Recommended Weekend Reading

Some good links for the weekend:

Excerpts from the Pak army and the jihadi’s second coming: Read in the context of recent incidents of ceasefire violation along the LOC and the controversy surrounding Gen Kapoor’s remarks.

Excerpts from [The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace

and how California alone uses more gasoline than any other country in the world (including India and China!)

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From Pak army and the jihadi’s second coming 

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Pakistan Army has two kinds of officers: nationalist jihadis and Islamist jihadis,” says Arif Jamal, a Pakistani scholar at Harvard University…

According to him, the nationalist jihadis would like nothing better than to snatch Jammu and Kashmir from India and see India break up. The Islamist jihadis, on the other hand, hate all infidels. They consider the United States as the bigger enemy and see India as a sideshow which can be taken on after they have vanquished the ‘Great Satan’. Arif believes that the Islamists are on the ascendant and will eventually replace the nationalist jihadists.

There are many who will view Arif’s analysis of the Pakistan army with a great deal of scepticism. But this they will do at their own peril….

…a lot of people think that the army Musharraf left is very different from the army he inherited and that the peace process between India and Pakistan has drastically reduced the hostile perception of India among Pakistan army officers.

Alluring as this thought is, it begs the question that…how is it possible that the entire officer corps of the Pakistan army has undergone such a radical transformation.

Although mutual animus among officers of the two armies is entirely understandable, there is a big difference between the two armies. The Indian army is firmly under civilian control and cannot even countenance going against the orders of the government. The Pakistan army, on the other hand, is a law unto itself and can easily sabotage any peace initiative that the civilian government in Pakistan might want to take with India.

…the jihadi culture is deeply imbedded in the psyche of Pakistan’s army, and increasingly its people.

…Let alone the entire rank and file of the army, even Musharraf’s close associates remain unreconstructed jihadists, totally impervious to any sort of enlightened moderation, much less enlightened national interest. A recent TV interview of Lt Gen Jamshed Kiyani, a former sidekick and now bitter critic of Musharraf, was quite a revelation into the mind of the Pakistan army.

In the interview Kiyani blasted Musharraf for ‘slavish subservience’ to the US, but conveniently avoided listing Pakistan’s options after 9/11. It appeared as though he was dying to blurt out that Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons was a guarantee against any hostile action by the US. Quite obviously, for Kiyani and his ilk (a large tribe, one daresay) nuclear weapons are weapons of use and not weapons of deterrence.

…As a result, there are disturbing signs that both the nationalist as well as Islamist jihad is back in fashion….

…The rising incidents of infiltration, repeated violations of the ceasefire along LoC, the re-emergence of jihadi groups who are once again holding public meetings, the re-opening of the offices of these groups, talk of relaxing the ban on some of the jihadi organisations ostensibly to bring them into the political system, and the sudden re-activation of the propaganda machinery to incite Sikhs, all seem to suggest that tensions with India are going to be ratcheted up.

…The question is whether the Pakistan army gives in to its jihadi fervour or whether the instinct for self-preservation acquires primacy.

If it’s the latter then there is hope for Pakistan. But if it is the former then catastrophe is unavoidable.

Related Posts:

“End the Moral Idiocy on Kashmir” – excerpts

From the tragedy, some unsavoury truths 

The “Raja-Mandala” approach to containing Pakistan  

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From [The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace by Daniel Pipes.

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“Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist,” said socialist Hugo Chávez during a visit to Tehran last November, celebrating his alliance with Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

…They followed in the footsteps of Fidel Castro, who in a 2001 visit told his hosts that “Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees.” For his part, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (“Carlos the Jackal”) wrote in his book L’islam révolutionnaire (“Revolutionary Islam”) that “only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States.”

It’s not just Latin American leftists who see potential in Islamism. Ken Livingstone, the Trotskyite former mayor of London, literally hugged prominent Islamist thinker Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

…Ella Vogelaar, the Dutch minister for housing, neighborhoods, and integration, is so sympathetic to Islamism that one critic, the Iranian-born professor Afshin Ellian, has called her “the minister of Islamization.”

…Spark, youth paper of Britain’s Socialist Labour party, praised Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British suicide bomber who attacked a Tel Aviv bar, as a “hero of the revolutionary youth” who had carried out his mission “in the spirit of internationalism.”

…Some leftists go farther. Several — Carlos the Jackal, Roger Garaudy, Jacques Vergès, Yvonne Ridley, and H. Rap Brown — have actually converted to Islam. Others respond with exhilaration to the violence and brutality of Islamism. German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen termed 9/11 “the greatest work of art for the whole cosmos,” while the late American novelist Norman Mailer called its perpetrators “brilliant.”

And none of this is new. During the Cold War, Islamists favored the Soviet Union over the United States. …

Leftists reciprocated. In 1978-79, the French philosopher Michel Foucault expressed great enthusiasm for the Iranian revolution.

…This goodwill may appear surprising, given the two movements’ profound differences. Communists are atheists and leftists secular; Islamists execute atheists and enforce religious law. The Left exalts workers; Islamism privileges Muslims. One dreams of a worker’s paradise, the other of a caliphate. Socialists want socialism; Islamists accept the free market. Marxism implies gender equality; Islamism oppresses women. Leftists despise slavery; some Islamists endorse it. As journalist Bret Stephens notes, the Left has devoted “the past four decades championing the very freedoms that Islam most opposes: sexual and reproductive freedoms, gay rights, freedom from religion, pornography and various forms of artistic transgression, pacifism and so on.”

…Why, then, the formation of what David Horowitz calls the Left-Islamist “unholy alliance”? For four main reasons.

First, as British politician George Galloway explains, “the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies,” namely Western civilization in general and the United States, Great Britain, and Israel in particular, plus Jews, believing Christians, and international capitalists.

…Listen to their interchangeable words: Harold Pinter describes America as “a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics” and Osama bin Laden calls the country “unjust, criminal and tyrannical.” Noam Chomsky terms America a “leading terrorist state” and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani political leader, deems it “the biggest terrorist state.” These commonalities suffice to convince the two sides to set aside their many differences in favor of cooperation.

Second, the two sides share some political goals. A mammoth 2003 joint demonstration in London to oppose war against Saddam Hussein symbolically forged their alliance. Both sides want coalition forces to lose in Iraq, the War on Terror to be closed down, anti-Americanism to spread, and the elimination of Israel. They agree on mass immigration to and multiculturalism in the West. They cooperate on these goals at meetings such as the annual Cairo Anti-War Conference, which brings leftists and Islamists together to forge “an international alliance against imperialism and Zionism.”

Third, Islamism has historic and philosophic ties to Marxism-Leninism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Islamist thinker, accepted the Marxist notion of stages of history, only adding an Islamic postscript to them; he predicted that an eternal Islamic era would come after the collapse of capitalism and Communism. …More broadly, the Iranian analyst Azar Nafisi observes that Islamism “takes its language, goals, and aspirations as much from the crassest forms of Marxism as it does from religion. Its leaders are as influenced by Lenin, Sartre, Stalin, and Fanon as they are by the Prophet.”

Moving from theory to reality, Marxists see in Islamists a strange fulfillment of their prophesies. Marx forecast that business profits would collapse in industrial countries, prompting the bosses to squeeze workers; the proletariat would become impoverished, rebel, and establish a socialist order. But, instead, the proletariat of industrial countries became ever more affluent, and its revolutionary potential withered. For a century and a half, author Lee Harris notes, Marxists waited in vain for the crisis in capitalism. Then came the Islamists, starting with the Iranian Revolution and following with 9/11 and other assaults on the West. Finally, the Third World had begun its revolt against the West, fulfilling Marxist predictions—even if under the wrong banner and with faulty goals. …At a time when the Communist movement is in “decay,” note analyst Lorenzo Vidino and journalist Andrea Morigi, Italy’s “New Red Brigades” actually acknowledge the “leading role of the reactionary clerics.”

Fourth, power: Islamists and leftists can achieve more together than they can separately. In Great Britain, they jointly formed the Stop the War Coalition, whose steering committee includes representation from such organizations as the Communist party of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain.

Islamists benefit, in particular, from the access, legitimacy, skills, and firepower the Left provides them. Cherie Booth, wife of then-prime minister Tony Blair, argued a case at the appellate-court level to help a girl, Shabina Begum, wear the jilbab, an Islamic garment, to a British school. Lynne Stewart, a leftist lawyer, broke U.S. law and went to jail to help Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, foment revolution in Egypt. Volkert van der Graaf, an animal-rights fanatic, killed Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn to stop him from turning Muslims into “scapegoats.” …

On a larger scale, the Indian Communist party did Tehran’s dirty work by delaying for four months the Indian-based launching of TecSar, an Israeli spy satellite.

…Writing in London’s Spectator, Douglas Davis calls the coalition “a godsend to both sides. The Left, a once-dwindling band of communists, Trotskyites, Maoists and Castroists, had been clinging to the dregs of a clapped-out cause; the Islamists could deliver numbers and passion, but they needed a vehicle to give them purchase on the political terrain. A tactical alliance became an operational imperative.” …

The burgeoning alliance of Western leftists and Islamists ranks as one of today’s most disturbing political developments, one that impedes the West’s efforts to protect itself. When Stalin and Hitler made their infamous pact in 1939, the Red-Brown alliance posed a mortal danger to the West and, indeed, to civilization itself. Less dramatically but no less certainly, the coalition today poses the same threat. As seven decades ago, this one must be exposed, rejected, resisted, and defeated.

 

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From California Uses More Gas than China

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…California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China’s! (Or Russia’s. Or India’s. Or Brazil’s. Or Germany’s.)

That’s according to the California Energy Commission’s State Alternative Fuels Plan, which was posted online last Christmas Eve (pdf). The whole report makes for some fascinating reading because it’s a blueprint for a low-carbon and renewable transportation fuel future. The dominant takeaway: it ain’t going to be easy.

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Please also read this short excerpt from California consumers more petrol than India! 

…But instead of worrying why Indians need two rotis per day rather than one, or why our rapid development has led to increased vehicles on India’s roads, perhaps it’s time for America to do some soul searching and ask a few questions of itself.

Isn’t it outrageous for a state with 36 million people to consume more transportation fuel than a nation of 1 billion, India, and still point the blame elsewhere?

The second question, how is this even possible? How can every 1 Californian consume more transportation fuel than 30 Indians?

It’s simple, really. In Asia, we utilise compressed natural gas, mass transportation, bicycles and our good old fashioned leather chappals to get around. In California, it’s not unusual for a family of four to have four vehicles, and for each member to drive his or her own separate way, every day!

…The average American’s idea of ‘public transportation’ is sharing a taxi. Compare this with Mumbai, where an estimated 6 million people avail of the local trains each day, cramming one on top of another into packed compartments. Now, the discrepancy starts to make sense.

So next time you read of an environmentally conscious American preaching about India’s lack of a commitment to green-friendly practices, chances are, that the American is alone in his sports car, cruising the highways around Los Angeles, with the air conditioning on high. Then, picture that packed Virar-Churchgate local in Mumbai.

Related Posts:

Saving the planet by going vegetarian… 

India and China: Apples and Oranges