Peace and Justice Post

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5th of February is being celebrated every year as the “Kashmir Day” by every Pakistani and Kashmiri all over the world to express solidarity with the freedom fighters, demanding their legitimate right of self-determination from India. In wake of the ongoing uprising (Intifada), the day not only reminds the sacrifices of Kashmiri people, but also history of various forms of state terrorism which have continued unabated by the Indian security forces and paramilitary troops on these innocent people.

Earlier, the misfortune of Kashmiris who comprises 94 percent in Jummu and Kashmir, started in 1846 when their territory was sold by the British colonialists to a Hindu, Gulab Singh who continued his brutal policies—memories of which remain alive today. During the Dogra rule (1846-1947), Kashmiri Muslims were leading so miserable life that it was difficult to differentiate them from beasts. Slave labour, capital punishment for cow slaughter, and living under constant terror was order of the day. On April 19, 1931, the ban of Eid Khutba ignited widespread demonstrations in the Jummu city. For the first time, people openly opposed the oppression. On July 13, 1931, thousands of people thronged the Central Jail Srinagar. As the time for obligatory prayer approached, a young Kashmiri stood for Azan. The Dogra soldiers opened fire at him. In this way, 22 Kashmiris embraced martyrdom in their efforts to complete the Azan.

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Tauseef Mustafa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Both India and Pakistan claim the Kashmir Valley, a predominantly Muslim region. The valley was once a unique and idyllic patch of India, filled with apple orchards and shimmering fields of saffron framed by spiky, snow-capped peaks. Kashmir’s mosaic of relatively peaceful coexistence first began to crack during the partition of British India, in 1947. Sixty years of bitterness, including two wars, have followed.

For decades, India maintained hundreds of thousands of security forces in Kashmir to fight an insurgency sponsored by Pakistan. The insurgency has been largely vanquished. But those Indian forces are still in place, and have faced major popular unrest in recent times. From 2008 to 2010 more than 100 civilians were killed in clashes between stone-throwing protesters and heavily armed security forces in Srinagar, the state’s major city. Each death prompted a fresh set of angry demonstrations that prompted even tougher crackdowns, leading to more bloodshed. The valley’s economy virtually collapsed.

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MICHAEL KOLODNER makes a detailed study of
Indian brutality in Kashmir.

Michael Kolodner, Defence Journal, Nov 1998

History and Geography of Kashmir

The State of Jammu and Kashmir is, as its name implies, made up of more than one territorial unit. The Vale, or Valley, of Kashmir and the region of Jammu are joined with Ladakh, Poonch, Gilgit, and Baltistan to form what was, before 1947, a single governmental unit under the rule of the Dogra Dynasty. Each of these regions is distinct from the others in many aspects, and this heterogeneity is important to bear in mind during study of the Kashmir question. However, Kashmiris have a strong culture of their own as well as a distinct language. In many ways, Kashmir’s regions are more like each other than anyone is like the rest of India.

Srinagar, the summer capital of the State, is located in the centre of the Vale. This is the most populous region and the most significant agricultural centre, though it constitutes only 10% of the total land area of the state. The population of the Vale of Kashmir is overwhelmingly Muslim. In 1941, Muslims accounted for over 93% of the Vale’s population. Also living in the Vale, though highly outnumbered, is a population of Kashmiri Brahmin Hindus known as the Pandits. Many leaders of the Indian independence movement came from this community, among them Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

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• Associated Press
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 8 July 2012 21.22 BST

Abdus Salam won the Nobel prize for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson. Photograph: AP

In what is perhaps a sign of the growing Islamic extremism in the country, Pakistan‘s only Nobel laureate, who helped develop the theoretical framework that led to the apparent discovery of the subatomic “God particle” last week, is being largely scorned in his homeland because of his religious affiliation.

Abdus Salam, who died in 1996, was once hailed as a national hero for his pioneering work in physics and his contribution to Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Now his name is stricken from school textbooks because he was a member of the Ahmadi sect that has been persecuted by the government and targeted by Taliban militants, who view them as heretics.

Their plight – along with that of Pakistan’s other religious minorities, such as Shiite Muslims and Hindus – has deepened in recent years as hardline interpretations of Islam have gained ground and militants have stepped up attacks against groups they oppose. The majority of Pakistan’s citizens are Sunni Muslims.

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• guardian.co.uk,
• Tuesday 10 July 2012

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By Franklin Lamb, ICH, July 8, 2012

Presidential candidate Barack Obama is being targeted by the US Israel lobby from A to Z, (Ackerman, Gary & Aipac to Zuckerman, Mort & the Zionist Organization of America) as no American President seeking re-election has been in the country’s 236 year history.

Israel’s duel loyalty agents, as well as more fair minded American Jewish voters have historically intimidated and influenced US presidents seeking reelection, especially those in a tight race, with various financial and political threats and rewards. That’s part of the American political game and obviously plenty of other lobbies do it also.

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Higgs  Boson

by Badri Raina

Invisible and ubiquitous like the *aam aadmi,

You lend mass to high-falutin matter.

Never in the limelight, your godlike presence

Lends chatter

To  groups, parties, institutions, sea,

Sky,  stars,  universes beyond cognizance.

Being absent, you suffuse all that is;

Prophets, scriptures, leaders,

Philosophers, poets, speculators

But the fizz.

Your monumental shadowiness,

Real and touchable,

Makes monkey of the priest,

And sets up the materialist and the atheist.

Deferring to the human brain,

You make your prowess known

To  the  hard-working  homo sapien.

O Boson petite, that lends weight

To the falsely ponderous,

Lead us now to the combust

And whence that came, and why;

Lead us to a cause that makes

Idle  archives of pointless

And  coercive  dogmas die.

*aam aadmi: an ordinary man

Obama has now been condemned as a war criminal by the UN and by former President Jimmy Carter (backed by other former Democratic Party leaders), among others. The following article is in the current issue of EIR. For the op-ed by Jimmy Carter published in the NY Times, see:

Mike Billington

Hits ‘Kill, Not Capture’ Policy —

by Carl Osgood, International Movement for a Just World, July 5, 2012

June 25—Anyone who still doubts the Nazi-like character of the Obama Administration needs to examine, closely, how the U.S. killer-drone program operates in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other places. The Administration, using the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command, carries out targeted killings in countries with which it is not officially at war, using Reaper and predator drone aircraft, without any sort of accountability or oversight or even any explanation of the legal basis for this campaign.

Among its victims have been at least three American citizens, killed in Yemen, whom the Administration claimed were terrorist facilitators, without ever providing evidence of its claims, never mind any due process for the victims. The White House has refused to officially acknowledge the program, despite Congressional inquiries and Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. However, leaks known to have come from the White House bragged about how the perverse President takes personal responsibility for choosing targets and directing strikes.

Lyndon LaRouche minced no words in describing what the drone program is on June 23. “You know, when the people in the United States know they have a Hitler running the U.S. government, which is what they have—this drone business and similar processes, done personally by the dictator, der Führer—that is a big issue! That any one of you, anyone out there, can suddenly disappear—then it reminds me of a case in Germany, where the town, which was a quiet town, and there’s a big smokestack in a wooded area around that town, and occasionally great billows of smoke were coming out of that smokestack. And life went on otherwise.

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The United States government is facing defeat in Afghanistan. But that is not a bad thing in comparison to the alternative: waging war for another decade.

There will be repercussions from the coming defeat. In Afghanistan, perhaps a renewed civil war. In the US and NATO, continued immunity for national-security elites from the consequences of their terrible judgments. A crippling political debate at home over “who lost Afghanistan?” And a cloud of confused depression for Americans who sent their sons and daughters into “the good war.”

An excellent account of the terminal crisis is a New Yorker article by Dexter Filkins, the best American correspondent in Afghanistan for the past decade. As a journalist close to Afghanistan’s people, however, Filkins cannot bear the consequences of actually getting out. He is not alone. No one in the mainstream media ever has called for total withdrawal Afghanistan. And so there is a real danger, as there was in “South Vietnam,” of the US lingering until the crashing defeat of the whole operation can be blamed on those who wouldn’t “stay the course.” As a result of never being held accountable for Vietnam, the current official US Army-Marine war-fighting manual even revives the phoenix of Operation Phoenix itself, the 1960s counterinsurgency program that was terminated amidst accusations of torture and tiger cages. The basic objective of our government and military elites – not to mention Wall Street – seems to be to prove our predominance, and never to retreat.

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