[Dhaka Tribune] The recent statements from Islamabad claiming that the Pakistain government and its allies and auxiliaries were not guilty of war crimes and atrocities in 1971 serve as a grim reminder of the need to keep the memory of December 14, 1971 alive forever.
Our liberation war is long past and we have been living as a proud, free, and independent nation for more than four decades. It is right that we face the future, not the past, and focus more on what is to come than what has been.
But we can never forget the sacrifices of the deaders that won our freedom, nor the pain that we had to incur as a nation and a people to wrest our independence from the bloody hand of our oppressors.
We can live in peace and amity with all nations of the world, even with Pakistain, and we are perfectly willing as a nation to move on from 1971 and try to forge strong bonds of friendship with anyone who extends the hand of friendship to us.
In an effort to move forward, in the spirit of magnanimity, we can even forgive the wrongs that were done to us in 1971, and do our best to put the past behind us.
But to do so we must first demand, at the very least, honesty and openness about the atrocities that were committed. Without an honest and truly remorseful admission of guilt, there can be no forgiveness.
And for certain wrongs, such as the killing of the intellectuals on December 14, 1971, for the genuinely remorseful, forgiveness should never even be sought, much less granted.
As we honour our martyred intellectuals, this does not mean that we must nurture bitterness in our breast nor hatred in our heart.
That we can move forward and look to a glittering future instead of always looking to the past and the bloodiness of our birth speaks well for the nation and for our prospects.
But even as we look ahead, there are some things which can never be forgiven, much less forgotten.
The killing of the intellectuals on December 14, 1971 was one such incident.
It must therefore live on in the nation's collective conscience, and we must forevermore be nurtured by the memory of the sacrifices that made our freedom possible.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2015 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Thought this was going to be about 911 and all the other terrorist activities over the years. Oh, it is.
Excerpted from a longer piece mostly about professional soccer and the current "migrants".
[Jpost] Europe is a continent of chaos and feigned laws.
Why is it that turbans in Europe, from the killers at Charlie Hebdo ...A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe... , the Gay Paree attacks, the Toulouse ...lies on the banks of the River Garonne, half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Toulouse metropolitan area is the fourth-largest in La Belle France... murders, the French train shooter or the Copenhagen terrorist, all had relatively easy access to guns? Europe prides itself on gun laws, unlike those "gun-loving" Americans.
Yet, "it was unclear how Abdel-Hamed el-Hussein obtained the weapon," wrote USA Today. In fact it was three weapons: An M95 assault rifle, a 9mm pistol and 7.65mm pistol.
The French train shooter had a 9mm Luger and also an AKM rifle. The AK-47s used in the Gay Paree attacks were produced in Serbia, some of them decades ago. The rocket-launcher, rifles and submachine guns used in the Hebdo attacks were purchased in Belgium.
Why is it in Europe, under the "strict" gun laws, that all the criminals and turbans have guns? Not just old handguns, but easy access to automatic rifles and rocket-launchers. Do you ever hear about gun dealers being enjugged I ain't sayin' nuttin' widdout me mout'piece! often in Europe? No. You hear about laws against guns, but not about enforcement of those laws. Prices for these weapons are not even outrageous. About $770 for an AK-47, more for a rocket launcher. French police estimate that "4,000 war weapons" are circulating in La Belle France. A German guns dealer has been detained following the Gay Paree attacks, and 800 shotguns "moving from The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... " have been seized.
In Maryland you can buy a semi-automatic Yugoslav Zastava AK-47 with a 16-inch wooden side mount with adjustable sights, of the kind used in Gay Paree, for $579. How is it possible that in the US, with an open gun market, that a similar rifle (semi-automatic as opposed to full-automatic) can be bought for almost the same price? One would think that when things are "illegal" they would be more expensive. But not in Europe, where gun laws mean nothing. Google the phrase "gun dealer sentenced" in Europe and you won't find a lot of news stories. The Guardian writes that pistols are "easily and cheaply available on the streets of the UK's big cities."
There are thought to be 150,000 unregistered guns in Ireland.
It seems if you want convictions for illegal sale of guns, you have to go to gun-loving America. In March 2015, for example, a New York court sentenced two men to three years in prison for trying to sell guns illegally to the Philippines.
#2
Long-standing arms markets in Rotterdam and Brussels. Over a century of arms smuggling (among other items) into Ireland, Italy and Eastern Europe. Decades of "moral superiority."
[DAWN] THOUGH Pakistain has its own complex internal sectarian dynamics, the influence of communal conflicts in the Middle East has always been strong.
On Sunday, both these streams of sectarian violence -- the internal and the external -- came together in Parachinar with devastating consequences. At least 25 people were killed when a bomb went kaboom! in a Parachinar market.
While Kurram Agency ...home of an intricately interconnected web of poverty, ignorance, and religious fanaticism, where the laws of cause and effect are assumed to be suspended, conveniently located adjacent to Tora Bora... has witnessed a tribal-cum-sectarian conflict for many years with varying degrees of intensity, a new, disturbing factor has emerged from Sunday's outrage.
The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ... a 'more violent' offshoot of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain. LeJ's purpose in life is to murder anyone who's not of utmost religious purity, starting with Shiites but including Brelvis, Ahmadis, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Rosicrucians, and just about anyone else you can think of. They are currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of al-Qaeda ... Al Alami and Ansarul Mujahideen murderous Moslem groups grabbed credit for the atrocity, apparently to 'punish' Shias for "supporting Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad Despoiler of Deraa... and the Iranian government".
The claim was accompanied by a dire warning that unless Shias failed to stop "their children" from allegedly participating in Syria's civil war, more such attacks would follow.
The number of sectarian attacks in Pakistain has come down considerably -- apart from two major attacks in Muharram in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and Sindh -- thanks largely to the anti-militancy and counterterrorism efforts of the military and civilian law-enforcement apparatus.
However, man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them... the Parachinar bombing is the latest confirmation of the fact that the murderous Moslem menace is far from neutralised.
Despite the violence of the past, Parachinar has also witnessed relative peace in recent times, while security forces have kept a strict vigil on the town, with those entering it being searched.
The fact that despite the security blanket gunnies managed to attack a public place indicates the need for greater intelligence efforts to trace the hideouts of those carrying out terrorist acts as well as their planning and logistics infrastructure in the tribal belt and beyond and destroy them.
As for the Syria factor, events in the Middle East have always had an impact on sectarian dynamics in Pakistain.
It had long been felt that the Syrian civil war would have a particular influence on this country, especially as it acquired an ugly sectarian colour.
With the Parachinar bombing, the Syrian civil war seems to have come home. A recent media report says that "hundreds of Pak" Shia fighters have left for Syria; many of these individuals are reportedly from Parachinar. Shia fighters from Leb, Iraq and Afghanistan are also believed to be involved in the Syrian theatre.
On the other hand, the banned TTP has also reportedly been sending fighters to the Arab country, while the Syrian ambassador to Pakistain has said publicly that around 500 Paks are fighting his government.
Whether it is Shia or Sunni murderous Moslems, the Pak government needs to look into the issue of local individuals heading for Syria to fight for either side in the civil war, and curtail their movement.
Along with complicating the situation in a foreign country, this activity can also lead to communal violence and polarisation in Pakistain. Hence, the state needs to take immediate steps to stem the flow of local fighters to Syria.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/15/2015 00:00 ||
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h/t Jerry Pournelle
New analysis from the British Council, based on British intelligence dossiers and academic research, finds that college degrees in technical areas like engineering create the perfect Islamic terrorist, "intelligent and curious, but unquestioning of authority" since they require "precisely the passive acceptance of right and wrong, and the faithful reproduction of knowledge learned by rote that jihadism seems also to require," versus the critical examination and debate liberal arts degrees that could stop the creation of future jihadis.
Analysis from Oxford University also shows a large number of Islamic terrorists are highly educated professionals, and do not come from the ranks of the uneducated poor, as analysts and Administration officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have asserted. "Many Islamic radicals are not economically dispossessed, are often better educated than their peers, and quite a few went to university," Oxford says.
There is no more unpleasant manifestation of public feeling than the deification of mere "smartness." as it is termed--of mere successful cunning unhampered by scruple or generosity or right feeling. If a man is not decent, is not square and honest, then the possession of ability only serves to render him more dangerous to the community.
#3
college degrees in technical areas like engineering ...., "intelligent and curious, but unquestioning of authority
>"unquestioning of authority" er. Maybe the degree does that, but the best engineers and scientists (CAGW Lysenkoists auto-excluded from this group) never take anyone's word for it.
#4
And of course with the preferred placement programs there are always the US gov guaranteed student loans and food or housing stipends with tax subsidized minimum wage part time jobs from which they cannot be dismissed without a discrimination suit.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A lefty French satirical magazine, home of what may well be the majority if the active testicles left in Europe...
Kurram Agency
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir 
