USA And The Future Of The World -II

[Guest]

2 are suspected gunmen.
He shot 50 rounds from his hand gun.

Name sounds like Palestine or Jordanian origin.
Now they are saying he is convert to Islam.
He had received poor performance review and was not interested to be deployed abroad.

[Guest]

<b>Army shooting suspect was heading to Iraq</b>
AP updated 8 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The man identified as the shooting suspect at Fort Hood was an Army psychiatrist preparing to deploy to Iraq.

NBC News’ Pete Williams reported that U.S. officials identified the gunman as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who had been promoted to major in May. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said military officials told her that the gunman, who was 39 or 40, <b>was about to be deployed to Iraq and was “upset about it.”</b>

[ramana]

What about the other two suspects?

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Nov 6 2009, 05:39 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 6 2009, 05:39 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->What about the other two suspects?
[right][snapback]102396[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They are saying only one man, Nidal. <b>Other two were suspect are now released.</b>
Nidal was a problem guy, we was against Iraq and Afghanistan war. He was upset that Obama is not bringing troops back. He was happy about AR shooting incidence.
He was very vocal about politics and was under investigation.

His cousin is saying he is from middle East origin and was born in Islam in US.
His cousin even sound same radical type.

[Guest]

FOX is getting testimony from officer that he heard the shooter make several anti-American, pro-Muslim/jihad-like statements about Muslims need to rise up against the Western agressors and engage in violent attacks against the military like the shooter in Little Rock, AR

[Guest]

The two suspect tried to bring down shooters, so they were questioned.
Two were good guys.

[Guest]

The Virginia-born soldier was single with no children. He was 39 years old.

<b>Sources told News 8 that Hasan was born in 1970 and is of Jordanian descent.</b>

(same I suspected)

Another suspect had been picked up.

[Guest]

He was targeting individuals, it was not random.

[Guest]

Shooter is not dead.

[Guest]

<b>Rampage kills 12, wounds 31</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The accused gunman, initially reported killed but later revealed to be in custody in a hospital,<b> is a Virginia-born doctor who once practiced at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The motive remains unclear, although some sources reported the suspect is opposed to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and upset about an imminent deployment.</b>

The attack erupted shortly after lunchtime on the sprawling complex that has absorbed more than 500 fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than any other base. Investigators said their initial impression was that the gunman had acted alone.

The victims were taken to various hospitals, where local residents were lining up to donate blood.

"It's a terrible tragedy. It's stunning," Army Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told reporters gathered outside the facility northeast of Austin. "Soldiers and family members and many of the great civilians who work here are absolutely devastated."

<b>Hasan, 39, graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997 and earned a doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda.</b> He spent at least six years at Walter Reed before moving to Fort Hood.

<b>He had been a "very devout" worshiper at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, attending prayers at least once a day, often in his Army fatigues, said Faizul Khan, a former imam there.</b>

"To know something like this happened, I don't know what got into his mind," Khan said. "There was nothing extremist in his questions. He never showed any frustration. . . . He never showed any remorse or wish for vengeance on anybody."

A co-worker identified as Col. Terry Lee told Fox News <b>that Hasan opposed the U.S. role in Iraq and Afghanistan and told others that "we should not be in the war in the first place." He said Hasan acknowledged that soldiers have a duty to follow the commander in chief's orders, but was hoping that President Obama would order a pullout from the conflicts</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim of Palestinian descent whose parents came to the United States from the West Bank. He joined the military after high school and earned medical degrees as he rose through the ranks, family members said. 'snip' Hasan attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and was "very devout," according to Faizul Khan, a former imam at the center. Khan said Hasan attended prayers at least once a day, seven days a week, often in his Army fatigues<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

<b>Nidal Hasan: Ft. Hood Shooter Participated in Homeland Security Disaster Preparation</b>

[ramana]

<!--QuoteBegin-"ramana"+-->QUOTE("ramana")<!--QuoteEBegin-->We have studied Af-Pak for over a decade and still cling to psy-ops fro interested parties. If Af-Pak is not resolved suitably it will take down the Western domination of the world system. Its bigger than Korea, Vietnam and Cold War.<b> Its an assymetric war between two different world views.</b> The earlier examples were similar zero-sum situations.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Af-Pak region


<b>Indian Prespective:</b>

- Afghanistant shouldnt become safe haven for terrorists
- Afghanistan shouldnt become 'strategic depth' for TSP
- Afghanistan should be multi-ethnic, multi-cultural modern state
- Ensure Afghanistan does not become base for extremist/"guided" Islam

<b>TSP prespective:</b>

- Afghanistan should have a TSP friendly regime for following reasons:
- Settling Durand Line to prevent loss of NWFP
- Provide strategic depth for
- Terrorist camps
- Hide special weapons
- Hinterland for heroin growing

<b>Pashtun Prespective:</b>

- Any ruler in Afghanistan has to be a Pashtun as they created modern Afghanistan
- Eventually erase Durand line and regain lost lands to British India

<b>Non Pashtun Prespective:</b>
- Pashtuns should not dominate and impact their sub-nationalism:Tajik, Hazara, Uzbeg etc..

<b>US prespective:</b>

- Non Islamist govt in Afghanistan to prevent:
- Regrouping of Islamist forces like AlQ & 'bad' Taliban
- Provide bases for US forces for hedge against Central Asia and fracturing TSP
- Provide base for 'guiding' new ISlamist thinking in Central Asia

<b>PRC prespective:</b>

- Ensure TSP retains influence in Afghanistan to hedge rising India
- Ensure US is weakened due to Afghanistan to preclude Uigher revolt
- Ensure Afghanistan does not become base for extremist/"guided" Islam

<b>Iran prespective:</b>

- Ensure TSP does not dominate Afghanistan
- Ensure balance in Shia (Hazara interests) versus Sunni(Pashtuns) power
- Ensure Afghanistan does not become base for extremist/"guided" Islam

<b>Russian prespective:</b>

- Ensure Afghanistan does not become base for extremist/"guided" Islam
- Ensure Afghanistan keeps the US occupied

<b>Central Asian countries:</b>

- Ensure Afghanistan does not become base for extremist/"guided" Islam

<b>EU countries:</b>

- Ensure Afghanistan does not become base for extremist/"guided" Islam
- Ensure Afghanistan is not a heroin producing region

<b>Geographic prespective:</b>

- Afghanistan is the pivot of Central Asia.
- Pathway to conquer Indian sub-continent or Central Asia
- High mountains and challenging terrain
- Not much arable land
- Only three rivers: Helmand,Kabul and Herat

<b>History Prespective:</b>

- Afghanistan has been at cross roads of invasions of Indian sub-continent
- Afghanistan was declared a neutral country between the British and Tsarist Russia
- Afghanistan has suffered continuous turmoil and civil war since 1973 if not since Abdur Rehman in late 19th century

<b>Consequences of US failure in Afghanistan:</b>

- Extremist Islam wins and will roll over most of the current Islamic states
- Have high negative impact on Indian sub-continent
- Certain radicalization of TSP with its nuclear weapons
- Uigher uprising in East Turkistan
- Central Asian countries will be radicalized
- PRC will gain Asian domination but lose East Turkistan
- Russia might be rolled back to the Duchy of Muscovy
- Demoralized by the defeat in far away lands the 'malaise' in American politics could return leading to political wilderness a la Vietnam
- Drug trade will zoom on the supply side
- World globalization will suffer
- It could lead to loss of leadership as other challengers will emerge



What else?

[HareKrishna]

moved

[Guest]

<b>Report: Hasan attended same radical mosque as 9/11 hijackers; Update: “He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim</b>”

<b>Fort Hood shooting: Texas army killer linked to September 11 terrorists</b>

[Guest]

<b>US working to secure Pak nukes: Pulitzer winner
</b>

Leading US investigative journalist and Pulitzer prize winner Seymour Hersh has created a stir by stating that Washington is working on a clandestine programme to secure Pakistan's nuclear installations.

Pakistan has reacted angrily to the assertion made by Hersh in the latest issue of `The New Yorker'. The widely respected journalist is known for having sources in most wings of the US establishment, including Pentagon from where he claims to have acquired the lead on Pakistan's nuclear assets.

The information may not be easy to dismiss as Hersh points to the fear that extremists in Pakistan's military establishment - even apart from the threat of a Taliban takeover - might grab control of some of the nuclear facilities in the country. He states in his article that Washington has been "negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military'' to prevent such a scenario.

"These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities - goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistan Army chief, has long desired,'' he states, adding that the secrecy surrounding the understanding was because of growing antipathy for the US in Pakistan.

The suggestion that the Pakistan army leadership might be ready to go along with the US plan for providing added protection is bound to be politically sensitive in Pakistan and is likely to draw strong denials from both the government and the military set-up. The "understanding" is not as improbable as it may sound as the Pakistan army brass would be aware of a strong current of support for the Taliban in its ranks.

India clearly shares the concern over the nuclear arsenal as foreign secretary Nirupama Rao on October 22 had expressed the hope that Pakistan's atomic weapons were safe while reacting to a question on reports that one such nuclear installation at Kamra had been attacked by terrorists.

Hersh goes on to state that the ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama's "so-called Af-Pak policy'' which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. "I was told that the understandings on nuclear cooperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the CIA and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved,'' he added.

A Pakistan official close to President Asif Zardari with whom Hersh spoke is said to have reacted angrily to the US interest in Pakistan's arsenal saying that even if there was a military coup, nobody would give up the control on nuclear weapons. This official, according to Hersh, wondered why the US was not worried about India's arsenal.

"Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will `f...' us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan,'' the official said.

Pakistan on Monday dismissed the report saying that it was "nothing more than a concoction to tarnish the image of Pakistan and create misgivings among its people''.

"Pakistan does not require any foreign assistance in this regard. Nor will Pakistan, as a sovereign state, ever allow any country to have direct or indirect access to its nuclear and strategic facilities. Any suggestion to this effect is simply preposterous,'' said Pakistan's foreign ministry.

[Guest]

<b>A Dollar Warning From Asia</b>
Obama gets an earful about America's super-easy money

[dhu]

Christianity: West’s Default Religion

Sandhya Jain



Switzerland’s recent vote against the construction of minarets as part of mosque architecture in that nation symbolises a frontal return of Christianity as the Western world’s default religion and culture, and a corresponding downsizing of the discourse on ‘secularism’ and ‘multi-culturalism,’ which gave Islam an opportunity to seize political and social space in the western public realm.



As other European nations gear up to challenge the public display of symbols of Muslim identity – most notably the hijab and head scarf, though the beard and skull cap may prove more difficult – a build-up of religio-cultural tensions is inevitable. Violent outbursts cannot be ruled out.



[color="#0000FF"]It is not a Hindu dharm-yudh[/color]



The Swiss vote has caused a frisson of excitement in traditional and secular circles in India, with some Hindus hallucinating about a ‘natural’ alliance with the Christian West to mutually crush Islam. This foolish hope once soared after the 2001 attack on the Twin Towers in New York, and Hindus in particular and Indians in general failed to comprehend why Pakistan emerged as the West’s leading non-NATO ally. Dr. Manmohan Singh is similarly clueless why two hostile votes in the IAEA against a friendly Iran still led to President Obama declaring China the leading Asian power.



Should Hindus respond to a Western Crusade against Islam, the result will be similar to our experience in World War II, where the 2.5 million-strong Indian Army won the war for the colonial West, only to be betrayed back at home. The British eventually quit India in 1947 only because of the military mutinies inspired by Subhash Chandra Bose, and they successfully cut up the nation before leaving, retaining critical territory in the form of a land bank called Pakistan, from which they (and the US) could overlook (and operate in) Tibet, Central Asia, China, Russia, and the Gulf. Further, they manipulated the mess in Jammu & Kashmir, and continue to stir the pot, to our discomfort.



The purpose of this article is to stress that Hindus lack the agility, self-confidence, or even stake, to participate in the emerging War of Religions in Europe. They would do well to keep out of this schism within the Semitic fold. The West will never support Hindu affirmation and primacy in India (or Asia), and will always support Indian (and Pakistani / Bangladeshi) Muslims and Jihadis against the Hindu nation and the Indian State, for its own geo-strategic dominance.



Terrorists David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana are not accidentally linked to the CIA and FBI. [Ignore the denials; please understand that a ‘rogue’ CIA agent is only a person CIA has decided to ‘sacrifice’ once the job is done; that is, one who is not a voluntary suicide bomber. Remember that Mumbai terrorist survivor Ajmal Kasab revealed that the terrorists were all assured of an ‘exit’ plan, and were not suicide terrorists – a significant revelation). Similarly, Kashmiri separatists do not casually visit the United States and Britain.



The Jihadi menace in our part of the world is the direct consequence of Western politics, which we can ignore only at our own peril. The Sonia Gandhi-led UPA’s decision to appoint the Ranganath Mishra Commission and examine ways to extend constitutional benefits of Hindu Scheduled Castes to Christian and Muslim converts is part of this continuing assault on Hindu dharma and dharmis in this country. So is the ‘quiet diplomacy’ with Kashmiri separatists; the decision to declare a Muslim-centric Telengana state in the old Hyderabad domains of the Pak-oriented Nizam on Sonia Gandhi’s birthday; and the proposal to bring an Equal Opportunities legislation to push Muslim employment in the private sector.



Hindus must realise that they will have to fight for their rights vis-à-vis politically assertive and West-backed minorities (both Muslims and Christians) in India with their own innate skills and resources. To outsource legitimate Hindu concerns to the West is abdication of responsibility, a sell-out.



Hindus have no stake in a Christian-Islamic confrontation in Europe (or anywhere else). Indeed, such a conflict, if it concentrates Islamic energies and resources in Europe, is certain to reduce jihad in India. Rising incidents of jihad in Europe – especially a fight to make Christian Europe an Islamic Eurabia – could prove a saving grace for India, similar to the Mongol rush to Baghdad and Europe that bypassed India.



[color="#0000FF"]Europe’s forked tongue[/color]



Notwithstanding [color="#0000FF"]Western rhetoric aimed at undermining non-Christian traditions in the post-World War II era,[/color] religion has always been a marker of political identity. And religion and culture are intimately connected. In India, the Hindu religion and culture rose simultaneously from the same soil and people over the centuries, and cannot be separated. In Islam, the Arab tribes, Arabic language and culture centred round the minor irrigation near the oases and the caravan trade provided the core structure of the early community. To this day, Islam is uncomfortable with cultural traits not rooted in Arab Islam.



Christianity, however, rose as a political community in Europe long after the death of Jesus, by taking over the declining Roman Empire. It claims origin from a man born in Galilee (or Bethlehem, or Nazareth); its culture from the extinct Graeco-Roman civilisation, and has spread by cannibalizing the traditions and cultures it encountered on its onward march. The divide between religion and culture is thus exclusive to Christian tradition, and cannot be extended to the experience of more homogenous societies and peoples.



Equally pertinently, Christianity has no native bhumi, much less a native region or ethnicity to call its own, because Jesus led the early believers away from his native Judaism and roots, and opened the doors to other groups. When the fledgling community moved to Rome, it moved to another continent, and grew by gobbling up the religion, culture and people of the dying Roman Empire. The Christian claim to conquer and enjoy the whole Creation and its creatures, human and non-human alike, is grounded in the Jewish Old Testament. Ironically, the Jews like their Christian offspring, also lack a clearly defined place of origin (where was Abraham born, or Noah, or Moses?); the first kingdom established by Joshua in Jericho was by conquest and the complete annihilation of the native population there.



[color="#FF0000"]Post Second World War, Europe (including America) played a complex game to keep the Christian religion and culture as the default religion and culture of the world, while paying lip service to concepts of ‘secularism’ and ‘multi-culturalism’ which, as I have argued before, are nothing but the Masks of the Christian God to disempower the gods and cultures of other non-monotheistic civilisations. [/color]Hindus in India, and those who left in search of financial opportunities abroad, have been willing to make this compromise with the Christian West.



Islam, which views itself as an exclusive nationhood, or ummah, is unable to compromise its religious and cultural identity, especially as hundreds of ordinary Muslims feel that the West has politically and economically disempowered the Muslim world by purchasing a handful of elites in Muslim lands, especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and made proxy colonies out of them.



In both the Christian and the Muslim mind, there is little doubt that the current contest is a continuation of the intra-Semitic struggle that began with the Prophet’s launching of his religious mission in Arabia, climaxed in the Crusades, and festered thereafter. All religions have a political facet. But Prophet Mohammad sought political expression and expansion for his religious community as part of his mission, and thus made Islam both a political ideology and a religious nationalism. He did not define racial, cultural, or geographical frontiers, which did not matter in the early heady centuries of conquest. Today, however, Islam does not know how to cope with limits to its expansion placed by other peoples and cultures; continuing tribal and old civilisational identities within Islam, modern nationalism, and the nation-state.



Yet without adjusting to the nation-state and the natural limits to its geographical expansion, Islam will not be able to combat the pro-Western political elites who have subordinated and humiliated Muslim countries and peoples to Western Corporate entities. Without being proud, stable, and ascendant in the Arabian homeland, Islam cannot hope to survive as a viable entity anywhere in the world. The Saudi refusal to permit other religious structures in Saudi Arabia is hollow as the dynasty survives on Western support, and operates as a subsidiary of the Imperial West.[[[??]]]



The brutalized and brutalizing face of Islam in Pakistan and Afghanistan reflects an aridity and brittleness that is doomed to failure. The famed Hindu resilience after Mumbai 2008 and other less spectacular jihadi assaults is only an inward understanding of this deeper impotence; Hindus are not afraid of jihad; the real danger comes from the rampaging and manipulative West.



[color="#0000FF"]Crusades continue[/color]



Initially, as Islam spread rapidly westwards, Christian Europe felt the heat. The Crusades were launched to recover the Holy Land, but more pertinently, to break Muslim control over the trade routes to Asia. Christendom lost the Crusades, but Europe’s mercantile class opened the sea route to the East, and later to Africa, putting Muslims at bay on two ocean fronts. Jerusalem was retaken in 1917; Gen. Allenby famously remarked that the Crusades were finally completed! Damascus was taken in 1920; the French commander went to the tomb of Salaudin in the Great Mosque and said: Nous revenons, Salaudin! (We are back, Salaudin!).



Post Second World War, the western world encouraged substantial Muslim immigration for cheap labour in the wake of prosperity stimulated by the Marshall Plan. Muslim intellectuals were encouraged to migrate west as ‘dissidents’ against their respective national regimes (mostly West-supported dictatorships!). Muslim integration into European civil society was not given a thought then; now Muslims are a dissatisfied and vocal minority.



Integration is now seen by both sides as accepting the Default Culture of the West, i.e., the culture of Christian Europe, and tailoring Islam to conform to this culture. [This formula works with Hindus in America, Europe, the Gulf, and even Australia, where Hindus cannot understand the growing white animosity to their presence there. This is because most Hindus sundered their links with religion and culture before leaving the shores of Bharat, egged on by ambitious parents who valued monetary success above everything else; a handful had other reasons].



But Islam is the last of the Revealed Semitic Faiths – supposedly the Final and most perfect Revelation – hence marginalised and besieged Muslim groups fight to retain their distinctive identity (hijab) and traditions (multiple marriages, Sharia). Islam challenges western secularism and multi-cultural claims with its insistence to live in its own way on soil long dominated by Christianity; the consequences of this increasing tension cannot but be volatile.



As part of its contest with Islam and quest for world dominion, the Christian-Colonial world made early inroads into the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. Jesuit monk Rudolf Acquaviva came to Agra for religious debates at the invitation of Emperor Akbar; the Delhi Diocese was established in the reign of Akbar.[color="#0000FF"] Unnoticed by Indian historians, the white missionary and trader were fairly entrenched in many strategic locations by the time the Mughal Empire formally declined and the Maratha and Sikh Empires had peaked.[/color]



All this ultimately deepened the religious conflict and triggered revivalist movements in Islam, which Europeans proved adept in penetrating and manipulating. Wahabi Islam and indeed, all militant Muslim movements that have accompanied the rise of Political Islam in the modern Colonial Era have intensified the de facto disempowerment of the Muslim world, a reality Muslims cannot wish away, and to which they accord a frustrated recognition.



Ayatollah Khomeini’s success in overthrowing the pro-American Pehlavi dynasty failed to quieten the seething discontent in the Islamic world. As pro-Western Sunni regimes generally survived the growing radicalization of the Muslim world, the Khomeini Revolution only intensified the Shia-Sunni divide.



In India, the traditional structures of Hindu society (jati, varna, parampara, sampradaya) have the intrinsic elasticity to cope with and contain sharply divergent cultural streams. India’s unique civilisational ethos has learnt to co-exist with ethnic, racial, and religious groups (Jews, Parsis, Muslims) that do not desire to be assimilated into the dominant culture. Muslims have long been negotiating political space while protecting their religion and culture. This involved delicate balancing and was possible only because, as Aristotle observed (Politics), Hindus were the only people in the world to have successfully made dharma the basis of their public life. To this day, this remains India’s default cultural trait; it survived the colonial divide-and-rule that inhibited Muslims from adjusting to a larger pan-Indian unity.



The Christian West is incapable of accommodating the growing assertion of socio-cultural-religious identity by its Muslim population. Hence cultural pluralism, the suspension of the dominant cultural-civilisational framework so other groups can find space to define themselves, has to make way for a more overt assertion of Europe’s traditional Christian identity. In reaction, pan-Islamism compresses the religious traditions of Muslim groups into a one-dimensional Arabized identity to respond to the West’s economic-political hegemony in Muslim countries and regions where Muslims are minority populations.



As a corollary, the overt assertion of the West’s Christian identity is a natural extension of continuing Western economic, cultural, and religious imperialism. Hence the rising budgets for evangelism in non-Christian countries like India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Myanmar, but also Muslim regions like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia (first East Timor, now Aceh), and our own Srinagar Valley.



It is in this context alone that one must view the frenzied French ban on head scarves in 2004, on the plea that it involved the submission of women, and the even more specious argument that the harsh lampooning of the Prophet in a Danish magazine in 2005 was about free speech.



[color="#0000FF"]Pigeons come home to roost

[/color]

For Europe, the pigeons have come home to roost. After decades of strenuous denial that religion is crucial in shaping national identity, and that the religion and culture of the majority must legitimately be the dominant identity in multi-religious societies like India, Europe is in a blue funk trying to manufacture a discourse over national identity without using the word ‘religion.’ Best of luck.



The truth is that religion is the bedrock of identity, and religion always expresses itself in culture. Islam cannot accept Christian culture without accepting Christian faith.



Another unpleasant truth is that religion cannot be kept out of the public domain, because it is not an individual or family affair, but has social and community aspects that demand expression and respect. The European Union’s 20 million Muslims are giving goose-bumps to 500 million Christians. Long centuries of familiarity and common descent from the Patriarch Abraham have failed to yield a common ground of mutual respect and peaceful coexistence. One country wants to put the Cross on its national flag.



Things can only get worse. The post 9/11 ‘War on Terror’ is viewed by both Muslims and Christians as another Crusade – a symbol of the West’s failure to separate the religious from the political.



For Islam, this is a moment of catharsis and choice. Islam stands at a major crossroad in its historical trajectory. Hitherto, it has been Janus-faced like the Greek god who looked simultaneously east and west.



Those days of luxury – of hating the west and hurting the east – are now over. To survive as a viable religion, culture, polity, Islam must free its own lands and peoples from the vice-like grip of the Crusaders and the Capitalists who are its real tormentors and oppressors. It must deny itself the temptation of crushing ‘soft’ targets like India that have the resilience and the resources to bounce back and to hit back.



Islam will do well to concentrate its fight on the Arabian peninsula, the European mainland, and the United States. Hindus should think in terms of restoring the Hindu civilisational frontier up to eastern Persia in the west, Myanmar and Nepal in the east and Tibet in the north.

[dhu]

[url="http://www.paragkhanna.com/2009/11/energizing_peace.html"]Energizing Peace[/url]

Foreign Policy | November 5, 2009

By Saleem Ali and Parag Khanna

..

Two proposed pipeline routes currently offer the greatest opportunity to solidify regional integration and create lasting stability: the route from Iran via Pakistan to India (IPI), and from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan to India (TAPI).

..

Has anyone figured out this Parag Khanna, Research fellow at the 'New America Foundation' and known for his one-line dismissal of India's future. Why the sudden interest in promoting NG pipeline to India?



He is also chummy with Zbig:

Fascinating lunch presentation/discussion with Zbig Brzezinski and SAIS faculty on the future of geopolitics. New Middle Ages has arrived!

[Guest]

[url="http://www.click2houston.com/news/22097824/detail.html"]Rocket Launcher Found In Apartment[/url]

December 31, 2009

HOUSTON

When officers went inside, they found something that made them concerned enough to call the bomb squad.

They found an AT-4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. It can shoot a missile nearly 1,000 feet through buildings and tanks.

"It gives infantrymen the advantage with an ultra-light weapon that can stop vehicles, armored vehicles as well as main battle tanks and fortifications," said Oscar Saldivar of Top Brass Military and Tactical on the North Freeway.

That type of rocket launcher has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[url="http://bobmccarty.com/2009/12/31/23748/"]link[/url]

Administration response will be

“This was just an isolated incident.” — President Barack Obama



“Obviously, this was a mix-up. The rocket launcher was probably left there by a careless veteran returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.” — Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano



“Arabs traditionally welcome the New Year by firing larger, more powerful fireworks than we do in the United States.” — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton



“It’s probably something the guy picked up at an Army surplus store and doesn’t deserve any more attention than it’s already received from Fox News.” — Press Secretary Robert Gibbs

<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

[Guest]

[url="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091231/ap_on_go_ot/us_cia_afghan_attack"]AP sources: CIA base chief killed in attack[/url]