Indo-UK News & Discussion 9th Aug 2011

[abhishek_sharma]

From Steven Tankel's report on LeT

While the vast majority of trainees of the groups continue to be
Pakistani, LeT also provided training to would-be jihadists from
around the world. This includes Westerners, especially British
citizens of Pakistani ancestry.24 An activist very close to LeT
and intimately familiar with its activities said that 3-4 years ago
he became familiar with a program for training people from the
West.25 Notable trainees include the members of the Virginia
Jihad Network; Omar Khyam, who spearheaded the fertilizer
bomb plot in the U.K.; and Willie Brigitte, a French convert
to Islam arrested on charges of planning attacks in Australia.
Dhiren Barot, who masterminded the failed gas-cylinder
bombing plot in London and prepared blueprints for al-Qaeda
of buildings in New York’s financial district, also trained and fought with Lashkar.26 According to transcripts of Brigitte’s trial
in France, foreigners were grouped separately and those he
met included British and American citizens of Pakistani origin.27

The group also acts as a gateway for Westerners seeking
terrorist training, facilitating access to groups like al-Qaeda that
are actively seeking so-called ‘clean skins’ in order to plan and
perpetrate attacks in the West.33 This is particularly true in the
case of British Pakistanis. Although the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq may have more resonance than the struggle in Kashmir for
them, militants who have fought in Kashmir are their first port
of call when seeking terrorist training or to fight in Afghanistan.
Using what some have called the ‘Kashmiri Escalator’ British
Pakistanis are able to use familial connections to find their
ways to groups like LeT and JeM, and from there make their
way to the Tribal Areas.

Notably, Lashkar’s operations in the UK have
historically focused mainly on fundraising, though the group
has also recruited some British Pakistanis to participate in its
training program and to fight in Kashmir.

[sanjaykumar]

Which values (hopefully free of irony) are you advocating for the "slave race"?


Perhaps the slave races should make themselves aware of the Briggs plan. This was only 50 years ago. When Britain was very much the liberal democracy admired by third world people everywhere.


Perhaps they should be educated in the tribalist warfare in Northern Ireland and the techniques applied by an ideal of the modern democratic country, as seen from the third world.


Perhaps they should be reminded of Britain's willing collaboration in the orgy of violence in Iraq, where they hunted for nuclear weapons with their superiors. (Much to their credit, many Brits revile Tony Blair for his participation, but not certain third world denizens).

[abhishek_sharma]

I posted this a few days ago. This is very relevant for this disussion.

When the British Empire crumbled in the mid-1950s, London replaced the cozy embrace of gunboats and imperial trading preferences with a new model: tempting the world’s hot money through lax regulation and lax enforcement. There was always a subtle balance, involving dependable British legal bedrock fiercely upholding U.K. domestic rules and laws while turning a blind eye to foreign law-breaking. It was a classic offshore-tax-haven offering that tells foreign financiers, “We won’t steal your money, but we won’t make a fuss if you steal other people’s.”

The term “tax haven” is something of a misnomer, because tax havens offer escape routes not just from taxes but potentially from any of the rules, laws, and responsibilities of other jurisdictions—whether those be taxes, criminal laws, disclosure rules, or financial regulation. Tax havens are usually about parking your money “elsewhere,” in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, beyond the reach of your home country’s regulators and taxmen. Or you park it in London: which is why some investment bankers have called it the Guantánamo Bay of finance. “The British think they do finance well,” says Lee Sheppard, a tax and banking specialist at the U.S. trade publication TaxAnalysts. “No. They do the legal stuff well. Most of the big investment banks there are branches of foreign operations. . . . They go there because there is no regulation whatsoever.”

James Henry, a former McKinsey chief economist, watched at close quarters the recycling of petrodollar wealth into Third World loans via London’s unregulated Euro-markets, which among other things enabled Wall Street to avoid New Deal-era banking regulations. Henry saw a global private-banking network emerge, following the money, “helping Third World elites abscond with hundreds of billions in diverted loans, illicit commissions, and corrupt privatizations, and park it in London and other tax havens.”

The number beside each location provides its ranking on the Financial Secrecy Index, which is calculated based on an analysis of the area’s role in global financial markets and a scoring of its laws and regulations that facilitate criminal activities carried out not within that area but elsewhere.

It comes as a surprise to most people that the most important player in the global offshore system of tax havens is not Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, but Britain, sitting at the center of a web of British-linked tax havens, the last remnants of empire. An inner ring consists of the British Crown Dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. Farther afield are Britain’s 14 Overseas Territories, half of them tax havens, including such offshore giants as the Caymans, the British Virgin Islands (B.V.I.), and Bermuda. Still further out, numerous British Commonwealth countries and former colonies such as Hong Kong, with deep and old links to London, continue to feed vast financial flows—clean, questionable, and dirty—into the City. The half-in, half-out relationship provides the reassuring British legal bedrock while providing enough distance to let the U.K. say “There is nothing we can do” when scandal hits.

[sanjaykumar]

Interesting. Of course only an American can write this, never a third-worlder.

[Neshant]

i wonder if musharaff is being sent back at the behest of the US to stage a coup in the country (again).

if a war with iran is coming, won't they want iran to be cut off on its eastern border.

what better way than to put a puppet in power.

definately he's going back to pakistan at their urging and they will fund his re-election or coup.

[RoyG]

i wonder if musharaff is being sent back at the behest of the US to stage a coup in the country (again).

if a war with iran is coming, won't they want iran to be cut off on its eastern border.

what better way than to put a puppet in power.

definately he's going back to pakistan at their urging and they will fund his re-election or coup.

I doubt he will be able to do much. The IP pipeline through Balochistan is going forward and the PA has a firm grip over politics in the country.

[Neela]

I posted this a few days ago. This is very relevant for this disussion.

When the British Empire crumbled in the mid-1950s, London replaced the cozy embrace of gunboats and imperial trading preferences with a new model: tempting the world’s hot money through lax regulation and lax enforcement. There was always a subtle balance, involving dependable British legal bedrock fiercely upholding U.K. domestic rules and laws while turning a blind eye to foreign law-breaking. It was a classic offshore-tax-haven offering that tells foreign financiers, “We won’t steal your money, but we won’t make a fuss if you steal other people’s.”

The term “tax haven” is something of a misnomer, because tax havens offer escape routes not just from taxes but potentially from any of the rules, laws, and responsibilities of other jurisdictions—whether those be taxes, criminal laws, disclosure rules, or financial regulation. Tax havens are usually about parking your money “elsewhere,” in jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, beyond the reach of your home country’s regulators and taxmen. Or you park it in London: which is why some investment bankers have called it the Guantánamo Bay of finance. “The British think they do finance well,” says Lee Sheppard, a tax and banking specialist at the U.S. trade publication TaxAnalysts. “No. They do the legal stuff well. Most of the big investment banks there are branches of foreign operations. . . . They go there because there is no regulation whatsoever.”

James Henry, a former McKinsey chief economist, watched at close quarters the recycling of petrodollar wealth into Third World loans via London’s unregulated Euro-markets, which among other things enabled Wall Street to avoid New Deal-era banking regulations. Henry saw a global private-banking network emerge, following the money, “helping Third World elites abscond with hundreds of billions in diverted loans, illicit commissions, and corrupt privatizations, and park it in London and other tax havens.”

The number beside each location provides its ranking on the Financial Secrecy Index, which is calculated based on an analysis of the area’s role in global financial markets and a scoring of its laws and regulations that facilitate criminal activities carried out not within that area but elsewhere.

It comes as a surprise to most people that the most important player in the global offshore system of tax havens is not Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, but Britain, sitting at the center of a web of British-linked tax havens, the last remnants of empire. An inner ring consists of the British Crown Dependencies—Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. Farther afield are Britain’s 14 Overseas Territories, half of them tax havens, including such offshore giants as the Caymans, the British Virgin Islands (B.V.I.), and Bermuda. Still further out, numerous British Commonwealth countries and former colonies such as Hong Kong, with deep and old links to London, continue to feed vast financial flows—clean, questionable, and dirty—into the City. The half-in, half-out relationship provides the reassuring British legal bedrock while providing enough distance to let the U.K. say “There is nothing we can do” when scandal hits.

-It is no wonder that HSBC was indicted and paid nearly $2 billion in fines for money laundering.
-The board members of HSBC walk in and out both the house of lords and the house of commons.
-Huge amounts of money _cannot_ pass through without scrutiny of senior executives and board members .

[Vayutuvan]

Tilak in India was I guess brandishing a rifle when he was struck on his head with a fatal blow.

B ji, IIRC, it is Lala Lajpat Rai (not Bal but Lal of the Lal-Bal-Pal trio) who was fatally struck by a lathi and the subsequent Bhagat Singh incident (where Bhagat Singh assassinated the wrong person). Tilak died of natural causes. That said, your point that certain of the leaders were subjected to worse treatment than the others is something to think about. It is something worth looking into more deeply.

[Vayutuvan]

It was reported a couple of years back that General Musharraf's security detail costs a few million pounds a day. I wonder how that sits with the UK populace whose tax money presumably is used for his security. It is a "strange law of the land" indeed that allows the ruling elite of the land to expend resources which are legally owned by its citizenry on a convicted criminal and fugitive from the law of another country.

[eklavya]

You on the other hand want non-violent Sikh separatists in Britain (and presumably therefore in India, Canada and elsewhere) to be systematically subject to the worst forms of human rights abuse: you are suffering from a murderous psychosis..

Ekalavya-ji,
Can you please explain Britain's inaction in the case of violent terrorists and separatists in Russia, India, Israel, and Serbia? I gave you several examples of Britain either turning a blind eye or actually encouraging the violent terrorists to act against foreign governments. Can you please inform us what prevents the British from acting against these?

nagesh, I got the Chechen example. What were the specific Indian, Israeli, and Serbian examples? As for the Russian/Chechen example, it appears to me that Britain was harbouring a terrorist; lingering Cold War animosities clouded their judgment I expect.

To answer your previous question, if India was as strong as the US, would the UK start abusing the human rights of its Sikh citizens that support Sikh separatism in India? I very much doubt it, unless the Sikh separatists started using gratuitous amounts of violence on British soil. If the British felt dependent on India for their security (as they do with the US), then the rules would probably change. Do you see India becoming a provider of security to the UK?

[sanjaykumar]

As the third worlders see in British liberal democracy a the paragon of virtue, so others see it differently.

It is most naive to believe that government is sentimental about some protesting Sikhs.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/fea ... cnum=23828

In April, after 14 years of investigation, Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens, Britain's highest-ranking police officer, released a 20-page overview of the largest single police inquiry in British history. Based on over one million pages of evidence weighing four tons, Sir John's report, known as "Stevens Three," contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.

"This is not about rogue elements within the British system," commented Alex Maskey, the Catholic lord mayor of Belfast and a member of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. "It's about a state policy sanctioned at the highest level."

Between 1969 and the IRA cease-fire of 1997, nearly 4,000 people were murdered in the course of "the Troubles," as the violent conflict in Northern Ireland is euphemistically called. The truth about many of the deaths is known. Victimsboth Catholics and Protestant, both British and Irishwere killed by paramilitary groups, including both the IRA and a number of Protestant guerilla organizations that took up arms to counteract IRA terrorism.

An avalanche of books is still hitting the market, examining how the Troubles started and who was responsible for the struggle over the rule of the six northernmost counties of Ireland which were partitioned from the Irish Republic in 1921 and incorporated into the United Kingdom. The conflict still rages between Catholic "republicans," who have sought to abolish Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, and Protestant "loyalists," who form the pro-British majority in the north.

THE "DIRTY WAR"

The latest revelations brought about by Sir John's inquiry relate to deaths involving the British state. "This is partly because apologists for paramilitary terror wish to deflect attention and blame from their own heavy and heinous responsibility for violence," said Gary Kent, a British parliamentary analyst and longtime political commentator on Northern Ireland, "but also because one should expect better standards from democratically accountable organizations such as the army and the police."

Aside from unleashing shocking and ugly revelations of official collusion, Stevens Three has set in motion a series of historically significant events that has blown the lid off of Britain's role in the 30-year "Dirty War" with the IRA in Northern Ireland.

"What Stevens has uncovered is just how dirty the Dirty War became," said Dan Keenan, the Northern Ireland news editor for the Dublin-based Irish Times. Keenan told CWR:

Everybody knows the paramilitaries fought a very dirty war. Now it's becoming clearer by the day that the British fought a very dirty war, too. The British didn't operate by due process. They allowed their agents on both sidesthose who had infiltrated the IRA and the paramilitary groupsto engage in crimes to further their own ends.

[eklavya]

You on the other hand want non-violent Sikh separatists in Britain (and presumably therefore in India, Canada and elsewhere) to be systematically subject to the worst forms of human rights abuse: you are suffering from a murderous psychosis.

How about not suffering from selective amnesia? This article was posted yesterday:

The first signs of the radicalisation of the Diaspora appeared in 1983 when a group of jihadi terrorists kidnapped Ravi Mhatre, an Indian diplomat posted in the Indian Assistant High Commission in Birmingham, and demanded the release of Maqbool Butt, the leader of the Jammu and Kashmir [Images] Liberation Front, who was then awaiting execution in Tihar jail in Delhi [Images] following his conviction on charges of murder. When India rejected their demand, the terrorists killed Mhatre and threw his body into one of the streets. This kidnapping and murder was allegedly orchestrated by Amanullah Khan, a Gilgiti from Pakistan. He was assisted by some Mirpuris. The British were uncooperative with India in the investigation and declined to hand over those involved in the kidnapping and murder to India for investigation and prosecution. By closing their eyes to the terrorist activities of the Mirpuris from their territory, they encouraged the further radicalisation of the Diaspora.

You want to explain the bolded parts?

abhishek, are you saying that the British government did not prosecute the people living in Britain who kidnapped and murdered an Indian diplomat? If so, India should break diplomatic relations with Britain. On the other hand, perhaps you could research what happened to Mohammed Riaz and Abdul Quayyam Raja.

In India on the other hand, a fellow called Yasin Malik, of the JKLF, murdered four Indian Air Force personnel, got caught, was subsequently released by the Government of India, and now openly associates with the leader of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who he travels to Pakistan to meet on his passport provided by the Government of India.

[eklavya]

You want to explain the bolded parts?

This is unfair. You can't post such questions. Such difficult questions can force BRF members to leave BRF and never come back.

The question was fair. Pity you know nothing about the case. But, hey, you got a chance to say your dialogue.

[eklavya]

^^ from the same article:

A careful examination of the details relating to the various jihadi terrorism-related cases in the UK would reveal that MI5 was intercepting the telephone conversations of these Mirpuris and other Punjabi Muslims with their friends and relatives in which they spoke of going to Pakistan for jihadi training. It did not take any action against them because it thought that they were going to wage a jihad only against the Indians and hence did not pose a threat to the British.

It turns out the British were wrong. These jihadis very much have Britain in its sights. But many countries have made this mistake: US with the Afghan Mujahideen, India with the LTTE, UK with their Pakistani origin jihadis, etc.

[abhishek_sharma]

abhishek, are you saying that the British government did not prosecute the people living in Britain who kidnapped and murdered an Indian diplomat?

Why is it difficult to read? What is mentioned in that article? I quote ". The British were uncooperative with India in the investigation and declined to hand over those involved in the kidnapping and murder to India for investigation and prosecution." Is it true or false?

On the other hand, perhaps you could research what happened to Mohammed Riaz and Abdul Quayyam Raja.

What happened to them? Why don't you enlighten me? This is what I see on Ravindra Mhatre's wiki page:

Mohammed Riaz and Abdul Quayyam Raja, then 27, were convicted of the murderer of Mhatre. The People's Justice Party (UK), supported by the Mirpuri Pakistanis in UK was formed specifically to get them released. Its original name was FRAQ - "the Free (Mohammed) Riaz and Quayyam (Raja) campaign". It later changed to "Justice for Kashmir"", then the Justice Party", before settling on its final name.[5]

Mohammad Aslam Mirza, 48, a Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) extremist, living in USA was identified in 2004, using fingerprints on the gun used to murder Mhatre, as one of the men wanted for Mhatre's murder. He had left his wife Sakina Bibi and seven children in Birmingham and left for Pakistan in 1984 [6]
Aslam moved to Pennsylvania, where he married Ann Aslam from Pottsville in 2001, and managed a Pottsville apartment complex.[7]

Mirza, a British citizen, was arrested for overstaying in the US after his visa had expired. Finger-prints revealed that he was a member of the JKLF, and was wanted for the kidnap and murder of Mr Mhatre. Mirza told the court he was not involved in the murder and said that he was appalled by the charges and had no recollection of the events of 1984 due to severe memory problems. He told the court that after the killing he had gone to Kashmir on family business.[8] The Birmingham Crown court later acquitted on Dec. 4, 2005 Mohammad Aslam Mirza from three charges — murder, kidnapping and the false imprisonment of Ravindra Mhatre.

How did Mirza manage to reach US? Thoughts?

In India on the other hand, a fellow called Yasin Malik, of the JKLF, murdered four Indian Air Force personnel, got caught, was subsequently released by the Government of India,...

He was punished, but I agree that he should have been hanged. Does that imply that UK should not hand over the people who killed an Indian diplomat? No. I thought we were discussing British policies. Why bring in irrelevant stuff here?

[abhishek_sharma]

>> India with the LTTE

Now, you have changed your strategy. Instead of claiming that the British were only allowing peaceful protests, you have switched to an == argument. Hence the references to Yasin Malik and LTTE.

Is it difficult for you to understand that situation in Jaffna was different from what was happening in J&K and Punjab? Can you see the difference? Or do we need to continue this painful discussion for a few more hours?

[eklavya]

As the third worlders see in British liberal democracy a the paragon of virtue, so others see it differently.

It is most naive to believe that government is sentimental about some protesting Sikhs.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/fea ... cnum=23828

In April, after 14 years of investigation, Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens, Britain's highest-ranking police officer, released a 20-page overview of the largest single police inquiry in British history. Based on over one million pages of evidence weighing four tons, Sir John's report, known as "Stevens Three," contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.

"This is not about rogue elements within the British system," commented Alex Maskey, the Catholic lord mayor of Belfast and a member of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. "It's about a state policy sanctioned at the highest level."

Between 1969 and the IRA cease-fire of 1997, nearly 4,000 people were murdered in the course of "the Troubles," as the violent conflict in Northern Ireland is euphemistically called. The truth about many of the deaths is known. Victimsboth Catholics and Protestant, both British and Irishwere killed by paramilitary groups, including both the IRA and a number of Protestant guerilla organizations that took up arms to counteract IRA terrorism.

An avalanche of books is still hitting the market, examining how the Troubles started and who was responsible for the struggle over the rule of the six northernmost counties of Ireland which were partitioned from the Irish Republic in 1921 and incorporated into the United Kingdom. The conflict still rages between Catholic "republicans," who have sought to abolish Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, and Protestant "loyalists," who form the pro-British majority in the north.

THE "DIRTY WAR"

The latest revelations brought about by Sir John's inquiry relate to deaths involving the British state. "This is partly because apologists for paramilitary terror wish to deflect attention and blame from their own heavy and heinous responsibility for violence," said Gary Kent, a British parliamentary analyst and longtime political commentator on Northern Ireland, "but also because one should expect better standards from democratically accountable organizations such as the army and the police."

Aside from unleashing shocking and ugly revelations of official collusion, Stevens Three has set in motion a series of historically significant events that has blown the lid off of Britain's role in the 30-year "Dirty War" with the IRA in Northern Ireland.

"What Stevens has uncovered is just how dirty the Dirty War became," said Dan Keenan, the Northern Ireland news editor for the Dublin-based Irish Times. Keenan told CWR:

Everybody knows the paramilitaries fought a very dirty war. Now it's becoming clearer by the day that the British fought a very dirty war, too. The British didn't operate by due process. They allowed their agents on both sidesthose who had infiltrated the IRA and the paramilitary groupsto engage in crimes to further their own ends.

The British are not "sentimental" (as you put it) about the Sikhs or the Indian state, and therefore no one in their right mind would expect the British state to fight a Dirty War against its Sikh citizens for the benefit of the Indian state. There are many things, within the law, that perhaps the British government could do; but brihaspati has rather queered the pitch for himself by using the Troubles as the yardstick for British cooperation on this matter.

[eklavya]

abhishek, are you saying that the British government did not prosecute the people living in Britain who kidnapped and murdered an Indian diplomat?

Why is it difficult to read? What is mentioned in that article? I quote ". The British were uncooperative with India in the investigation and declined to hand over those involved in the kidnapping and murder to India for investigation and prosecution." Is it true or false?

On the other hand, perhaps you could research what happened to Mohammed Riaz and Abdul Quayyam Raja.

What happened to them? Why don't you enlighten me? This is what I see on Ravindra Mhatre's wiki page:

Mohammed Riaz and Abdul Quayyam Raja, then 27, were convicted of the murderer of Mhatre. The People's Justice Party (UK), supported by the Mirpuri Pakistanis in UK was formed specifically to get them released. Its original name was FRAQ - "the Free (Mohammed) Riaz and Quayyam (Raja) campaign". It later changed to "Justice for Kashmir"", then the Justice Party", before settling on its final name.[5]

Mohammad Aslam Mirza, 48, a Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) extremist, living in USA was identified in 2004, using fingerprints on the gun used to murder Mhatre, as one of the men wanted for Mhatre's murder. He had left his wife Sakina Bibi and seven children in Birmingham and left for Pakistan in 1984 [6]
Aslam moved to Pennsylvania, where he married Ann Aslam from Pottsville in 2001, and managed a Pottsville apartment complex.[7]

Mirza, a British citizen, was arrested for overstaying in the US after his visa had expired. Finger-prints revealed that he was a member of the JKLF, and was wanted for the kidnap and murder of Mr Mhatre. Mirza told the court he was not involved in the murder and said that he was appalled by the charges and had no recollection of the events of 1984 due to severe memory problems. He told the court that after the killing he had gone to Kashmir on family business.[8] The Birmingham Crown court later acquitted on Dec. 4, 2005 Mohammad Aslam Mirza from three charges — murder, kidnapping and the false imprisonment of Ravindra Mhatre.

How did Mirza manage to reach US? Thoughts?

In India on the other hand, a fellow called Yasin Malik, of the JKLF, murdered four Indian Air Force personnel, got caught, was subsequently released by the Government of India,...

He was punished, but I agree that he should have been hanged. Does that imply that UK should not hand over the people who killed an Indian diplomat? No. I thought we were discussing British policies. Why bring in irrelevant stuff here?

Mhatre was killed in Britain by British citizens and they faced British justice. Why don't you tell me under what provision of British law or India-UK treaty the UK courts would have handed over the killers to Indian jurisdiction. In this case, why did the Indian government not apply to the British courts for extradition?

JKLF terrorists who committed murders in India are walking free in India, but to you that is not relevant. JKLF terrorists who committed murders in the UK were convicted and imprisoned in the UK. You work out what's relevant.

[brihaspati]

matrimc ji,
Apologies. Yes it should have been Rai.

[brihaspati]

Yes JKLF terrorists with violent crime on record, walking around freely in India - should not be allowed. Both Congress and non-Congress govs have allowed such things. Does that justify similar terrorists or their supporters being maintained freely in their activities in UK against India?

Or are we saying that there is a deeper reason behind both govs allowing them to roam freely? That there is coordinated behaviour between the two govs on this? Allowing such free roaming by one gov justifies the free roaming being allowed by the other?

[brihaspati]

http://www.globalresearch.ca/london-7-7 ... igence/782

A British citizen named Haroon Rashid Aswat, living in Lusaka, Zambia is wanted for questioning in relation to the 7/7 London bomb attacks.

Haroon Rashid Aswat comes from the same town in West Yorkshire, Dewsbury, where three of the alleged bombers lived. “He is suspected of visiting the bombers in the weeks before the attacks.” (New Republic, 8 August 2005).

“Scotland Yard declined to shed any light on claims Mr Aswat was the possible mastermind of the July 7 attacks.”

Haroon Rachid Aswat is said to have played a central role in the London attacks:

“Cell phone records show around 20 calls between him and the 7/7 gang, leading right up to those attacks, which were exactly three weeks ago.” (Fox News, 28 July 2005)

Links to British Intelligence?

The same source (Fox News) which presents Aswat as the “mastermind”, also points to Aswat’s relationship to British and US intelligence, through a British based Islamic organization Al-Muhajiroun.

In an interview with Fox News (29 July 2005), intelligence expert John Loftus revealed that Haroon Rashid Aswat had connections to the British Secret Service MI-6 (emphasis added): ”the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI-6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him… “

The Loftus interview suggests that the suspect was being used either as an informer or a “double agent”:

MIKE JERRICK [FOX NEWS]: John Loftus is a terrorism expert and a former prosecutor for the Justice Department. John, good to see you again. So real quickly here, have you heard anything about this Osman Hussain who was just picked up in Rome? You know that name at all?

JOHN LOFTUS: Yeah, all these guys should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.

JERRICK: So a couple of them now have Somali connections?

LOFTUS: Yeah, it was not unusual. Somalia, Eritrea, the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat.

JERRICK: Aswat, who they picked up.

LOFTUS: Right, Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London.

JERRICK: On 7/7 and 7/21, this is the guy we think.

LOFTUS: This is the guy, and what’s really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him. And this has been a real source of contention between the CIA, the Justice Department, and Britain.

JERRICK: MI6 has been hiding him. Are you saying that he has been working for them?

LOFTUS: Oh I’m not saying it. This is what the Muslim sheik said in an interview in a British newspaper back in 2001.

JERRICK: So he’s a double agent, or was?

LOFTUS: He’s a double agent.

JERRICK: So he’s working for the Brits to try to give them information about Al-Qaeda, but in reality he’s still an Al-Qaeda operative.

LOFTUS: Yeah. The CIA and the Israelis all accused MI 6 of letting all these terrorists live in London not because they’re getting Al-Qaeda information, but for appeasement. It was one of those you leave us alone, we leave you alone kind of things.

JERRICK: Well we left him alone too long then.

LOFTUS: Absolutely. Now we knew about this guy Aswat. Back in 1999 he came to America. The Justice Department wanted to indict him in Seattle because him and his buddy were trying to set up a terrorist training school in Oregon.

JERRICK: So they indicted his buddy, right? But why didn’t they indict him?

LOFTUS: Well it comes out, we’ve just learned that the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat.

JERRICK: Hello? Now hold on, why?

LOFTUS: Well, apparently Aswat was working for British intelligence. Now Aswat’s boss, the one-armed Captain Hook, he gets indicted two years later. So the guy above him and below him get indicted, but not Aswat. Now there’s a split of opinion within US intelligence. Some people say that the British intelligence fibbed to us. They told us that Aswat was dead, and that’s why the New York group dropped the case. That’s not what most of the Justice Department thinks. They think that it was just again covering up for this very publicly affiliated guy with Al-Muhajiroun. He was a British intelligence plant. So all of a sudden he disappears. He’s in South Africa. We think he’s dead; we don’t know he’s down there. Last month the South African Secret Service come across the guy. He’s alive.

JERRICK: Yeah, now the CIA says, oh he’s alive. Our CIA says OK let’s arrest him. But the Brits say no again?

LOTFUS: The Brits say no. Now at this point, two weeks ago, the Brits know that the CIA wants to get a hold of Haroon. So what happens? He takes off again, goes right to London. He isn’t arrested when he lands, he isn’t arrested when he leaves.

JERRICK: Even though he’s on a watch list.

LOFTUS: He’s on the watch list.The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence. He was a wanted man.

JERRICK: And then takes off the day before the bombings, I understand it–

LOFTUS: And goes to Pakistan.

JERRICK: And Pakistan, they jail him.

LOFTUS: The Pakistanis arrest him. They jail him. He’s released within 24 hours. Back to Southern Africa, goes to Zimbabwe and is arrested in Zambia. Now the US–

JERRICK: Trying to get across the–

LOFTUS: –we’re trying to get our hands on this guy.

JERRICK: John, hang around. I have so many questions now.

LOFTUS: Oh, this is a bad one….

(Fox News, 29 July 2005, emphasis added)

The interview conveys the impression that there were “disagreements” between American, British and Israeli intelligence officials on how to handle the matter. It also suggests that “the Brits” might have misled their US intelligence counterpart.

More substantively, what this interview reveals is something which news coverage on the London 7/7 attacks has carefully ignored, namely the longstanding relationship of Western intelligence agencies to a number of Islamic organizations. In this specific case we are dealing with a British based organization Al-Muhajiroun.

Amply confirmed by official documents, Al Qaeda was a creation of the US intelligence apparatus. Both the CIA and its British counterpart MI-6 are known to have links to Al Qaeda operatives.

The Kosovo Connection

In the Balkans in the 1990s, both US, British and German intelligence (BND) were involved in training the Kosocvo Liberation Army (KLA), which was also being supported by Al Qaeda.

Mujahideen mercenaries from the Middle East and Central Asia were recruited to fight in the ranks of the KLA in 1998-99, largely supporting NATO’s war effort.

According to a report published in 1999, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had approached MI-6 to arrange a training program for the KLA:

“MI-6 then sub-contracted the operation to two British security companies, who in turn approached a number of former members of the (22 SAS) regiment. Lists were then drawn up of weapons and equipment needed by the KLA.” While these covert operations were continuing, serving members of 22 SAS Regiment, mostly from the unit’s D Squadron, were first deployed in Kosovo before the beginning of the bombing campaign in March [1999].(The Scotsman, Edinburgh, 29 August 1999).

While British SAS Special Forces in bases in Northern Albania were training the KLA, military instructors from Turkey and Afghanistan, financed by the “Islamic jihad”, were collaborating in training the KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics .(“Kosovo in Crisis”, http://www.truthinmedia.org/, 2 April 1999).”Bin Laden had visited Albania himself. He was one of several fundamentalist groups that had sent units to fight in Kosovo.… Bin Laden is believed to have established an operation in Albania in 1994. ( Sunday Times, 29 Nov 1998)

Haroon Rachid Aswat belonged to Al Muhajiroun, which was involved in the recruitment of Mujahideen in Britain. The latter were also sent to Kosovo to fight in the KLA in support of the NATO-US led war: .

LOFTUS: …..But the US was used by Al-Muhajiroun for training of people to send to Kosovo. What ties all these cells together was, back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That’s when Al-Muhajiroun got started.

IJAZ: Which is by the way why we know so much about them right now.

LOFTUS: Yes, I’m afraid so. The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook, the head of Al-Muhajiroun, he sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that’s how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo, Haroon was 31 years old, he came on about 1995.

The Pakistan Connection

In the last couple of weeks, the London 7/7 police investigation has focussed on a ”Pakistani connection”: the alleged British bombers are said to have visited Pakistan. While in Pakistan, they allegedly had contacts with several Islamic organizations, including a madrassa (coranic school) controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. They allegedly also had contacts with the two main Kashmir rebel groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba. Two of the British bombers, Khan and Tanweer, were allegedly “associated with Jaish -e-Mohammed or one of its splinter groups” (India Today, 1 August 2005):

“In Pakistan, [British] police are painstakingly analyzing the mobile phone records of the two 7/7 suspects who visited the country. While officials stress that it is a tedious process, it has already yielded the name of at least one significant suspect: Masoud Azhar, leader of the Jaish -e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed). (Christian Science Monitor, 1 August, 2005).

Both Jaish and Lashkar are said to have links to Al Qaeda.

The Role Of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence
In their endeavours to uncover these various links to Pakistan based terrorist organizations, British police investigators sought the collaboration of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI).

While collaborating in the British investigation, Pakistan’s Military Intelligence is known to have actively supported and financed the Kasmir rebel groups, which allegedly had contacts with the London bombers.

The ISI was instrumental in the creation of the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM) in the late 1980s. (See K. Subrahmanyam, “Pakistan is Pursuing Asian Goals”, India Abroad, 3 November 1995). It has also supported the other two main Pakistan-based Kashmir rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba, (Army of the Pure) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Mohammed), which claimed responsibility for the attacks on the Indian parliament in October 2001.

See Council on Foreign Relations, “Terrorism: Questions and Answers, Harakat ul-Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad”, http://www.terrorismanswers.com/groups/harakat2.html , Washington 2002.)

Moreover, according to intelligence sources and the FBI, the ISI also provided support to the alleged 9/11 hijackers.
(See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111A.html )

Concluding remarks

The Fox News report raises some very serious considerations. Haroon Rachid Aswat was reportedly in London for two weeks before the July 7 attacks, “fleeing just before the explosions”.

If Haroon Rashid Aswat had been working for MI-6, as suggested by intelligence analyst John Loftus, his movements and whereabouts, including his contacts with the alleged Yorkshire bombers, might have been known to British intelligence. The nature of Haroon Rachid Aswat’s links to Western intelligence agencies inevitably has a bearing on the conduct of the police investigation. The broader role of Al-Muhajiroun since its creation in the 1990s, as well as its alleged links to MI-6 requires careful review.

Pakistan’s ISI should not, for obvious reasons, be involved in the police investigation. In fact, Pakistan’s ISI should be the object of the investigation in view of its documented links to the terror network, including Al Qaeda.


Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica and is the author of America’s “War on Terrorism” , Second Edition, 2005, forthcoming.

[eklavya]

>> India with the LTTE

Now, you have changed your strategy. Instead of claiming that the British were only allowing peaceful protests, you have switched to an == argument. Hence the references to Yasin Malik and LTTE.

Is it difficult for you to understand that situation in Jaffna was different from what was happening in J&K and Punjab? Can you see the difference? Or do we need to continue this painful discussion for a few more hours?

So, what happened to the situation in Jaffna in 2009? Was the situation so wonderful for the Tamil civilians that there was no longer any need or moral justification (which previously did exist: you are clearly suggesting) for India to sponsor an organisation like the LTTE?

Come to think of it, how wonderful was the situation for the Sikhs in Delhi after Indira Gandhi was assasinated in 1984? If the US or the UK had been a 82% Sikh majority state, how do you think they would have reacted to the slaughter.

[sanjaykumar]

Here is how Britain has followed its democratic conscience and propa due process:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ap ... tanamo-bay

They were probably not Anglican.

Several British nationals and residents were detained in Cuba for years despite the US authorities knowing they had no connection with al-Qaida or the Taliban, or otherwise posed no security risk, the Guantánamo files show.

After being rendered to the prison, a number of British prisoners gave accounts of fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Interrogation of some of them provided the US authorities with a detailed picture of jihadist networks, in north London in particular. However, even those prisoners deemed to pose no risk remained locked up. Some were held because their captors believed they could yet give up useful information; others apparently because the camp authorities were unable to admit they should have been released.

[abhishek_sharma]

Why don't you tell me under what provision of British law or India-UK treaty the UK courts would have handed over the killers to Indian jurisdiction. In this case, why did the Indian government not apply to the British courts for extradition?

And what under extradition treaty do western countries want Afghanistan/Pakistan to hand over Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders to them? Afghanistan was bombed (by countries including UK) because OBL was not handed over to them. Why? Maybe OBL could have faced justice in a Sharia court in Afghanistan. Actually Taliban offered exactly that. Did UK apply to an Afghan court for OBL's extradition? Why not? It appears that people remember extradition-related laws selectively. It is a sign of very high levels of honesty.

Mhatre was killed in Britain by British citizens and they faced British justice.

What justice did they face? provide link.

[brihaspati]

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2010/3 ... ictim.html

Once the Soviets moved out of Afghanistan in 1989, and the United States untangled itself from the "mess" it had helped create in Afghanistan, the British and the Saudis moved in to gain control of the terrorists, who were then engaged to force India to give up the Indian-part of Jammu and Kashmir, particularly the Kashmir valley. While the British objective was to eventually bring about an independent Kashmir, independent of both India and Pakistan, the Saudi objective was to spread Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's state religion.

British-Saudi Takeover of Pakistani Terrorists

It is evident that Britain, when it "granted" independence, did not want India to have any direct land links to Afghanistan, Russia, or Iran. In the North, when the dispute over the status of J&K arose, India's access to the North was blocked as well. The Kashmir dispute, the handiwork of London, revealed what the British were looking for.

The MI6 mouthpiece, and link to the British colonial establishment, Eric Lubbock (Lord Avebury), was the first Member of Parliament to publicly support the Kashmiri secessionist movement. In an address to a secessionist group, JKLF (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front), conference in London, in 1991, he also announced his support for an armed struggle, according to The Dawn of Karachi. In a March 1995 issue of the JKLF's Kashmir Report, Lubbock condemned Indian policy in Kashmir as equivalent to what would have occurred if "Britain had been invaded in 1940," and suffered Nazi occupation.

Although Lord Avebury is not much heard from nowadays, the British push for an independent Kashmir remains in place. Take, for instance, the case of David Miliband, the protégé of former British Premier Tony Blair. Soon after the LeT terrorist attack on Mumbai on Nov. 26, 2008, Miliband, the then-British Foreign Secretary, who visited India soon after, tried to link the LeT attack to the Kashmir issue. Miliband knew well that LeT has no Kashmiri representation; it is manned by the Punjabis and British Muslims, and controlled by the Pakistani ISI, in conjunction with MI6.

On July 4, 2009, the London Times Online posted a revealing article, "British Islamists plot against Pakistan," according to which: "British militants are pushing for the overthrow of the Pakistani state. Followers of the fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrir have called for a 'bloodless military coup' in Islamabad, and the creation of the caliphate in which strict Islamic laws would be rigorously enforced. At Lahore's Superior College, where Muqeem has set up a Hizb ut-Tahrir student group, he said the organization's aim was to subject Muslim and western countries to Islamic rule under sharia law, 'by force' if necessary."

The article also stated that Abdul Muqeem, who is on the faculty at the London School of Economics, said Islamic rule would be spread through "indoctrination" and by "military means," if non-Muslim countries refused to bow to it. "Waging war" would be part of the caliphate's foreign policy. One of HuT's strategies in Pakistan is to influence military officers, he revealed. "In 2003, four army officers were arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of being linked to extremist groups, although the groups and men have not been named. A Hizb ut-Tahrir insider at the time claims they were recruited by the organization's 'Pakistan team' while training at Sandhurst."

HuT is a terrorist outfit, born, nurtured, and protected in Britain. Like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka and the Mirpuri terrorists demanding an independent Kashmir, HuT is also controlled and used by Her Majesty's Service to assassinate leaders and destabilize nations. HuT is banned in Russia, Germany, and many other nations because of its terrorist activities. In Britain, from time to time, questions have been raised about its terrorist activities, but Blair, earlier, and later, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, made clear that HuT is to be given a free hand.
Britain's 'Fair-Play' Crowd Active Again

"We must do all we can to make it a top priority to solve the world's oldest unresolved dispute of Jammu and Kashmir," MP Kaufman said, adding that Britain needed to do "much more" to put it high on the international agenda. He dismissed the Indian criticism of Miliband's remarks about Kashmir as unacceptable, and warned that not paying serious attention to a resolution of the Kashmir conflict would be a strategic error.

Last July, the head of the British ruling Conservative Party and cabinet minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi was in Mirpur. In the presence of the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, Adam Thomson, among others, Warsi said Britain would play its due role to ensure an early resolution of the Kashmir dispute. On that occasion, top Kashmiri leaders, including Sardar Attique and Muhammad Yasin, called upon Britain to exert every possible pressure on India for the early resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

On Sept. 8, 2010, Kashmir National Party (KNP) leaders Abbas Butt and Dr. Shabir Choudhry had a detailed meeting with senior officials responsible for issues related to Kashmir and South Asia at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Issues discussed by the Kashmiri leaders on that occasion included human rights abuses, terrorism, extremism, communalism, and militant infiltration. They also emphasized that there was no military solution to the Kashmir dispute, and that it was not a religious or a bilateral dispute. The dispute has to be resolved by a peace process, and by making people of Jammu and Kashmir part of the process. In a letter to the British Foreign Secretary William Hague, the KNP sought British help on self-determination and ended saying: "Sir, we believe Britain still has an important role to play in the matter of Kashmir; and we hope that you will take some positive steps to help resolve the Kashmir dispute."

Last August, in light of the fact that the U.S. President is scheduled to visit India in November, 11 members of a group of British parliamentarians, headed by the chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Kashmir (APPG-K), Lord Ahmed of Rotherham, sent a letter to Obama seeking urgent U.S. intervention in Kashmir. The letter said: "Since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and India's subsequent refusal to adhere to the United Nations Security Council Resolution relating to self-determination of Kashmiris, citizens of Jammu and Kashmir have suffered grave human rights abuses.

"Kashmiris are denied the right to freedom of speech, assembly and movement. Kashmiris are denied basic rights guaranteed to other citizens of India as a democratic republic. As such, India has made Kashmir a permanent state of exception where citizens are treated as second class to other Indians."

[abhishek_sharma]

So, what happened to the situation in Jaffna in 2009? Was the situation so wonderful for the Tamil civilians that ...

No, the situation was not wonderful. But eliminating LTTE was considered more important. Many people disagree but it is a quite reasonable point. Is that too difficult to understand?

Come to think of it, how wonderful was the situation for the Sikhs in Delhi after Indira Gandhi was assasinated in 1984? If the US or the UK had been a 82% Sikh majority state, how do you think they would have reacted to the slaughter.

The situation was bad for a few days. Sikhs in India have received much better treatment than what Americans have done to their African-American citizens (or Native Americans citizens, also remember the support of Western countries to Apartheid in SA). Imagine if India had been 82% African, how do you think they would have reacted to decades of discrimination?

[sanjaykumar]

The last nig*er was lynched in the US South in the 1960s (a practice Congress pointedly did not pass strictures on for over a century).

What if a black man had done something similar as what was does to Indira Gandhi?
What if a Muslim does the same?

Any thoughts?

[sanjaykumar]

Note to self: Got to stop these hot-poker-in-the-a$$ retorts

[Shanmukh]

Ekalavya-ji,
Can you please explain Britain's inaction in the case of violent terrorists and separatists in Russia, India, Israel, and Serbia? I gave you several examples of Britain either turning a blind eye or actually encouraging the violent terrorists to act against foreign governments. Can you please inform us what prevents the British from acting against these?

nagesh, I got the Chechen example. What were the specific Indian, Israeli, and Serbian examples? As for the Russian/Chechen example, it appears to me that Britain was harbouring a terrorist; lingering Cold War animosities clouded their judgment I expect.

So many Indian examples have been quoted by the others that I don't think I should even start adding more.

Here is one example of an anti-Israeli violence being condoned by the British.

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/35706 ... ng-summing

The judge accepted that since it was Israel that was the (ultimate) recipient of the violence against the EDO, it was perfectly acceptable. In his summing up, the judge also advocated awarding the George Cross Medal to one of the vandals. In short, he authorised a mini British Kristallnacht. The British MP Caroline Lucas was ecstatic about the damage done and the unscathed escape of the perpetrators.

The British intelligence links with the al-Muhajiroun is well documented. Until the group started targeting Britain, the British were absolutely in bed with this group. Among their various activities were recruiting volunteers with British passports for the Kosovo Liberation Army (aided by British Intelligence), bombing Mike's cafe in Tel Aviv (Asif Hanif), attacking Indian barracks, etc. Only when the group turned against the British did they actually act against it.

To answer your previous question, if India was as strong as the US, would the UK start abusing the human rights of its Sikh citizens that support Sikh separatism in India? I very much doubt it, unless the Sikh separatists started using gratuitous amounts of violence on British soil. If the British felt dependent on India for their security (as they do with the US), then the rules would probably change. Do you see India becoming a provider of security to the UK?

In other words, the whole harangue about human rights, laws and everything else is a sham, only meant to be enforced against those countries that are not vital to British interests. It means nothing when British interests are concerned. Laws are meant to be enforced arbitrarily when Britain has no interest in preventing terrorism against the targeted countries. Is that it?

[Shanmukh]

Ekalavya-ji,
Here is another - Britain encouraging nuclear proliferation by Pakistanis by handing out remarkably lenient sentences.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.js ... t_norman_1

[Sanku]

Tilak in India was I guess brandishing a rifle when he was struck on his head with a fatal blow.

B ji, IIRC, it is Lala Lajpat Rai (not Bal but Lal of the Lal-Bal-Pal trio) who was fatally struck by a lathi and the subsequent Bhagat Singh incident (where Bhagat Singh assassinated the wrong person). Tilak died of natural causes. That said, your point that certain of the leaders were subjected to worse treatment than the others is something to think about. It is something worth looking into more deeply.

However, Tilak's health did suffer greatly due to his exile and harsh treatment. His death was no doubt accelerated because of the same.

[Sanku]

Lisa>> Brihaspatiji,

Lets make this simple. One word answer.

Is Separatism legal or illegal in the United Kingdom?

Remember this is a one word answer question!

Improperly framed question.

Inconvenient, for you, perhaps, but not improper. Your response exposes your discomfort.[/quote]

Yes, I am uncomfortable at that, just as I would be uncomfortable with shit lying around in my living space, good catch. However the question is still improperly framed.

For the question to be meaningful, one would have to define, what is meant by separatism, against who, and under what conditions, the answer would also be more than one word.

The general answer to the vague question is "it depends".

You cant have "is sucking your thumb good or bad" type of question when discussing centuries of institutionalized duplicitous behavior by a power whose chief source of live-hood has been resource extraction through force.

[rohitvats]

All this talk of letter of law and due process is nothing but a sham used to convince people gullible enough to be fooled with these arguments. The moment where self interest being hurt is even perceived, the entire might of the empire is hurled at the foe.

The fact of the matter is that Britain has nurtured both Khalistanis and Islamic fundamentalists to further their agenda against India. All this nonsense of law this and that is complete hogwash.

[eklavya]

Ekalavya-ji,
Here is another - Britain encouraging nuclear proliferation by Pakistanis by handing out remarkably lenient sentences.

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.js ... t_norman_1

nagesh, the creation of Pakistan itself by the British is a crime against humanity.

When we very rightly ask the British to get tough on supporters of violent Sikh separatism (and my preference would be for them to use legal methods), violent Sikh separatism is being condoned within India by prominent people and organisations, with no action taken by the government authorities, other than a few empty words:

Bhindranwale's portrait installed in Golden Temple

PTI Nov 29, 2007, 09.33pm IST

AMRITSAR: In a controversial move, Punjab's ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-controlled SGPC on Thursday installed a portrait of slain Khalistan militant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in the Golden Temple museum here.

The installation ceremony was attended by the son of the former Damdami Taksal head Isher Singh, SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar, Akal Takht jathedar Joginder Singh Vedanti and current Taksal chief Baba Harnam Singh Dhuma among others.

'Kirtans' (hymns) were sung and prayers offered as Bhindranwale's portrait was placed alongside paintings dating to the 15th century in the Sikh heritage museum.

Bowing to the demands of radicals within the body, Makkar had announced installing the portrait of the Khalistan Commando Force chief in the museum soon after being elected SGPC chief for a third consecutive term last week.

The KCF chief was killed during the 'Operation Bluestar' in June 1984 to flush out militants holed up inside the Golden Temple.

[eklavya]

Yes, I am uncomfortable at that, just as I would be uncomfortable with shit lying around in my living space, good catch. However the question is still improperly framed.

For the question to be meaningful, one would have to define, what is meant by separatism, against who, and under what conditions, the answer would also be more than one word.

As you are having difficulties in understanding what "separatism" means, I expect the shit has migrated through some super-natural process out of the living space and into your organs meant for storing information and processing thought, and is now appearing as posts on the forum.

[eklavya]

The fact of the matter is that Britain has nurtured both Khalistanis and Islamic fundamentalists to further their agenda against India.

Evidence please Rohit.

[eklavya]

So, what happened to the situation in Jaffna in 2009? Was the situation so wonderful for the Tamil civilians that ...

No, the situation was not wonderful. But eliminating LTTE was considered more important. Many people disagree but it is a quite reasonable point. Is that too difficult to understand?

Actually I had understood with my original post, which said that India made a mistake by sponsoring the LTTE in the 1980s, and several hundred dead soldiers and a dead ex-PM later, learned from its mistake. In the same way, the US made a mistake by sponsoring the pan-Islamic jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and the British made a mistake by tolerating jihadis going to Pakistan to receive terrorist training.

[Sanku]

Yes, I am uncomfortable at that, just as I would be uncomfortable with shit lying around in my living space, good catch. However the question is still improperly framed.

For the question to be meaningful, one would have to define, what is meant by separatism, against who, and under what conditions, the answer would also be more than one word.

As you are having difficulties in understanding what "separatism" means, I expect the shit has migrated through some super-natural process out of the living space and into your organs meant for storing information and processing thought, and is now appearing as posts on the forum.

So a recommendation for not posting vauge statements, will now be responded with sheer garbage. The tolerance on BRF for personal attacks by those who are beaten in debate has gone up significantly.

If you have any intentions of not doing your favorite pass time of calling names to people whose facts you can not counter -- perhaps we can see some remotely informed posts.

Or at least even trying to do so?

[Neela]

There is always the option of ignoring the proverbial "horse"!

[eklavya]

So a recommendation for not posting vauge statements, will now be responded with sheer garbage. The tolerance on BRF for personal attacks by those who are beaten in debate has gone up significantly.

If you have any intentions of not doing your favorite pass time of calling names to people whose facts you can not counter -- perhaps we can see some remotely informed posts.

Or at least even trying to do so?

I did not see you post any facts or information, however generously defined. Only saw you talking about "shit". But it seems you only like your own "shit" talk.