People-to-people dialogue is the best way out of the Kashmir logjam

By Shivam Vij

(source: countercurrents.org)

On 28 May this year, the Economic Times, India’s leading business daily, carried a story titled, ‘Kashmir survey finds no majority for independence’. That is a curious headline. What is ‘no majority’? Either there is majority or there is not. Robert Bradnock conducted this survey for Chatham House, a leading British think-tank, Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control. The survey was conducted in the autumn of 2009, and the copy mentioned that 44 percent in Azad Kashmir and 43 percent in Jammu & Kashmir favoured an independent Kashmiri nation state.

Similar was the reporting of the survey in other Indian papers. They omitted some details, though. They did not mention that the survey was conducted not just in Kashmir but also the Jammu and Ladakh regions. They did not mention that even after factoring in Jammu and Ladakh, the total support for India was 21 percent and for Pakistan 15 percent. So if there was a three-way poll, the whole region’s average figure of those supporting independence (43 percent) would win hands down. Most of the rest (14 percent) favoured making the LoC a permanent border, which means sealing the status quo, something India and Pakistan came very close to doing in 2007. This 14 percent comes only from Poonch (94 percent), Rajouri (100 percent) and Jammu (39 percent).

Further, they did not mention that in the district-wise results the greatest support for independence was in the Indian side of the Valley – an astounding 95 percent in Baramulla, 75 percent in Srinagar, 82 percent in Badgam, and 74 percent in Anantnag. Pulwama and Kupwara were not surveyed. The highest support for India was 80 percent in Kargil and 67 percent in Leh, 73 percent in Udhampur and 63 percent in Kathua. In Jammu district, it was 47 percent – ‘no majority’. In Azad Kashmir, 50 percent wanted to be with Pakistan.

(source: NetureiKarta International)

Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews recoiled in disgust at the latest outburst of hate speech from Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, a former Sephardic so called "chief rabbi" of the illegitimate Zionist State of "Israel", in which he called the Palestinians "evil," and cursed them with death.

"The Torah commands Jews to live peacefully with their non-Jewish neighbors in all parts of the world. This sort of rhetoric is against the Almighty’s Torah, repugnant to say the least and dangerous," said Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, of Neturei Karta International.

"This Rabbi and others like him do not and cannot represent Judaism or the Torah, just as the Zionist State of "Israel", which is a rebellion against the Almighty, cannot represent the Torah or world Jewry true to the Torah".

By Andrew Lee Butters

(source: Time.com)

The rocky red hills and dense oak forests of southern Lebanon near the Israeli border make perfect terrain for guerrilla warfare, as the Israeli army has repeatedly discovered to its chagrin. Whether or not the once and future war zone is an ideal location for a multi-million dollar tourist attraction is another matter. But that hasn't stopped Hizballah, the anti-Israeli militant group and Shi'ite Muslim political party, from opening a war memorial this summer here in the southern hill town of Mleeta.

With a reported cost of about $20 million and a cryptic slogan ("Earth Speaks to Heaven"), Mleeta is the first stage of what Hizballah hopes will be a kind of family theme park of the Islamic Resistance that will eventually include spa hotels, a paint-ball gun battlefield, and a cable-car ride with a scenic view of northern Israel, or as the tour guides call it, "Occupied Palestine."

Mleeta is a full-frontal display of the Party of God's legendary attention to detail, its willingness to sacrifice, and its glorification of combat. Visitors walk down "The Path" — a winding trail interspersed with mannequin-filled dioramas of combat scenes, including a field hospital and a camouflaged rocket launch site meant to convey the experience of being a mujaheddin. They duck their heads and enter "The Cave" — a once-secret bunker used as barracks for as many as 7,000 militants that engineers carved out of the hillside over a period of several years, scattering its debris for miles to avoid drawing the attention of Israeli reconnaissance planes. And they can gawk at "The Abyss," a pit filled with captured Israeli machine guns, rockets and tanks.

(source: Monitoring Authority...BBC Charter Compliance)

Introduction

How do BBC statements compare with evidence in the public domain? Is the BBC coverage accurate? Does the BBC output divert attention from the most relevant issues and events? Are the key questions addressed?

Monitoring Authority reviews the BBC documentary, "911 Conspiracy File", broadcast in Feb 2007 and July 2008 plus the BBC web site. It asks whether the programme can fairly be seen as deceptive and whether it could condition our minds to reject further inquiry.

The evidence is verified, collated and presented for the reader's judgement.

After Sept. 11th President Bush declared:

"You're either with us or you're with the terrorists"

How did the BBC react to this confrontational statement?

The BBC investigation backs the official theory: 19 Muslims conspired with Osama bin Laden to attack the US, because they "hate freedom".

Is the BBC guilty of misrepresentation of the evidence and "spinning" the phrase "conspiracy theory" in an attack on freedom of expression? Was there censorship of dissent?

Methodology

A deconstruction of the programme [transcript] pointing to information in the public domain contradicting the BBC content. It does not make statements that cannot be substantiated.

It does however examine the frequent repetition of the phrase - "conspiracy theory" - and whether this phrase has been used subliminally to condition us to react, in a predictable Pavlovian manner, to support US & UK government policy.,

This phrase now lights up pathways in our brains that resonate with “paranoid stories by sad souls”, as if asking a question, how? who? when? where? constitutes evidence of psychological disturbance and flawed character. But is this really how the BBC "911 File" spins those who doubt or inquire?

We should consider whether the UK public-financed broadcasting corporation ignored its Charter obligations in a programme about arguably the most important political event of the 21st Century - leading as it did to war in Afghanistan and Iraq with draconian increases in state power at home - all vital, we're told, to fight terrorism.

(source: Tony Karon Blog - Rootless Cosmopolitan)

 America’s march to a disastrous war in Iraq began in the media, where an unprovoked U.S. invasion of an Arab country was introduced as a legitimate policy option, then debated as a prudent and necessary one. Now, a similarly flawed media conversation on Iran is gaining momentum.

Last month, TIME’s Joe Klein warned that Obama administration sources had told him bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities was “back on the table.” In an interview with CNN, former CIA director Admiral Mike Hayden next spoke of an “inexorable” dynamic toward confrontation, claiming that bombing was a more viable option for the Obama administration than it had been for George W. Bush. The pièce de résistance in the most recent drum roll of bomb-Iran alerts, however, came from Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic Monthly. A journalist influential in U.S. pro-Israeli circles, he also has access to Israel’s corridors of power. Because sanctions were unlikely to force Iran to back down on its uranium enrichment project, Goldberg invited readers to believe that there was a more than even chance Israel would launch a military strike on the country by next summer.