#pakistan seems to be the only country with the right response at this point

[bisexualbailorgana]

thinking about how 500 people, mostly women & children, are still missing after a boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of greece and the search and rescue operation seems limited entirely to the greek coastguard who may even be at fault for the disaster. meanwhile 5 billionaires go missing at sea while on a vanity trip and suddenly the us coastguard & navy are on it as well as canada and even france sends a ship from across the atlantic (x). they got the military involved!! for 5 people!! not to mention the submarine search has had live news coverage on the bbc since it began while there’s very little being reported on the migrant boat disaster. like you don’t have to be a genius to see what this says about how the west views migrants and refugees, its almost laughable how obvious it is it’s not even a metaphor at this point!!

#i understand that people find the submarine disappearence more interesting but if a boat carrying 500 british people or americand had #disappeared there would be widespread mourning and people would be talking about it!! #pakistan seems to be the only country with the right response at this point

[clarabosswald]

I've been reading your posts about the Israel-Palestine issue and I'm messaging you without going on anon to show that I have a genuine desire to understand. You've said you don't support apartheid and you're not a zionist so I want to ask why you believe the issue is that complicated, and get your genuine response. I'm from Pakistan, a country created in the name of religious protection and it has been at the helm of several genocides and displacements to this day. I lived in South Africa where the settler population coexists after the abolition of apartheid. I'm now a settler in Canada and I support the fight for land back and the dissolution of the colonial state even as I reside in it because I would prefer to be welcomed on this land after Indigenous sovereignty has been returned. I am just curious if you really do feel such an attachment to Israel's existence knowing that from its conception it has been a settler colonial apartheid state. Certainly Netanyahu has worsened it but the ethnic cleansing, ghettoization, displacement, imprisonment without grounds, and torture of Palestinians has been ongoing for decades. I do believe that most people currently advocating for Palestine's liberation and the dissolution of Israel as a state don't want to kill or even displace all Israelis, there is just an understanding that Israel's existence depends on the subjugation of Palestinians. And as for Hamas, most people would not want Hamas as a governing body but Israel has backed all Palestinian resistance efforts especially peaceful ones into such a corner that at this point Hamas is like any violent resistance force such as the ones in Ireland, Algeria, Haiti, Vietnam or elsewhere. Would you disagree that the violence they enact is rooted in Israeli violence? Decades of brutal oppression can only lead to radicalization in this way. I hope that you will understand I'm genuinely trying to gain your perspective on these issues and not trying to attack you. This situation is personal to me because the loss of lives is heartbreaking and I've lived in so many countries where violence not only paints the history but the present and I wish we lived in a world where borders and militaries did not exist. But I've come to learn that unfortunately peace is often achieved when there is violent resistance to oppression.

I already sent follow up direct messages so I'm SO SORRY for spamming you but I guess I'm nervous about you misreading my tone since it's easy to do that online and people have attacked you regarding all this. I just want to reiterate I make no claims to knowing everything and certainly not to knowing you and your allegiances or politics. I can tell you care about people and that's why I want to have a genuine conversation, if you'll engage with me

hi - first of all, you seem to be coming with good faith and nowadays that's not obvious at all, so thank you for that

the first thing i want to address is that yes, i'm not a zionist. at the same time i've got no fucking idea what constitutes "zionism" in western eyes at this point in time. but i don't believe jewish people have got some super special holy right of "owning" israeli lands or whatever, just because they're jewish and it's the people's ~promised land~. that's zionism how i understand it. and i don't believe in that because i'm a secular (non-believing) jew.

"why you believe the issue is that complicated" is a question that on the one hand seems extremely weird to me, and on the other hand... really makes complete sense. i say that it's complicated because there are literally decades upon decades at the very least of history behind the events that started on october 7th. and i've found that westerners seem to be desperate for some easy-to-digest, eli-5 version of it. they want fairytale morality where they can say that one side is 100% good and the other side is 100% evil. they don't want to think, to have mental/moral struggles. i think it's... naive at best, to expect something that involves decades/centuries of history and millions upon millions of people, to be that simple.

"I am just curious if you really do feel such an attachment to Israel's existence" - because it's where i was born, where my family was born, where my friends were born, the only place i've ever lived in. it's my home. it's hot and humid, the people are often rude and inconsiderate, every time it rains there's a stupid amount of flooding in the streets... and it's the only home i've ever known. is that really that hard to understand?

"I do believe that most people currently advocating for Palestine's liberation and the dissolution of Israel as a state don't want to kill or even displace all Israelis" - you know, i believe so too. that's why it's so flabbergasting to see many of the same people repeat the speaking points of different organizations that for many years have called for exactly the killing/displacement of all israelis (or at least all the jewish ones). the absolute lack of critical thinking and source-checking is infuriating. or just... the general ignorance. 99% of the people who are involved in the recent protests have probably never even heard of hamas before october 7th. honestly, considering what i've seen and heard, some of them probably still are ignorant of its existence. for fuck's sake, i've seen people think that the gaza strip is the west bank because it's located to the west.

"And as for Hamas, most people would not want Hamas as a governing body but Israel has backed all Palestinian resistance efforts especially peaceful ones into such a corner that at this point Hamas is like any violent resistance force such as the ones in Ireland, Algeria, Haiti, Vietnam or elsewhere." - can you give examples to the most recent peaceful palestinian efforts? the most recent attempt at the peace process i can think of off the top of my head is the oslo accords... possibly camp david? and i assume i don't need to explain what those were and what happened after them? but i might be missing something more recent. your mentions of other locations in the world are an excellent shout because i do believe the israeli-palestinian conflict is nothing like them. i do believe it's a unique conflict in global terms. i do think the ongoing comparisons in the west to other historical conflicts is part of the same western attempts to simplify it and make it more palatable (?) to the western audience.

"Would you disagree that the violence they enact is rooted in Israeli violence?" - to be as thorough about it as i can? no, i don't, because this (arab-jewish tensions/clashes/violence in the region of palestina/palstine/israel) goes way before the state of israel was declared. at the same time i think this is infantilizing towards palestinians. neither side's violence is just reactionary or devoid of responsibility and choice.

"Decades of brutal oppression can only lead to radicalization in this way." - what's maddening to me about this specific argument point is that the exact same thing can be said of israelis in particular and jewish people worldwide in general. (my point being that i do not accept any kind of excuse for violence against civilians and innocents, anywhere.)

"This situation is personal to me because the loss of lives is heartbreaking and I've lived in so many countries where violence not only paints the history but the present" - i appreciate your sympathy and sense of personal connection. from my perspective i can tell that since october 7th i've had to start paying a lot less attention/ignoring western opinions, or i'd have gone mad weeks ago. (not just as a form of speech. i'm so thankful for going back to therapy a few months ago.) it probably started back when i started following the russian invasion of ukraine. i've seen western reactions to the suffering of the ukrainian people and there was something very... disconnected, about those reactions. i realized that you can't... just make someone understand what it's like to live under rocket/missle/drone fire. the sound of them hitting around you. or exploding overhead. feeling the shockwave hit your body while you hide in shelter and can only hope that the roulette won't land on you this time because it was, 100% directed at you and your family and friends, at civilians, openly and unapologetically. to live in war in your own home. it's the exact same now with the current war (which is far from being the first war i've lived through). i've reached the conclusion that the only opinion that really mattes is that of palestinians and israelis. the rest just cannot begin to comprehend.

"But I've come to learn that unfortunately peace is often achieved when there is violent resistance to oppression." - and after over 75 years of violence (if we're only counting since the establishment of israel, which, i repeat, is really not the starting point of any of this, neither is the current war since october 7th), where did that get us? what did that achieve?

to which i can segue to one of my main opinions: the whole reason this conflict has been going on for so long, and only gets worse, is because more importance is being given to the past than to the future. the heads of both israeli and palestinian leaderships are stuck in the past and up their own assholes (either alternatively or at the same time, it's a true biological miracle). the only thing that will truly make a change is when people will realize that the wheels can't be turned back and we can't replicate what used to be. the only way to create a sustainable and peaceful future for both israelis and palestinians would be to give up the glorification of the past. but to be clear, i'm well aware that i'm an idealist and the chances of my ideals actually happening are nonexistent.

this post is long enough as is but i want to touch on a few more points and attempt to paint a slightly more complete picture here.

the old yishuv (if you're interested, the hebrew version of this wiki article is a lot more comprehensive, and google translate should do a good enough job on it)

Expulsions and exoduses of Jews

Jewish exodus from the Muslim world

Mizrahi Jews in Israel

Ethiopian Jews in Israel

Arab citizens of Israel

The Hamas Networks in America: A Short History

fuck bibi, fuck ben gvir, fuck smotrich, fuck levin, fuck their coalition of religious nutjobs and rightwing extremists, fuck the west bank settlers, fuck jewish terrorism, fuck jewish supremacy.

#asks #belligerentbarbie

[beardedmrbean]

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Turkey had already threatened to derail Sweden’s NATO aspirations when a far-right extremist set fire to a Koran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. On Friday, Ankara issued its verdict on Sweden and Finland’s joint NATO bid: For now, Turkey would only start ratifying Finland's application. Several reports have since emerged, meanwhile, pointing to suspected Russia ties among the organisers of the damaging Koran-burning protest.

On January 21, far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan travelled from Denmark to Sweden to set the holy book of Islam alight in what appeared to be a one-man show in front of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

The act sent shockwaves across large parts of the Muslim world, sparking mass protests in Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and of course in Turkey, where anti-Sweden rallies grew so violent that the Swedish embassy in Ankara was briefly forced to close.

Politically, the Koran-burning was nothing short of a disaster for Sweden. For months on end, Sweden had tried to appease Turkey in exchange for its all-important ratification of its NATO membership application. But the road to such a blessing had already proved long and arduous – and in some cases even impossible. Ankara’s demands had grown from extradition requests of “Kurdish terrorists” in the name of Turkish national security to calling for Sweden to crack down on anti-Turkey protests in Stockholm and to fire a minister.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodgan said Sweden could no longer count on Turkey's support in joining the military alliance.

Just 10 days prior to Paludan’s Koran-burning protest, Sweden had already seen its NATO bid almost scuppered after a group of Kurds had hung an effigy of Erdogan to a lamppost outside Stockholm’s City Hall.

Infuriated by the move, Ankara immediately cancelled a planned visit to Turkey by Sweden’s parliament speaker – a clear indication that diplomatic ties between the two countries had now hit a new low.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called the protest an outright act of “sabotage against Sweden's NATO application”.

‘Sweden will be shocked’

Then came Paludan’s Koran-burning stunt, which prompted Erdogan to announce, for the first time, that his country may only greenlight Finland’s NATO application, leaving Sweden behind.

"If necessary, we can give a different response concerning Finland. Sweden will be shocked when we give a different response for Finland," Erdogan said.

On paper, however, the Koran-burning was nothing out of the ordinary for Paludan. The Islamophobic extremist had already staged several similar events in both Sweden and his home country Denmark in the past. However, there was something odd about the protest that did not sit quite right with outside observers. Firstly, it was the timing – it was clearly a particularly sensitive moment in Sweden's NATO application. Secondly, Paludan had travelled from Denmark to Sweden with the sole purpose of staging the event.

Finland’s former foreign minister Alexander Stubb immediately blamed it on Russia.

“This should come as no surprise. Russia seems to be behind the burning of the Quran [Koran] in Sweden. This is what hybrid warfare of a rogue state looks like. In today's world everything can be weaponised,” he tweeted.

Stubb’s successor, Pekka Haavisto, chimed in, telling Finnish broadcaster YLE that Paludan’s ties to Russia had “been investigated and certain connections in his vicinity have been found", but without giving any evidence of his claims.

Although Kristersson, the Swedish premier, did not comment on any such links, he said: “There are forces both within Sweden and outside who wish to hinder Sweden’s membership in NATO,” adding that: "It’s against that background we need to see the provocateurs who wish to worsen Sweden’s relations with other countries.”

‘How to fight back against liberalised, globalised West?’’

In the days leading up to the event, it emerged that the idea of burning a Koran outside the Turkish embassy had not even come from Paludan himself. Instead, he claimed he had been contacted by two Swedish far-right activists who had convinced him to do it, and that one of them, Chang Frick, had even paid for his demonstration permit.

Frick, who regularly does media spots for the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), previously contributed to Ruptly, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned media Russia Today. According to DN Frick has travelled to Russia on several occasions in recent years, and in 2017, he accompanied a fellow SD member who acted as an election observer in the Russian regional elections. During their visit, Frick claimed in a tweet to have met “real hotshots in Moscow”. When interviewed by a state-run broadcaster, he said that the elections had been carried out in a fair and just manner. “There’s nothing to criticise,” he said.

In a recent interview with DN, however, he said that: “I’ve never had anything to do with the Russian state in any way, and I’m deeply critical against what it is doing in Ukraine.”

The other man who was allegedly involved in organising the Koran-burning is an unnamed reporter who works for the far-right Swedish news website Exakt24. The website also has links to Russia, and its Editor-in-Chief, Erik Almqvist, has acted as an election observer there. In a video from a 2020 conference in Russia, Almqvist is seen asking Leonid Alutskij, the chairman of the Russian Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, how they could “together join our forces and fight back [against] the liberalised, globalised West".

'Secret methods'

Last week, just days before Turkey announced its decision on Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications, Swedish investigative programme Kalla Fakta (Cold Facts), revealed that Paludan too has Russian connections. According to the programme he has been connected to at least six people linked to the private Russian paramilitary Wagner Group via Russian social media network VKontakte. One of them is believed to be a recruiter and a senior member of the group, and has been accused by Ukraine of election meddling and influencing public opinion in favour of Russian interests in other countries.

When confronted with this evidence by Kalla Fakta, Paludan denied the claims. He called the findings “ridiculous” and accused the reporter of having set up a fake profile in his name.

“I would assume that the profile you have been checking isn’t my profile. It seems more like you might have cheated with this [the evidence] to create a VKontakte profile,” he retorted.

But whether Paludan was consciously influenced by his Russian contacts or not, experts say an overall Russian involvement cannot be ruled out.

“There’s reason to grow suspicious when events that have been set up so sophistically so clearly play into Russia’s hands,” Tony Ingesson, a senior lecturer in intelligence analysis at Lund University, told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, pointing to the logic that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

But, he added, “Russia uses secret methods so that people don’t realise they are being supported [in their acts]”.

Jorgen Holmlund, an expert in intelligence analysis at the Swedish Defence University, agreed.

“You can ask yourself why a Danish citizen travels here to work in a way that supports Russian interests,” he said. “Given what we already know about Russian election meddling, it’s not untoward for me to say that skillfully planted narratives to get others to act – consciously or not – are likely to be present here [in Sweden] as well”.

On Friday, Turkey made a fateful decision on Sweden’s NATO process that – at least in the near term – was definitely not helped by a Koran-burning protest in Stockholm.

#nunyas news

[thesheel]

The ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) rose to prominence rapidly in Afghanistan in the last 2 to 3 years, but their emergence was highlighted in the wake of the Taliban taking control of Kabul and American forces evacuation.  ISIS-K is a South Asian affiliate of ISIS that originated in Afghanistan and Pakistan in early 2015. Khorasan is a regional term that is used to represent the territories covered by modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other regional countries. The manpower of the group was recruited by a faction separated from the Afghan Taliban and another faction separated from the Pakistani Taliban. Both of them teamed up to pose a new significant threat to the security of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Although the situation in Pakistan is under control, principally due to the military offensive against the terror groups, Afghanistan still remains the breeding ground of the ISIS-K. After the peace deal with the Afghan Taliban, the major rivalry in the war-torn country has shifted from Taliban Vs. USA to ISIS-K Vs. The USA.  ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the attack on Kabul airport, which resulted in the death of more than 160 Afghans and 13 US service members. With this, both the Taliban and the US have a common enemy in the form of ISIS-K. Top Pentagon officials, including General Mark Milley, have already indicated an attack on US soil from Afghanistan, which depicts a worrying state of affairs. Recently Panama also detained some Al-Qaeda members who were trying to enter the US with immigrants, which is a clear depiction that all eyes are on US security these days. [caption id="attachment_10164" align="aligncenter" width="768"] The rise of ISIS-K poses significant threat to the security of the US as well as the top military leadership has indicated an imminent attack in the upcoming months[/caption] ISIS-K is an only Security Threat to the US in Post War-on-Terror Era Attacking on the US seems to be the only goal for ISIS-K right now, considering that they are at a crossroads with the Taliban right now. ISIS-K is an anti-Taliban faction, and the Taliban's government in Afghanistan is a sign of death for the group. Currently, the US-Taliban agreement mentions that the Taliban will not let any group use Afghan soil against external attacks. It means that in case of an attack, the US-Taliban agreement will stand canceled, which will be a win-win situation for the ISIS-K.  The warning of military leadership cannot be ruled out because the newly formed Afghan government of the Taliban does not have the capacity and experience to prevent the operation of these terrorist organizations. These terrorist organizations, ISIS-K and Al Qaeda, have roots in multiple countries, and they always try to expand their network.  The Panama foreign minister recently told US officials that the number of immigrants trying to enter the US through Panama has increased from 800 per month to 20,000 per month.  But the point of worry is that she made a claim that Panama authorities caught several individuals from those immigrants who have links with Al Qaeda.  She also told reporters that thousands of those immigrants have already crossed the border of the USA and are in the USA right now. This should serve as an eye-opener for the Biden administration, as connecting all the dots is showing a dangerous sign. [caption id="attachment_10166" align="aligncenter" width="475"] The former President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai blamed the US for the emergence of the ISIS-K in Afghanistan, saying that the US intentionally installed them in the region as its proxy[/caption] The US and the Taliban Need to Counter Al Qaeda and ISIS-K Together USA and Taliban can prevent the expansion of ISIS-K in Afghanistan if they act on common grounds. The announcement of President Biden that the USA would exempt some of the Afghan civil servants from the Taliban era of 1996-2001 from the terror-related ban list can improve the relations between the two stakeholders.

But there are many factors at play that are creating systematic hindrances right now. Firstly, if the USA wants to work with the Taliban, it has to recognize the rule of the Taliban, which would hurt the USA's long-standing point of view. It will push the Biden administration into troubled waters as it will be an exception of defeat on an international stage. Secondly, the Taliban lacks logistics and intel experience to counter terrorist threats on their own.  For instance, the Islamic State Khorasan attack on Hamid Karzai international airport exposed this weakness of the Taliban.  Thirdly, there is an ambiguity that the Taliban does not have links with these terrorist organizations. Shahab Al Muhajir, who is an ISIS-K's leader, for instance, was the Haqqani group commander in the past before leaving for the Islamic State. As this Haqqani network is a close associate of the Afghan Taliban, it is worrying many stakeholders about the intermingling of the two organizations.  Furthermore, according to the report of the United Nations, tens of thousands of fighters are gathering in Afghanistan from the countries of Central Asia after the US withdrawal & Taliban takeover, and are joining the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS-K.  This is creating a trust deficit in American power corridors that the Taliban can play a dual game with the US just for the sake of getting international recognition. The USA needs to keep its eyes open while dealing with the Taliban against ISIS-K. Otherwise, the expansion of the Islamic State's caliphate could endanger the USA land in the longer term.  The recent United Nations counterterrorism officials reported that the terrorist attacks in Afghanistan by ISIS-K have increased from 21 to 77 during the year 2020 to 2021.  The global power can face a similar attack on its land if it does not act pre-emptively against these terrorist groups. [caption id="attachment_10167" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Pakistan, China and Russia are most concerned about the emergence of ISIS-K in Afghanistan as all of them are regional countries that hold the key to curb the ISIS in Afghanistan.[/caption] Final Thoughts The way to counter ISIS-K is to collaborate not only with Taliban leaders but also with the regional countries, especially China, Russia, and Pakistan.  Only collective consensus against the common enemy can bring fruitful results. Secondly, there is a need to put the leaders of these militant groups on the travel ban lists.  In addition to this, the US and regional countries should provide Taliban training and help on a milestone basis.  Because Afghanistan is a nurturing ground for Al Qaeda and ISIS-K, and Taliban can prove to be effective in countering them on a ground basis.

[creepingsharia]

Joe Biden’s Biggest Fundraisers are Tied to Islamic Terrorists

The Iran Lobby, the Pakistan Lobby, and the Muslim Brotherhood are funding Biden.

by Daniel Greenfield

Joe Biden had spent the entire election hiding the names of his bundlers, the big money fundraisers who fueled his campaign, until releasing them right before Election Day.

What did he have to hide?

The list of bundlers who managed to raise at least $100,000 for Biden includes some of the usual Democrat politicians and big party donors, along with some other names.

Like that of Jamal Abdi.

Abdi is the executive director of NIAC Action and the former policy director of the National Iranian American Council, often referred to as the Iran Lobby.

NIAC Action is the lobbying arm of NIAC and despite claiming to represent the Persian diaspora in America, Iranian-Americans have accused it of echoing the talking points of Iran’s regime. Members of the democratic opposition to the Islamist regime have even helped spread the #niaclobbies4mullahs hashtag across Twitter which was tweeted as much as 300,000 times.

“The NIAC pretends to support the interests of Iranians who reside in the US but, in practice, it aims to protect the interests of the Islamic Republic,” Shervan Fashandi, a member of the opposition to the regime, has said.

Earlier this year, Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Tom Cotton had sent a letter to the Justice Department urging an investigation of NIAC and NIAC Action for violating FARA by lobbying for a foreign country without officially registering as foreign agents. The letter noted that "NIAC's relationship with the Iranian regime and its role amplifying regime propaganda in the United States have been the subject of discussion in Washington D.C. for years."

Iran is an Islamic terror state responsible for the murder of Americans around the world.

Joe Biden is no stranger to the Iran Lobby. He had celebrated the Islamic takeover of Iran. During the Iran Hostage Crisis, opposed the rescue of American hostages, and called for an end to pro-democracy broadcasts into Iran and for admitting the terror state into the WTO.

Early in the century, he had also raised sizable amounts of money and headlined an event for the American Iranian Council whose founder had run for the presidency of Iran.

After September 11, Biden suggested, “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.”

In 2007, Biden warned that if President Bush took action to stop Iran, he would impeach him.

A year later, he told Israelis that they would have to accept Iran’s nuclear program.

A spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran warned that Biden's campaigns "have been financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California."

Now, as America struggled with the pandemic, Biden hurried to propose a plan, not to help Americans, but to help Iran, to “streamline channels for banking” and weaken US sanctions.

NIAC Action endorsed Biden and appears to have raised a lot of money for him. What does NIAC expect in return? In its official endorsement, NIAC claimed that Biden had made an "ironclad commitment" to return to the Iran Deal. That would allow Iran to continue developing its nuclear program and provide it with an ongoing cash flow for international terrorism.

An article co-written by Abdi, one of Biden's biggest fundraisers, warned that "the U.S. has less leverage to secure concessions from Tehran given its own diminished credibility and Iran’s increasing nuclear leverage".

All of this comes as the FBI noted that Iranian hackers were targeting government websites in “an intentional effort to influence and interfere with the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

Its hackers also sent threatening fake "Pro-Trump" emails to voters in Florida, among other states, warning, "You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you."

The move was transparently meant by the Iranians to aid the Biden-Harris campaign.

Had President Trump been the beneficiary of $100,000 or more in cash, a turnout operation, hacking attacks, and other forms of election interference from the networks around an enemy state, we would be hearing about it. Since all this is benefiting Biden, the story is being buried.

But Abdi isn’t the only troubling name on the list of Biden’s biggest bundlers.

One of them is Ijaz Ahmad.

Ahmad is the head of the American-Pakistani Political Action Committee (APPAC) who had boasted of being recognized by Pakistan's foreign ministry as the "true face of Pakistan".

APPAC is militantly opposed to India's attempts to stop Pakistani terrorism and Biden has been happy to pander to it, attacking India and expressing support for Islamic claims to Kashmir.

“We warmly welcome Mr. Biden’s policy declaration in support of people in occupied Kashmir,” Ahmad declared.

“Never before we have had so many Muslims in a position of influence in a presidential campaign,” Biden said, and quoted a Hadith.

APPAC noted that it had raised $320,000 for Biden, including $120,000 from Ahmad.

Tahir Javed, a candidate endorsed by APPAC, is also listed as a Biden bundler. As is Asif Mahmood, who ran for lieutenant governor in California, raising $1 million for the race, then for state insurance commissioner, before being appointed by Newsom to the Medical Board.

Pakistan is an Islamic terror state and an enemy of the United States, which harbored Osama bin Laden. The Bin Laden raid that Biden opposed targeted a Pakistani military town.

It’s deeply troubling that Biden doesn’t seem to have learned anything from that experience.

Another Islamic lobby member in the six figure Biden fundraiser club is Wa’el Alzayat, the head of Emgage. It’s been noted that Emgage is part of a network of Muslim Brotherhood organizations, and various figures in Emgage have connections to Islamic terrorist groups.

Another Biden bundler is Amed Khan, a member of an advisory council for the International Crisis Group founded by George Soros. In an editorial for the Quincy Institute, an anti-war group funded by Soros, Khan blamed the refugee problem on America's attacks on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and on sanctions on the narcosocialist Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Another of the bundlers on the list is Hady Amr, Obama's Deputy Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, who has co-authored articles calling for a Hamas deal.

Amr had been the founding director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. The Islamic terror state of Qatar has dominated Brookings and is a major backer of the Brotherhood and Hamas.

But the most striking bundler on the six figure list may be Mohamed Soltan.

Soltan is the son of Muslim Brotherhood cleric Salah Soltan. Salah had claimed in television appearances that people from all over the world “thirst for the blood of the Jews, and predicted, “One of these days, the U.S. will suffer more deaths than all those killed in this third Gaza holocaust. This will happen soon.”

Mohammed Soltan claimed that he was tortured by Egypt’s new government which had removed the brutal Muslim Brotherhood regime from power. While it's not certain that the Mohammed Soltan on the Biden bundler list is the same man, Soltan lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

While Soltan has denied that he’s affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, he served as president of the Muslim Student Association at Ohio State. The MSA was set up by Muslim Brotherhood members. He was also a speaker at an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference. The AMP has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, a terror arm of the Brotherhood.

Soltan has posted messages praising the Brotherhood and Hamas, describing the "Ikhwan" or Brotherhood as the "school that breeds amazing freedom fighters" like a Hamas leader.

In a tweet to the IDF spokesperson, Soltan declared that the terrorists were lions that would "annihilate u Zionist pigs".

A video shows him leading the "Khaybar" chant calling for the murder of Jews.

Joe Biden had tweeted support for Soltan by name and the Islamist supporter had thanked him personally after the Obama administration helped him escape Egyptian justice.

It’s understandable why the Biden campaign didn’t want Americans seeing a list of its top bundlers until now. The list contains disturbing names, lobbyists, and figures linked to Islamic terrorist organizations and regimes from Iran to Pakistan to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The presence of so many Islamist bundlers testifies not only to their determination to buy influence in a Biden administration, but Biden’s eagerness to sell out America. These donations are the culmination of decades of Biden’s pandering to Iran, to Pakistan, and to the Muslim Brotherhood. These are the numbers in cold hard cash for which Biden is betraying America.

The bundler list shows that Biden will aid Iran, Pakistan, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic terrorists will thrive and Americans, and free people around the world, will die at their hands.

The Biden campaign is funded by supporters of Islamic terrorism because it supports terror.

#Biden #JoeBiden #Elections #Finance #Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #Law #News #Media #Politics #Terror

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 18, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

It is still early days, and the picture of what is happening in Afghanistan now that the Taliban has regained control of the country continues to develop.

Central to affairs there is money. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with about half its population requiring humanitarian aid this year and about 90% of its people living below the poverty line of making $2 a day.

The country depends on foreign aid. Under the U.S.-supported Afghan government, the United States and other nations funded about 80% of Afghanistan’s budget. In 2020, foreign aid made up about 43% of Afghanistan’s GDP (the GDP, or gross domestic product, is the monetary value of all the goods and services produced in a country), down from 100% of it in 2009.

This is a huge problem for the Taliban, because their takeover of the country means that the money the country so desperately needs has dried up. The U.S. has frozen billions of dollars of Afghan government money held here in the U.S. The European Union and Germany have also suspended their financial support for the country, and today the International Monetary Fund blocked Afghanistan’s access to $460 million in currency reserves.

Adam M. Smith, who served on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, told Jeff Stein of the Washington Post that the financial squeeze is potentially “cataclysmic for Afghanistan.” It threatens to spark a humanitarian crisis that, in turn, will create a refugee crisis in central Asia. Already, the fighting in the last eight months has displaced more than half a million Afghans.

People fleeing from the Taliban threaten to destabilize the region more generally. While Russia was happy to support the Taliban in a war against the U.S., now that its fighters are in charge of the country, Russia needs to keep the Taliban’s extremism from spreading to other countries in the area. So it is tentatively saying supportive things about the Taliban, but it is also stepping up its protection of neighboring countries’ borders with Afghanistan. Other countries are also leery of refugees in the region: large numbers of refugees have, in the past, led countries to turn against immigrants, giving a leg up to right-wing governments.

Canada and Britain are each taking an additional 20,000 Afghan women leaders, reporters, LGBTQ people, and human rights workers on top of those they have already volunteered to take, but Turkey—which is governed by strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan—is building a wall to block refugees, and French President Emmanuel Macron asked officials in Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to prevent migrants reaching their countries from traveling any further. The European Union has asked its member states to take more Afghan refugees.

In the U.S., the question of Afghan refugees is splitting the Republican Party, with about 30% of it following the hard anti-immigrant line of former president Donald Trump. Others, though, especially those whose districts include military installations, are saying they welcome our Afghan allies.

The people fleeing the country also present a problem for those now in control of Afghanistan. The idea that people are terrified of their rule is a foreign relations nightmare, at the same time that those leaving are the ones most likely to have the skills necessary to help govern the country. But leaders can’t really stop the outward flow—at least immediately—because they do not want to antagonize the international community so thoroughly that it continues to withhold the financial aid the country so badly needs. So, while on the streets, Taliban fighters are harassing Afghans who are trying to get away, Taliban leaders are saying they will permit people to evacuate, that they will offer blanket amnesty to those who opposed them, and also that they will defend some rights for women and girls.

The Biden administration is sending more personnel to help evacuate those who want to leave. The president has promised to evacuate all Americans in the country—as many as 15,000 people—but said only that we would evacuate as many of the estimated 65,000 Afghans who want to leave as possible. The Taliban has put up checkpoints on the roads to the airport and are not permitting everyone to pass. U.S. military leaders say they will be able to evacuate between 5000 and 9000 people a day.

Today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley tried to explain the frantic rush to evacuate people from Afghanistan to reporters by saying: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.” Maybe. But military analyst Jason Dempsey condemned the whole U.S. military project in Afghanistan when he told NPR's Don Gonyea that the collapse of the Afghan government showed that the U.S. had fundamentally misunderstood the people of Afghanistan and had tried to impose a military system that simply made no sense for a society based in patronage networks and family relationships.

Even with Dempsey’s likely accurate assessment, the statement that U.S. military intelligence missed that a 300,000 person army was going to melt away still seems to me astonishing. Still, foreign policy and national security policy analyst Dr. John Gans of the University of Pennsylvania speculated on Twitter that such a lapse might be more “normal”—his word and quotation marks—than it seems, reflecting the slips possible in government bureaucracy. He points out that the Department of Defense has largely controlled Afghanistan and the way the U.S. involvement there was handled in Washington. But with the end of the military mission, the Defense Department was eager to hand off responsibility to the State Department, which was badly weakened under the previous administration and has not yet rebuilt fully enough to handle what was clearly a complicated handoff. “There have not been many transitions between an American war & an American diplomatic relationship with a sovereign, friendly country,” Gans wrote. “Fewer still when the friendly regime disintegrates so quickly.” When things started to go wrong, they snowballed.

And yet, the media portrayal of our withdrawal as a catastrophe also seems to me surprising. To date, at least as far as I have seen, there have been no reports of such atrocities as the top American diplomat in Syria reported in the chaos when the U.S. pulled out of northern Syria in 2019. Violence against our Kurdish allies there was widely expected and it indeed occurred. In a memo made public in November of that year, Ambassador William V. Roebuck wrote that “Islamist groups” paid by Turkey were deliberately engaged in ethnic cleansing of Kurds, and were committing “widely publicized, fear-inducing atrocities” even while “our military forces and diplomats were on the ground.” The memo continued: “The Turkey operation damaged our regional and international credibility and has significantly destabilized northeastern Syria.”

Reports of that ethnic cleansing in the wake of our withdrawal seemed to get very little media attention in 2019, perhaps because the former president’s first impeachment inquiry took up all the oxygen. But it strikes me that the sensibility of Roebuck’s memo is now being read onto our withdrawal from Afghanistan although conditions there are not—yet—like that.

For now, it seems, the drive to keep the door open for foreign money is reining in Taliban extremism. That caution seems unlikely to last forever, but it might hold for long enough to complete an evacuation.

Much is still unclear and the situation is changing rapidly, but my guess is that keeping an eye on the money will be crucial for understanding how this plays out.

Meanwhile, the former president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has surfaced in the United Arab Emirates. He denies early reports that he fled the country with suitcases full of cash.

—-

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/world/asia/ashraf-ghani-uae-afghanistan.html

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/afghanistan/overview

https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/the-root-of-russias-fears-in-afghanistan/

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2021-07-30qr-section2-economic.pdf#page=14

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-afghanistan-funding-int/u-s-other-aid-cuts-could-imperil-afghan-government-u-s-watchdog-idUSKBN2B72WJ

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-will-have-to-talk-to-taliban-but-wary-of-recognition/a-58890698

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/08/17/treasury-taliban-money-afghanistan/

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/18/business/afghanistan-lithium-rare-earths-mining/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-taliban-afghanistan-putin/2021/08/17/af53a9ec-ff4c-11eb-87e0-7e07bd9ce270_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/18/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/aid-groups-warn-of-possible-refugee-crisis-in-afghanistan-far-beyond-western-evacuation-plans/2021/08/18/0d7094fc-0058-11ec-825d-01701f9ded64_story.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/21/1008656321/how-does-the-u-s-help-afghans-hold-on-to-gains-while-withdrawing-troops

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/18/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/

https://www.reuters.com/world/canada-accept-20000-vulnerable-afghans-such-women-leaders-human-rights-workers-2021-08-13

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/politics/memo-syria-trump-turkey.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/18/afghan-refugee-debate-fractures-gop-506135

​​https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/politics/us-must-rely-on-taliban-for-evacuation/index.html

John Gans @johngansjrFrom what I'm seeing and hearing, the reasons for the mess in Afghanistan might be far more 'normal' than many are suspecting/suggesting -- driven more by typical pathologies in government & Washington. More to be learned. But a few thoughts. 1/x

533 Retweets2,195 Likes

August 18th 2021

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/15/1027952034/military-analyst-u-s-trained-afghan-forces-for-a-nation-that-didnt-exist

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#quotes #political #Afghanistan #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #money #corruption

[96thdayofrage]

How the Taliban surge exposed Pentagon's lies

Western politicians and media colluded in duping their publics into believing Afghanistan was a 'winnable war'

The real explanation for the Taliban's 'surprise' success is that western publics were being duped all along

A month ago, as the US army prepared to end the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan and hand over responsibility to local security forces it had armed and trained, maps showed small, relatively isolated pockets of Taliban control.

At the weekend, the Islamist fighters marched unchallenged into Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, bringing almost the entire country under their thumb. US intelligence assessments that it would take the Taliban up to three months to capture Afghanistan's capital proved wildly inaccurate.

It took a few days.

Foreign nationals were left scrambling to Kabul's airport while American officials were hurriedly evacuated by helicopter, echoing the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US embassy staff were chased out of South Vietnam after years of a similarly failed war.

On Sunday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a statement that he had fled the country – reportedly in a helicopter stuffed with cash – to "avoid bloodshed". But all the evidence indicates his corrupt security forces were never in a position to offer serious resistance to a Taliban takeover.

Jumping ship

The speed with which the Taliban have re-established their hold on a country that was supposedly being reconstructed as some kind of western-style liberal democracy is astonishing. Or, at least, it is to those who believed that US and British military commanders, western politicians and the mainstream media were being straight all this time.

The real explanation for the Taliban's "surprise" success is that western publics were being duped all along. The United States' longest war was doomed from the start. The corrupt, entirely unrepresentative members of the Kabul elite were always going to jump ship as soon as Washington stopped pumping in troops and treasure.

According to Forbes magazine, as much as $2 trillion was poured into Afghanistan over the past 20 years – or $300m a day. The truth is that western politicians and the media intentionally colluded in a fiction, selling yet another imperial "war" in a far-off land as a humanitarian intervention welcomed by the local population.

As Daniel Davis, a former US army lieutenant colonel and critic of the war, observed at the weekend: "Since early 2002, the war in Afghanistan never had a chance of succeeding."

Nonetheless, many politicians and commentators are still sounding the same, tired tune, castigating the Biden administration for "betraying" Afghanistan, as if the US had any right to be there in the first place – or as if more years of US meddling could turn things around.

Colonial chessboard

No one should have been shocked by the almost-instant collapse of an Afghan government and its security services that had been foisted on the country by the US. But it seems some are still credulous enough – even after the catastrophic lies that justified "interventions" in Iraq, Libya and Syria – to believe western foreign policy is driven by the desire to assist poor countries rather than use them as pawns on a global, colonial chessboard.

Afghans are no different from the rest of us. They don't like outsiders ruling over them. They don't like having political priorities imposed on them. And they don't like dying in someone else's power game.

If the fall of Kabul proves anything, it is that the US never had any allies in Afghanistan outside of a tiny elite that saw the chance to enrich itself, protected by US and British firepower and given an alibi by western liberals who assumed their own simplistic discourse about identity politics was ripe for export.

Yes, the Taliban will be bad news for Afghan women and girls, as well as men, who are concerned chiefly with maintaining personal freedom. But a tough conclusion western audiences may have to draw is that there are competing priorities for many Afghans who have suffered under decades of invasions and colonial interference.

Just as in Iraq, large segments of the population appear to be ready to forgo freedom in return for a guarantee of communal stability and personal safety. That was something a US client regime, looking to divert aid into its own pockets, was never going to guarantee. While the US was in charge, many tens of thousands of Afghans were killed. We will never know the true figure because their lives were considered cheap. Millions more Afghans were forced into exile.

Spoils of war

Nothing about western intervention in Afghanistan has been as it was portrayed. Those deceptions long predate the invasion by the US and UK in 2001, supposedly to hunt down Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda fighters following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Seen now, the attack on Afghanistan looks more like scene-setting, and a rationalisation, for the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq that soon followed. Both served the neoconservative agenda of increasing the US footprint in the Middle East and upping the pressure on Iran.

The West has long pursued geostrategic interests in Afghanistan, given the country's value as a trade route and its role as a buffer against enemies gaining access to the Arabian Gulf. In the 19th century, the British and Russian empires used Afghanistan as the central arena for their manoeuvring in the so-called "Great Game".

Similar intrigues drove US-led efforts to expel the Soviet army after it invaded and occupied Afghanistan through the 1980s. Washington and Britain helped to finance, arm and train Islamist fighters, the mujahideen, that forced out the Red Army in 1989. The mujahideen went on to oust the country's secular, communist government.

After their victory against the Soviet army, the mujahideen leadership split, with some becoming little more than regional warlords. The country was plunged into a bloody civil war in which the mujahideen and warlords looted their way through the areas they conquered, often treating women and girls as the spoils of war.

Despite Washington officials' constant trumpeting of their concern at Taliban violations of women's rights – in what became an additional pretext for continuing the occupation – the US had shown no desire to tackle such abuses when they were committed by its own mujahideen allies.

Rule of the warlords

The Taliban emerged in the 1990s from religious schools in neighbouring Pakistan as civil war raged in Afghanistan. They vowed to end the corruption and insecurity felt by Afghans under the rule of the warlords and mujahideen, and unify the country under Islamic law.

They found support, especially in poor, rural areas that had suffered most from the bloodletting.

The subsequent "liberation" of Afghanistan by US and British forces returned the country, outside a fortified Kabul, to an even more complex havoc. Afghans were variously exposed to violence from warlords, the Taliban, the US military and its local proxies.

To much of the population, Hamid Karzai, a former mujahideen leader who became the first Afghan president installed by the US occupation regime, was just another plundering warlord, the strongest only because he was backed by US guns and warplanes.

It was telling that five weeks ago, asked about the prospects of the Taliban returning to power, Biden stated that "the likelihood there's going to be one unified government in Afghanistan controlling the whole country is highly unlikely". Not only was he wrong, but his remarks suggested that Washington ultimately preferred to keep Afghanistan weak and divided between feuding strongmen.

That was precisely the reason most Afghans wanted the US gone.

Washington poured at least $88bn into training and arming a 300,000-strong Afghan army and police force that evaporated in Kabul, the government's supposed stronghold at the first sight of the Taliban. American taxpayers will be right to ask why such phenomenal sums were wasted on pointless military theatre rather than invested back home.

The US military, private security contractors, and arms manufacturers fed at what became a bottomless trough, and in the process were ever more deeply invested in maintaining the fiction of a winnable war. An endless, futile occupation with no clear objective swelled their budgets and ensured the military-industrial complex grew ever richer and more powerful.

Every indication is that the same war-industry juggernaut will simply change course now, playing up threats from China, Iran and Russia, to justify the continuation of budget increases that would otherwise be under threat.

Missing in action

The motive for US officials and corporations to conspire in the grand deception is clear. But what about the mainstream media, the self-declared "fourth estate" and the public's supposed watchdog on abuses of state power? Why were they missing in action all this time?

It is not as though they did not have the information needed to expose the Pentagon's lies in Afghanistan, had they cared to. The clues were there, and even reported occasionally. But the media failed to sustain attention.

As far back as 2009, as the US was preparing a pointless surge of troops to tackle the Taliban, Karl Eikenberry, then ambassador to Afghanistan, sent a cable to secretary of state Hillary Clinton that was leaked to the New York Times. He wrote that additional US forces would only "delay the day when Afghans will take over". A decade later, the Washington Post published secret documents it called the Afghan Papers that highlighted the Pentagon's systematic deceptions and lying. The subtitle was "At war with the truth".

Bob Crowley, an army colonel who had advised US military commanders in Afghanistan, observed: "Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible." The Post concluded that the US government had made every effort to "deliberately mislead the public".

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction appointed by Congress in 2012, had long detailed the waste and corruption in Afghanistan and the dismal state of the Afghan forces. But these reports were ignored or quickly disappeared without trace, leaving the Pentagon free to peddle yet more lies.

Cheerleading, not scrutinising

In the summer, as he issued yet another report, Sopko made scathing comments about claims that lessons would be learnt: "Don't believe what you're told by the generals or the ambassadors or people in the administration saying we're never going to do this again. That's exactly what we said after Vietnam... Lo and behold, we did Iraq. And we did Afghanistan. We will do this again."

A good part of the reason the Pentagon can keep recycling its lies is because neither Congress or the media is holding it to account.

The US media have performed no better. In fact, they have had their own incentives to cheerlead rather than scrutinise recent wars. Not least, they benefit from the drama of war, as more viewers tune in, allowing them to hike their advertising rates.

The handful of companies that run the biggest TV channels, newspapers and websites in the US are also part of a network of transnational corporations whose relentless economic growth has been spurred on by the "war on terror" and the channelling of trillions of dollars from the public purse into corporate hands.

The cosy ties between the US media and the military are evident too in the endless parade of former Pentagon officials and retired generals who sit in TV studios commenting as "independent experts" and analysts on US wars. Their failures in Iraq, Libya and Syria have not apparently dented their credibility.

That rotten system was proudly on display again this week as the media uncritically shared the assessments of David Petraeus, the former US commander in Afghanistan. Although Petraeus shares an outsize chunk of responsibility for the past two decades of military failure and Pentagon deception, he called for the "might of the US military" to be restored for a final push against the Taliban.  

Were it still possible to hold US officials to account, the Taliban's surge over the past few days would have silenced Petraeus and brought Washington's huge war scam crashing down.

Instead, the war industries will not even need to take a pause and regroup. They will carry on regardless, growing and prospering as though their defeat at the hands of the Taliban signifies nothing at all.

[shararsblog]

Bharatiya Janata party celebrates selection of Basavaraj Bommai as Karnataka chief minister as gangwars continue unabated on the streets of Bengaluru.

(03/08/2021)

Prime minister Narendra Modi and BJP should not celebrate Bommai's elevation to chief minister's post, they should be mourning for the pitiful state that so called world class city Bengaluru is in today. And predecessor Yeddyurappa's failure to free Bangalore from gangsters grip.

Basavaraj Bommai - New Chief Minister of Karnataka.

So finally the BJP parliamentary board on Yeddyurappa's recommendation choose Basavaraj Bommai as CM. That the chief minister's responsibility is towards all the cities within the state, but in Karnataka's case the problem of one city Bengaluru has been gigantic more than compared to cities like Hubli-Dharwad Mangaluru, Mysuru, Belgaum and others. And 61 year old mechanical engineering graduate Mr Bommai is well versed with Bengaluru's problems and who better than him, as he was the home minister before. And as rowdies go on wreaking havoc in city, my question is who is going to stop them? The hardworking family of Bengaluru and poor people who are struggling to provide the best for their families have completely lost faith in the Bengaluru police and it is they who get caught in the cross hairs of these gangsters. Can the new chief minister end the rowdies menace in Bengaluru? Can Basavaraj Bommai make a difference and show he has it in him to wipe out the rowdies from Bengaluru's every nook and corner unlike his predecessors Yeddyurappa, Kumaraswamy, Siddaramaiah, Jagadish Shettar and SM Krishna who were mere fence sitter chief minister's.

Why are the Bengaluru police hesitating to go in an aggressive mode against the gangsters? One reason here can be attributed to lack of support from the chief minister or home minister, and the political patronage provided by politicians to criminals. 6 out of every 10 MLA's in Karnataka assembly have links with notorious rowdies in their own constituencies. BJP on its part cannot wash hands off its sins here, because BJP is the party in power in Karnataka and Amit Shah holds the home portfolio here in central government. But the shame and irony within BJP remains and so does lawlessness in Bengaluru. The only good thing that Amit Shah has done in his capacity as home minister is to target opposition parties in rule in states like Kerala, West Bengal etc. He has continuously targeted West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee over law and order issues in Bengal and goondaism by Trinamool Congress leaders, true that TMC leaders have indulged in goondaism and also urged it's party workers to create terror, but Mr. Shah before pointing fingers at others, you should first clear garbage in your own backyard. Amit Shah being the home minister of central government, you are right in your concerns of lawlessness in West Bengal, but what about the lawlessness in Bengaluru in Karnataka.

Also police reforms which needs to undergo a gigantic change here in India despite the Supreme court of India clearly stating that it be done at the earliest, the Modi government seems unperturbed and casual in its approach. Police reforms are a slew of measures that need to be undertaken to break the police-criminal nexus at lower ranks and many more problems in police department. But despite the police reforms remaining unchanged, that cannot be the yardstick of excuse for police commissioners for failure to bring down crime in their respective cities. In my view the police chiefs leave Bengaluru city but in any part of the world, their foremost priority should be to bring down crime to zero, if not zero but at the level at least where people can breath easy and feel safe, they must instill fear in the minds of criminals for law enforcement agencies, and above all no political interference in working of police. All these things are completely missing in Bengaluru. Its high time Bengaluru's police stop flexing their muscles on innocent public, I wish they take on rowdies seriously. Because the rowdies of Bengaluru have gone beyond the police lathis, it has no more effect on them, the only language they understand now is the language of bullets. Also we need to understand here that the servants learn what their masters teach. Now look at how much rotten subsequent Karnataka governments have become in terms of corruption, either it is congresses Siddaramaiah who was the chief minister or Kumaraswamy's tenure as CM and BJP's Yeddyurappa, these very Chief minister's who before elections blabbered about good governance, various schemes for poor people and other promises, once they got elected showed their true colours. For instance, post covid and the brutal second wave that led to lockdown all over India, in Karnataka things have come to such a pathetic state, that police have been entrusted with imposing fines on people without masks, I have no objection in them imposing fines for those without masks, but when these very politicians and their rowdy party workers did break the covid protocol by not following rules, the same police remained mute spectators. So law in Karnataka is only for common public the minister's, rowdies are free to break law. The police machinery in Bengaluru has been turned into hafta collection force more than law enforcement force. Increasing harrasement of motorists by Bengaluru's traffic police for fines, is another indication of frustration of Karnataka government. That the biggest investors in real estate industry in Bengaluru have been the Karnataka's politicians and it is not a hidden secret. Malls, flats and commercial complexes in every nook and corner of Bengaluru city, you name it and some other minister's, MLA'S are involved in investment. Also Bengaluru being an IT hub the main buyers or customers for real estate sector are the software professionals, post lockdown many of these IT employees played safe by not buying these properties, also those who came to Bangalore from other states went back to their homes as companies started work from home policy. And new upcoming real estate projects with huge investments by politicians faced the brunt, with construction work stopped and losses to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees. Now this has resulted in more frustration for government with fresh property registrations going down in huge numbers and extremely low income from real estate market. The frustrated Karnataka government has now taken to loot the public through police, by way of targeting motorists, for false traffic violations, wearing of masks etc, whereas rowdies have a field day on the streets of Bengaluru.

Also when I am saying false traffic violation cases, people may say it as an exaggeration of comment, but this is the fraud being committed by Bengaluru traffic cops for some time now. An incidence of proof of this fraud by police, was highlighted by my own family member, whose friend who had been staying in France for close to three months on his return back to India, received a slew of messages from Bengaluru traffic police for violations relating to traffic in various areas within Bangalore, irony as it is when the concerned person was not even present in India, just look at the desparate attempt to loot the public by the police and government. This is just a tip of the ice berg in corruption within Bangalore police. So deep rooted has the rot of corruption become in Karnataka state, that not just the Police department but even BBMP, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has officials neck deep in corruption, I will come to the blog on irregularities in BBMP later on.

Left to right: Karnataka state BJP affairs incharge Arun Singh, former Chief minister BS Yeddyurappa and newly appointed CM Basavaraj Bommai.

Also Arun Singh the incharge for BJP party affairs in Karnataka needs to urgently address the happenings in Bengaluru to Prime minister Narendra Modi, if BJP on its part is serious in removing the dent on reputation of the city, which has happened not only at national level but at international level too, then they should take steps to turn it into a world class city as claimed by Yeddyurappa which in reality is not, also focus on one objective to end rowdies menace which has spread its ugly tentacles throughout Bengaluru.

(Above news of crime in 'Times of India' edition Bengaluru section dated 29th July 2021). Complete Lawlessness: Rowdy Harish Kumar who was murdered by his rivals in broad daylight.

Prime minister Narendra Modi who on every Sunday gives his opinion to the people of India through government run 'Doordarshan' channel titled, 'maan ki baat' is far away from reality of problems that the public faces. His speech can best be described as chest thumping of his governments scheme's, though there is nothing wrong in the prime minister of a country reach out to people and air the good work done by govt and it's benefits to the people, but will the prime minister be transparent and speak out his maan ki baat about the rising crime graph in Bengaluru? His own party rules Karnataka and his own partyman former Chief minister Yeddyurappa has called Bengaluru as a world class city. So honourable prime minister, what does your inner subconscious mind tells you? Do you agree with Mr. Yeddyurappa's comments? Prime minister Modi you need to rise above politics first, and talk about increasing lawlessness in your own party ruled state. But despite my severe criticism of BJP rule in Karnataka and it's failure of law and order in Bangalore, I must admit that Narendra Modi is the best prime minister India has had till date. Uri surgical strike and Balakot airstrikes go on to prove that he stood by his words before coming to power, about befitting reply to Pakistan, also aggressive combing operations in Jammu and Kashmir to flush out Pakistani terrorist's, shows the free hand given to Indian army by Prime minister Modi. The result in the past 2 years the highest number of Jaish and Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist's including their top commanders have been killed. So PM Narendra Modi has delivered on his promise of hammering terrorist's, the result today we see is Pakistan became wary and quiet and Kashmir largely peaceful. So his efficiency in fighting terrorism has been largely successful, but when it comes to rising crime graph within India, and especially Bengaluru the Modi government has failed miserably. Now that Bengaluru is officially India's crime capital, looking at Bharatiya Janata party and it's leaders lethargic attitude, the city will very soon become the world's no 1 crime city.

#bengaluru police #bengaluru #politics #karnataka bjp #bs yeddyurappa #kamal pant #crime news #bengaluru crime #basavaraj bommai #karnataka #karnataka politics

[kalyan-gullapalli]

Post # 106

Sir Cyril Radcliffe and his bloody lines.

On 12th August, 1947, a British barrister, who had set foot in India only over a month back, who had never been to Asia before and who had never travelled east of Paris, presented to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India, a map with two zigzag lines - one, 553 km long, from Gujarat to the southern tip of Jammu and Kashmir, and the other, 4096 km long, dividing the Bengal presidency into two. His name was Sir Cyril Radcliffe.

Together, these two lines created two new countries - the Republic of India and the Islamic republic of Pakistan (including East Pakistan which later seceded and became Bangladesh).

Lord Mountbatten waited five days before publishing the map on 17th August, 1947. He wanted the Independence Day celebrations to be done with - on 14th August for Pakistan and on 15th August for India. He probably expected trouble. Well, he was right. All hell broke loose!

These lines displaced 14.5 million people on either side of them. About 1 million people died in frustration-triggered riotings, pillage, rapes and looting. The scars have still not faded away. India and Pakistan are sworn enemies since. And will probably remain so for some time.

Together, these two lines are called Radcliffe lines and they represent the boundaries between India and Pakistan.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe is said to have been so appalled by the mayhem created by his infamous lines that he refused his salary of 3000 pounds (Forty Thousand rupees). And till his death in 1977, he maintained that he wasn't to blame for this fiasco, he did the best he could, he simply didn't have enough time. Therein lies a tale!

The details of the events that happened are somewhat like this:

After WW II, Great Britain realised that it simply didn't have the resources to control India any more, nor did it have the will to suppress its demands for independence. So, on 20th February, 1947, Prime Minister Clement Atlee announced that Britain would grant India full independence, latest by 30th June, 1948.

In March, 1947, a glamorous royal named Lord Mountbatten was sent to India as its last Viceroy. His mission was simple and clear: To hand over power to Indians, exit with as little damage to British reputation and if possible, avoid partition. But very soon, he realised that India was at a flash point, a truce between Indian National Congress and Muslim League was impossible and Partition was the only way out.

So on 3rd June, he shocked every one by declaring that the British would leave India on 15th August, 1947, about ten months before his deadline, and that the partition would be done based on religion-majority- demographics.

This was called the Mountbatten plan or the 3rd June plan. Mountbatten was clearly in a rush to exit India ASAP.

The British government back home ratified this decision by passing the Indian Independence Act on 18th July, 1947.

The only thing left to decide was who gets what! Some were simple. Baluchisthan and Sindh had 92% and 73% muslim population respectively. So they went to Pakistan. North West Frontier Province voted in a referendum to join Pakistan. Today, it is called Khyber Pakthunwa.

Princely states were allowed to decide who they wanted to accede to. They could even remain independent if they wanted. So both INC and ML wooed them. Over 560 princely states joined India. Three of them dithered. Junagarh and Hyderabad later joined India and integrated well. The third, Jammu and Kashmir, is a thorn in Indo-Pakistan relationships, even today, decades later. But that's another story. Books can and have been written on it.

All of these were relatively simpler. Punjab and Bengal, each with 54-55% Muslim majority were the tougher ones. Jinnah wanted them both. Nehru and Sardar Patel were adamant. Punjab and Bengal were tough nuts to crack indeed.

Enter Cyril Radcliffe, a complete outsider to this situation. Actually, the selection of Sir Cyril Radcliffe was made because he was a complete outsider and could not be unduly influenced by either the INC or the Muslim League.

He was appointed Joint-Chairman of two boundary committees - one to divide Punjab into East Punjab and West Punjab, and the other to divide Bengal into East Bengal and West Bengal. East Punjab had Hindu majority, West Punjab had Muslim majority. The vice-versa was true in Bengal.

Each committee has two representatives each of INC and Muslim League. No one saw eye to eye. However, they had to distribute village, canal, field and drain - on the basis of religion.

Radcliffe had the responsibility of equitably dividing 450000 sq. km of territory inhabiting 88 million people. And he had just 40 days to do it. Maps were not accurate. Surveying was tough in the July heat in Punjab and Bengal. And Mountbatten would call him twice a day to remind him of his deadline.

So, he bent his back, did the best he could, drew the lines, made the maps, submitted them to Lord Mountbatten - on 12th August, three days ahead of schedule - packed his bags, went back to Britain, burnt his notes, refused his salary and swore never to return to either India or Pakistan. Till the day he died, he knew that he wasn't liked a lot in Punjab or Bengal.

That's the story of Sir Cyril Radcliffe and his blood-smeared Radcliffe lines.

There is a post-script to this story. We are talking about the independence of India and we haven't spoken a word about the guy most responsible for it - Mahatma Gandhi. While all this was happening, the Mahatma grieved in some corner of the country he loved, shocked by the way his dream was turning into a nightmare, not identifying with the "tryst with destiny" that his proteges seemed so cocky about, trying his best to douse the embers of religious hatred in different parts of the country or when tired, retiring to his ashram and spinning his wheel in misery. Less than a year later, an assassin's bullet would rip him apart and he would die with the words "Hey Ram" on his lips.

#cyril Radcliffe #Radcliffe lines #partition #indian independence #pakistan #bangladesh #lord mountbatten #india independence act #jinnah #nehru #sardar patel #east pakistan #india #british india

[mizanurtumb]

Atlantic Charter: The Beginning of the Rise of the United States as a Superpower

August, 1941. World War II is going on. All around then the triumph of the Axis Powers. Germany and its junior partner, Italy, were then the masters of the European mainland. The vast expanse of Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean was then under the influence of the Axis Powers. France has fallen. The mighty 'Mistress of the Sea' Britain has not yet conceded defeat, but they have been defeated by intense Axis air strikes. Axis forces continue to attack the communist superpower, the Soviet Union. Axis forces are rushing towards Moscow with lightning speed, crushing the famous Red Army. Meanwhile, Japan has occupied a large area of ​​China as well as Indochina. In Africa, the Axis powers are waging a fierce battle with the Allies. Only one major power is still out of the war - the United States.

The United States was the largest economic power in the world at that time. In fact, they became the world's major economic power before the turn of the twentieth century. The devastation in Europe during the First World War strengthened their position. The United States participated in the war at the end of World War I and distanced itself from international politics as much as possible in order to avoid being caught up in the whirlpool of post-war European politics. They maintained neutrality in the early stages even after the outbreak of World War II, but their sympathies were largely with the British and French-led allies.

But by August 1941, 'sympathy' alone was not enough for almost cornered Britain. The British wanted to involve the United States in this war at any cost. By the time France fell, almost the whole of Europe was under the control of the Axis Powers, and the British colonies were in revolt. In this situation, Britain had no choice but to involve the United States directly in the war to avoid defeat. Only the huge industrial and military capabilities of the United States could save Britain.

It is pertinent to note that in September 1940, the United States and Britain signed the 'Destroyer for Base' agreement. Through this agreement, the Americans provided Britain with 50 destroyers and in return the United States gained the right to establish military bases in the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean. This agreement was one of the reasons why Britain was not forced to surrender to the Axis Powers in 1940. The military equipment obtained through this agreement helped Britain to continue the war. But U.S. public opinion was still strongly opposed to participating in the war, so the United States refrained from participating directly in the war. But some U.S. policymakers were in favor of participating in the war because they thought it would open the door to possibilities for the United States.

By August 1941, their idea had taken root. At the time, the Soviet Union was engaged in a deadly struggle against the Axis Powers, and the Allies feared that the Axis Powers would lose. For Britain and the United States, the possible defeat of the Soviet Union was an ominous sign, because if the Soviet Union was defeated, the Axis powers would have the opportunity to seize the vast territory of Eurasia and use it in the fight against Britain (and possibly the United States). In this situation, Britain and the United States decided to strengthen mutual cooperation and to determine what the post-war world would look like if the Allies won the war. The result of this resolution is the 'Atlantic Charter'.

On 9 August 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in the Gulf of Pleasantia off the southeast coast of Newfoundland aboard the British warship HMS Prince of Wales. He was welcomed at the US Naval Station in Argentina by US President Franklin Roosevelt aboard the USS Augusta. Their interview was kept secret from the whole world. The Americans knew their president was on a 10-day fishing holiday! It should be noted that at that time Newfoundland was a British Dominion (Autonomous Colony), and now it is part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

From 9 to 12 August, talks were held between Roosevelt and Churchill and top officials from both states. It later became known as the Atlantic Conference. The conference was followed on 14 August by a joint declaration by the President and the Prime Minister, which later became known as the Atlantic Charter. Note that the Atlantic Charter was not a formal treaty, nor was it a treaty signed by anyone. It was the culmination of a series of agreements between the United States and the United Kingdom, which were publicized in the form of declarations and thus gained worldwide recognition. Roosevelt later compared the Atlantic Charter to an unwritten British constitution and commented that the Atlantic Charter did not exist on paper, but everyone knew it existed.

It is pertinent to note that even after the proclamation of the Atlantic Charter, the United States refrained from joining the war directly for several months due to internal political reasons. But it became clear that the United States had linked its destiny with the Allies. On December 6, 1941, three months after the Atlantic Summit, Japan attacked the United States naval and air base at Pearl Harbor, and in response the United States declared war on Japan. Through this the United States became directly involved in World War II, and emerged as an economic and military superpower at the end of World War II. And the Atlantic Charter played an important role in their emergence as a superpower.

The Atlantic Charter outlined the post-World War II world. Note that the Atlantic Charter is not the first 'declaration' in this regard. Earlier, on 12 June 1941, Britain and its four Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa), the expatriate governments of six European countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia and France) The alternative to the German-controlled ‘Vichy France’ (the French government) collectively issued the ‘Declaration of the Palace of St. James’ or the ‘Declaration of London’. Through this declaration, the states pledged to refrain from making peace with the Axis powers separately and to recognize the right of the free nations to voluntarily cooperate with each other. 'Anglo-Soviet Treaty' of 12 July 1941 Was signed and through this agreement Britain and the Soviet Union pledged to refrain from making peace with the Axis powers separately. The 'Atlantic Charter' was a logical extension of this process.

The Atlantic Charter had a total of 6 articles. These are as follows:

(1) The United States and Britain will not claim any land after the war.

(2) The United States and Britain are not interested in seeing a change in ownership of a territory against the will of its inhabitants.

(3) The United States and the United Kingdom respect the right of each nation to choose its own system of government and are keen to return it to the nations whose sovereign rights and sovereignty have been taken away.

(4) The United States and Britain shall endeavor to maintain equal rights in the conduct of trade and procurement of raw materials for each nation, large and small, victorious and victorious in the post-war period.

(5) The United States and the United Kingdom are keen to maintain full economic cooperation among all nations in order to improve the conditions of workers, ensure economic progress and social security.

(6) After the final destruction of Nazism, the United States and Britain are willing to establish a peace that will allow every nation to live safely within its borders and free from fear and poverty.

(6) The United States and Britain are willing to ensure the right to free movement at sea.

(6) The United States and Britain believe that every nation in the world should abandon the use of force and take steps for full disarmament.

From the general point of view, the Atlantic Charter was a declaration that was very ‘noble’ and ‘ethical’. It discourages the practice of resolving political disputes through force and land grabbing. It emphasizes the right of each nation to choose its own system of governance, the right to free trade, the right to form alliances and the right to free movement at sea. At the same time, emphasis has been placed on disarmament, poverty alleviation and economic cooperation.

Apparently the clauses of the charter seem to be very noble. The Atlantic Charter is described as a milestone in history. In general terms, the Atlantic Charter is the landmark treaty that has led to the end of global colonialism and the establishment of the United Nations to establish world peace. But considering the context, the subtle motives of these clauses become clear, and then they can no longer be termed as 'noble motives'.

The most important clause of the Atlantic Charter is the third clause of the treaty. Through it, the United States and Britain recognized the right of nations around the world to self-determination. But the United States and Britain themselves were imperialist powers and they themselves had suppressed the right of different nations to self-determination. Why, then, were they so concerned about the “right of nations to self-determination”?

It should be noted that before the Second World War, Britain was the owner of a huge empire worldwide. In fact, the British Empire was the largest empire in human history. "The sun never sets in the British Empire" - they proudly referred to it. The British deprived the people of present day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Gambia and many other similar states of their 'right to self-determination'. The United States, on the other hand, promoted itself as anti-imperialist, but in practice they themselves were a colonial state. Not only did they seize large tracts of land from North American natives, but they also seized vast tracts of land from Mexico, as well as from the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and many other territories.

In this context, the declaration of support for the "right of nations to self-determination" by the US and the British was virtually self-contradictory. But even then the United States and Britain included this clause in the Atlantic Declaration. In fact, at that time, US and British statesmen realized that after World War II, it would no longer be possible for Western European states to retain control of their colonial empires. Nationalist thought spread widely in several colonies, and the successive defeats of other Western European colonial states, including Britain, near the Axis powers at the beginning of World War II intensified the desire for independence in the colonies. On the other hand, the war destroyed the economies and infrastructure of these European nations.

By August 1941, British statesmen had realized that no matter what the outcome of the war, it would not be possible for the British to maintain control over their vast colonial empire with the economy destroyed at the end of the war. Therefore, they decided to withdraw from the most anarchic colonies as soon as possible after the war and to maintain control over the prosperous African colonies and some other strategically important colonies.

Note that in the end, the British had to give up almost their entire colonial empire. But even then the end of the British Empire was relatively peaceful. Other Western European colonial powers could not be as realistic as Britain, so after World War II France became involved in bloody wars in Indochina and Algeria, the Netherlands in Indonesia, and Portugal in southern Africa.

But there was still an important question before Britain - to whom would they hand over the dominion of this vast empire, the dominion of the world? After the retreat of the British from the colonies all over the world, to whom will the world domination go? To the German Nazis, against whom they are engaged in a deadly war? In the hands of the French, who have virtually surrendered to the Germans? Or to the Soviet communists, who want to spread their 'terrible' (from a British point of view) ideology all over the world? The world ruled by Germany, France or the Soviet Union was not desirable to Britain, so they decided that their most suitable successor for world domination would be the United States, a capitalist democratic state like Britain and part of the English-speaking world.

However, it should not be underestimated that Britain readily agreed to cede its empire and global dominance to the United States. In this case, the pressure of the United States on Britain played an important role. Britain's weakness was not unknown to the Americans, and they wanted to use this situation to their advantage as much as possible. They knew that Britain had no choice but to accept US aid. To this end, they pressured Britain to grant independence to the British colonies and to gain British support for the Atlantic Charter clause on the "right of nations to self-determination." However, after the declaration of the Atlantic Charter, Churchill explained that this right would only apply to German-occupied territories. But later events make it clear that the 'right to self-determination' mentioned in the charter

However, the question may be raised, how could the United States benefit from the loss of the British colonies? To answer this question, we need to look at the structure of the world economy. During World War II, the United States was the world's largest economic power and industrial producer. U.S. policymakers realized that it would take them a long time after the war to make up for the losses suffered by the major powers in World War II. At this time, the United States will be the economic center of the world. In this case, if the British (and other) colonies became independent, there would be no need for the United States to occupy them. Because the economic situation of the colonies at that time was very bad, And in the post-independence period they had to depend on the developed northern states for economic development. And since the economies of all the major powers, except the United States, have been devastated by World War II, the newly independent states will have no choice but to accept economic and political control of the United States.

The idea of ​​the Americans later proved to be correct. In World War II, Britain, France, and other Western European colonial powers, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan all suffered heavy losses. On the other hand, the mainland of the United States was out of the realm of the battlefield, so the war caused the U.S. economy to swell. After World War II, more than 50% of the world's production came from the United States. In this situation, the newly independent states of Africa and Asia naturally depend on the United States to overcome their economic woes. Through this the United States emerged as the new superpower of the world.

Thus Article III of the Atlantic Charter played an important role in the rise of the United States as a superpower. However, other sections of the charter did not play a less important role in this regard. According to Articles 4 and 5 of the Charter, the United States and Britain agreed to expand global free trade and economic cooperation. In this case, it should be noted that free trade means trade between different countries as far as possible without taxes / duties / quotas etc. In such a case, the state with the highest amount of product will benefit the most. After World War II, the United States was the world's leading industrial producer. The production capacity of Western Europe, the Soviet Union, China and Japan was significantly reduced as a result of the war.

Similarly, at the end of World War II, the 'Bretton Woods System' was established to assist in the economic reconstruction of war-torn countries and to strengthen global economic cooperation. As part of this arrangement, two bodies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, were formed and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was signed. The main task of the World Bank is to provide loans to various countries for long-term development. The task of the International Monetary Fund is to provide short-term loans to various countries to avoid sudden economic crises. And the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was intended to promote free trade worldwide.

The United States was the world's major economic power in the latter part of World War II, so the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund came under de facto US control. Similarly, the expansion of free trade benefits the United States the most. After all, through the Bretton Woods system, states accept gold and the US dollar as interchangeable, and as a result they stockpile dollars instead of gold. As a result, the key to their wealth passed into the hands of the United States. In the early 1970s, the United States abolished the exchangeability of gold and the dollar, and became the de facto regulator of the world economy. Since other countries have so far failed to agree on a global currency as an alternative to the US dollar, the US dollar still dominates the world economy.

Overall, the implementation of the provisions of the Atlantic Charter provides an opportunity to establish U.S. authority worldwide. The independent states created by the end of colonialism became dependent on the United States in the face of their own economic weakness. The expansion of free trade has enabled the United States to export and profit from its products worldwide. In the context of U.S. economic domination, global financial institutions set up to strengthen economic cooperation have effectively become tools of U.S. influence. Above all, through the ratification of this charter, the then world power Britain agreed to peacefully hand over the flag of global domination to the United States. Thus the implementation of the Atlantic Charter made the United States a global superpower, and the United States still exists as the most powerful state in the world.

[humane-surekha]

The most important pastime or if I may correct the most important way to get visibility today is the WhatsApp status update .

Everyone seems to love updating whatsapp status .

As long as it is harmless gyaan , selfies or business promotion , its doesn't really matter.

But now a days , lot of people put political or some flagrantly divisive status .

This seems to have increased and every one seems to carry their political and religious affinity on their sleeves.

Seeing all these malicious and provocative status, I started wondering and this blog is a result of it .

Have we always been such a divisive country?

Is unity in diversity only a hollow slogan ?

Have we not been divided into religion, caste, creed, language, class, gender and so many other such categories?

Did our country not get bifurcated into 3 countries as muslims and hindus just couldn't or let us say didnt want to be part of one country and preferred to go separate ways?

Is it not ironic that our enemy today Pakistan was a part of us for centuries , but we seem to only remember the last 70 years and claim they are our sworn enemies.

Of course the reverse is also true .

Today even saying that we are estranged siblings will attract sedition charges .

So does it not mean that the fear and anxiety about the other has been fuelled and has been festering for long .

Did British by it policy of Divide and Rule conquer us and created this impregnable divide is another topic .

Our history has been rife with communal strifes .

Partition let loose fanatics from both the religion and left such a trail of destruction, misery, death and animosity that we still have not been able to overcome it .

If India thought post partition , rioting and the othering phenomenon of minority is past, we didnt take long to prove ourselves wrong .

The language riots which lead to creation of states on basis of language was the first step in this othering phenomenon.

We have had so many secessionist movement in our states, starting from Kashmir, northeast, Punjab.

Each state based on distinct culture and language has aspired to be independent and have always been at loggerheads with the centre especially if the Govts at centre and state belonged to different political parties.

Riots between hindus and muslims have not receded .

Any local trigger led to communal riots.

Their have also been major events like babri masjid destruction, which affected the whole country.

Each major city whether Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi, so many cities in UP, MP and Rajasthan all have had their black spots in communal history.

Then coming back to what has actually changed today

If relations between the majority Hindus and minority Muslims have always been tense and on a tinderbox, then why so much hue and cry about today situation?

Actually if you see .the statistics, their have been lesser communal disturbances last 6 years except for Delhi .

Then what's new that is so scary?

The divide and the suspicion between the communities and the divide between the caste and creed has always existed .

Today all the simmering differences and discontent which was under wraps is out of open.

Due to Majoritarianism and culture of hindutva this so called victimisation of majority community is in vogue and fuelled by social media and the ruling party.

What was once a fringe is normal now .

Everyone is feeling emboldened and feels can express their views which are parochial and communal.

What I find shocking and sad is that normal people I know suddenly metaphorising into these narrow minded vindictive individuals I can no longer recognise.

Voicing out grievances about so called victimisation of majority community and protesting against the so called minority stereotypes.

Is the Govt or the political parties responsible for this ?

Partly maybe

But by trying to point out to politician's who have actually not changed much , i feel we are missing the bigger picture.

We all are responsible for this sad state .

Right wing activist who are on a upward spiral , the liberals who feel marginalized, but still posturing aggressively, the weak political opposition.

We have always been a very religious society and have been insecure about other religions.

And today the genie which was in the bottle is out and is out of control today .

Wish could be optimistic about future, but things look pretty bleak as of today.

#hindutva #communal #minority #indian express news #majority #latest news

[hg47]

47 Reasons Why I Fear Islam - (Reason 1)

-1-I am suspicious of any religion that demands the death of any member who quits. Polls taken worldwide consistently reveal that the majority of Muslims in the world want the laws of whatever country they are living within changed to allow the execution of any Muslim who leaves Islam (if the laws do not already allow this).  The majority of Muslims in the world also want the laws of whatever country they are living in to make blasphemy of Islam an offense punishable by death.  The majority of Muslims in the world also want the laws of whatever country they are living within to allow for hand amputation as a punishment for theft. This frightens me because it indicates that so called “moderate Muslims” are in the minority, possibly far below the 50% mark of Muslims.  10%?  It also frightens me because it shows that Muslims are not inclined to assimilate into Western society; they will generally NOT acquire Western values.  A few will; but most?  No.  It frightens me because the bulk of Muslims expect whatever country they are living within to change and adapt to their own religion.  Most moderate Muslims fully expect to slowly destroy EVERYTHING non-Islamic, over a period of centuries. Western culture honors the individual, The Unique Individual, and tries to provide a framework for different people, with their differing backgrounds, to work constructively together. Islamic rulings deny the value of the individual.  People only exist so that their God will have worshippers.  And their God is delighted in proportion and intensity of the received worship.  (Asking for a Muslim who pretends to be my friend: Since a female Muslim is only worth half a male Muslim, does that mean that her worship only delights the Islamic God half as much?) As I write this, 9/25/2013 10:20 AM, significantly more than half the Muslims in the world want to kill any Muslim who quits their religion.  What does this say about Islam?  What does this say about what Islam does to people? One of my favorite TV shows is LIFE, starring Damian Lewis and Sarah Shahi.  It only ran for 2 seasons. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001I24BTA/ref=dv_dp_ep4 Episode 4, Season 2 of LIFE is based on the Stanford Prison Experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment This Wikipedia entry details what the Guard/Prisoner Dynamic does to people. In the LIFE episode: “Us Against Them -- A university’s prison experiment goes horribly wrong when one of the students acting as a corrections officer ends up dead.”  The show demonstrates in a dramatic way, how civilized college kids can be made to behave in savage ways, doing terrible things they never could have imagined they would ever do, just by organizing them within a Guard/Prisoner Dynamic. I believe this is what Islam does to people: it sets up a Guard/Prisoner Dynamic.  Male Muslims are the Guards.  Female Muslims are the Prisoners.  Male head of a household: Warden.  Sons: Rookie Guards.  Religious leaders would be the Western equivalent of Rock Stars.  Super-Wardens?  Outside the prison walls: “Infidels!  We must make the prison larger!  Need more prisoners!”  Anyone who quits Islam: “Escaped prisoner!  Kill!  Kill!”  Obviously, I am over-simplifying.  But I think I’m onto something.  A useful First Approximation? Is Islam a force for Good, or a force for Evil?  You tell me!  Send me a tweet. ++++------- tweet ~ Islam theologizes the inferiority of Muslim women as being worth 1/2 of Muslim men. A non-Muslim has no worth unless impregnated by a Muslim ++++------- http://www.amazon.com/Islam-Terrorism-teaches-Christianity-violence/dp/0884198847/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380596025&sr=1-1&keywords=islam+and+terrorism+mark+a+gabriel In ISLAM AND TERRORISM by Mark A. Gabriel, Ph.D., Mark tells how when he quit Islam to become a Christian, his father tried to kill him as he ran away: His own father, with tears streaming down his face, shooting bullets at him. ++++------- tweet ~ Christianity + Judaism + Technology = Man on the Moon (Reaching for Heaven?) \\ Islam + Technology = Rioting Muslim Mobs (Hell on Earth?) ++++------- http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Islam_and_Apostasy The majority of Muslims in the world want anyone who quits Islam to be killed.  The stats show that most Muslims are inflexible on this point.  Keep it in mind, before you convert to Islam.  Once in, never out. ++++------- tweet ~ HASSAN ROUHANI: “Iran only wants Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Medical purposes. Medical tests scheduled for Tel Aviv, New York, London…” ~ (OK, I’m joking!  But I do believe that is their intent.) ++++------- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/son-of-hamas-holds-islam-responsible-for-middle-easts-anguish/article2239037/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2239037 In this article MICHAEL POSNER argues that the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict is not about politics or security, but is all about religion.  He also argues that anyone who does not believe in Islam is under a Death Sentence. ++++------- tweet ~ Female Suicide Bombers in Paradise: “You are a brand new Virgin! We’re giving you to Male Bomber #45889! Happy Eternity!” ++++------- http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_3_muslim-economy.html In this article Guy Sorman gets into the whole sharia banking thing, how Islamic banks do all the formerly forbidden Infidel monetary practices like interest and credit, but just describe them differently so the imams back home don’t get upset.  Guy also brings up the point that any Sunni imam can define what it means to leave Islam and become an apostate under a death sentence, and that this tends to discourage any innovation.  Why try something new, if you might get killed for it? ++++------- I am amused.  Muslims, always concerned with the letter of the law, never the intent of the law, are now using forbidden Infidel banking practices of “interest” and “credit” which are illegal under Islamic law—but the Muslims just give these practices different names.  So, it’s OK! Is this Islam lying to itself?  Or is this an instance of Muslim banking specialists lying to Muslim imams?  Or are they all “in on the game” and cool with the Great Big Lie? This whole “describing things differently” thing to conform with Islamic law actually is an Islamic legal precedent, if moderate Muslims wish to take advantage of it.  Feminists, get on this!  If Muslim bankers can find a “description” of the hateful Infidel banking practice of “derivatives” which conforms to Sharia law, perhaps Muslim feminists can find a “description” of women which will give them equal rights with men under Islamic law.  There may be a better approach, but this Islamic legal precedent of “describing things differently” may be of some use.  Possibly “Infidels” might be described as “innocent future Muslims” so as to avoid bloodshed. ++++------- tweet ~ 66% of Protestant pastors in the US believe that Islam is “Dangerous” * (Harper’s) ++++------- http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9182/pub_detail.asp In this article, AMIL IMANI argues that Islam is not a religion, but rather a cult.  The way Amil Imani describes it, Islam does seem to fit the definition. ++++------- tweet ~ Which is the better TwitterName for that guy? Ahmadinedildo or Ahmadildojad? I love pushing a dildo into Ahmadinejad, does that make me gay? ++++------- http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-stifling-effect-of-muhammeds-life-and-teachings-on-muslim-society/ One of the things Hege Storhaug mentions in this article is the Pew Research study results that 84% of Egyptians want to kill anyone who leaves Islam. ++++------- tweet ~ ISLAMABAD (Reuters – May, 2015) - Pakistan has blocked all Western media indefinitely in a bid to contain “blasphemous” material. ~ (OK, I’m just trying to think ahead here.  It’s now 10/12/2013 5:06 AM.  But something like this may happen.  Iran is trying to set up its own Islamic-Approved Internet to control information and eliminate protest against the government.) ++++------- http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.8622/pub_detail.asp In this article Diana West mentions the Pew stat about 84% of Egyptians wanting to kill anyone who leaves Islam. ++++------- tweet ~ US (Reuters – May, 2017) – Twitter begins filtering in deference to Muslims: Muhammad, Mohamed & Muhamad now appear in Tweets as GEORGE. ~ (Again, this is just me, circa 10/12/2013 5:11 AM trying to think ahead.) ++++------- http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-1206-muslim-poll-20101206,0,252922.story This article by Meris Lutz, Los Angeles Times, has more stats about Islam.  Muslims, by wide majorities in Egypt, Pakistan, and Nigeria want current laws changed so that anyone who exits Islam can be executed. ++++------- At present, Muslims who leave Islam are sometimes killed by family members or, occasionally, angry Muslim mobs.  So I can see why Muslims want the laws of their nation changed to kill those who leave Islam.  Let the state deal with it.  This would save family embarrassment.  I wonder if there are stats on what percentage of Muslims quit Islam and survive? ++++------- tweet ~ So which do the #TeaParty Tweople hate more? Black man Obama in White House? Or Shiite Muslim Rima Fakih as winner of Miss USA contest? ++++------- http://www.citizenwarrior.com/2009/05/terrifying-brilliance-of-islam.html Citizen Warrior, in this article, confirms that Islam is a Once-In-Never-Out Proposition. ++++------- tweet ~ Saudi Women are not allowed to drive, inherit, divorce or gain custody of children, and cannot socialize with unrelated men. Can they Tweet? ++++------- http://www.hudson-ny.org/1610/sharia-advancing-in-west This article by Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is mostly about Islamic Banking in the West, and how the Sharia experts are setting the stage now for the eventual destruction of the United States of America.  The murder of apostates is also mentioned. ++++------- tweet ~ INTERPOL Agrees to Same-Sex Couple Conjugal Visits between Ex-President Ahmadinejad & Ayatollah Khamenei if they both surrender immediately. ~ (Yes, another joke.) ++++------- http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/10/12/26542/ This article by Brendan Carroll brings up Geert Wilders, and asks some serious questions concerning Free Speech, Islamic values, and Western Values.  It also notes that Muslim youth today have been radicalized compared with former generations of Muslims living within the West. ++++------- tweet ~ We have political ads on TV to influence voters; Iraq has clerics in mosque chanting for death. The real #Iraq ballots are bullets & bombs. ++++------- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451 Stephen Evans in this article notes that Muslims have largely failed to integrate as useful members of German society, instead becoming a drain upon the state and a threat to German values. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ +Go-To-2+ +Go-To-Beginning-Of-47-REASONS-WHY-I-FEAR-ISLAM+

#islam

[bhavbazar]

How Does Fashion Influence the Lives of Students

This is an era of fashion and fashion is very influential to our lives. In fact, it adds diversity to our lives by offering an aspect of enthusiasm to strive for something new and different, otherwise it would be a monotonous life if we were supposed to dress up and act in the same manner.

Fashion is an expression of a distinctive style particularly in clothing, footwear, accessories or makeup. It belongs to the style of doing something, looking different and dealing with others. It encircles a wide range of categorization like behavior, speech, actions, manners and lifestyle. There is much intellectual discussion over fashion and clothing and their importance within present day society. Fashion and clothing can be defined as many things that hold our society together. Fashion can be defined as an existing norm or style of dress, manners and way of socializing, whereas clothing is defined as garments collectively. If fashion and clothing were eliminated from our lives there would be no room for individuality and the world’s population would be the same. There also would be a loss of the distinctions between social classes, which was much defined in the 18th century but is still present today. The eradication of fashion and clothing would also change the dynamics of the social world and social relationships.

Mod, short form of ‘modern’, refers to a youth lifestyle that came out from London during 1960s and quickly spread to other parts of the world. Being fashionable is not only desirable but also satisfying. It is very usual that the young students get attracted to fashion the most and start following the trends instantly so fashion influences our youth strongly. Fashion continually has an impact on the society. It affects our views and attitude towards social culture. We introduce new ways of lifestyle through fashion and create awareness within ourselves to reinstate a new line of customs. It is a leading social statement for students to make an outside appearance to their social circle. Malcolm Barnard says in his book Fashion as Communication, “Fashion and clothing have always been explained as forms of communication” (39). Students use fashion to exchange their feelings and beliefs. They use fashion as a way of social contact with reference to scrutiny for all sorts of people. Fashion is a way of communication to convey with the world what their personality really says.

The decade of 1920 is called the Age of Flaming Youth because of its wild and jazzy expression. In this period the energy of youth was set free in a new way and no style seemed too ridiculous to become a high fashion. Our world has globalized. Celebrities play very important role in the lives of youth. Students look up to their favorite icons to keep themselves up to date. While watching television or using internet, they can easily be attracted by a variety of fashionable concepts. Moreover, the students idealize their favorite celebrities and they always have a desire to look like them so they do their best to imitate the appearance and lifestyle of their idols. They are trying to grasp all the existing fashion from their society to enhance their personality. Whenever they socialize, they talk about new things which could be adapted. They use non-natural way of expression, speech and mannerism in their routine lives which is relatively artificial.

In my point of view, there are two categories i.e. positive and negative impact of fashion on students.

The fashion in our society has a lot of negative impact on students. They only think about new fashion and this result in spending of a large amount of money. Therefore, they are not able to become aware of other important needs of life. It always distracts them from studies. Once a style or fashion gets in a trend, it is instantly chased by student community regardless of the fact that how much hassle it leads to. On the other hand they are caught in the confusion of fashion due to impact of society. To follow a certain fashion, one has to adopt some actions and to do so some students go beyond their limits just to attract their surroundings. Eventually they become hopeless instead of being ingenious and suffered from depression for being within fashion. On the other hand, it is also a thought that the money spending on Fashion could be spent for various other purposes like charity and helping the poor.

Fashion creates an inaccessible standard for students. They all want to be attractive and glamorous like the celebrities on television or in magazines hence they spend a lot of time and money just to build up a good impression on people around them. However, they fail to make a statement most of the time that leads to a low self esteem. It also creates a clash of thoughts between them and their friends that may lead to jealousy factor and as a result ruin their relationship with friends. Students start judging people by their outlook appearance and those who cannot spend sufficient amount on their outward look, eventually become persecuted which decreased their confidence level to certain extent.

Students who give more concentration to fashion are generally least conscious about their studies. They think that by adopting certain fashion trends, they will achieve certain distinction among the peers therefore they start giving less importance to their academic careers.

There are some positive points of being fashionable as well. For instance, when teenagers feel good because of the way they look, it gives a high sense of worth and confidence in their personalities. Moreover they feel more independent and acceptable in a social context. If students follow a certain trend, it facilitates them to recognize their own personalities by meeting different people from the society with the same interests and sense of style. Wearing trendy clothes shows a person’s status. People assume a person more progressive if he is wearing fashionable clothes. Malcolm Barnard says in his book Fashion as Communication, “Fashion and clothing have always been explained as forms of communication”

Students eventually come to know that it’s not good for them to follow or imitate others all the time. Instead, they should learn how to be innovative and make their own sense of style. That helps them to be more strong, independent and imaginative. Fashion is the name of expressing oneself.It proves that the people have liberty to feel comfortable about themselves and that results in a more successful and prosperous society.

Fashion is a form of art and because art is beneficial to society so same goes for fashion as well.Fashion is a big reason for companies to invest more into the expansion of latest clothing, trends, and better living. We cannot disagree with the fact that fashion has a significant place on the life of every student. At times, it can be the source of things that make the life more pleasant. On the other hand, it can be destructive for the lives of certain people. So it’s better to keep yourself modernized with fashion but if it is damaging your academic performance by any mean, you should keep yourself away from that. Generally, fashion can be entertaining, exciting and harmless. Fashion is a money making method that can provide employment to thousands of people.

There should be stability in the lives of students while pursuing fashion. They should be aware of the fact that the fashion within limits is admirable but when the limits are crossed, they have to face many problems. Their prime responsibility is to fill up themselves with the asset of knowledge instead of running after the wildness of deceptive fashion world. There should be a right balance between being fashionable and getting away from our roots. Students should know the fact that they have maximum time to indulge themselves to the world of lavishness after they completed their studies.So they should give their utmost devotion to education presently for time and tide waits for none.

Being trendy and fashionable is just our own wish, no one can force us to do it and it’s our own decision that how much and what type of fashion we prefer according to place and requirement. Though this time of 21st century in Pakistan mostly people are affected by glamorous world and style of fashion but still they have not forgotten our traditions and culture which is the priority and symbol of our country.

[gifted-burnout-archive]

Codename: Candy

Part Two - Let It Burn

Word Count - 1531

Author’s Note: I wrote another chapter! Magical! Should have part three up soon too, so enjoy!

"This... Is Thomas Roland." Dr. Ryan began, opening the second day of talks in the compound. It was the reason Greer and Ryan had come to Afghanistan, and by the next morning they were set to fly out again back to Virginia to brief CIA officials of the new situation. "He was born in England, raised in America, and is currently the highest risk threat we have on our radar at the CIA."

"Why are we in Afghanistan in he grew up in the West?" Gomez spoke up, succeeding the question by taking a bite out of his sandwich. Base Commander Rogers and his Deputy has left the team to it, and the atmosphere was a lot more casual.

"He fled to Pakistan in 2011 on charges of domestic terrorism, and he was sighted here ten days ago." Greer informed, shutting down Gomez so Jack could continue.

"Roland created a new form of chemical warfare before he fled the States, but in the past years he has more than enough time to expand and commercialise." Ryan continued, looking around the room to make sure everyone was still with him. He eyes stayed for a moment on Jones, dressed now like her fellow soldiers, who was writing as he spoke, before he got to his point.

"Six days ago, a number of shell corporations that the CIA has been monitoring have been sent large payments of money, all owned in part by Roland. We believe that this chemical warfare he started with in the States has now become something he can sell, and for a lot of money." Ryan finished, taking a seat, inviting questions from the group.

"So if he-"

"Shut up Gomez." Jones spoke up for the first time that day, writing down a few more notes. "Have you got a list of the shell companies?" She asked, and Greer passed over a file containing the desired information. There then sat a moment of silence.

"You're looking at this wrong." Jones said at last, speaking directly to Dr. Ryan. The table looked confused, and shocked, though the doctor seemed interested in her opinion.

"How so?" He asked, looking at his copy of the files.

"This isn't terrorism. You're treating it like the Suliman case because it's organised and clever, multiple shells under different ownership, transferring innocuous amounts of money that, when time stamped, show every deposit between all six shells equals exactly 2.4 million." She sat back, thinking again. "This isn't death to the West, this is death to whoever. It's organisation in anarchy, and he's distributing the products in three weeks." She finished, and Jack smiled from across the table, like she took the words right out of him.

"How did you know three weeks?" Greer asked, an eyebrow raised.

"The personal touch. I read the Suliman case file, and someone as crazy as him has to want the personal touch... Roland's birthday is in three weeks and a day." Jones decided it was her best theory, standing up and smiling. "I need a cigarette. Be back in ten." She announced leaving the meeting room for the outdoors.

The five men shared looks, and with the three soldiers looking rather intimidated, and Greer looking at his coffee with a new level of vigour, Jack was opted to go speak with her. He found her sat outside, sunglasses on, in a state of thought with a cigarette between her fingers.

"Those things'll kill you..." Jack spoke up, alerting the Lieutenant to his presence. She looked up and smiled, watching the cigarette between her fingers.

"Oh, I know. I "quit"," she spoke, with air quotes, "about three years ago. I just let them burn now, nice way to get outside for some fresh air, get out of those hot and stuffy rooms." Jones explained, letting her hair looses from its plait and running a hair through it. "So... Did I get it right?" She asked, looking up as Jack sat down beside her.

"You weren't wrong... When did you get time to read the case file?" He asked, brushing settled dust from his trousers. He didn't like being here, he had never liked being in Afghanistan. It always gave him a bad feeling, like something he had to wash off. He had avoided coming back to the country for so long, only to be brought back on one of his biggest leads. Jack wondered if he should have turned it down when he had the chance, but he knew Greer wouldn't let him.

"I don't sleep much." Was her response, and Jack could only nod. He knew what it was like, working off the need for sleep.

"So, come on, give me something else about you Lieutenant. How do you know Greer?" Jack asked, watching the cigarette burn away, and the Lieutenant finally giving in to take a single drag, passing it to him. He did the same, surprised by how much better it was than he remembered, before stubbing it out. The pair stood up, and Jones recounted events as they ambled back to the meeting room.

"I joined the Army at 17, and Greer was the new Base Commander here. Temporary posting but he was good. He was my first big supervisor, first person to give me a solo scout mission. He taught me how to be a good soldier. Moved on to Karachi the year after I went to Libya I think." Jones explained with a shrug. Jack smiled, finding the idea of Jim being in anyway caring in such an environment hard to believe.

"You ready to continue the fun?" Jack asked, the pair looking at the door with an overwhelming feeling of dread, more for the heat than the discussion. Alas, the two walked in, Jack followed by Jones, and they resumed discussions of action plans, starting with the under-wraps mission the team would be taking into a vacated compound. Rendezvous points, codenames, all of the basics required.

—

The end of the day came fast, and the team dispersed as the evening activities took precedence, Gomez, Dalton and Ling making their way to the canteen as Greer excused himself to brief Colonel Rogers on the plan. Jack and Jones sat back, the pair flicking through the floor plan of the warehouse they were targeting for a final time. The team were dispatching at 23.00 hours, and the pair wanted to be sure everything went perfect.

After another hour pouring over the map, Jones pointed to a small insert made.

"Is that the vent system?" She asked, to which Jack nodded, placing her hand down by hers, an accident leading to their hands brushing against one another, and Jones flinching and stepping back rather quickly.

"Oh, Jones... Lieutenant... I didn't mean to-" Jack began, but Jones cut him off with a tight smile.

"Perfectly fine Jack... Please call me Candy. I prefer codenames during missions. And have a pleasant flight home tonight." She declared, and Jack nodded, collecting the papers together, muttering 'of course, of course' under his breath as he hurried himself out of the room, following the direction Greer had left in an hour or so before. Jones sat there for a moment, composing herself before walking out, heading over to the garage where the armoured Jeep for the mission awaited.

It was an easy procedure, simply sweeping the building and leaving. It was unlikely the would find any physical evidence, but they were armed with technology, Dalton joining in a more intelligence based role to taking alpha, beta and gamma radiation readings. She fingers grazed each weapon they had, she checked every round of ammo, and finally made sure the gas was full for the trip.

A quick check of the time sent her to the mess hall, plonking down against Lima and eating her way through a double portion sized meal for the slow release energy. He looked over at her, a little concerned, but not due to the food on her plate.

"Candy, you want to talk about it?" He asked, receiving a sharp shake of the head in response. "Come on Candy, I was posted with Clark, I know what happened... I can help if you want." He persisted.

"What about no do you not understand Lima? Clark doesn't know shit, neither do you." Candy replied coldly, finishing her food and getting up from the table.

"You didn't kill them Candy!" He called over the noise, a few other soldiers looking their way, confused by the interaction.

"Like I said Lima... You don't know shit. Stand down." She warned, her monotone voice and cold stare sending him to his seat, allowing her a quieter exit to the barracks, a temporary place of stay until she was reassigned. She entered and let herself let go for exactly six seconds: letting out a yell and sending her fist into the stone wall with a 'thunk'. And then, nothing. She shook the pain from her bleeding hand, walking to the bathroom and tidying herself up for the mission, fixing her shoes, her hair, and dawning her full uniform.

It was going to be a long night, so she should at least feel ready.

—

Tags: @iwantthedean

#jack ryan #john krasinski #fanfiction #fanfic #reader insert #reader #jack ryan x reader #tom clancy #codename candy #part two

[hellyeahomeland]

“Threnody(s)”: an HYH recap

First things first: a threnody is “a wailing ode, song, hymn, or poem of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person.” If it clicked far too late for you that the parentheses and ‘s’ meant that more than one person would die this week... welcome to the club.

This soul crusher of an episode opens with Haqqani reading the Quran in his cell. A few guards arrive to get him and he walks, peacefully, slowly, while the other prisoners bang their cups against their cells (a real thing that happens on death row in American prisons). He’s handcuffed to a post in an open-air courtyard as he stares down a lineup of soldiers with rifles, all aiming at him.

Cut to Hayes, Linus, and Hugh Dancy John Zabel in the Oval Office. They have the video that Jalal Haqqani shot of Max last episode. This is now a hostage situation and… look how these dots connect. If G’ulom executes Haqqani, Jalal will execute Max. Hayes pleads with G’ulom to halt the execution, at least until they can retrieve Max. G’ulom agrees, but only for 24 hours.

Saul calls Carrie on the sat phone and she asks for an update. When is special ops coming? He still doesn’t know, but hey! At least now people other than Carrie seem to sort of care about whether Max lives or dies. She says the situation there is “quiet but fucked,” which is a perfect descriptor of most Homeland scenes.

Saul steps into a meeting with the White House to discuss Max’s exfiltration. It’s tough, because there’s no cover and the house they’ve got Max in is completely exposed. Also it’s in Pakistan so that adds another layer of complication. Hayes wants to know the odds. Resident Scott Ryan delivers the not so great, not so bad news: 50/50.

Hayes has a freakout because even when they went to kill bin Laden it was like 80%. But 50%? It doesn’t help that John Zabel is the figurative devil on his shoulder, making arguments like:

We don’t negotiate with terrorists. (Heh? It’s not a negotiation.)

I don’t even know who Max is. (You literally just got here. SIT DOWN, JOHN.)

“The US government can’t be expected to come to the rescue of every adventurer who gets himself in trouble overseas.” (Fuck you, dude.)

If the rescue fails, it’ll sink your presidency. (Your wife Carrie Mathison is gonna come after your ass.)

Elsewhere in the West Wing, Linus is snooping in John’s office and finds a printout of a speech he’s been working on for Hayes, the gist of which is: “Peace in the Middle East? I don’t know her.”

If you’re wondering whether John Zabel was successful in convincing Hayes to leave Max to die, in the very next scene Haqqani is dragged back into the courtyard. Saul is there. Once again they line up, but this time they go through with it. The bullets hit him and he doubles over. Saul watches in horror. Then, miraculously, he inhales sharply, very much not dead. He pulls himself up and stands again. G’ulom orders them to reload as prisoner’s chants of Haqqani’s name reach them. They fire again, and he falls to his knees. The job is done.

Back at the compound, there’s movement. Yevgeny brings Carrie a news report: an image of Haqqani, chest filled with bullets, slumped over. Carrie knows what this means, and then she spots the Taliban soldiers escorting Max out of the house, seemingly to take him to another location. She calls for the crew to get their stuff, they need to follow them and can’t lose track. Then, through the scope of the binoculars, she spots Jalal Haqqani shoot Max in the chest from close range. One two three.

Carrie races down the hillside as the Taliban soldiers all flee in their trucks. She gets to Max, lying on his side, blood in the dirt. She checks his pulse, but the worst has happened—again. She breaks down in sobs as she clutches his body.

In Washington, Linus is furious with John Zabel—who might just be as evil as his beard is tragique. Linus is in disbelief about this “speech” Zabel has written. A speech where he calls for security along the entire Afghan-Pakistani border that will be guarded entirely by the Pakistani military—the military of a country Zabel refers to as “failed and duplicitous.” It’s basically Homeland’s version of Tr*mp saying Mexico will pay for the wall after he called Mexicans criminals and rapists. 

ANYWAY. Zabel spits back that he can’t be as dumb as Linus, who got two presidents killed. And, I mean I did make this point last week, but that doesn’t make Zabel any less evil.

Meanwhile, Saul is overseeing the preparation of Haqqani’s body. Carrie calls him. She’s still sitting next to Max’s body, her face is stained with tears. 

Carrie: Max is dead. Fuck you. Saul: What? Carrie: He’s dead. Fuck you. By the way, thanks for the special ops team. They were really handy. Saul: POTUS wouldn’t move. Carrie: You wouldn’t make him move. You did nothing. You brought him here and it was your responsibility to protect him. That was your fucking job! Not mine. But I still tried, and he’s still dead. Did I say fuck you yet? Because fuck you. And fuck special ops too! Saul: I deserved that. But also, Carrie, you can’t keep running around with Yevgeny in the Pakistani countryside. Even though it brings great joy to Sara.  Carrie: Fuck you, dude. At least Yevgeny gave a shit. Saul: You still have to come in. Carrie: Come and get Max. I’ll still be here. Fuck you, goodbye.

The Taliban are holding a town meeting. Haqqani’s lieutenant says they need to keep on the same path that Haqqani set out for them: peace. He knows that none of them were responsible for the helicopters crashing, so peace really is still possible. Just then, Haqqani and the Taliban Teenagers roll up. That’s right, it’s time for a little power battle. Jalal tells them all that his father is a hero. He wouldn’t die even after they shot him. He says we have to honor him: not by respecting the choice he made for peace, but by emulating him back when he was busting into embassies and murdering people. And also: it was I, Jalal Haqqani, who fired the RPG that brought down the presidents’ helicopters! And we will do the same for any other infidels who stand in our way!

After the meeting, the lieutenant comes over to Jalal and asks for some one-on-one time. He knows that Jalal didn’t shoot down the helicopters and Jalal gaslights him a bit. He also knows that Haqqani didn’t choose Jalal to be his successor, and Jalal gaslights him a little bit more. Jalal offers him some money or poppy fields if he’ll buzz off, but all he wants is peace, his country back. Jalal says they’ll get their country back, but not through peace.

In the Oval Office, Hayes is sitting with the Two Stooges, who both want him to say something wildly different in his address to the nation. Hayes just says, “figure it out,” which is kind of hilarious and that’s when Zabel springs into action. He calls up some woman named Claudette and asks for any dirt she has on this situation. Which now means he’s cosmically linked with Carrie because she was trying to do the same thing last season.

They’ve moved Max’s body inside the house, but Carrie is still sitting there next to him. They’ve removed the bright orange jumpsuit and he’s lying on a small rug, barefoot. Yevgeny wants to know what their next move is. Carrie says she’ll just hang out until special ops comes, then she’ll go back to Kabul with Max. She understands if Yevgeny wants to leave now, before special ops comes, but like the good boyfriend he is, he sits down next to her and asks who this Max guy was anyway.

Carrie’s surprised. She told him everything about her life (!!) but not this? Nope. She goes on: Max was… always there for her. She’s known him forever, and wherever she went, he’d dutifully follow, always by her side. And the reason she never mentioned him is clear now, too. She took him for granted and took advantage of him. And now he’s dead. What a horrifying replay of events. “I’m so sorry, Max,” she sobs. She kneels down next to his body, her hands on his chest, and repeats it, over and over: “I’m so sorry.” Yevgeny comes over to comfort her and she clings to him amid more heaving sobs.

The next day, Hayes has decided on his speech, which—surprise!—is the “cowardly” Linus version, where he just says “let’s do peace.” John Zabel is highly displeased but luckily Claudette has arrived just in time with that dirt he requested. It’s not dirt, but just intel: one of the soldiers at the secret Taliban power struggle meeting last night was actually recording the whole thing. So now they have Jalal on video saying he killed the presidents. Who cares if he’s actually telling the truth!

He races to Hayes to tell him what’s happened and in what language. Hayes is like “fuck, I need a moment,” and that’s when Zabel swoops in with his first draft racist speech and is like, “here ya go!” I’m sorry to say, but this actually seems realistic.

Saul arrives to the base where the special ops team is preparing to retrieve Max (and Carrie). They’re all huddled around a laptop screen opened to Hayes’ speech, which goes something like this:

We got the wrong Haqqani! Oops! Anyway, who’s ready for more war?

The reactions are “Can you believe this shit?” and “Oh, Christ,” which are both extremely relatable!

Linus is once again furious with Zabel.

Linus: What the actual fuck! Zabel: You weren’t here. Actually where were you? Aren’t you the Chief of Staff? Linus: You fucking idiot, we’re on a collision course with a nuclear power. Zabel: Don’t be such a drama queen. Pakistan will back down. Linus: No they won’t, dipshit. Also good job on making Jalal Haqqani a folk hero. He was a nobody 90 seconds ago. You’re pushing us into ANOTHER war that we can’t win. Zabel: See, that’s your problem, bro. You don’t think America can win any war. Anyway, I’m outie. Linus: We’re so fucked.

Saul and the special ops team fly over Carrie and Yevgeny’s location. Carrie tells Yevgeny that she can’t stay out here with him forever, and he’s like, “hmm, are you sure *wink*?” She thanks him and he takes position by his truck with his crew. This is the Carrie/Yevgeny equivalent of dropping someone off at home and waiting until you watch them walk through their front door before leaving.

Saul and the team touch down and retrieve Max’s body. Saul fills Carrie in on the pile of shit that’s happened in the last 48 hours. He hopes she has something to make it less shitty. She reveals she has a lead on the black box but doesn’t elaborate. Saul doesn’t ask any follow-up questions but says they’ll find it together, like old times. She agrees, but asks for no more bullshit about her loyalty, or Mike, or the FBI. She did what she had to do. He promises he’s on her side, but she doesn’t totally believe him.

They’re about to board the helicopter when one of the special ops team members requests to search Carrie. “What?” Carrie says, before realizing she’s surrounded by a special ops team carrying automatic weapons. Saul looks around in disbelief too. Carrie spots plastic cuffs, and it all feels suddenly like a trap. It escalates quickly from there:

Carrie pulls out her gun, quickly backing away, in Yevgeny’s direction. 

Saul tries his best to calm everyone down.

Yevgeny fires his gun to distract them.

Saul pleads with Carrie to come back, it’s all a misunderstanding.

“What, so we can work together?” she spits.

“Yes, I need you.”

“In fucking handcuffs!”

He says he didn’t know. She calls him a liar and runs back toward Yevgeny. Saul, rightfully livid, heads to the helicopter and asks whose genius idea this all was.

Yevgeny, ever the gentleman, opens the car door for Carrie. She turns back and glares at Saul, the perceived betrayal still a stinging wound (on top of everything else), before they drive off. The helicopter lifts off and Saul watches from above as Carrie and Yevgeny speed away. He has a look on his face not too unlike when he left Carrie in Moscow last season (and, come to think of it, this involves a lot of the same people). In the car, Carrie reveals to Yevgeny that she’s also been looking for the flight recorder and that she knows where it is.

Seriously though, something has palpably broken just now, possibly the last shred of trust left between Carrie and Saul. Carrie has been conditioned all season to distrust those who call themselves her friends. Now she’s actually lost her last remaining friend (in the world), bringing a devastating new literal meaning to the phrase “nothing left to lose.” That Carrie could so quickly get to a spot where her handgun is out and she’s ten seconds from Yevgeny’s car says a lot about the distrust and fear just simmering below the surface. That she didn’t hesitate to suspect Saul was in on it reveals just how broken and filled with resentment their relationship now is. And that Saul actually was on her side makes the end result that much more tragic.

#homeland #threnody(s) #an hyh recap #* #by: sara #homeland spoilers #this episode is .... fml

[dukeofriven]

Guns or Children: The Only Choice Left, America

[Note: this post was originally a response to this thread.

Trigger warnings: guns, gun deaths, murder, violence, death, child death, school shootings, racism, anti-semitism, mass shootings, Orlando Pulse Shooting,  sports injuries, cursing, swear words, statistics, sourced facts, responsibility, collective responsibility, the necessity of change, moral imperatives]

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There is always a justification for why it’s okay for Americans to own guns.

Tradition. The Cultural Importance of Firearms. Farmers Vs Wild Beasts. The Scary Non-White People Who Are Moving Into The Neighbourhood. The Need For An Unsubtle Penis Metaphor To Show-Off To Your Fellow Men.

And, of course, the worst of them all:

“I Like Them.”

I don’t care.

It has become parodic at this point to try and argue against these points because the people who make them aren’t arguing in good faith anyways: they like guns and they know that you don’t like guns so how can there be any kind of accord when you won’t even meet them on their own turf? You can’t argue with people who don’t like guns because secretly - or not-so-secretly - they just want to take you guns away. We can’t have a real argument about gun control against such an extremist position.

Which is fine because I’m not here to argue. There’s no argument to be made anymore. The time for argument was seventy years ago when America’s culture wasn’t so toxic that the sane, reasonable positions on gun ownership that other countries ended-up with could still be enforced.

That was seventy years ago. That opportunity is gone. There’s no longer any argument to be made.

The Onion makes a habit of running a variation of an article every time a big shooting happens:

The fact that America is irresponsible with guns, cannot be trusted with guns, has lost all ability to live with guns, is fundamentally true, and not in dispute anywhere other than in America itself. America’s mind-boggling gun-death rate is a direct, indivisible result of: [Note: most numbers here are from the last major survey from 2017] 1) The sheer volume of guns. America has about 120 civilian-owned guns for every hundred people in the country. There are more guns than people. If everyone in America had to start killing one-another in a grand old game of nation-wide paintball-with-bullets no one would have to share a gun and there would be spares before the first shot was fired. The next region with an entry on the guns per-people per-region list? The Falkland Islands with 60 guns for every 100 people. The Falkland Islands has a total population of some 3000 people. Its murder rate? Does’t seem to have one. Leaving aside the Falklands War I don’t think anyone’s been murdered there since 1981. Next country down? Yemen. Population: 28 million, with 50-odd guns per 100 people. Yemen a region that hasn’t known peace since... ever. Yemen has existed in some form since 1918 and not once has it ever had what you’d call a lasting and nation-wide peace.

The farthest down the list you have to go to find a country that comes close to America in terms of population size is Pakistan - population 200 million, and only 22 guns for every hundred people. Should they start that nation one -kill-paintball game most people would have to share until they’d wiped-out some eighty percent of the country.

So the three biggest gun-owning regions in the world by guns per person is a tiny British tourist trap where nobody but governments commit crimes, and civil-war ravaged Yemen. And America. Neither of those first places comes close to America in terms of either size or number of guns. America has more guns for civilian use than anywhere else on Earth. This number is not in dispute. America has more than twice the number of guns per citizen than anywhere else on Earth. This number is also not in dispute. America has a death-by-firearm rate far and beyond any other nation of its size, population, wealth, and stability. Of the six countries that make up half the world’s gun deaths, America is one of them - the other five are Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guatemala, all nations with significantly more serious gang-related and stability-related issues than America. This number is also not is dispute.

2) Easy access to guns. 390 million guns don’t get distributed by accident. American gun laws are known for their laxity and their ease of use: in America the courts have decided that 1791′s Second Amendment of the US Constitution, by-and-large, grants Americans the largely unrestricted right to own guns, and indeed have something of a moral obligation to do so as a guarantor against tyranny. American law thus goes out of its way to make the process of purchasing a gun as inconvenient as possible. It is easier to buy a guy in many places in America than it is to purchase alcohol. 3) A culture that worships guns. America has a culture that loves guns. A culture that lauds guns. A culture that worships guns. America has a culture that that stands around and not only says ‘shit guns are cool’ but takes the next step and says ‘and people should be able to own cool things.’ This is somewhat odd given the awesome destructive power of a gun and the average citizen’s need to posses destructive power. Tanks are cool, but nobody is handing those out to civilians. Fighter jets are awesome, but we don’t make those for sale to anything other than repressive governments. “But DukeofRiven swords are cool and we let people buy those,” you say. Well, many countries don’t, first of all, or allow much sword-freedom - in my country it is legal to own a sword, but not to wield it or carry it. Secondly, you know how many people were murdered with a sword in 2017? No, you don’t. Nobody does - no one seems to be keeping track as far as I can tell. It’s so few people that the number is statistically insignificant. I can tell you that in 2017 some 1,591 people were murdered with all “knives and other cutting instruments” compared to a full 10,982 gun homicides. This is a list that notes all defenestration murders (4), and all murders via explosion (0) - it doesn’t take a lot to get on the FBI’s “common murder weapon” radar. Swords don’t qualify. “But DukeofRiven” - I hear you cry (’Your Grace’ will do) - “That’s a lot of knife deaths. Knives are a useful tool that would be silly to ban. Guns are an important tool too - farmers who live in dangerous areas find guns useful for warding off wild animals.” Well that’s true, fictional question asker - farmers do find guns useful. There’s about 3.2 million farmers in American - slightly less than 1% of the population - so let’s do the American thing and give them a heaping, generous portion of 10 guns each. That still leaves... uh... about 360 million guns not owned by farmers. Well what if we take all rural-dwelling Americans, who hunt and shoot and kill as part of their very important rural hunting/shooting/killing culture and make sure they all have at least one gun. 57 million rural non-farmer Americans - about 17% of the population - but damn, we’ve still got 303 million guns lying around. Most American gun owners own at least three guns? Can’t deprive the rural folk of their just due so will give them each an extra two guns. That still leaves us with 181 million guns to hand out to civilian urbanites who cannot possible have a good day-to-day use for them - and that’s counting the extra seven guns we gave to each farmer. If those guns were to secede and form an independent nation they’d bump Ethiopia’s spot to become the 12th largest country by-population in the world. That’s more guns than the population of the world’s 109 smallest countries combined. “Guns are still tools used by hunters” - oh sweet boy howdy do I not give a shit about hunters. 7000 of those 2017 deaths were by handguns, a gun that literally has no other purpose other than to shoot people. Handgun deaths top all other gun deaths in America by a significant margin. A handgun is not a tool. It is a weapon. That’s all it is - and Americans own a lot of weapons. You’re drowning in them. You are overrun by guns. Right-wingers should forget curbing immigration to save white people as the dominant ethnic group - the primary demographic of the United States is gun! Y’all lost already! I don’t care that you think guns are cool, because I also think guns are cool - and I own none. I can be impressed by guns without having to own guns, without making sure my friends own guns, and my family owns guns, and that there are enough guns in my country for every single person to personally shoot another person in the head in a suicidal conga line stretching round the entire country and still have spare guns left over. Culture? Tradition? Heritage? Don’t give a flying fuck. Slavery was part of your tradition too, and no that’s not a disingenuous comparison because both practices created death, pain, misery, and suffering for profit.  Both practices were morally indefensible. You’ve been a responsible gun owner all your life? Don’t give a fuck. How many gun owners need to be un-responsible before the tipping point is crossed and you would agree that there is culturally a gun problem, that no amount of responsibility by one group os making up for the irresponsibility of the other half? Why is this ‘one good man in ‘Sodom’ argument framed this way? 10000+ people died in 2017 because of a culture that glorifies an item with no functional utility to improve society. Let me be clear about this: given the number of gun deaths compared to that of gun owners that 10000 deaths is statistically insignificant it terms of responsible proportionality. Most gun owners are responsible gun owners. There’s only 118 million gun-owning households in the US - only a third of the population actually owns a gun - so if we fudge the number a bit and just say that there are 118 million individual guns owners the numbers work out to about 0.009% of all gun owners being irresponsible. Guess what: that doesn’t matter. You want to know all the stuff America bans that hasn’t ever killed anybody but someday might? Kinder Eggs. Haggis. Imported brie. Think of all the chemicals banned since the 70s because of fears that they might do something. Think of every product recall that happened because one person was simply injured. Think of the products you’ve banned for nothing more than their dangerous ideology like Cuban cigars. You banned Amy Winehouse and Margaret Thatcher’s son from entering America but you won’t ban the sale of guns? Guns aren’t nearly as dangerous as the late Amy Winehouse? Gun culture and tradition glorifies nothing but instruments of slaughter. Arthur Hoppe killed your stupid arguments about tradition stone-dead 49 year ago:

(Hoppe, Arthur. "Legislation Attempts to Ban the Bomb." Sidelines (Murfreesboro), October 27, 1970. Page 4. For the original source see Hoppe, Arthur. "Ban The Bomb Banners." The San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco), October 25, 1970. Page 103. For print, see Hoppe, Arthur. Mr. Nixon and My Other Problems. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 1971. Page 78. )

The moral bankruptcy of the tradition argument was demonstrated half a century ago, when a lot less Americans were dying by the gun. When whole classrooms of children and concert goers on the Vegas Strip and students at their lectures and devoted church-goers [and hey, synagogue shooting after I first started writing this: all house-of-worship goers] all have to fear the omnipresent threat of death when does your right to admire the gun cease to be a relevant point of consideration? When does living every day with the constant gnawing fear that it could happen to you finally suffocate ‘most of us are responsible’ in its cradle? When do ‘a few bad apples’ become ‘too many bad apples’? If I’m making apple sauce you’re not going to care that 99% of my apples were perfect - because that 1% of rotten apples I tossed in was enough to ruin the batch. When does ‘most of us are not rotten’ stop sounding quite so reassuring? I’ve been listening a lot lately to Still Buffering, a McElroy extended universe podcast where - in its first year - the-then 15 year-old Rileigh Smirl shared her life with her 15-years-plus older siblings. In the episode recorded immediately after the Orlando shooting, where the adults are literally shaking and you can hear it in their voices, the 15 year-old very blandly describes life in a world where the idea of being shot in her school has been so utterly normalized for her that she has a hard time generating the same level of fear about it as the adults do. It is genuinely nauseating. Her sisters are practically crying into their microphones, sick with horror that their little sister goes to school entirely accepting that another member of her school not only might wander in with a gun and shoot-up the place, but would not be culturally abnormal for having done so. The young Ms. Smirl is already used to being evacuated: kids at her school have brought guns, brought bombs, and while nothing fatal has yet happened, she would be unsurprised if it did. resigned to the fact. If the shooter only murdered a handful of people the story wouldn’t still be in the news after a couple days (did you even remember there was a synagogue shooting a week ago?) - and if they’d killed dozens they’d be superseded by another shooting within a few weeks. (As of writing - April 26 2019 - there have been six school shootings in the US since the start of the year Eight. There were two more school shootings between me first writing this down on April 26 and coming back to finish it on May 11/12th. There were 20 mass shootings in total in just those fifteen days. 21 fatalities. Jesus Fucking Christ, America.) You know, I wouldn’t care if guns hadn’t killed a soul in 2017. If the simple spectre of their presence - the easy access, the sheer volume, the cultural identity - created a fraction of that level of fear and fatalism you hear in Rileigh Smirl’s voice  in school children across America I would happily rip every single gun from the living hands of every American gun owner and melt them in a pyre the size of Delaware rather than let such a state of affairs continue. A mere 10000 gun owners were murderers in 2017? A mere 10000 gun owners a year have been murderers for the last 20 years? A mere 2,000,000 gun murderers in two decades? Damn you all. Keep in mind we haven’t touched on anything other than homicides. 10000-plus gun owners made the decision to murder others with their gun in 2017. People often bring up car deaths as a rebuttal to the gun stats - 40000 car deaths in 2017 to 10000 gun deaths should we therefore ban cars, you idiot? What a disingenuous question. That’s 40000 car deaths of all kinds - I’m talking about homicide alone, where the so-called ‘responsible person’ is proven to use their ‘responsibly’-owned item for irresponsible ends. The ‘bad-eggs.’ You know how many bad-egg car owners murdered people in 2017 as an act of willful homicide? No. And neither do I. It’s another stat so low it is presumably lumped-in with an aggregate - the 976 deaths in 2017 known only as “miscellaneous.” This, again, on a chart that notes that 13 people were murdered by poison, 4 people were murdered by being pushed, and zero people were murdered with explosions. The number of cars used to murder people? Presumably less than three. Could be as low as zero. [Note: the number is actually 50. See the Addendum and this follow-up article for expanded stats.] There are a little over 270 million car owners in the US, and from that we can conclude that while 0.009% of gun owners a year can’t stop themselves from murdering people with their guns, less than 0.000001% of car owners can’t stop themselves from being a first-degree car murderer. On the face of it those are pretty tiny numbers - infinitesimal, really. Less than one percent. Insignificant. Why get worked up? 10,000 lives ended by guns fired with a purpose to kill. By civilians, only, mind - I haven’t even touched on gun deaths by police officers, or the even broader question of gun deaths by US soldiers looking to shoot people. We’re still just focussed on civilian gun owners who felt the need to kill other human beings. ~10,000 American gun murders in 2017 alone. Three times the entire population of the Falklands, your closet neighbours in terms of guns-to-population ratio. I’m Canadian - 36 million people, a disturbing 36 guns per 100 people. If I go to Windsor and drive across the bridge I instantly become 10 time more likely to be shot to death - not specifically because I am now in Detroit, not specifically because I’m a Canadian in the United States, but simply because I went from any developed nation that wasn’t America into America. Taking Detroit specifics account, if you drive back and forth across the Ambassador bridge your odds of getting shot jump some 50 times every time you cross an invisible line on the Detroit River. Detroit and Windsor have very different crime rates: 2017 saw 267 murders in Detroit. Windsor saw 3. The Detroit Murder Rate is 45 per 100,000 people - Windsor is 0.89. These cities are less than 2000 feet apart. About 600 metres. 0.6 kilometres. 0.4 of a mile. Statistically speaking most of those crimes in Detroit were firearm deaths. I can stand in Windsor (having had an excellent meal at Smoke & Spice Southern Barbecue), walk some 300 yards, and my life-expectancy from being slain by a passing bullet balloons 50 times. People just die more in America. That’s - to be fair - partially a matter of volume. Contrasted against Canada, say, and you’re looking at nine times the number of people: of course you’ve got more deaths. But the homicide numbers don’t scale that way. Canada had 266 firearm homicides in 2017. If you made the population of Canada nine times larger, so that we had population parity with the US, we would have had about 2394 gun homicides - still only a quarter of the USA’s 10,982. You’d have to make Canada 41 times larger than it is now, creating a billion and a half Canadians, which amounts to a full 20% of the existing world population. You’d need there to be 1.2 billion more Canadians than there are Americans now to have the same number of gun homicides. Homicides alone! Because we’re still - still - not talking about suicides. Or home ‘defence.’ Or police shootings. Or killings by US troops. Just civilians with guns and the capacity to use them on fellow citizens out of a need to murder. If this getting through? Tell me this is getting through. Americans - your family, friends, colleagues, comrades, acquaintances, lovers, crushes, vaguely-recognized strangers are dying at rates from causes that are not present elsewhere in the stable places of the world. You are dying from solved problems. If ~10,000 Americans were dying yearly from the black plague you’d be upset. You’d be doing something. America has a disease, and that disease is a willingness to let friends, family, lovers, even children die rather than change. Six eight school shootings in four five months. “It’s lucky that fatalities were low,” you might say if you were a lunatic. That’s not lucky. Gut-wrenchingly relieving, all things being equal: six eight schools threatened and only one family four families had to lose a child. It didn’t happen to us think the thousands of parents whose children walked out of those six eight shootings alive. A school bus company that had six eight crashes in four five months wouldn’t count itself lucky that only one child four children died. It would be defunct as a company, drowning in litigation, its corporate officers hounded in the streets by mobs of furious parents horrified that this company had proven so incapable of a simple act like protecting their children. But six eight schools across the nation experienced an event with armed gunman and its not even notable. America, you’re broken. You’re just broken. And your problem is the guns. So I don’t care that you’re a responsible gun owner with a gun cabinet who memorized the rifleman’s credo. I absolutely don’t give a damn that you have fond memories of you and your grandfather stalking deer and bonding as family. If I weigh the cost of you sharing that bonding experience with your own grandchild someday against the ~10000 people shot dead in 2017, and the ~100000 people shot dead over the decade your warm fuzzies don’t amount to shit. Teach your grandkid to bake cookies. Go camping. Introduce him to the love of baseball. If you cannot imagine formative bonding without killing something go take a butchery course at the community college and learn how to barbecue a pig - hey, look, valuable life lessons, a trade skill, and I just made you a must-get for cool parties. Yes, I am talking about taking your guns away. All of your guns. All of them. This is a future I want - because you, America, collectively, have proven that you are not socially responsible enough to be a country that owns guns. If you can ban Kinder Eggs for 50 years because you thought it would take that much time to train your children not to swallow a massive plastic capsule that the rest of the world’s children have no problem surviving, I think at the very least a 50-year moratorium on firearms is the bare fucking minimum. There were 23 school shootings in America in 2018. There have been 20 school shootings in Canada in the entire 152 years of our existence. Over 10000 American civilians decide every year to shoot people to death. That doesn’t happen in other stable places. The difference is THE GUNS. IT’S ALL THE GUNS! IT’S ALL THE FUCKING GUNS! You can’t just talk about tightening guns laws. You can’t just talk about making gun owners more responsible - statistically speaking American gun owners are individually responsible! It doesn’t matter, because collectively you’re all irresponsible. Responsible people don’t prioritize their interests and hobbies over bi-monthly school shootings. Responsible people don’t ‘Good German’ themselves when children’s are under threat at least once a month nation-wide.

Real talk for you people out there who own guns, love guns, would never think or murdering anybody, and are genuinely angry that I keep acting like 10000-a-year bad apples reflects badly on your interests as a whole. How high does the number have to be before your association with your hobby would begin to make you feel uncomfortable with sharing an interest? Let me put it another way: enrolment in youth football teams is dropping nation-wide as parents aren’t comfortable putting their children at risk. Football has given America exciting games to watch, stories of victory and defeat, bonding with friends and family, and one of television’s true masterpieces, Friday Night Lights (#neededmoredevin #justiceforwaverly #justiceforsantiago). But all that good warm fuzzy feeling is running up against a problem: kids are getting hurt. In some cases kids are dying. 2017 saw 13 football-related deaths among the under-18 crowd: 4 direct fatalities, 9 indirect fatalities. (Direct fatalities are causes like head injuries and organ trauma. Indirect fatalities are causes like heat stroke.) That’s a death rate of 0.095/100,000 direct and 0.21/100,000 indirect - still lower than the murder rate in Windsor. And yet football enrolment declines. Because it’s more than just those thirteen deaths: it’s the up-front injuries like broken bones and sprains, it’s the long-term brain injuries that might not emerge for years, it’s the trauma of watching friends and teammates get seriously hurt, die, or simply find the sport a source of stress rather than joy. Right now football is experiencing white flight as predatory football pipelines double-down on players-of-colour to feed their football mills, but that too will decline as a generation that grows up not experiencing a close intimacy with football loses interest in the sport. (Another demographic timebomb lurking in America’s wings.) 13 child deaths by football in 2018. 44 students shot-dead the same year. High schools are shutting down their football programs - taking football completely away - because they can’t stomach all that death, injury, and trauma. The seriousness of this has proven that America is not a nation that can handle its football, and does not want to keep its kids playing football in the same numbers as it once did. (Anyone who wants to come in here and say “would you say the same about hockey, Canadian?” Yes. Absolutely. Instantly. Ditch the whole thing. It’s just a sport, a hobby. It is not more important than lives.) So what will it take to get you to admit that if America can’t handle football it can’t handle guns? A half-dozen kids got their hair chewed in the 90s and America decided that responsibility didn’t matter, that nobody should own a Snacktime Kid Cabbage Patch Doll. One kid died from a non-blunt lawn dart in 1987 and you’ve banned them since 1988. 44 kids got shot to death last year and America thought it unnecessarily restrictive of freedom to take away a single gun. Give me numbers. Please. How many kids would have to die in America this year before you felt uncomfortable owning a gun simply by transference of shame or guilt or association? What if every gun owner but you shot a kid at a school next year? Would you still say your responsibility kept your conscience clear? An absurd, hyperbolic question, fair enough. So let’s start counting down from those 117999999 gun-owning households who aren’t you: what’s the magic number when your responsible ownership of your thing-that-just-kills no longer sits comfortably against the annual number of gun-owning, school-child murderer-producing households? Not accidents, not mistakes, not once-in-a-generation horrors by an statistically aberrant psychopath - I’m talking about systemic patterns of yearly school-child homicide via gunshot. Because last year that was about 44 child murders from about 15 households. That’s currently a number that doesn’t shame you. Start counting up. I’m asking, genuinely, because I need to know. Is there a number? 440 kids murdered by 150 household? 4400 from 1500? 44000 from 15000? Or will others actions never affect you? Is what the rest of society does is of no import, no responsibility of yours? If you were the only responsible gun owner in America, ask yourself if you’d still be comfortable owning a gun. And think - real hard - at what the ratio of responsible-to-not-responsible gun murderers and death tolls are right now, and why you’re okay with that. Then ask yourself what other hobby has that kind of real-life school-kid homicide count that needs to be updated on a monthly basis. Not a lot of gunpla hobbyists struggling with the weight of rogue members murdering kids. Knitters can be vicious, but only socially. Mountain climbers and fast car enthusiasts see plenty of tragedy in their hobby - but they’re tragedies of accidents and mistakes. Not a lot of malicious intent going around. Not a lot of cut ropes and slashed brakes. Not to the tune of 10000+ homicides a year. Ask yourself if maybe - just maybe - America has a problem when it comes to guns. Maybe, just maybe, so many of you being responsible isn’t working. Maybe, just maybe, your hobby, your tradition, your culture, your warm family memories, your constitutional guarantees of ownership, are not worth the death of children in their schools, concert goers at their venues, worshipers at their altars, families in their homes year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year, after year in numbers that simply, truthfully, are not present elsewhere in the world in places similar to America. Maybe, just maybe, being responsible isn’t enough. Maybe, at some point, the number of dead kids will be too many. And if it isn’t, you need to come clean and admit that every child in America could be shot to death tomorrow and you’d still love owning a gun. You can get rid of the guns, America, or you can start wearing shirts that say “kill all the kids you like - I’m proud to be a gun owner.” Because there’s no other choices left to you. The time for incremental change is long over. The time for saner, less drastic measures died decades ago. There is no moderate position left. It’s the guns, or it’s the children. There are no other choices.

________________________ Addendum: there is now a second part to this article, which expands upon some of the points made here with the more comprehensive fatality statistics from the CDC, including numbers I did not have when originally writing this article.

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