The 'Disappeared'

The policy of “disappearances” is the cornerstone of all counter-revolutionary terror inflicted by state/military and para-military forces. It is the core of inflicting terror and fear in society at large – by ‘disappearing’ not only prominent politicized types, but also, as in places like Argentina (30 000), El Salvador (700), Iran (under the Shah) and Kashmir (10 000), whole generations of youth who even have the potential of being “infected” by the “virus” that calls for social change and an end to oppression and oligarchy.

Rather than simply framing the issue as one of targeting the most well-known political opposition activists disappearances are central to the strategy of simply terrorizing society at large firstly into submission and secondly into a state of utter despair and gloom that makes them think ten times about taking any stand for social change.

The most inspiring organisation that has emerged around the illegal abductions is the, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Its members are the Argentine women whose children ‘disappeared’ during the Junta’s war between 1976 and 1983. These mothers have been protesting for more than 30 years and they have congregated at the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday and even today they continue to fight for their right to be re-united with their abducted children. 

The latest manifestation of this phenomena are the extraordinary renditions that the US has been carrying out globally. Individuals are picked up off the streets of the US , UK , South Africa, Pakistan , Sudan etc and flown to undisclosed detention centres in countries that are notorious for their torture methods. The well-known centres of course being Guantanamo, Baghram and Abu Ghraib however there are many more of these centres in the Arab world, North Africa and Pakistan and their locations have been classified.

The reality is that not enough is being done to ensure that the US is answerable for those it 'disappears' and  the criteria of ‘suspicion of terror’ that is used to arrest individuals is so vague and ridiculous that one can even be arrested for stopping to tie their shoelaces too close to a US embassy.

Mongolian Women

 

 

(Photo Source : Google)

Remembering the Moghuls...

(Picture Source:google)

Thou art in the Ka'ba at Mecca,
as well as in the (Hindu) temple of Somnath.
Thou art in the monastery,
as well as the tavern.
Thou art at the same time the light and the moth,
The wine and the cup,
The sage and the fool,

The friend and the stranger.

The rose and the nightingale.

(From Dara Shikoh's treatise on Sufism, The Compass of Truth)

Dara Shikoh (March 20, 1615 – August 30, 1659) was the eldest son and heir  apparent of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal ( of Taj Mahal fame).He came to believe in the essential unity of Hinduism and Islam. and was led to this conclusion by another Sufi saint, Mullah Shah Badakshani. He had the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads translated into Persian as The Mysteries of Mysteries, and wrote a comparative study of Hinduism and Islam, The Mingling of Two Oceans.

A Pakistani Girl From The Cholistan Desert

(Picture Source: Google)

The Cholistan Desert of Pakistan covers an area of 26,300 km². It adjoins the Thar Desert extending over to Sindh  and into India. The word Cholistan is derived from the Turkish word Chol, which means Desert. The people of Cholistan lead a semi-nomadic life, moving from one place to another in search of water and fodder for their animals.

*(This one is for the fans from Bahawalpur)

State Of Recognition

Palestinians have not historically lacked legal instruments to challenge Israel [EPA]
What is at stake in Barack Obama's vehement refusal to recognise Palestine as a mini-state with a disfigured geography and no sovereignty, and his urging the world community not to recognise it while threatening the Palestinians with retribution? What is the relationship between Obama's refusal to recognise Palestine and his insistence on recognising Israel's right to be a "Jewish state" and his demand that the Palestinians and Arab countries follow suit?

It is important to stress at the outset that whether the UN grants the Palestinian Authority (PA) the government of a state under occupation and observer status as a state or refuses to do so, either outcome will be in the interest of Israel. For the only game in town has always been Israel's interests, and it is clear that whatever strategy garners international support, with or without US and Israeli approval, must guarantee Israeli interests a priori. The UN vote is a case in point.

Possible outcomes

Let us consider the two possible outcomes of the vote and how they will advance Israeli interests:

The ongoing Arab uprisings have raised Palestinian expectations about the necessity of ending the occupation and have challenged the modus vivendi the PA has with Israel. Furthermore, with the increase in Palestinian grass-roots activism to resist the Israeli occupation, the PA has decided to shift the Palestinian struggle from popular mobilisation it will not be able to control, and which it fears could topple it, to the international legal arena. The PA hopes that this shift from the popular to the juridical will demobilise Palestinian political energies and displace them onto an arena that is less threatening to the survival of the PA itself.

The PA feels abandoned by the US which assigned it the role of collaborator with the Israeli occupation, and feels frozen in a "peace process" that does not seek an end goal. PA politicians opted for the UN vote to force the hand of the Americans and the Israelis, in the hope that a positive vote will grant the PA more political power and leverage to maximise its domination of the West Bank (but not East Jerusalem or Gaza, which neither Israel nor Hamas respectively are willing to concede to the PA). Were the UN to grant the PA its wish and admit it as a member state with observer status, then, the PA argues, it would be able to force Israel in international fora to cease its violations of the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions, and numerous international agreements. The PA could then challenge Israel internationally using legal instruments only available to member states to force it to grant it "independence". What worries the Israelis most is that, were Palestine to become a member state, it would be able to legally challenge Israel.



If the UN vote passes, the PLO will cease to represent the Palestinian people [EPA]

This logic is faulty, though, because the Palestinians have not historically lacked legal instruments to challenge Israel. On the contrary, international instruments have been activated against Israel since 1948 by the UN's numerous resolutions in the General Assembly as well as in the Security Council, not to mention the more recent use of the International Court of Justice in the case of the Apartheid Wall. The problem has never been the Palestinians' ability or inability to marshal international law or legal instruments to their side. Instead, the problem is that the US blocks international law's jurisdiction from being applied to Israel through its veto power. The US uses threats and protective measures to shield the recalcitrant pariah state from being brought to justice. It has already used its veto power in the UN Security Council 41 times in defense of Israel and against Palestinian rights. How this would change if the PA became a UN member state with observer status is not clear.

True, the PA could bring more international legal pressure and sanctions to bear on Israel. It could have international bodies adjudicate Israel's violations of the rights of the Palestinian state. The PA could even make the international mobility of Israeli politicians more perilous as "war criminals". This would render Israel's international relations more difficult, but how would this ultimately weaken an Israel that the US would shield completely from such effects as it has always done?

Implications of the UN vote

This presumed addition of power the Palestinians will gain to bring Israel to justice will actually be carried out at enormous cost to the Palestinian people. If the UN votes for the PA statehood status, this would have several immediate implications:

(1) The PLO will cease to represent the Palestinian people at the UN, and the PA will replace it as their presumed state.

(2) The PLO, which represents all Palestinians (about 12 million people in historic Palestine and in the diaspora), and was recognised as their "sole" representative at the UN in 1974, will be truncated to the PA, which represents only West Bank Palestinians (about 2 million people). Incidentally this was the vision presented by the infamous "Geneva Accords" that went nowhere.

(3) It will politically weaken Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes and be compensated, as stipulated in UN resolutions. The PA does not represent the refugees, even though it claims to represent their "hopes" of establishing a Palestinian state at their expense.  Indeed, some international legal experts fear it could even abrogate the Palestinians' right of return altogether. It will also forfeit the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel who face institutional and legal racism in the Israeli state, as it presents them with a fait accompli of the existence of a Palestinian state (its phantasmatic nature notwithstanding). This will only give credence to Israeli claims that the Jews have a state and the Palestinians now have one too and if Palestinian citizens of Israel were unhappy, or even if they were happy, with their third-class status in Israel, they should move or can be forced to move to the Palestinian state at any rate.

(4) Israel could ostensibly come around soon after a UN vote in favour of Palestinian statehood and inform the PA that the territories it now controls (a small fraction of the West Bank) is all the territory Israel will concede and that this will be the territorial basis of the PA state. The Israelis do not tire of reminding the PA that the Palestinians will not have sovereignty, an army, control of their borders, control of their water resources, control over the number of refugees it could allow back, or even jurisdiction over Jewish colonial settlers. Indeed, the Israelis have already obtained UN assurances about their right to "defend" themselves and to preserve their security with whatever means they think are necessary to achieve these goals. In short, the PA will have the exact same Bantustan state that Israel and the US have been promising to grant it for two decades!

(5) The US and Israel could also, through their many allies, inject a language of "compromise" in the projected UN recognition of the PA state, stipulating that such a state must exist peacefully side by side with the "Jewish State" of Israel. This would in turn exact a precious UN recognition of Israel's "right" to be a Jewish state, which the UN and the international community, the US excepted, have refused to recognize thus far. This will directly link the UN recognition of a phantasmatic non-existent Palestinian state to UN recognition of an actually existing state of Israel that discriminates legally and institutionally against non-Jews as a "Jewish state".

(6) The US and Israel will insist after a positive vote that, while the PA is right to make certain political demands as a member state, it would have to abrogate its recent reconciliation agreement with Hamas. Additionally, sanctions could befall the PA state itself for associating with Hamas, which the US and Israel consider a terrorist group. The US Congress has already threatened to punish the PA and will not hesitate to urge the Obama administration to add Palestine to its list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism" along with Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

All of these six outcomes will advance Israeli interests immeasurably, while the only inconvenience to Israel would be the ability of the PA to demand that international law and legal jurisdiction be applied to Israel so as to exact more concessions from that country. However, at every turn the US will block and will shield Israel from its effects. In short, Israeli interests will be maximised at the cost of some serious but not detrimental inconvenience.

The second possible outcome, a US veto, and/or the ability of the US to pressure and twist the arms of tens of countries around the world to reject the bid of the PA in the General Assembly, resulting in failure to recognise PA statehood, will also be to the benefit of Israel. The unending "peace process" will continue with more stringent conditions and an angry US, upset at the PA challenge, will go back to exactly where the PA is today, if not to a weaker position. President Obama and future US administrations will continue to push for PA and Arab recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" that has the right to discriminate by law against non-Jews in exchange for an ever-deferred recognition of a Palestinian Bantustan as an "economically viable" Palestinian state - a place where Palestinian neoliberal businessmen can make profits off international aid and investment.

Either outcome will keep the Palestinian people colonised, discriminated against, oppressed, and exiled. This entire brouhaha over the UN vote is ultimately about which of the two scenarios is better for Israeli interests. The Palestinian people and their interests are not even part of this equation.

The question on the table before the UN, then, is not whether the UN should recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would grant them 45 per cent of historic Palestine, nor of a Palestinian state within the June 5, 1967 borders along the Green Line, which would grant them 22 per cent of historic Palestine. A UN recognition ultimately means the negation of the rights of the majority of the Palestinian people in Israel, in the diaspora, in East Jerusalem, and even in Gaza, and the recognition of the rights of some West Bank Palestinians to a Bantustan on a fraction of West Bank territory amounting to less than 10 per cent of historic Palestine. Israel will be celebrating either outcome.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.

The Pushkar Fair

 

(Photographer: Paul Beinssen- Allposters-)

Pushkar in Rajasthan is one of the oldest cities in India and legend associates Lord Brahma with its creation. The Pushkar fair is a massive event for desert dwellers. The fair continues for 5 days and is one of the largest cattle fairs in the country. Animals, including over 50,000 camels, are brought from miles around to be traded and sold.


Trading is brisk as several thousand heads of cattle exchange hands. All the camels are cleaned, washed, adorned, some are interestingly shorn to form patterns, and special stalls are set up selling finery and jewelery for the camels. Camels at the Pushkar fair are decorated with great care. They wear jewelery of silver and beads. There are silver bells and bangles around their ankles that jangle when they walk. An interesting ritual is the piercing of a camel's nose.

Romani Dreams

It was their night and finally it had arrived. He wished Hassen was there with him, after all they had done this together but as usual he was off on some adventure, ‘testing his spirit’ as he liked to call it. Sometimes it takes years to fulfil your dreams, sometimes they all come rushing at you on the edge of fulfilment all at once.

Their reports had been accepted by the UN forum on minority issues. The years of research had finally paid off. The plight of the Romani would be heard. Well not entirely but this recognition and the funding to begin the project was a good start.

The children would no longer be forced into ‘special schools’, so that the other children wouldn’t have to mix with them. They would begin with a community centre and they would house 500 families in their own suburb. It was out of the way, but the conditions were miles better than the derelict farmhouses and broken down apartment blocks where they had been forced to take refuge in the past.

Tonight was the formal celebration and the handing over of the title deeds to the land and the cheques with which work could begin. It had taken 3 years to get these proposals looked at and another 5 to get them approved. This was their life’s work and it was finally moving of the papers and into reality.

Their family were convinced that they were insane. Who would buy this bullshit? Funding and recognition were reserved for countries and peoples who lived in the vicinity of natural resources wanted by the first world. Who would notice those that hadn’t been given a second glance after the Second World War -when serving survivors had become a bourgeoisie hobby-?

He thought back to the first time they had heard about the Romani. His grandfather had left them his diary in his will when he passed. Perhaps the old man had realised that this was the only way to give his beloved a living memorial.

Their meeting had been fleeting and fraught with danger. Her family was escaping across the border, his regiment was on watch, the place was remote and freezing. He was the only one on duty for the next 3 nights. Her pleading eyes, her desperation, passionate exchanges in the darkness with the constant fear of being discovered by her family but mostly her strength, yes it was definitely her strength! – of course her wild mysterious beauty helped a bit, his grandfather had added as an after thought –.

How could he possibly have refused her? Her image was burnt into his heart forever and the memory of those eyes haunted him always. His ‘foray into love at first sight’, he often called it. He became her disciple for life.

The phone rang; he thought it was his brother checking whether he was running late as usual and adding some points to his speech but mostly just the usual pep talk. Hassen was their spokesperson and he hoped he would do him proud in his absence.

He picked up the phone. It was his mother. She was crying. Where are you she asked him. Her voice was shaky. ‘On my way ma’, he replied, ‘there’s no need to be emotional ma, this is only the start, and there is much work to be done’. ‘Pull over; I have to tell you something.’ Her voice was urgent, robotic, Pained. He did as he was told. ‘Ok ma , I’m on the side of the road, what is it?’

‘There’s been a train accident she said, Hassen didn’t make it’.

Her voice trailed off…

His mind was racing, this was a nightmare, he would wake up and he would be at the gala dinner, they would be calling him up for the presentation…All that played over and over in his mind, was Hassen’s victorious smile, the day they had made it passed all the aunts and under the garden tap – they had been three years old then - and since birth they had been inseparable.

Danger

An Ethnic Volksie ...

(Image:google)

I couldn't resist posting this 1990s Volkswagen Beetle named "Vochol". It's part of an exhibition on Huichol culture at the Museum of Puebla. Its name "Vochol", is a combination of "Vocho," a popular term for Volkswagen Beetles in Mexico, and "Huichol", a Mexican indigenous group. The car was decorated by indigenous craftmen from the Huichol community living in the states of Nayarit and Jalisco, using traditional beads and fabric. This beauty will be auctioned and the proceeds will go to the Huichol community.