PROTESTS, SIT-IN ON FRIDAY IN KASHMIR: COORDINATION COMMITTEE

September 4, 2008
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 ‘Lal Chowk Chalo stands’

MUDDASIR ALI | Greater Kashmir, Sept 4, 2008

Srinagar, Sep 3: The Coordination Committee – an amalgam of various pro-freedom parties, traders, lawyers and members of the civil society – on Wednesday called for peaceful protests on Friday after the Zuhr prayers and complete shutdown on Saturday.
After more than three hour marathon meeting at Mirwaiz Manzil, Fazl Haq Qureshi, who presided over the meeting, told media persons that the Committee appealed to the people all over the Valley to hold peaceful sit-in protests outside mosques after the prayers. “The protests would remain peaceful. People have been asked to raise slogans seeking freedom and right to self determination during the protests,” Qureshi said.
For rest of the day, Qureshi said, life would continue to be normal, as per the earlier  announcements of the Co-ordination Committee. “Business establishments, education institutions and offices would remain open and transport would ply normallys`,” he said.
The meeting, Qureshi said, decided that complete shutdown would be observed in the Valley on Saturday. “But it decided against the shutdown on Sunday. All the shops and offices would remain open on Sunday and transport would ply normally till 4 p.m. as per the program given by the Committee during last meeting,” he said.
Talking to Greater Kashmir, Qureshi said the “Lal Chowk Chalo” program remained unchanged. However, the Committee would decide on its new date later, he said.
The chairman of Hurriyat Conference (M), Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, and the chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Muhammad Yasin Malik, could not attend the meeting because both were under house arrest. The chairman of Hurriyat Conference (G), Syed Ali Shah Geelani, too could not attend due to ill health.
Among others present were: Dr Ghulam Muhammad Hubbi, (Hurriyat-M), Showkat Ahmad Bakshi, Bashir Ahmad Bhat (JKLF), Ghulam Muhammad Bhat (AAC), Khursheed Alam (EJAC), Nahida Akhtar (Dukhtaran-e-Millat), Jan Muhammad Koul (KTMF), Lateef Ahmad (HCBA), Dr Mubeen Shah (KCCI), Shakeel Qalander (FCIK), Ghulam Muhammad Bhat (KMDA), Muhammad Shafi Khan (CCIK), Muhammad Azim Tuman (HBOA), Bashir Ahmad (Fruit Growers Association) and a representative of EJAC (Q).
However no one from the Geelani faction of the Hurriyat Conference participated in the meeting. Asked about their absence, Qureshi said the Committee had earlier decided the venue for the meeting. After the meeting, however, a delegation of the Committee led by Dr Hubi, went to Geelani’s residence and informed him about the decisions taken.
Earlier, the Mirwaiz faction of Hurriyat Conference convened a meeting of its party leadership at the Nigeen residence of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who is under house arrest since his release.

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The Bush Administration Is an Ongoing Criminal Conspiracy Under International Law and U.S. Domestic Law

September 4, 2008

by Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research, September 2, 2008

Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference:

Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals
Massachusetts Law School
September 13-14, 2008

Andover, Massachusetts

Since the impeachable installation of George W. Bush as President in January of 2001 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Gang of Five, the peoples of the world have witnessed a government in the United States that has demonstrated little if any respect for fundamental considerations of international law, human rights, and the United States Constitution.

What the world has watched instead is a comprehensive and malicious assault upon the integrity of the international and domestic legal orders by a group of men and women who are thoroughly Machiavellian and Straussian in their perception of international relations and in their conduct of both foreign policy and domestic affairs. Even more seriously, in many instances specific components of the Bush administration’s foreign policies constitute ongoing criminal activity under well-recognized principles of both international law and U.S. domestic law, and in particular the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, as well as the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare (1956), all of which apply to President Bush himself as Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution.

Depending upon the substantive issues involved, those international crimes typically include but are not limited to the Nuremberg offenses of crimes against peace: For example, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and perhaps their longstanding threatened wars of aggression against Iran and now Pakistan.  Their criminal responsibility also concerns Nuremberg crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare:  For example, torture at Guantanamo, Bhagram, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere; enforced disappearances, assassinations, murders, kidnappings, extraordinary renditions, “shock and awe,” depleted uranium, white phosphorous, cluster bombs, Fallujah, and the Gitmo kangaroo courts.

Furthermore, various members of the Bush administration have committed numerous inchoate crimes incidental to these substantive offences that under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as paragraph 500 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 are international crimes in their own right:  planning and preparation—which they are currently doing today against Iran and Pakistan—solicitation, incitement, conspiracy, complicity, attempt, aiding and abetting.

Finally, according to basic principles of international criminal law set forth in paragraph 501 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, all high level civilian officials and military officers in the U.S. government who either knew or should have known that soldiers or civilians under their control (such as the C.I.A. or private contractors), committed or were about to commit international crimes and failed to take the measures necessary to stop them, or to punish them, or both, are likewise personally responsible for the commission of international crimes.

At the very top of America’s criminal chain-of-command are President Bush and Vice-President Cheney;  former U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld’s Deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Secretary of State Rice; former Director of National Intelligence Negroponte; National Security Advisor Hadley; his Deputy Elliot Abrams; former U.S. Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, criminally responsible for the torture campaign launched by the Bush Jr. administration; and the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staffs along with the appropriate Regional Commanders-in-Chief, especially for U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

These U.S. government officials and their immediate subordinates are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes as specified by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as by U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10.  Today in international legal terms, the Bush Jr. administration itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international criminal law and U.S. domestic law because of its formulation and undertaking of serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in violation of the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.

Of course the terrible irony of today’s situation is that six decades ago at Nuremberg the U.S. government participated in the prosecution, punishment and execution of Nazi government officials for committing some of the same types of heinous international crimes that the members of the Bush administration currently inflict upon people all over the world. To be sure, I personally oppose the imposition of capital punishment upon any human being for any reason no matter how monstrous their crimes, whether they be Bush Jr., Tony Blair, or Saddam Hussein.

As a consequence, American citizens possess the basic right under international law and United States domestic law, including the U.S. Constitution, to engage in acts of civil resistance designed to prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by Bush administration officials in their conduct of foreign affairs policies and military operations purported to relate to defense and counter-terrorism.  Today’s civil resisters are the sheriffs!  The Bush administration officials are the outlaws!

We American citizens must reaffirm our commitment to the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles by holding our government officials fully accountable under international law and U.S. domestic law for the commission of such grievous international and domestic crimes.  We must not permit any aspect of our foreign affairs and defense policies to be conducted by acknowledged “war criminals” according to the U.S. government’s own official definitions of that term as set forth in the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10, the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Four Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations.  The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all U.S. government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes.  If not so restrained, the Bush administration could very well precipitate a Third World War.

In this regard, during the course of an October 17, 2007 press conference, President Bush Jr. terrorized the entire world with the threat of World War III if he could not work his illegal will upon Iran.  It is my opinion that the Bush administration is fully prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons against Muslim and Arab states and peoples in order to break the taboo of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  After the terrible tragedy of September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.  As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: witness Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  In post -9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against Peoples of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas.  The Crusades all over again.  But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!

We American lawyers must be inspired by the stunning example set by those heroic Pakistani lawyers who led the successful struggle against the brutal Bush-supported Musharraf military dictatorship in Pakistan.  We American lawyers must now lead the fight against the Bush dictatorship and empire! This is our Nuremberg Moment!

Thank you.


Francis A. Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Francis A. Boyle

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Palin was member of party calling for vote on Alaskan secession from US

September 4, 2008

Revelations about McCain’s running mate for vice-president raise questions about his selection

John McCain and Sarah Palin

US Republican presidential candidate John McCain with his vice-presidential running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in Ohio. Photograph: Matt Sullivan/Reuters

New revelations about the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — including her membership of a party that wants Alaskans to vote on becoming a separate country — are raising questions about how thoroughly John McCain’s campaign vetted her background before adding her to the ticket.

Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence party (AIP) before becoming an elected Republican official, according to party members, and recorded a video message for the AIP convention this year. The AIP’s chief goal is securing Alaska a vote on seceding from the US, a goal that party leaders believe the state was denied before it became part of the US almost 50 years ago.

Yet it is the AIP’s motto, “Alaska First, Alaska Always”, that may cause the most trouble for McCain. The Republican’s campaign slogan this year is “Country First”.

At the convention where Palin’s video was played, the AIP vice-chairman, George Clark, told the audience that she was an AIP member before getting her first political post as mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska.

“But you get along to go along — she eventually joined the Republican party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that,” Clark said. “She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.”

Palin suggested in a July interview with CNBC news that she would insist on making Alaskan issues a high priority before agreeing to serve as a vice-presidential candidate. “We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans, and for the things we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the US, before I can even start addressing that question,” she said.

In response to the AIP flap, the McCain camp denied that Palin was a party member and released voter registration documents that showed her affiliating with Republicans. “If the Alaska Independence Party at some point taught Governor Palin their secret handshake, there is no record of it,” McCain aide Michael Goldfarb wrote on the campaign’s website. “Otherwise, the only relevant criterion for membership in a party is registration — and Palin has never been a member of the AIP.

Intense media scrutiny of Palin since she became McCain’s running mate four days ago has led to speculation that the Republican party failed to fully examine her background. In addition to the pregnancy of Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, several other disclosures threaten to throw the McCain camp into turmoil.

Palin has promoted her independence from Alaska’s powerful senior senator, Ted Stevens, who is facing seven criminal charges in Washington. But she served for two years as a director for one of his political groups that was able to raise unlimited money from corporate patrons.

Palin faced pressure to resign as mayor of Wasilla in 1997 after she fired the city police chief for not fully supporting her agenda, leading to a lawsuit for breach of contract.

In Alaska, Palin faces an ethics investigation into whether she abused her office by firing the public safety commissioner, who refused to intervene in a messy divorce case involving her sister. Palin has hired an attorney to help her handle the case, leading to another round of embarrassing press coverage.

McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Eskew, defended the selection: “This legal defence is neither new nor uncommon nor at all political. It is a matter of her job and is not recent and it is not related to her selection on the McCain-Palin ticket.”

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The End of New Labour…?

September 4, 2008
RINF.COM, Sept 4, 2008

Switching the leader will be a waste of time if the party does not radically change direction.

The end of every summer marks a moment of potential political renewal. Pundits and commentators urge leaders to modernise, consolidate, shift left, move right or die. Reality rarely matches the hype. But the tail end of the wet summer of 2008 lives up to the hyperbole. Labour really must change or die.

Whatever Gordon Brown decides to do as he considers relaunches and reshuffles, something is glaringly apparent: the new Labour project, initiated, perhaps unwittingly, a quarter of a century ago by Neil Kinnock and accelerated to dramatic effect by Tony Blair after 1994, is finished. The centre left needs a new paradigm in thinking and action, one as different from new Labour as this was from the creed it superseded. But a new left project that mixes commitment to principle with a lust for power in equal measure has to be built on an understanding of the rise and fall of new Labour.

For the century before new Labour, the centre left put all its hopes in the basket of the bureaucratic state. The combination of economic Fordism and the elitist politics of Fabianism and parliamentary Leninism created a bureaucratic model of top-down state reform. For the 30 years between 1948 and 1978, the bureaucratic state ruled supreme. It died as society became more complex, decentralisation became popular and we witnessed a welcome end to the age of deference.

The failure of the state was the most important cause of the right-wing response, a market state which ruled for an equivalent 30-year period from 1978 until now.

Servants of the market

Historians will bracket new Labour with this era and with Thatcherism. That does not make it the same as neoliberalism. New Labour was a contradictory and limited response to the free-market forces unleashed during the 1980s. But its failure to make a decisive break with Thatcherism meant new Labour’s response to the crisis of the left and of the state was doomed, containing the seeds of its own destruction.

After four electoral defeats, new Labour inverted the principle of social democracy: Labour governments would no longer try to make society the master of the market; it would make society its servant. Social justice would become a product of economic efficiency. Globalisation would not be regulated in the interests of society but would be accommodated.

Unlike under Thatcherism, people would not be left totally alone in the face of open market competition. New Labour believed that, for Britain to compete effectively on the world stage, people had to be trained, educated and encouraged to become flexible and adaptable. So the state would be modernised. Labour would invest in people to help them become individually competitive.

Crucially, in the name of social justice, the private sector and market forces would be introduced into parts of the public sector Margaret Thatcher had not dreamed of.

As Lord Tebbit, of all people, said recently: “There are some things that just shouldn’t be privatised.” New Labour was better than Thatcherism, but not different in character.

The nature of the new Labour project was contradictory and it is vital that the positive aspects of its legacy be rescued. Its period of government cannot end up as 13 wasted years. There are three aspects of new Labour the centre left must hold on to: first, the will and ambition to modernise and win; second, the active use of the state to determine different social and economic outcomes (despite the now obvious limitations for motive and method); and, third, completion of the social liberalisation project started by Roy Jenkins in the 1960s.

But Labour’s next stage should not be a modified form of Blairism, unable to deal with such market failures as the credit crunch because it doesn’t have the belief, the will or the institutional mechanisms to do so.

For new Labour, the market must always come first. Lab our’s electoral strategy is similarly in tatters. Its foundation was the belief that voters had nowhere else to go if it pushed the Tories to more and more extreme positions. To which the answer from Glasgow East, Crewe and probably Glenrothes is “Oh yes we do”. A hugely destructive pincer movement is at work. A mixture of boredom, Iraq and illiberal policies such as 42-day detention has led to new Labour’s contract with the middle classes being broken. The working classes are tired of their interests being ignored. Both social groups breathe the same free-market air and want no more of it. David Cameron poses as a friend to all, but has no prescription for the security people are seeking.

New Labour has equally little to offer. It has only the policies of state Thatcherism, a declining rump of supporters and party members, a crisis in Scotland and no money to fight an election campaign. In fact, it is worse than that. An election defeat could leave Labour without a hated enemy (the role Thatcher played after 1979) to galvanise renewal. Cameronism is the heir to Blairism. Even now, the instincts of many new Labour ministers on welfare reform and housing pro vision are clearly to the right, paving the way, as George Osborne has said, for the Tories.

Important Labour policy successes are unlikely to survive Tory rule because they were never advocated on grounds of social morality, but presented as requirements of economic efficiency. The minimum wage will not be updated. Sure Start will be quietly bled dry. They were created by stealth and they will die by stealth.

Acting together

New Labour has run as far as it can up the down escalator of believing that economic efficiency delivers social justice. Free markets tend to inequality: the statistics now show a country more divided on class and mobility lines than the one Labour inherited from Thatcherism.

The starting point for centre-left renewal depends on determining what offers a radical and popular alternative to the market state: the ideas, organisations and vested interests that make the political weather to which leaders have to respond.

Here, there are grounds for optimism. People want security; Thatcherism gave it to them in the form of markets and individualism in the 1980s, just as Attlee did after 1945 with the welfare state. Today, there is no demand for a return to free-market fundamentalism. Even Eddie George, the former governor of the Bank of England, has criticised the effect of free markets. The issues we face today demand collective responses, from climate change to the housing market, from pensions and public transport to rocketing fuel prices.

There are two Rubicon issues for a post-new Labour Party. Globalisation has to be made to work in the interests of society, and democracy must be viewed as an end in itself. The two are linked; democracy is the form by which the management of markets is legitimised and constructed. The future of the centre left rests on the creation of the democratic state as the means by which people can take control of the world around them in ways that individual choices can never match.

A new policy agenda for the 21st century must centre on a democratic state capable of addressing market failure in ways that mix the desirable with the feasible. A windfall tax on the energy companies would be a quick start. It could be followed by taking the railways back into public but accountable ownership at no cost to the Treasury; a graduate solidarity tax to replace the market system of variable fees; a ban on advertising to children under the age of 12; abolition of tax for people earning less than £10,000 and the introduction of a new upper rate; the election of local health boards and the co-production of public services; the creation of a national well-being index; and proportional representation in the Commons, along with an elected second chamber.

Thatcher said people should stand on their own two feet. New Labour said it would help. But people cannot withstand the pressures of globalisation alone. We cannot go back to the bureaucratic state, but we do need ways of acting collectively.

The last time Labour was desperate not to lose power, it lurched to the right and grabbed Tony Blair as a saviour. The party could be in danger of repeating its mistake. A change of leader must mean a change of direction, towards a country that becomes more equal because it is more democratic.

Tony Blair said on 2 May 1997 that “we ran for office as new Labour, we will govern as new Labour”. The task now is to ensure that the party does not die as new Labour.

Neal Lawson is chair of Compass: http://www.compassonline.org.uk

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Sami Al-Arian’s long-delayed freedom

September 4, 2008

Nicole Colson reports on a proud victory for the family of witch-hunt victim Dr. Sami Al-Arian.

Socialist Worker, September 4, 2008

Sami Al-ArianSami Al-Arian

IN A long-overdue victory, Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian was released on bail September 2 and reunited with members of his family for the first time since his arrest in early 2003.

“[I]t feels very unbelievable and surreal that he’s finally with us after more than five-and-a-half years of being apart and of only being able to see him behind glass. It’s breathtaking, really,” his daughter, Laila Al-Arian, described her feelings to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman.

“And the whole time, we–me and my siblings–just kept telling each other, ‘Is this a dream? Is this real?’ We couldn’t believe it. And even when we first heard the news, we were a bit skeptical, because we’ve been in this situation so many times, where we thought my father would finally be released, and he wouldn’t. So we kind of held back our happiness and joy until he was finally with us.”

Sami Al-Arian is the former University of South Florida professor who has been the victim of an ongoing government witch-hunt since the Bush administration, in the days following the September 11 attacks, accused him of using an Islamic think tank and a Muslim school and charity as a cover for raising funds to finance “terrorism” through the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Though then-Attorney General John Ashcroft held up Al-Arian’s arrest as an essential part of the “war on terror” here at home, after a six-month trial costing more than $50 million, a Florida jury in 2006 refused to find Al-Arian guilty of a single count of the 17 charges against him.

What you can do

Visit the Free Sami Al-Arian Web site to get regular updates about his case and learn more about what you can do to protest the government’s continued persecution of Dr. Al-Arian.

You can send donations to help the Al-Arian family defray the costs of more than five years of legal defense to: Liberty Defense Fund, P.O. Box 1211, 24525 E. Welches Road, Welches, OR 97067.

The documentary film USA v. Al-Arian can be viewed on the Internet at the LinkTV Web site.

Facing the prospect of a lengthy and costly retrial, not to mention further separation from his wife and children, Al-Arian agreed to plead guilty to a single count of the least-serious charge against him in exchange for what was supposed to be a minor additional sentence and voluntary deportation.

Instead, before his scheduled release date, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg had Al-Arian moved to Virginia to try to compel his testimony in an unrelated investigation of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)–despite an explicit agreement with Florida prosecutors, recorded in court transcripts, that Al-Arian would be exempt from all future testimony.

Because of his continued refusal to testify, Al-Arian has had his prison stay extended first with civil, and then criminal contempt charges. But according to his defense lawyers and family, the government’s request of his testimony is nothing more than a trap–designed to keep Al-Arian imprisoned indefinitely on contempt charges if he refuses to testify, or allow government prosecutors a reason to charge him with perjury if he were to testify.

As Laila Al-Arian noted on Democracy Now, “[W]hat we’ve learned along the way [about Gordon Kromberg]…is that he’s not really interested in the truth. What he’s interested in really is retrying the case that the government lost so badly in Florida.”

Continued . . .

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MEDIA-INDIA: Columnists Support Kashmir’s Secession

September 4, 2008

Analysis by Rita Manchanda | Independent Press Service,

NEW DELHI, Sep 4  – “Anti-national” is the charge hurled in India at the usual radical suspects who argue for the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people.

But the recent outcrop of media columnists asking Indians to, “think the unthinkable”, “let Kashmir go” and “we’d be better off”, are respected mainstream editors of leading national dailies and top columnists. They include Vir Sanghvi of the mass-circulation the Hindustan Times, Jug Suraiya of the Times of India, popular columnist Swaminathan A. Aiyar and activist-writer Arundhati Roy.

Moreover, according to a recent public opinion survey, these writers are reflecting growing popular sentiment. A Times of India survey of young professionals conducted across nine cities revealed a sizeable 30 percent polled feeling that if the economic and human costs were so high, India should not hold on to the Kashmir, though 59 percent felt they should hold on at any cost.

Some two-thirds of those polled said ‘No’ to the question whether the state of Jammu and Kashmir [or part of it] should be allowed to secede. Poll analysts explained that contradiction as indicating that, while thinking on Kashmir remains unclear, Kashmir’s possible secession has, for the first time in years, ‘’become a matter of common debate.”

What has produced this unsettling in the public perception of restored normalcy in the insurgency-wracked Himalayan valley? Kashmiris are back on streets in tumultuous numbers, defiantly chanting “We want freedom” and with equal intensity, “Long live Pakistan”.

The crisis which began two months ago over the proposed transfer of 100 acres forest land in the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley to a Hindu religious Board based in Jammu has shattered the myth of Kashmiris being reconciled to integrating with India. A new twist is the communalisation of the intra-state Jammu- Kashmir divide posited as Hindu nationalists v/s Islamist separatists. It has buried faith in ‘Kashmiriyat’ (or Kashmiriness), the cultural syncretism of the Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists of Kashmir.

Indian administered Kashmir consists of three distinct regions: Hindu dominated Jammu, the Muslim majority Kashmir valley and Ladakh, which is largely Buddhist. Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas are administered by Pakistan.

Muslim Pakistan and largely-Hindu but constitutionally secular India have, ever since they were created by the 1947 partition of the subcontinent on religious grounds, been in dispute over the possession of Kashmir. Three wars fought over the issue have not succeeded in altering the fact that two-thirds of the territory is administered by India and one third by Pakistan.

‘Kashmir fatigue’ appears to be driving the new sentiment behind the emerging public debate. “It is not being driven by the recognition of the legitimacy of the Kashmiri people’s right to decide, but by a sense of exasperation at pampered and mollycoddled Kashmiris remaining anti-Indian,’’ says leading Kashmir human rights campaigner Tapan Bose. “Shining India does not want to have the blot of coercively holding onto resentful and alienated Kashmiris,’’ he added.

Sanghvi’s article on Aug. 16 succinctly strikes these several chords — “What does the Centre get in return for the special favours and billions of dollars spent?” ‘’Far from gratitude, there is active hatred of India. Pakistan, a small, second-rate country that has been left far behind by India, suddenly acts as though it is on par with us, lecturing India in human rights”. “We have the world to conquer, and the means to do it. Kashmir is a 20th century problem. We cannot let it drag us down and bleed us as we assume our rightful place in the world.”

Swaminathan Aiyar and Jug Suraiya have a more liberal perspective. Aiyar acknowledges that “democracy (in Kashmir) has been a farce for almost six decades”. There are uncomfortable parallels with colonial rule over British India and the quasi colonialism of India’s rule “over those who resent it” in Kashmir. Suraiya tweaks the argument of Kashmir’s secession fatally wounding the idea of India as a pluralist polity and democratic society. “India can survive without Kashmir, if it has to; it can’t survive without the idea of India, central to which is the idea of democratic dissent and the free association of people”. This is being eroded in holding Kashmiris against their will.

Arundhati Roy, writing in the ‘Guardian’ on Aug. 22, gives it a radical twist: “India needs azadi (freedom) from Kashmir as much as Kashmir needs azadi from India”. Roy asserts, that “the non-violent people’s protest is nourished by people’s memory of years of repression”. Drawing a wider frame, she warns that “Indian military occupation makes monsters of us and allows Hindu chauvinists to target and victimise Muslims in India by holding them hostage to the freedom struggle being waged in Kashmir’’.

Expressing surprise at such articles by people who (except Roy) have never campaigned for azadi, Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, executive editor of the respected ‘Kashmir Times’ newspaper said: “We have always campaigned for ‘azadi’. This is just the wrong time. Nobody thinks about the repercussions of the disintegration of the state on communal lines (especially, Doda, Rajouri and Poonch). Whose azadi are they talking about? The need is to douse the fires and begin dialogue at different levels.”

Among the flurry of reactive articles, representative of the national security line is strategic analyst K. Subrahmanyam writing in the Times of India on Aug. 22 is adamant against any redrawing of borders. Subrahmanyam, a known nationalist, warns that if Kashmiris are allowed to secede, ‘’there would be consequences that have to be anticipated’’.

‘’During the partition of the subcontinent in 1947-48, such consequences were not foreseen and the result was a bloodbath resulting the death of a million people and ethnic cleansing involving 15 million,’’ Subrahmanyam argues.

Appealing for greater responsibility and efforts to retrieve ‘Kashmiriyat’, eminent journalist Kuldip Nayar warned in the ‘Deccan Herald’ on Aug. 29 that the independence of Kashmir would mean a takeover of the territory by the Taliban or terrorists. Political editor of ‘The Hindu,’ Harish Khare, has on Aug. 28 cautioned against “over reacting to provocative slogans in Lal Chowk’’ and said there is ‘’no need to be apologetic about our democratic values and practices”. Kashmir society could still be “weaned away from violence, distrust and suspicion.”

Sultan Shaheen, editor of the website ‘New Age Islam’, has decried the ‘irresponsibility’ of public intellectuals arguing for letting Kashmir go. “What about the nationalist Muslims of Kashmir? It was the vision of secularism and pluralism that had brought them to India in the first place. Kashmir is important for common Indians because Kashmiriyat is a prototype for Hindustaniyat — a unique blend of unity in ideological diversity.”

(END/2008)

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Pakistan reacts with fury after up to 20 die in ‘American’ attack on its soil

September 4, 2008
· Children reported dead in assault near Taliban base
· Raid was gross violation, says foreign ministry

Pakistan

Relations have become increasingly fraught between the US and Pakistan, which is struggling to control Islamist militants. Photograph: John Moore/EPA

The war in Afghanistan spilled over on to Pakistani territory for the first time yesterday when heavily armed commandos, believed to be US Special Forces, landed by helicopter and attacked three houses in a village close to a known Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold.

The surprise attack on Jala Khel was launched in early morning darkness and killed between seven and 20 people, according to a range of reports from the remote Angoor Adda region of South Waziristan. The village is situated less than one mile from the Afghan border.

Local residents were quoted as saying that most of the dead were civilians and included women and children. It was not known whether any Taliban or al-Qaida militants or western forces were among the dead.

Furious official Pakistani condemnation of the attack followed swiftly, amid growing concern that the Nato-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan could spread to Pakistan, sparking a region-wide conflagration.

Owais Ahmed Ghanisaid, the governor of North-West Frontier province, adjoining South Waziristan, said 20 people had died and called for retaliation. “This is a direct assault on the sovereignty of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan expect that the armed forces … would rise to defend the sovereignty of the country and give a befitting reply,” he said.

The foreign ministry in Islamabad termed the incursion “a gross violation of Pakistan’s territory” and a “grave provocation” which, it said, had resulted in “immense” loss of civilian life.

“Such actions are counterproductive and certainly do not help our joint efforts to fight terrorism. On the contrary, they may fuel the fire of hatred and violence we are trying to extinguish.”

“This is a very alarming and very dangerous development,” said a former senior Pakistani official. “We have absolutely been telling them [the US] not to do this but they ignored us.”

US and Nato commanders say Taliban and al-Qaida fighters use the unruly, semi-autonomous tribal areas of Pakistan to stage attacks on coalition forces inside Afghanistan and create “safe havens” where they are immune from attack. Nato and civilian casualties in Afghanistan have reached record levels in the past 12 months in the face of a spreading Taliban offensive.

US forces have used missile-carrying drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – to attack militant targets inside Pakistan in the past. But yesterday’s assault, involving up to three helicopters and infantry commandos, marked the first time the fight has been taken directly to the enemy on Pakistani soil.

Major-General Athar Abbas, a spokesman for the Pakistan army, said Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) had carried out the raid. “Two helicopters of Isaf landed very early in the morning and conducted a raid on a compound there. As per our report, seven civilians were killed in this raid.”

But a Nato spokesman denied involvement. “There has been no Nato or Isaf involvement crossing the border into Pakistan,” a Nato spokesman, James Appathurai, said. There were unconfirmed reports that the incursion was carried out by US Special Forces, which are not under Isaf command and can operate independently. A US military spokesman at the Bagram base near Kabul did not deny an attack had occurred but declined to comment.

Tensions between Pakistan’s new civilian government and the US have been running high following American accusations that rogue elements in Pakistan’s top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, were feeding classified information on coalition troops to Taliban fighters. Washington has also repeatedly accused Islamabad of failing to do enough to curb militant activity.

The strains have been exacerbated by a political crisis in Pakistan following last month’s forced resignation of President Pervez Musharraf and the collapse of a power-sharing agreement between the ruling Pakistan People’s party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister. An election to find a replacement for Musharraf is scheduled for Saturday, with the PPP chairman, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, expected to win.

In a further sign of instability, militants opened fire yesterday on prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s car, in an apparent assassination attempt, near Islamabad. The assailants, firing from a roadside embankment, hit the driver’s side window twice. Gilani was not in the car at the time.

Today he was due to meet David Cameron, the Conservative leader, who is visiting Pakistan.

• Watch John D McHugh’s video on the struggle for power and influence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region

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Yasin Malik, Geelani, Mirwaiz salute people of Kashmir

September 3, 2008
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JAVAID MALIK | Greater Kashmir

Srinagar, Sept 2: A day after their release, senior pro-freedom leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Muhammad Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, on Tuesday saluted the people of Kashmir for remaining firm on their resolve and for showing tremendous resilience.
Geelani, who was admitted in SK Institute of Medical Sciences here after his release on Monday, said, “India, by using force to crush the popular movement, has been exposed before the international community.”
He lauded the people for remaining firm on their resolve and not succumbing to pressure. “We’ve to carry forward our movement peacefully. India has lost its credibility by using excessive force to crush the movement.”
The veteran leader urged the people to follow the programs given by the Coordination Committee, an amalgam of pro-freedom groups, traders, transporters, lawyers and members of the civil society, spearheading the present movement in Kashmir. “Future course of action will be decided in the next meeting of the Coordination Committee.”
Geelani said, adding that all the aspects would be taken into consideration before finalizing the next program. “We don’t want people to suffer. Life and movement have to move on together.”
Geelani outrightly rejected the recent agreement between the government and Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti over land row. “For us 800 kanals of land is no issue, we are fighting for a bigger cause of freedom,” he said.
Urging pro-freedom leadership to unite and fight collectively for the cause, Geelani said, “Unity among the pro-freedom leadership is the need of the hour. We’ve to remain united at this crucial juncture.”
Talking to Greater Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman, Muhammad Yasin Malik, said, “People of Kashmir have won. They have proved it to the world that their movement is indigenous and it’s non-violent.”
“Entire leadership salutes the brave people of Kashmir for remaining firm on their resolve and for showing tremendous resilience,” said Malik.
The JKLF chairman said that till now international community was under the impression that Kashmiris were “terrorists” but by holding peaceful demonstrations they had proved that they are not for violence. “Kashmiris have sent a clear message to the international community and they have won millions of supporters. People in India too have realized that voice of Kashmiris cannot be muzzled through force. It’s heartening to see that Indian media too is giving space to the feelings of Kashmiris,” Malik said, adding, “I’m happy that entire leadership has agreed upon carrying forward the struggle peacefully.”
Malik said that he laid the foundation of peaceful Kashmir struggle by first carrying out the signature campaign and then Safar-e-Azadi (Journey for freedom) across the Valley.
The chairman of Hurriyat (M) Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that use of force against peaceful demonstrators and confining people within the four walls of their houses was not going to help India’s cause. “By doing so they (New Delhi) made the resolve of Kashmiris stronger. New Delhi cannot keep on resorting to violence against the non-violent people. I salute the people of Kashmir for showing tremendous resilience and courage.”
Mirwaiz reiterated that peaceful movement will continue and mission of martyrs will be taken to its logical end.
“New Delhi cannot frighten us by arresting and intimidating us. Kashmiri leadership is committed to the people of Kashmir and will never let them down,” said Mirwaiz.
He said that pro-freedom leadership will interact with cross section of the society and will take everyone into confidence before deciding the future course of action.

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US-led forces kill 15 Pakistani civilians

September 3, 2008

US-led forces alleged involved in Pakistan attack; at least 15 said killed

ISHTIAQ MAHSUD |AP News, Sep 02, 2008 23:47 EST

At least 15 people, including women and children, the border were killed in an attack involving U.S.-led forces in a remote Pakistani village near with Afghanistan, intelligence officials and a witness said Wednesday.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said it had no report of such an incursion, said to have happened in the militant-infested South Waziristan tribal region. Pakistan’s army confirmed an attack but did not specify if it believed foreign troops were involved.

The U.S. and Pakistan, allies in the war on terror, have had tensions over cross-border attacks, including suspected American missile strikes in Pakistani territory. In one high-profile incident earlier this year, Pakistan said 11 of its soldiers died when U.S. aircraft bombed their border post.

Habib Khan Wazir, an area resident, said the latest incident happened before dawn, shortly after an American helicopter landed in the village of Musa Nikow in South Waziristan.

He said as the owner of a home nearby came outside with his wife, the “American and Afghan soldiers starting firing.”

Khan said later the troops entered the house and killed seven other people, including women and children. He said the troops also killed six other residents.

Two local intelligence officials confirmed the account on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media. One official said 19 people died.

The U.S. embassy in Islamabad declined to comment.

Maj. Murad Khan, a spokesman for Pakistan’s army, said it could confirm an attack on a house near the Pakistan-Afghan border.

“We are collecting details,” Khan said, without specifying if Americans were involved.

American officials say Pakistan’s tribal regions along the Afghan border have turned into havens for al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants involved in attacks on U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. South Waziristan is the base for Pakistan’s top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud.

The U.S. has pushed Pakistan to crack down on the militancy inside its territory, and there have been debates in Washington over how far the U.S. can go in carrying out its own strikes.

U.S. rules of engagement allow ground forces to go a few miles into Pakistan when in “hot pursuit” and when forces were targeted or fired on by the enemy. U.S. rules also allow aircraft to go several miles into Pakistan air space.

Source: AP News

Read also: News International, Sept 3, Coalition forces’ attack kills 20 in S Waziristan

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Raiding Democracy in St. Paul

September 3, 2008

Marjorie Cohn | Infowars, September 2, 2008

In the months leading up to the Republican National Convention, the FBI-led Minneapolis Joint Terrorist Task Force actively recruited people to infiltrate vegan groups and other leftist organizations and report back about their activities. On May 21, the Minneapolis City Pages ran a recruiting story called “Moles Wanted.” Law enforcement sought to preempt lawful protest against the policies of the Bush administration during the convention.

Search warrant
“So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protestors who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do,” Greenwald wrote on Salon.

Since Friday, local police and sheriffs, working with the FBI, conducted preemptive searches, seizures and arrests. Glenn Greenwald described the targeting of protestors by “teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets.” Journalists were detained at gunpoint and lawyers representing detainees were handcuffed at the scene.

“I was personally present and saw officers with riot gear and assault rifles, pump action shotguns,” said Bruce Nestor, the President of the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, who is representing several of the protestors. “The neighbor of one of the houses had a gun pointed in her face when she walked out on her back porch to see what was going on. There were children in all of these houses, and children were held at gunpoint.”

The raids targeted members of “Food Not Bombs,” an anti-war, anti-authoritarian protest group that provides free vegetarian meals every week in hundreds of cities all over the world. They served meals torescue workers at the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to nearly 20 communities in the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.

Also targeted were members of I-Witness Video, a media watchdog group that monitors the police to protect civil liberties. The group worked with the National Lawyers Guild to gain the dismissal of charges or acquittals of about 400 of the 1,800 who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Preemptive policing was used at that time as well. Police infiltrated protest groups in advance of the convention.

Nestor said that no violence or illegality has taken place to justify the arrests. “Seizing boxes of political literature shows the motive of these raids was political,” he said.

Further evidence the political nature of the police action was the boarding up of the Convergence Center, where protestors had gathered, for unspecified code violations. St. Paul City Council member David Thune said, “Normally we only board up buildings that are vacant and ramshackle.” Thune and fellow City Council member Elizabeth Glidden decried “actions that appear excessive and create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation for those who wish to exercise their first amendment rights.”

“So here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protestors who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do,” Greenwald wrote on Salon.

Preventive detention violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that warrants be supported by probable cause. Protestors were charged with “conspiracy to commit riot,” a rarely-used statute that is so vague, it is probably unconstitutional. Nestor said it “basically criminalizes political advocacy.”

On Sunday, the National Lawyers Guild and Communities United Against Police Brutality filed an emergency motion requesting an injunction to prevent police from seizing video equipment and cellular phones used to document their conduct.

During Monday’s demonstration, law enforcement officers used pepper spray, rubber bullets, concussion grenades and excessive force. At least 284 people were arrested, including Amy Goodman, the prominent host of Democracy Now!, as well as the show’s producers, Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. “St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city to be,” Greenwald wrote, “with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations.”

Bruce Nestor said the timing of the arrests was intended to stop protest activity, “to make people fearful of the protests, but also to discourage people from protesting,” he told Amy Goodman. Nevertheless, 10,000 people, many opposed to the Iraq war, turned out to demonstrate on Monday. A legal team from the National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently to protect the constitutional rights of protestors.

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. She is author of Cowboy Republic. Her articles are archived at http://www.marjoriecohn.com

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