New York Post.
She has also become the main focus of the FBI’s probe into Epstein’s dark world.
It
was Maxwell who allegedly procured young and underage women to have sex
with the convicted pedophile and his perverted pals. She has previously
denied wrongdoing and has not been charged.
“Ghislaine is
protected. She and Jeffrey were assets of sorts for multiple foreign
governments. They would trade information about the powerful people
caught in his net — caught at Epstein’s house,” the source told the
tabloid.
“She is not in the U.S., she moves around. She is
sometimes in the U.K., but most often in other countries, such as
Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses
and protection.”
JerusalemPost | Qasem Soleimani reportedly killed in Baghdad Airport, militia leader blames Israel, US
"The American and Israeli enemy is responsible for killing the mujahideen Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and Qassem Soleimani," said Iraqi PMF spokesman Ahmed al-Assadi.
IRGC Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani was reportedly among those
killed in an airstrike inside Baghdad International Airport, along with
Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
The Iraqi Popular
Mobilization Forces spokesperson claimed that Israel and the US are
behind the attack.
Iraq's Security Media Cell announced late Thursday night that three katyusha rockets had targeted Baghdad Airport.
tothepointanalysis | It was not enough for the Israelis to convince their own Jewish
citizens that Zionist racism was righteous self-defense and support of
Palestinian rights the equivalent of anti-Semitism. This logical fallacy
had to be pushed on Israel’s primary ally, the United States. And, at
least in the halls of power, this effort has been remarkably successful,
probably because the Zionist lobby has a lot of money to help or hinder
ambitious American politicians.
However, outside of those halls, the effort has been exposed for what
it is: a dangerous reversal of categories that threatens to turn the
clock back on much of the post-World War II progress in political, civil
and human rights. As the growing popularity of the boycott Israel movement (BDS) has shown, American citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have an increasing ability to see the reality of the situation. A survey released in mid June 2017
by an organization known as the Brand Israel Group, “a coalition of
volunteer advertising and marketing specialists” who consult for
pro-Israel organizations, indicated that “approval of Israel among
American college students dropped 27% between the group’s 2010 and 2016
surveys” while “Israel’s approval among all Americans dropped 14
points.” Brand Israel’s conclusion: in the future, the U.S. may “no
longer believe that Israel shares their values.” This is the case not
because of any big increase in anti-Semitism, but due to ever-growing
evidence of Israeli racism.
One reaction to this increasing popular clarity of vision is
President Trump’s executive order. If, in this case, colleges and
universities do not enforce the Zionist logical fallacy, they lose
federal money.
Part V—Conclusion
Governments do not have a very good reputation for telling their
citizens the truth. For instance, just this month it was made known that
the U.S. government and military misled the American people about the ability to achieve victory in the Afghan war—a conflict that has been going on for 18 years. The same thing occurred during the Vietnam War.
However, it is one thing to withhold information, or downright lie
about a situation, and another to urge a population to swallow the
category contradictions Trump and the Zionists are peddling. There is
something Orwellian about that. It is no mistake that it is the
brightest of college students, those who are actually overcoming
ignorance and practicing the art of thinking straight, who are most put
off by this propagandistic tactic.
As for those Zionist students who claim that protests against Israeli
policy and behavior on their campus make them feel uncomfortable, or
even unsafe, they might try to learn something from those feelings.
After all, it’s the closest they will ever come to the much more
profound feelings of anxiety and danger that Palestinians feel every
day, in their own homes, neighborhoods and campuses as well. So which
category do all of us want to defend—the category of state-sponsored
racism or the category of human, civil and political rights? Just be
sure not to confuse one for the other.
I find it hard to listen to establishment fake news front Amy Goodman and crew. However, this is recent Arundhati Roy, and thus, I'm making an exception. The real shizzles and bizzles - where Roy breaks it down even for the slow cats who don't pay close attention - can be found here. Since I don't expect you to pay $5.00 for this lecture, I surely wouldn't, here's a temporary link that should enable you to listen to it for free for the next couple of weeks. Click on the January 1st 2020 9:00am radio broadcast when it goes live at this location in a few minutes.
Oh, lastly, you're welcome for the KKFI hookup. Of special note (you need to check out these shows) are The Boogie Bridge, Old-G's Hangout, and Lynn's Beautician's Blues. You will thoroughly enjoy each one of these. Yesterday's Beautician's Blues was straight FYRE!!! Don't say I never did you any favors.
politico |New York Times columnist Bret Stephens ambushed and gravely wounded his own career on the evening of Dec. 27 when his piece about—bear with me here—the alleged superior intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews went live on the Times website.
As Twitter fury rose to smite Stephens for his “The Secrets of Jewish Genius” column and press coverage
tilted hard against him, his editors attempted some post-publication
damage control. They went back into his column and simply deleted the
most provoking passages from his copy, expunged the reference (and link)
to a controversial and brutally debunked
race-science paper from 2005, and added a note explaining that it was
not Stephens’ “intent” to argue that “Jews are genetically superior.”
The Times disavowal
and re-edit (tellingly neither co-signed nor acknowledged by Stephens)
was too little and too late—if you’re going to edit a piece, the smart
move is to edit before it publishes. More than that, it was clearly
wrong about what he was saying. Jewish genetic superiority was the exact direction his woolly argument was headed, something easily deduced from reading the passages excised
from the original column. If Stephens and his editors want to insist he
was merely misunderstood, they do so at their own peril. As writer Paul
Fussell observed long ago, when a writer is as widely “misunderstood” as Stephens claims he was, it’s almost always the writer’s fault.
The Stephens self-mauling did not
come as a complete surprise. Just a few months ago, he assumed a
vindictive and petty pose by bullying a professor who playfully called
him a “bedbug” on Twitter. Other Stephens columns in the Times about global warming and Ilhan Omar had been irritating the paper’s liberal readers (he’s a conservative) since he moved over from the Wall Street Journal in 2017, but by outraging readers across the political spectrum, his “Jewish Genius” piece marked a new personal low.
scroll | In March 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party decisively won the Uttar
Pradesh elections after its leaders openly pitted Muslims against
Hindus, with no less than Prime Minister Narendra Modi insinuating that
the majority community was not getting a fair deal. “If you create
kabristaan [graveyard for Muslims] in a village, then a shamshaan
[cremation ground for Hindus] should be created, he declared at one rally.
India’s
ruling party had not fielded a single Muslim candidate. The new
assembly, dominated by the BJP, had fewer Muslims than any time in its
history. This was bad enough – for anyone who believes India’s most
populous state cannot afford to politically marginalise one-fifth of its
200 million people.
Then, one evening, the news broke: Adityanath had been chosen by BJP to become the chief minister of the state.
To say it was a shock would be an understatement.
Here
was a firebrand monk whose entire politics revolved around fuelling
hostility towards Muslims. A five-time member of Parliament, he had criminal cases against him for leading violence against Muslims. He had brazenly justified this violence on national television.
One of the first decisions Adityanath took as chief minister was to order raids on slaughter-houses and butcher shops.
This was done ostensibly to enforce regulations. But the state could
not explain why its concern for health and hygiene was limited to a
single industry. Muslims, as the largest producers and consumers of meat
in the state, were not fooled: they saw this as an attack on their
livelihoods and food habits.
caravan | Outside the venue, around two dozen people had gathered to protest.
They were neither irate protestors opposing her domestic policies nor
activists angered by her stance on America’s wars. They were people such
as Baljit Kumar, a young Dalit refugee residing in nearby Riverside.
“She supports the people I ran from in India,” Kumar told me. Claiming
that Gabbard’s congressional campaign financing is heavily augmented by
American affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—the parent
organisation of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party—protestors held
bold red, white and blue signs proclaiming her “Prince$$ of the R$$.”
Since 2015, a handful of articles in online Western media outlets have
speculated about Gabbard’s perceived closeness to the Indian prime
minister, Narendra Modi, and the BJP.
The mood inside the hall was
different. As she concluded her speech, the crowd chanted: “Tulsi!
Tulsi!” The emcee, Jimmy Dore—a comedian who hosts a popular YouTube
show, and is a Gabbard supporter—opened the floor up for questions. As
hands went up all around, he pointed to me. Aware that my prepared
question was about to strike a discordant tone, I removed my hat and
glasses.
“It is getting serious,” Gabbard joked.
“In your
first two terms in office, you met the RSS spokesperson at least three
times,” I said. “You spoke at many RSS events, including two in India.
When did your collaboration with the RSS begin and how much money have
they given you?”
The usually unflappable Gabbard, who speaks with
slow deliberation, grimaced. She paused long enough for an audience
member to shout, “Speak up.” Finally she responded. “I am a soldier, and
I took an oath,” she began. “One oath in my life. That was an oath to
serve and protect this country, to put my life on the line for the
people of this country.”
She grew more emphatic. “We stand for
aloha. We stand for diversity. We stand for peace and bringing people
together around these shared ideals of freedom and opportunity for all
people.” Gesturing to the audience to stand, she continued, “Thank you
everybody for standing with me. It is this kind of attacks that are
rooted in religious bigotry that we must stand together and condemn.
Whether these attacks are being targeted at Hindus, or Buddhists, or
Muslims, or Jews, or atheists, or Catholics, we must stand united and
condemn this hate and bigotry because an attack against one of us is an
attack against all of us.” Again, the crowd chanted, “Tulsi, Tulsi.”
This is typical of how Gabbard responds to questions about the depth
of her relationship with Modi, her association with affiliates of the
Sangh Parivar—the family of organisations working with the RSS—or the
identity of many of her key donors. Such queries are dismissed as signs
of “Hinduphobia.” When an article in The Intercept described
her as “a rising progressive star, despite her support for Hindu
nationalists,” Gabbard lashed out with an opinion piece for Religion News Service, headlined: “Religious bigotry is un-American.” She said her critics were “trying to foment anti-Hindu sentiment.”
mondoweiss | Large-scale protests have been roiling Indian cities since earlier
this month, when the country’s parliament passed the Citizenship
Amendment Act, CAA. It offers citizenship to any refugees from the
neighboring (majority-Muslim) countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and
Bangladesh who are members of non-Muslim “minority” communities in those
countries—but notably not to any Muslims. Prime Minister Narendra Modi
had introduced this clearly discriminatory measure as part of a package
of anti-Muslim steps he has taken since his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
won an increased majority in the Lok Sabha (parliament) last April.
The BJP was founded in 1980 as a party that proudly and explicitly
pursues “Hindutva” (Hindu power) in a country that, throughout the 50
years after it won Independence from Britain in 1947, had remained
committed to the determinedly non-religious form of civic equality
envisaged by the Congress Party and key independence-era leaders like
Mahatma Gandhi and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The Congress Party
is now but a shadow of its earlier self. In the April elections, the BJP
won 303 of the Lok Sabha’s 543 elected seats.
Democrats and progressives around the world have been united in
protesting the BJP’s radically pro-Hindutva (or “saffronizing”)
policies. It is instructive, therefore, to note the many parallels
between the BJP’s policies and the classic kinds of policies Zionists
have pursued both on the ground in Palestine and in the lavish p.r.
campaigns they have run worldwide. Modi, it turns out, can teach us all a
lot about Zionism. Here, in a nutshell, are Modi’s step-by-step lessons
for how to create and defend an exclusivist,
ethno/sectarian-nationalist state:
asiatimes | he Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), often termed “the world’s
largest NGO,” is considered the parent organization of the right-wing,
Hindu nationalist political party: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The RSS
sought to dispel British colonial rule in India, but also to combat Muslim separatists,
soon extending their militancy towards Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, and
lower-caste communities. During WWII, the RSS drew inspiration from
fascist movements in Europe – notably admiring Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini for their ideologies on strengthening nationalism through racial purity .
In 1939, RSS ideologue MS Golwalkar wrote: “To keep up the purity of
the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the
country of the Semitic Races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has
been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible
it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to
be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan
to learn and profit by.” Golwalkar was not alone.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, another ideologue who helped shape Hindutva
wrote, “If we Hindus in India grow stronger, in time these Muslim
friends of the League type will have to play the part of German-Jews
instead.”
While references to early far-right European influences are not explicitly found in the RSS’ official “Vision & Mission”
today, the statement repeatedly calls for the protection, preservation,
and dominance of Hindu culture through the “re-organization” of
society. This philosophy, formally known as “Hindutva”, espouses similar
ideas as Italy’s Fascist Party (PNF) and Germany’s Nazi Party of
instituting ultra-nationalism through forging adherence to a single,
pure Hindu society.
An official RSS statement
echoes this. The “Sangh is unique in according primacy to the
inculcation of patriotism in all citizens and in all life’s activities.
[…] Erosion of the nation’s integrity in the name of secularism,
economic and moral bankruptcy, incessant conversions from the Hindu fold
through money-power, ever-increasing trends of secession,
thought-patterns and education dissonant with the native character of
the people, and State-sponsored denigration of anything that goes by the
name of Hindu or Hindutva: these pervasive tendencies provide ample
proof of the soundness of the philosophical foundation of the Sangh as
conceived by Dr Hedgewar and its continued relevance for the survival
and health of the Hindu society and of the nation as a whole.”
Compare this to Adolf Hitler’s visions of the ideal relationship
between the State and race, it’s not hard to see an ideological
likeness .
“Thus the highest purpose of the folkish State is the care for the
preservation of those racial primal elements which, supplying culture,
create the beauty and dignity of a higher humanity. We, as Aryans, are
therefore able to imagine a State only to be the living organism of a
nationality which not only safeguards the preservation of that
nationality but which, by a further training of its spiritual and ideal
abilities, leads it to the highest freedom,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf in 1925.
newyorker | Muslim-Hindu harmony was central to the vision of India’s founders,
Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who laid the foundation for a
secular state. India is home to all the world’s major religions; Muslims
constitute about fourteen per cent of the population. As the British
Empire prepared to withdraw, in 1947, Muslims were so fearful of Hindu
domination that they clamored for a separate state, which became
Pakistan. The division of the subcontinent, known as Partition, inspired
the largest migration in history, with tens of millions of Hindus and
Muslims crossing the new borders. In the accompanying violence, as many
as two million people died. Afterward, both Pakistanis and Indians
harbored enduring grievances over the killings and the loss of ancestral
land. Kashmir, on the border, became the site of a long-running proxy
war.
India’s remaining Muslims protected themselves by forging an alliance
with the Congress Party—Gandhi and Nehru’s group, which monopolized
national politics for fifty years. But the founders’ vision of the
secular state was not universally shared. In 1925, K. B. Hedgewar, a
physician from central India, founded the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,
an organization dedicated to the idea that India was a Hindu nation, and
that Hinduism’s followers were entitled to reign over minorities.
Members of the R.S.S. believed that many Muslims were descended from
Hindus who had been converted by force, and so their faith was of
questionable authenticity. (The same thinking applied to Christians, who
make up about two per cent of India’s population. Other major
religions, including Buddhism and Sikhism, were considered more
authentically Indian.)
Hedgewar was convinced that Hindu men had
been emasculated by colonial domination, and he prescribed paramilitary
training as an antidote. An admirer of European fascists, he borrowed
their predilection for khaki uniforms, and, more important, their
conviction that a group of highly disciplined men could transform a
nation. He thought that Gandhi and Nehru, who had made efforts to
protect the Muslim minority, were dangerous appeasers; the R.S.S.
largely sat out the freedom struggle.
In January, 1948, soon after
independence, Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Vinayak Godse, a
former R.S.S. member and an avowed Hindu nationalist. The R.S.S. was
temporarily banned and shunted to the fringes of public life, but the
group gradually reëstablished itself. In 1975, amid civic disorder and
economic stagnation, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended parliament
and imposed emergency rule. The R.S.S. vigorously opposed her and her
Congress Party allies. Many of its members were arrested, which helped
legitimize the group as it reëntered the political mainstream.
The
R.S.S.’s original base was higher-caste men, but, in order to grow, it
had to widen its membership. Among the lower-caste recruits was an
eight-year-old named Narendra Modi, from Vadnagar, a town in the state
of Gujarat. Modi belonged to the low-ranking Ghanchi caste, whose
members traditionally sell vegetable oil; Modi’s father ran a small tea
shop near the train station, where his young son helped. When Modi was
thirteen, his parents arranged for him to marry a local girl, but they
cohabited only briefly, and he did not publicly acknowledge the
relationship for many years. Modi soon left the marriage entirely and
dedicated himself to the R.S.S. As a pracharak—the
group’s term for its young, chaste foot soldiers—Modi started by
cleaning the living quarters of senior members, but he rose quickly. In
1987, he moved to the R.S.S.’s political branch, the Bharatiya Janata
Party, or B.J.P.
afp | As Indian protests
against a new citizenship law have intensified, so has police use of
"lathis", sturdy sticks used to whack, thwack and quell dissent since
British colonial times -- to sometimes deadly effect.
At least 27
people have died in the past two weeks of protests, mostly from bullets,
but hundreds more have been injured in clashes between demonstrators
and riot police wielding the bamboo canes.
Images shot by AFP and other media of officers hitting
people with them, in some cases apparently indiscriminately lashing out
at passers-by and even minors, has only fuelled public anger.
One
video of a group of Muslim women in New Delhi protecting a cowering male
fellow student from a police lathi barrage spread like wildfire on
social media in India.
Those who have
experienced a blow from a lathi, measuring five or six feet (1.5-1.8
metres) and made of stout bamboo or plastic, say it leaves a numbing
sensation that lasts for days.
Multiple strikes can break bones, cripple and even kill.
"From being used as means to regulate crowds, lathi has
turned into a lethal weapon," said V. Suresh, the secretary general of
the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), a non-profit rights
group.
"It is... being freely used, so much so that as a country
we have become inured to it. Lathi is seen as a normal but it is a
horrible weapon," Suresh told AFP.
"Nothing legitimises its brutal use."
- Fear and awe -
Many
believe the lathi originated as a martial arts accessory in South Asia.
It was also used by feudal landlords against poor peasants, emerging as
a symbol of unquestioned power and authority.
project-syndicate | We are living in the Dark Ages of inequality statistics. More than a
decade after the “Great Recession,” governments are still unable to
track accurately the evolution of income and wealth. Statistical
agencies produce income-growth statistics for the population as a whole
(national accounts), but not for the “middle class,” the “working
class,” or the richest 1% and 0.1%. At a time when Google, Facebook,
Visa, Mastercard, and other multinational corporations know intimate
details about our private lives, governments still do not capture, let
alone publish, the most basic statistics concerning the distribution of
income and wealth.
This failure has huge costs for society. The perception that
inequalities are reaching unjustifiable heights in many countries,
combined with a lack of any possible informed choice for voters, is
fodder for demagogues and critics of democracy.
Making matters worse,
experts in the field of inequality are sometimes depicted as being
overly reliant on specific methodological approaches, as illustrated in The Economist’s recent cover story,
“Inequality illusions.” But, of course, data in the social sciences are
by their very nature open to challenge, which makes methodological
debates largely unavoidable. The question is where to draw the line
between legitimate academic disagreement about inequality levels and
trends and outright inequality denialism.
Whether or not inequality is acceptable – and whether or not something
should be done about it – is a matter of collective choice. To help
inform the debate, more than 100 researchers from around the world have
joined forces to develop innovative methods for compiling inequality
statistics through the World Inequality Database,
which now covers more than 100 countries. The WID includes the widest
possible array of available data sources, from household surveys,
tax-administration data, national accounts, and wealth rankings
published in the media, to the “Panama Papers,”
through which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
exposed stockpiles of wealth stashed in various tax havens.
speigel | On Nov. 23, DER SPIEGEL reported on the background of the so-called
Magnitsky sanctions (the English report was published on Nov. 26). The
sanctions, applied by the U.S. and others to Russian officials, are
largely based on depictions provided by the former investor Bill Browder
and are related to the fate of his employee Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky died in 2009 in a Moscow prison under circumstances that
haven't been completely clarified. Browder claims that Magnitsky was
murdered because he had uncovered a tax scandal. The report from DER
SPIEGEL describes the inconsistencies in Browder's version of events and
demonstrates that he is unable to present sufficient proof for his
claims.
Browder has now gone public with his complaints about the
DER SPIEGEL story in the form of a letter to the newsmagazine's
editor-in-chief in addition to a complaint filed with the German Press
Council. In his letter, he accuses DER SPIEGEL of having misrepresented
the facts.
We believe his complaint has no basis and would like to review why
we have considerable doubts about Browder's story and why we felt it
necessary to present those doubts publicly. The English text of the
original story can be found here, and the paywall has been removed from the German version, which can be read here. In addition, you will find links below to some of the sources that we relied on in our reporting.
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