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Microsoft buying SAP? Yahoo! $44.6bn deal dead

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Now that the Yahoo deal is dead. Will Microsoft begin looking at SAP?

It is said that Bill Gates was looking at the want ads on the Google site at 2 in the morning. An emergency Microsoft meeting was called to discuss why Google was hiring the same type of people as Microsoft was hiring.

Google is now competing with the desktop space with Microsoft and has its own word processing and presentation software available on the net without having to deal with the software solutions on the desktop. 

The purchase of Yahoo was to compete directly with Google in the search engine space. By attempting to purchase Yahoo Microsoft has conceded defeat and will merge its own search engines with Yahoo technology.

The Yahoo deal would have allowed , Bill Gates to repeat success–acquiring DOS, Windows technology from Apple, Excel technology from Lotus, Word technology from Word Prefect etc. 

Microsoft might just be about to get much bigger. Microsoft’s buying plans have been rumored for months. One of the two hot rumors was just made official. 

SAP is supposedly negotiating with IBM and also Microsoft. The Enterpirse consoldiation between Mocrosoft’s Front Office suite and SAP’s back office suites would create a huge competitor for Oracle still struggling with is own buy spree and fusion project.

Microsoft purchasing Yahoo! – $44.6bn offered. Just breaking on “the wires” right now is schock news for the online world. – it has just proposed a deal to buy long-time internet nearly-company Yahoo! for a vast total fee of $44.6bn – that’s $31 a share. The deal between the two mega-corporations was first rumoured a year ago but is now official.

The Microsoft-Yahoo deal would give Google a run for their money.

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February 24, 2008 Digital Domain Maybe Microsoft Should Stalk Different Prey By RANDALL STROSS
OVER the years, Microsoft has pummeled countless rivals, including the superheavyweight I.B.M. But it has never faced a smaller foe as formidable as Google. The tale of the tape gives Microsoft a $100 billion advantage in market capitalization, but it counts for little: Google appears to be its superior in strength, speed, smarts.

Having exhausted its best ideas on how to deal with Google, Microsoft is now working its way down the list to dubious ones – like pursuing a hostile bid for Yahoo. Michael A. Cusumano, who has written several books about the software industry and about Microsoft, is not impressed with Microsoft’s rationale for its Yahoo offer. He said the bid seemed to be a pursuit of “an old-style Internet asset, in decline, and at a premium.”

Determined to match Google in search and online advertising, Microsoft has managed to overlook a plain-vanilla strategy, the oldest one in the book: build on its own strengths. What it does best is to sell software to corporations, for all sorts of applications, visible and not so visible, at a handsome profit.

If Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should not pursue Yahoo. Rather, it should acquire another major player in business software, merging Microsoft’s strength with that of another. This is more likely to produce a happier outcome than yoking two ailing businesses, Yahoo’s and its own online offerings, and hoping for a miracle.

For an illustration of how Microsoft could select targets more judiciously, Mr. Cusumano, who is a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed to the Oracle Corporation’s strategic acquisitions and its prudent use of capital to “roll up firms with similar products and customers to its own.” With impressive regularity – 13 strategic acquisitions in 2005, another 13 in 2006 and 11 in 2007 – Oracle has picked up key products and customers while avoiding an “oops” slip, venturing too far away from its core business, or paying too much. At no point along the way has it acted in a fit of desperation.

Last month, Oracle pulled in another major prize, BEA Systems, a leading software company, for about $8.5 billion. You’ve probably never heard of BEA: it’s doubly obscure, producing the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that large companies use to build behind-the-scenes software systems for their entire business, or “enterprise software.” Both Oracle and BEA are based in Silicon Valley, but their side of the street is not lit by klieg lights and does not get the same attention as the Googles and Yahoos.

And, to be honest, it’s not much fun hanging out on the enterprise side of the software business. BEA says its software helps organizations “ensure that business processes are optimally defined, managed, executed and monitored.” Unless you’re playing Business Jargon Bingo, it’s hard to sit still and remain attentive. You have to admire Oracle’s ability to remain focused on the business that serves business and to not be distracted by the buzz of the Web crowd gathered across the street.

Microsoft does business software well. Approximately half its revenue comes from business customers for its e-mail infrastructure, database systems, developer tools, Office productivity applications and other mainstays. It has also assembled, through acquisitions, a fledgling line of enterprise software that it calls Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft would like Dynamics to be viewed as competing head to head with the No. 2 name in enterprise software, Oracle, or the No. 1, SAP of Germany. For the moment, however, Microsoft Dynamics’ parity with those big names is nothing more than wishful aspiration.

Professor Cusumano has a suggestion: Rather than acquire Yahoo, Microsoft should pursue SAP.

It’s not an outlandish idea. The two companies held merger talks in late 2003, and perhaps since then, too. Microsoft is in an enviable position: it is a nearly universal presence in corporate data centers, and large enterprise customers are arguably the best customers a software company can have. Clients pay very dear prices for the complex, semicustomized software that runs their business. And once they’ve got their systems running – a process that can take years to complete – they aren’t inclined to change vendors lightly.

A few dozen well-paying Fortune 500 customers may actually be more valuable than tens of millions of Web e-mail “customers” who pay nothing for the service and whose attention is not highly valued by online advertisers.

Today, SAP’s market capitalization is about $59 billion, and a sizable premium to get a deal done would send its price well north of that. Microsoft cannot put both SAP and Yahoo in its shopping cart, deals that together might run well over $120 billion. Microsoft must pick one or the other.

Suppose that Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, were the head of Microsoft and was doing the shopping. Which deal would he choose? Past experience suggests that it would not be Yahoo. That acquisition would bring little but duplication headaches – and no large enterprise customers.

It’s amusing to note that the most Larry-like choice, Microsoft’s acquiring of SAP and leaving it alone as an autonomous division to avoid a cross-cultural integration fiasco, is the course that would be most discomfiting to Oracle. Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics, an information technology research firm, in Irvine, Calif., said that “a Microsoft-SAP combination would be Oracle’s worst nightmare.”

Google would not be happy with a conjoined Microsoft and SAP, either. It has made a pro forma expression of its own opposition to a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, but we can speculate that it may be cheering that deal on. Working in Google’s favor are the hostile nature of Microsoft’s bid, the colossal potential for integration problems, and organizational paralysis in, and exodus of talent from, Yahoo.

But were Microsoft to turn and head in SAP’s direction, Google would have reason for concern. Whatever strengthens Microsoft is bound to influence, later if not sooner, its continuing competition with Google. For its own part, Google is keen to expand its foothold inside large companies. Last year, it acquired Postini, whose software filters corporate e-mail. Google has not done so well with corporate customers on its own, however. Google Apps has conspicuously failed to win adoption quickly.
If Microsoft is to rededicate its attention to its most valuable assets, business customers, a prerequisite is dropping its ill-advised bid for Yahoo. And to find the best acquisition strategy, ask, “What would Larry do?”

If Microsoft tries to fight Google with wobbly legs, scared witless, it will lose.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

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Microsoft buying SAP? Yahoo! $44.6bn deal dead

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Afghanistan fubar: A crumbling alliance?-Canada and Australia withdrawing?

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Troops in Afghanistan: United States – 15,038, United Kingdom – 7,753, Germany – 3,155, Italy – 2,358, Canada – 1,730, Netherlands – 1,512, France – 1,292, Turkey – 1,219, Poland – 1,141, Australia – 892, Source: Nato

“the greatest threat to Afghanistans future is abandonment by the international community.”The Mayor” of Kabul: Mr. Karzai

“the mission in Afghanistan needed more troops and equipment, such as helicopters, … “too few of our allies have combat troops fighting the insurgents especially in the south.” Mr Boucher

Karzaiistan is shrinking and is confined to Kabul

ISAFistan is shrinking

Talibanistan is growing

The situation in Afghanistan is grim for NATO. They control a few of the provinces mostly in the North. Southern Afghanistan is fully under the control of the Taliban and Mulla Umar. They have now seeped into Waziristan and threaten Pakistani settled areas. However the mercenary splinter group in Wat has been decimated and Mr. Mehsud has been disowned by the main Tlaiban group. That Taliban want to concentrate on Afghanistan this spring America has recently sent 3000 new troops but these are not enough.

Japan withdrew forces in Nov 2007. Australia is withdrawing forces from Iraq and may also withdraw forces from Afghanistan, though no date has been set for the withdrawal. The Dutch are also in the same process. The UK is also under tremendous pressure at home to withdraw forces.

Mr. Gates the US Secretary of State wrote an urgent letter to NATO to ask the NATO forces to move south into “Talibanistan”. The Germens say “No Bid”. “We have agreed on a clear division of labor,” Jung told reporters on Friday. “I think that we really must keep our focus on the North.” Herr Jung-Germany

“ you have a little German Afghanistan in the north, an Italian Afghanistan in the west, Dutch Afghanistan in Uruzgan and a Canadian Afghanistan in Kandahar, and so on. Geographically NATO has been fractured, and also sectorally with equal ineffectiveness–like giving the justice sector totally to the Italians, counter-narcotics to the British, the police to Germans and anti-terrorism to the Americans. Daan Everts, former civilian representative of the NATO Secretary General in Kabul:

A frustrated Mr. Karazi has requested a dramatic increase in the troop level but the NATO response has been feeble.

There are 950 Australian troops (ADF) in Afghanistan. There is a new government in Australia and the new Prime Minister promised to withdraw troops.

• A National Command Element in Kabul;
• Reconstruction Task Force based in Tarin Kowt, Oruzgan Province as part of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Provincial Reconstruction Team;
• a Special Forces Task Group deployed to Oruzgan province as part of ISAF operations against insurgents;
• an RAAF air surveillance radar capability deployed at Kandahar Air Field; and
  a Chinook helicopter group based at Kandahar in Helmand province in support of ISAF operations, temporarily returned to Australia until April 2008.
   

The Canadian government is also under tremendous pressure to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. On the 5th of February, the Canadian Prime Minster Mr. Harper informed Mr. Sarkozi that Canada would withdraw her forces if NATO does not deploy at least another 1000 troops. Sarko the American had promised to join NATO, but now the old fissures are rising again. “What are we doing there?”,” What are we fighting for”

Canada informs UK about possible troops withdrawal, TORONTO: Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped up pressure on his NATO allies Thursday, cautioning his British counterpart a day after issuing a similar warning to US President George W. Bush that Canada will end its military mission in Afghanistan if the alliance does not assume a greater role in the dangerous south.

Harper, under pressure to withdraw Canada’s 2,500 troops from Afghanistan, spoke to Gordon Brown about an independent Canadian panel recommendation to extend the mission only if another NATO country musters 1,000 troops for Kandahar, said his spokesman, Michael Aubie. Harper conveyed the same message to Bush on Wednesday during a phone call.

Canadians have grown increasingly weary of the conflict in Afghanistan, which has claimed the lives of 78 of their troops and one diplomat. Opposition parties have threatened to bring down Harper’s minority government if he does not withdraw the forces. The mission is set to expire in 2009 without an extension by Canadian lawmaker.

The refusal of some major European allies to send significant number of troops to the southern front lines has opened a rift within NATO.

Troops from Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and the United States have borne the brunt of a resurgence of Taliban violence in the region, with support from Denmark, Romania, Estonia and non-NATO nation Australia.

“Canada should remain in Afghanistan beyond February 2009, but only if NATO Allies supply additional combat troops for Kandahar Province and our troops have additional equipment. Without that, Canada’s mission will end in a year’s time,” Aubie said in a statement detailing the conversation.

The two leaders decided to pursue the issue further in the coming weeks as Harper talks to other NATO leaders and key players before the government delivers its final decision later this spring.

Britain has about 7,700 soldiers in Afghanistan, up from 3,600 in2006.

The U.S. contributes one-third of NATO’s 42,000-strong International Security Assistance Force mission, making it the largest participant, on top of the 12,000 to 13,000 American troops operating independently.

Harper has promised to put the future of the mission to a vote in Parliament, where the opposition parties hold the majority of seats. NATO urged Canada on Wednesday not to pull its troops and pledged to help find the 1,000 troops.

We still beleive that the only solution for the Afghan quagmire is to end the ISAF occuption, eliminate Mr. Karzai’s Northern Alliance Government and hand over the Pashtun provinces to Pakistan.

Afghanistan fubar: A crumbling alliance?-Canada and Australia withdrawing?

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Pakistani Opposition Leader Imran Khan on Musharraf, Bhutto, and How the U.S. Has Undermined Pakistani Democracy

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We attended a Tehreek e Insaaf meeting in Long Island, New York and shared lunch with Mr. Imran Khan. It was a remarkable moment. More than 500 people and all major TV channels were present. A fantastic lunch was provided. Even Bangladeshi columnists were there.

Several American Tehrik e Insaf  leaders were present. Shaikh Elahi of the East Coast and the head of the TI International as well as of New York were present. Mr. Dabbir introduced Imran Khan with fantastic poetry.

Imran Khan spoke for an hour with confidence and charisma. The incorruptible politician with integrity defined his mission to explain to the American Congressman and politicians that it was not in the interest of America to support a military dictatorship. He asked for the complete restoration of the judiciary and “rule of law” in Pakistan. He referred to Mr. Dabbir as “the walking talking Tehrik e Insaaf“. Imran Khan spoke about the tremendous potential of the Pakistani nation. However progress was dependent upon building and preserving the institutions. He defended his position on boycotting the elections and said that the army should go back to the barracks. He also praised the Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry whom he called one will be described “as a real hero” of Pakistan. He narrated several cricket analogies to the hard working people of Pakistan.

Rupee News: Every politician says that he or she is “L’etat, cest moi” (I am the state). If you don’t elect me something will happen to Pakistan. What do you say.

Imran Khan: We have to build institutions that will save Pakistan 

Rupee News: What do you think about external factors in creating instability of Pakistan?

Imran Khan: If you create a a swamp, the mosquitoes will come. The Musharraf government has attacked the Tribals and is using our armed forces to kill our own people. This must stop. 

Rupee News: Bhutto gave Pakistanis a vision. Imran can you give us a vision of Pakistan for 2010 or 2050?

Imran Khan: Roti Kapra Makan was not a vision. My vision is to have good strong stable institutions and the army back in the barracks. Investment will come by itself.

Rupee News: Pakistan should calculate the amount of expenses and losses incurred by Pakistan as a result of the US “Global War on Terror (GWOT).

Imran Khan: We didn’t know. When we asked the questions in parliament we were not informed. We heard about the $10 Billion in newspapers.

Rupee News: What about Muslim terrorists?

Imran Khan: Every religion has terrorists, why aren’t terrorists of other religions also identified by their religion….

Rupee News: Can you give us your email address?

Imran Khan: Yes! Here it is.

 http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/30/pakistani_opposition_leader_imran_khan_on

Pakistani Opposition Leader Imran Khan on Musharraf, Bhutto, and How the U.S. Has Undermined Pakistani Democracy

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Book Reveiw: The Last Days of the American Rupublic

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Mr. Chalmers Johnson’, is “The Last Days of the American Republic is the third in a trilogy (Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire”). He is the president of the Japan Policy Research Institute. A contributor to the Los Angeles Times, the London Review of Books, Harper’s, and The Nation, among others, he appears in the 2005 prizewinning documentary film Why We Fight. He lives near San Diego.

From Publishers Weekly: Like ancient Rome, America is saddled with an empire that is fatally undermining its republican government, argues Johnson (The Sorrows of Empire), in this bleak jeremiad. He surveys the trappings of empire: the brutal war of choice in Iraq and other foreign interventions going back decades; the militarization of space; the hundreds of overseas U.S. military bases full of “swaggering soldiers who brawl and sometimes rape.” At home, the growth of an “imperial presidency,” with the CIA as its “private army,” has culminated in the Bush administration’s resort to warrantless wiretaps, torture, a “gulag” of secret CIA prisons and an unconstitutional arrogation of “dictatorial” powers, while a corrupt Congress bows like the Roman Senate to Caesar. Retribution looms, the author warns, as the American economy, dependent on a bloated military-industrial complex and foreign borrowing, staggers toward bankruptcy, maybe a military coup. Johnson’s is a biting, often effective indictment of some ugly and troubling features of America’s foreign policy and domestic politics. But his doom-laden trope of empire (“the capacity for things to get worse is limitless…. the American republic may be coming to its end”) seems overstated. With Bush a lame duck, not a Caesar, and his military adventures repudiated by the electorate, the Republic seems more robust than Johnson allows. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From AudioFile
We are, the author contends, headed for monumental economic disaster because of selfish, secret, and reckless military spending. As Johnson outlines the “dangerous path” the United States has forged., narrator Tom Weiner’s steady, deep voice offers comfort to a rocky journey. The book’s only flaw is the extent of the author’s tangential explanations. But the gem is the section on the erosion of freedom of information. The author’s theme is clear early on: “Imperialism requires that a . . . domestic democracy change into a domestic tyranny.” Weiner’s voice of reason resonates as listeners are left questioning our future. M.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine– Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine –This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist
The third book in a series begun with Blowback (2000), which predicted harsh comeuppance for the post-cold war American “global empire,” and The Sorrows of Empire (2004), which continued Johnson’s thesis with a lambasting of American militarism pre- and post-September 11, this book continues the author’s broad condemnation of American foreign policy by warning of imminent constitutional and economic collapse. In a chapter analyzing “comparative imperial pathologies,” Johnson reminds readers of Hannah Arendt’s point that successful imperialism requires that democratic systems give way to tyranny and asserts that the U.S. must choose between giving up its empire of military bases (as did Britain after World War II) or retaining the bases at the expense of its democracy (as did Rome). Johnson also predicts dire consequences should the U.S. continue to militarize low Earth orbits in pursuit of security. To some extent a timely response to recent arguments in favor of American empire, such as those of Niall Ferguson in Colossus, this account also reiterates Johnson’s perennial concerns about overseas military bases, the CIA, and the artifice of a defense-fueled economy. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Eugene Jarecki, Director of Why We Fight Grand Jury Prize Winner, Sundance Film Festival
“An urgent warning for a country… Johnson is a national treasure. Let’s hope we listen this time.” –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Chalmers Johnson, a patriot who pulls no punches, has emerged as our most prescient critic of American empire and its pretensions. Nemesis is his fiercest book-and his best.”-Andrew J. Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism

“Nemesis, the final volume in the remarkable Blowback trilogy, completes a true patriot’s anguished and devastating critique of the militarism that threatens to destroy the United States from within. In detail and with unflinching candor, Chalmers Johnson decries the discrepancies between what America professes to be and what it has actually become-a global empire of military bases and operations; a secret government increasingly characterized by covert activities, enormous ‘black’ budgets, and near dictatorial executive power; a misguided republic that has betrayed its noblest ideals and most basic founding principals in pursuit of disastrously conceived notions of security, stability, and progress.”
-John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

“Chalmers Johnson’s voice has never been more urgently needed, and in Nemesis it rings with eloquence, clarity, and truth.”-James Carroll, author of House of War

“Nemesis is a stimulating, sweeping study in which Johnson asks a most profound strategic question: Can we maintain the global dominance we now regard as our natural right? His answer is chilling. You do not have to agree with everything Johnson says-I don’t-but if you agree with even half of his policy critiques, you will still slam the book down on the table, swearing, ‘We have to change this!’”
-Joseph Cirincione, Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy, Center for American Progress

“Nemesis is a five-alarm warning about flaming militarism, burning imperial attitudes, secret armies, and executive arrogance that has torched and consumed the Constitution and brought the American Republic to death’s door. Johnson shares a simple, liberating, and healing path back to worthy republicanism. But the frightening and heart-breaking details contained in Nemesis suggest that the goddess of retribution will not be so easily satisfied before ‘the right order of things’ is restored.”-Karen Kwiatkowski, retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel

“Last fall a treasonous Congress gave the president license to kidnap, torture-you name it-on an imperial scale. All of us, citizens and non-citizens alike, are fair game. Kudos for not being silent, Chalmers, and for completing your revealing trilogy with undaunted courage.”-Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst; co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

–This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

New York Observer
“Fascinating.” –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Nemesis is particularly good in sounding the alarm. Johnson’s book is a primer on what needs to be done.” –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Kirkus Reviews
“A sobering read.” –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Book Description
A New York Times bestseller, Nemesis is Chalmers Johnson’s ‘fiercest book-and his best’ (Andrew J. Bacevich) In his prophetic book Blowback, Chalmers Johnson linked the CIA’s clandestine activities abroad to disaster at home. In The Sorrows of Empire, he explored the ways in which the growth of American militarism and the garrisoning of the planet have jeopardized our stability. In Nemesis, the bestselling and final volume in what has become known as the Blowback Trilogy, he shows how imperial overstretch is undermining the republic itself, both economically and politically. Delving into new areas-from plans to militarize outer space to Constitution-breaking presidential activities at home and the devastating corruption of a toothless Congress-Nemesis offers a striking description of the trap into which the reckless ambitions of America’s leaders have taken us. Johnson confronts questions of pressing urgency: What are the unintended consequences of our dependence on a permanent war economy? What does it mean when a nation’s main intelligence organization becomes the president’s secret army? Or when the globe’s sole ‘hyperpower’ becomes the greatest hyper-debtor of all times? Writing ‘as if the very existence of the nation is at stake’ (San Francisco Chronicle), Johnson offers his most ‘bracing’ and ‘important’ (Los Angeles Times) exploration of the crisis facing America.

Book Reveiw: The Last Days of the American Rupublic

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BOOK REVIEW: What was the Moplah Revolt? by Khaled AhmedPakistan Movement—

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BOOK REVIEW: What was the Moplah Revolt? by Khaled AhmedSubaltern Studies: Muslims, Dalits, and the Fabrications of History, Edited by Shail Mayaram, MSS Pandian & Ajay Skaria
Permanent Black, Delhi 2005, Pp322; Price Rs 1390

If you vaguely remember having read a potted account of the Moplah Revolt in the 1920s in your Pakistan Movement textbook, you should read this latest research into what really happened in Malabar in Kerala that made the Muslims there rise in bloody revolt. First let us get the word Moplah right, which no one explained because the textbook had to pass over quickly to more urgent sections of the communal conflict in India. Like ‘Moses’ in Biblical Egypt, ‘Pillah’ means child in Malayalam. It is treated as an honorific in Kerala.

Moplah is written in many different ways (Mappilla, Maplah, Moplah, Mopla, Moplar, Moplaymar) and means differently with every version. Many think that it is a contraction of maha-pilla, the big child, a title of honour bestowed on immigrants. It can be ma-pilla meaning mother’s child, implying a foreign paternity; it can be mappila meaning bridegroom or son-in-law. When Ibn Battuta happened along in the 14th century, he noted that the Muslims were the most respected community in Malabar, but the locals didn’t let them into their house or eat with them.

The paper Refiguring the Fanatic Malabar1836-1922 by MT Ansari at the University of Hyderabad, India, tells us that in 822 AD a king of Kerala called Perumal secretly left for Mecca to meet Prophet Muhammad there. Before disembarking, he changed his name to Abdur Rehman Samiri, and there is a grave in Zuphar (Dhofar?) today with a tombstone with that name! Samiri could not return from Mecca because of ill health but sent his representatives with letters of recommendations to the rulers of Malabar. These representatives were thereafter allowed to build mosques in Kodungallur, Kollam-Koolam in Kurumbranad and Chaliyam in Ernad. There is another version of the legend which says that King Perumal actually returned and ruled as Zamorin, which was actually changed form of the Arabic word Samuri (mariner).

Killings that followed the Moplah Peasant Revolt in northern Malabar in 1921 happened as one of the series of violent uprisings that took place in the wake of the Khilafat Movement. The Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of 1919 took 379 people killed; the Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur) incident accounted for 23 policemen burnt alive in 1920; and the Malabar (or Moplah) rebellion saw 2,337 rebels killed although an unofficial count put the dead at 10,000. The Moplah rebels took over and ruled for five months an area that also contained 40,000 Hindus. According to an Arya Samaji count, the Moplahs killed 600 and forcibly converted another 2,500. The Moplahs claimed Arab descent and were thought to be descended from the Arab traders who came to Malabar in the 4th century AD and were welcomed by the local rulers.

At the time of uprising the Moplahs were not from the privileged class. They were dispossessed peasants who, when pushed to the wall, found their leader in a bullock-cart driver Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji. The decline of the Muslim Moplahs began in 1836 after a change in the land tenure laws against which the Moplahs kept agitating violently from 1836 to 1919, with the doctrine of shahadat underpinning their desperate campaigns. They began to be dubbed fanatic Muslims and the Congress Party under whose new politics of Khilafat the Moplahs had arisen condemned them under the same labelling.

The Moplahs in 1921 were only 33 percent of the population of Malabar in Kerala, but in three talukas of northern Malabar – called the fanatical zone – they formed two-thirds of the population. They were overwhelmingly poor, comprising cultivating peasants, landless labourers, petty traders and fishermen. Their landlords were Namboodiri Brahmins and the rich Nair caste. The British came in with the intent to undo the effects of Tipu Sultan’s rule in the area through a ‘land reform’ – based on fixed rent as opposed to the old practice of sharing the produce according to ratio – which made peasant evictions easy. This allowed the British to count on the support of the landed aristocracy.

Evictions went ahead with the British administrators receiving thousands of complaints each from the evicted Moplahs but to no effect. Any suggestions of reform from within the British system were brushed aside as it was feared that reforms would offend the Hindu elite. Instead, the Moplahs were categorised as mindless fanatics whose way of life was that of violence. This spared everyone of the obligation to inquire into the real causes of the peasant revolt. When 1921 came around, the Moplahs were fired by two causes, the Tenancy injustice, and the Khilafat Movement in which Hindus and Muslims were supposed to fight together.

The protest began after hearing the news that the Ali Brothers had been arrested by the British. When the Moplahs came out waving Khilafat and Congress flags, they were mishandled by the police and one mosque was desecrated and their leader Ali Musalyar, a Gandhian, was arrested and later hanged. In fact he had surrendered to the police after being advised by the local Congress leaders to do so. After this incident, the Moplahs spread around and killed the local Hindus (janamis) in what was seen as guerrilla tactics.

The Hindu press covered the incident with editorial remarks like: ‘The Muslim lion and the Hindu lamb have lain together but the lamb is inside the belly of the lion’. Gandhi also made disparaging remarks about the fanaticism of the Moplahs – ‘our Moplah brothers, undisciplined all these years, have now gone mad’ – and the Congress generally tried to obfuscate the very clear nexus of the Moplah uprising with the Khilafat Movement.

It was the distancing of the Congress Party from the peasant revolt that made the Muslims of the rest of India aware of the categorisation of fanatic for the Muslims.

Although not much is written in the textbooks about the Moplah uprising, it has become a part of the Pakistan Movement literature as an example of how the Hindu-dominated Congress betrayed its Muslim followers. The case made above by Mr Ansari is much more nuanced that what it was made out to be in the communally divided India later on. *

BOOK REVIEW: What was the Moplah Revolt? by Khaled AhmedPakistan Movement—

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Afghanistan: Charlie Wilson's War: The missing pieces

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during the House Committee on Foreign Affairs discussion recently. Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher named the Clinton administration, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for creating the Taliban. “Let me repeat that: The Clinton administration, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, created the Taliban,” Rohrabacher
The CIA was a construct of the CIA. Rohrbarker

“The west’s Afghan adventure is now devoid of coherent strategy. Soldiers are dying, the opium trade is booming and aid lies undistributed. Command and control of the war against the Taliban is slipping from the most bizarre western occupying force since the fourth Crusade to a tight cabal around the Afghan ruler, Hamid Karzai, who is fighting to retain a remnant of authority in his own capital.

Karzai’s exasperation with the west has led him to refuse the services as “coordinator” of the former Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown. The latter may have cut a dash in the subsidy swamp of Sarajevo, but in Afghanistan he would have been a boy on a man’s errand. Karzai knows well that his fate lies not with the patronising platitudes of western proconsuls but in the hard graft of provincial warlords, drug gangsters and Taliban go-betweens. Simon Jenkins Guardina. Jan 30th, 2008

George Crile’s in Charlie Wilson’s war reduced the “Great Game” to a hedonistic drama completed within a span of one hour with the “hero” winning the war. The American President boldly declared in Berlin “Mr. Gorbochev, tear down this wall!”. President Ronald Reagan, now described by many as possibly the greatest American president ever, stood in front of the American Congress and declared that the “Evil Empire” had been destroyed. It was as if the “Gipper” had ridden on the Silver steed and taken down the Berlin war and sent the USSR packing back to Moscow.  Back then, the “mujahideen” were being invited to the White House, and the ranches in Texas.

One who walks on water is usually walking on the heads of others!

President Reagan was walking on the heads of two million Pakistani, Afghan and other kids who died fighting on the side of the USA. They named airports and freeways after Ronald Reagan. No memorial to the kids! Today their brothers and sisters and children are being bombed to smithereens.

The war in Afghanistan didn’t just happen. Afghanistan had been in the Soviet sphere of influence. A coup in Kabul tried to change that. Prime Minister Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto was in charge of Islamabad. Already reeling from the 1971 debacle, he would not play ball with the USA and did not want to antagonize the USSR.

After his elimination, a US backed General allowed the CIA total freedom to run “Charlie Wilson’s War”.

What is also left out of the movie, is the fact that the USSR left left hundreds of thousands of mines in Afghanistan. The victors of the war just left the mines there and did nothing about them. Even today Afghan kids blow up or lose limbs from these mines. Princess Diana was one of the few warm blooded humanoids on the planet who wanted to do something about it. Most countries signed the total ban on mines…with a few notable exceptions! Care to guess who?..Yup! It was Mr. Reagan and his advisers Casper Weinberger and the rest of the gang.

After the 2nd Afghan war, the USA also forgot the other allies and imposed an Anti-Pakistan Government in Kabul. So much for friendship and alliances!

Today’s Afghanistan

Whose war was it anyway? By Razeshta Sethna, 1/28/2008
Recently I caught Charlie Wilson’s War, based on George Crile’s book about how the former democratic congressman, Charlie Wilson from Texas, helped fund the Afghan mujahideen back in the 1980s. The film, though highly engaging, fast-paced and maybe even exaggerated in its personalities, has been hugely criticized for factual errors, but not unlike most Hollywood favourites has omitted nuggets of information, something analysts observe as critical in assessing America’s covert war in Afghanistan over decades. Fuelled by anti-communist fervour and humanitarian outrage at the plight of Afghan refugees in the 80s, it stars Tom Hanks as Wilson, Julia Roberts as Joanne Herring (an activist-cum-right-wing socialite who was Pakistan’s high commissioner in Texas), and the magnificently sour-faced Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Gust Avrakotos, an uncouth Greek-American, disgruntled CIA officer, who in a scene, when asked by Wilson about America’s strategy in Afghanistan responds: ‘Well, strictly speaking, we don’t have one,’ he says, ‘but me and three others are working on it.’ This one hour plus of viewing may convert America’s covert war in the region into a heroic undertaking, but fails to remind of the mistakes made back then (after the Soviets withdrew, the American administration left without a hope for future generations) and whether those giant players learnt from these historical errors. Has American voyeurism paid dividends in Afghanistan or even Iraq of late, or have these ill-fated encounters left already ravaged countries in an even greater political mess?

In the 80s, the American administration most certainly had a strategy when Reagan’s government was supplying the mujahideen with arms to fight the Soviets, as it does currently when undertaking what may refer to as expansionist behaviour in other international realms. The rules of the game may have altered slightly as the map of the world changes, but the players remain the same; only in numerous garb. “In every century, there seems to emerge a country with the power, the will, and the intellectual and moral impetus to shape the entire international system in accordance with its own value,” observed Henry Kissinger. If that includes the American encounter with the world for better or for worse, then the twentieth century is surely marked by Washington’s involvement: whether it was political or moral leadership for victory in two world wars and the Cold War or tragedies like the war in Vietnam. But this encounter with the world or this intervention as we could term it is hardly a closed chapter as NATO forces remain engaged with pro-Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Iraq’s insurgency is no where near quelled turning the country into a ripe nurturing ground for Al Qaeda sympathizers and Iranian backed militias.

This relentless engagement in Afghanistan which began post-9/11 is not a new situation. Just over a century ago the region was the playing field for the first ‘Great Game,’ a war fought out between the Russians and the British Raj. Both tried to manipulate Afghanistan for their own benefit through secret agents, subsidies and the final route being military intervention. The aim was to secure a government in Afghanistan that was in their own strategic interests. Now, one again, post-9/11 as sophisticated American bombers pounded pro-Taliban hideouts in Afghanistan and near the Pak-Afghan border, the second great game secretly kicked off on the ground, with exactly the same motives for those involved. This time during round three, however, there are dozens of players. And, like the Afghans themselves, they too form a complex and shifting helix of agendas, interests, alliances and enmities.

Today the no-win situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas (FATA and Waziristan) are linked and a military solution may be viable, if implemented carefully but winning hearts and minds is equally essential, especially in Pakistan’s northern belt. Poverty and under-development permeating this region, say analysts has led to escalating violence as young men engage in fighting what they term the ‘enemies of Islam.’ US funding, which runs into billions of dollars for counter-terrorism measures against pro-Taliban forces is primarily money spent by the military, on security forces, sidelining projects geared toward education, employment and economic empowerment. But recent claims from western sources state that this money has not even reached frontline units engaged in the fighting in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Interestingly, international observers claim that upon visiting the region they have seen the Frontier Corps wearing sandals in the snow, using barely functional Kalashnikov rifles with just 10 rounds of ammunition apiece. This is when Pakistan is said to be receiving funds to fight Al Qaeda as well as approximately $300 million per year to equip and train its forces.

Charlie Wilson’s War is a nudging reminder at a time when even certain key American presidential candidates have announced they will not hesitate to deploy US forces if need be in Pakistani territory to hunt down militants. However, the film may exaggerate the role of Charlie Wilson, the lone ranger who visited the Afghan refugee camps in General Ziaul Haq’s helicopter and was moved enough to ensure that billions would be funnelled to the Afghan fighters to drive out of Afghanistan, but it brings to the fore how fighting the Cold War created yet another modern-day war: this time the enemy is all too invincible with horrific impetus to multiple. Wilson and the likes were too gung-ho to have realized back then the ramifications of their war. Also the potential horror of nuclear conflict is no longer one of rival superpowers, for the proliferation of the method and the weapons of mass destruction in angered states and with aggrieved groups makes the situation more unpredictable.

For the Reagan administration, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan was part of a multi-layered assault, from economic warfare to pubic diplomacy to covert operations involving different partners and initiatives, to take down the Soviet empire and win the Cold War. Its principal objectives were as straightforward as containing and over time reversing Soviet expansionism. The Soviets were gaining ground in Afghanistan militarily, although local fighters were resilient, they lacked ammunition, propelling Pakistan and the ISI to step into the picture, supported by American patronage. The arrival of the Stingers, of which mention is in the movie, completely and nearly instantaneously reversed the war, and led to an ultimate Soviet retreat and surrender. Martin Schram writes in January 1980 in the Washington Post that “Reagan specifically urged the supplying of US shoulder-launched, heat-seeking missiles that can shoot down Soviet helicopter gunships,” which was a year before he was sworn in as president. Reagan, Schram noted, said the United States should supply the weapons through Pakistan. This as history witnessed evolved into a major portion of US foreign policy known as the Reagan Doctrine under which America expanded assistance, supporting other anti-communist resistance movements worldwide.

Interestingly, the national security advisor to President Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, disputes the official version of history, which says CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until much later, is completely otherwise: it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, claims Brzezinski who has stated that this might have even induced a Soviet incursion. He also claims this was an important reason leading to the final break-up of the Soviet Union.

(To be continued)

Razeshta Sethna is a journalist/writer. Email: razeshta@yahoo.co.uk

ARTICLES ABOUT INDIA GANDHI, PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN FATIMA AND BILAWAL BHUTTO

India: The cracks are showing

Is India a failed state?

http://rupeenews.com/2008/01/11/cracks-in-indiablaming-the-isi-cannot-dampen-the-indigineous-indian-insurgencies-are/

Fatima Bhutto the niece writes a farewell letter to Aunt Benazir Bhutto

Fatima Bhutto hints at political involvement. Sign up sheet for a Draft Fatima movement. Leave comments and contact info. Name, email and contact info

Fatima Bhutto and Bilawal Bhutto…a couple made in heaven

Two women. Benazirs murder and Princess Dianas Pakistan connection. Was the Quran the reason for her death?

The speech that Fahim, Zardari, and Bilawal Bhutto should have made. The message that the PPP should have sent. The patriotism that the People Party could have spread

The speech that Bilawal Bhutto should have given. The words that Zardari should have shouted. The thoughts that Fahim should have communicated

The CIA Connection…….The Benazir Bhutto Assassination was pre planned, the Zia model with a twist. The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan. The Great Game continues. When the Elephants dance the grass gets stamped upon…Pakistanis suffer. The purpose of this assignation is to destabilize Pakistan and find a reason to secure the Nukes

Criticism of Benazir Bhutto’s 5E Campaign program

Criticism of Benazir Bhutto. Pre-Assassination

Who killed Liaqat Ali Khan?
On deconstructing the wrong paradigm of the USA media
Rebutting Cohen
Pakistanis are immune to another prophecy of doom
Pakistanis want to hear “Thank You” from the ingrate Americans. Nothing is good enough!
Pakistanis to USA: We want “Friends Not Masters”
Say Thank You
Pakistan US Relations should be normal not transactional
Response to Congressman Hoyer on Pakistan”
On inadequate US Aid to Pakistan
Where is Osama Bin Laden
Where are the Pakistani nukes?

Where is Leadership of the PPP? Why is it behaving like Nero. Stop the arson and the carnage. Ask for a national Day of prayer and reconciliation

Open Letter to Mr. 10% Asif Zardari. Show some leadership

Open Letter to Mr. Bilawal Bhutto

The CIA connection—Benazir Bhutto assassination was pre-planned, the Zia model with a twist

Benzir Bhuttos revenge from the grave: Annointing a despised and corrupt politician Mr. 10% as her successor

Open letter to Mr. Zardari

The 4th Bhutto assassination is a message to the USA. Hands Off Pakistan

Here we go again! Another Indian prophecy of doom. The first one was in 1947

We would like to refer our readers to the an article on “Toppling the US military” that is worth its weight in gold. Search for it on this site. See: “Kissinger threatened Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto”

Also of interest may be an article on “Who assassinated Liaqat Ali Khan”?

Pakistani infrastructure needs> Build Pakistan up as a bulwark against American enemies”

About the inane discussion of taking out Pakistan’s Nuclear weapons.”

Taking out Pakistani Nuclear weapons.”

This was an angry reaction to Benazir Bhutto’s unpatriotic comments. According to tradition, we should not say bad things about a dead person. May God Bless her soul.”

Every time something bad happens, anti-Pakistan elements come out of the woodwork. Here is a response to the talking heads.”

the Democrats don’t get it.”

Discussion of taking out Pakistani nukes: The White House should immediately repudiate this aggression and arrest Anti-Americansim”

Discussion of taking out Pakistani nukes: The White House should immediately repudiate this aggression and arrest Anti-Americansim”

Wish List from Pakistan to Santa America”
Perpetual Mimetic warfare
The Worst Islamphobes
Where are the Pakistani nukes?

On Liaqat Ali Khan: Who killed him?
On deconstructing the wrong paradigm. Why the US Think Tank industry is wrong!
Rebutting Cohen. He is an Indian agent!
Another prophecy of doom for Pakistan. Blah Blah Blah!
Pakistanis want to hear “Thank You” for the US
Pakistanis to USA: We want “Friends Not Masters”
America: Say Thank You”
Pakistan US Relations should be normal not transactional”
Response to Congressman Hoyer on Pakistan”
On inadequate US Aid to Pakistan”

….Pakistanis are not stupid and have their nukes hidden”

The Democrats don’t get it

Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden

The speech that Bilawal Bhutto should have given. The words that Zardari should have shouted. The thoughts that Fahim should have communicated

The CIA Connection…….The Benzair Bhutto Assassination was pre planned, the Zia model with a twist. The continued CIA involvement in Pakistan. The Great Game continues. When the Elephants dance the grass gets stamped upon…Pakistanis suffer. The purpose of this assignation is to destabilize Pakistan and find a reason to secure the Nukes

Criticism of Benazir Bhutto’s 5E Campaign program

Criticism of Benazir Bhutto. Pre-Assassination

Who killed Liaqat Ali Khan?
On deconstructing the wrong paradigm of the USA media
Rebutting Cohen
Pakistanis are immune to another prophecy of doom
Pakistanis want to hear “Thank You” from the ingrate Americans. Nothing is good enough!
Pakistanis to USA: We want “Friends Not Masters”
Say Thank You
Pakistan US Relations should be normal not transactional
Response to Congressman Hoyer on Pakistan”
On inadequate US Aid to Pakistan
Where is Osama Bin Laden
Where are the Pakistani nukes?

Where is Leadership of the PPP? Why is it behaving like Nero. Stop the arson and the carnage. Ask for a national Day of prayer and reconciliation

Open Letter to Mr. 10% Asif Zardari. Show some leadership

Open Letter to Mr. Bilawal Bhutto

The CIA connection—Benazir Bhutto assassination was pre-planned, the Zia model with a twist

Benzir Bhuttos revenge from the grave: Annointing a despised and corrupt politician Mr. 10% as her successor

Open letter to Mr. Zardari

The 4th Bhutto assassination is a message to the USA. Hands Off Pakistan

Here we go again! Another Indian prophecy of doom. The first one was in 1947

We would like to refer our readers to the an article on “Toppling the US military” that is worth its weight in gold. Search for it on this site. See: “Kissinger threatened Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto”

What is Afghanistan really about? It was once a UN mission that has since changed to NATO and even these motives are now being questioned, as they should be…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1oPEfa9Lws&featu

This next link is hokey (and funny) but accurate and worth a listen. After a while, one begins to understand why animation is the best way of delivery.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Khut8xbXK8

A link in helping us to understand PNAC
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aepfsJfWxV0&featu

This guy knows his stuff. It starts slow, but it goes somewhere. Well worth the watch…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRo5jdWQPDI&featu
After watching this video, one can gather why this action of the Conserative government is found to be rather… offensive?

www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/19/torture-ma

Especially in light of Republican presidential candidates openly discussing particular kinds of torture on political prisoners, Guatanimo Bay, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine which hosts the largest prison (1.5 million Palestinians surrounded by walls Israel built with expropriation of Palestinian lands) in the world.
And the true reason why the U.S. is in Iraq and threatening war with Iran?

Two must watches on Peak oil

www.youtube.com/watch?v=caDpfAXBEro&featu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=caDpfAXBEro&featu
This is a must watch, the reason why the U.S. is in Iraq and wants to invade Iran. The first link sets up all the rest.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6_0SQo8c10&featu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSPqto796Lc&featu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSPqto796Lc&featu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4tYb9nv6Zk&featu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulszmnTbwjM
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwJqAKIG_c8&featu
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhzlEX9GQAE&featu
If you get through these links dear readers, you’ll know why it makes no sense to back anyone who backs a loser and that loser is the nation that starts the next world war. Who in Canada backs George W. Bush and PNAC? And there are flaws within this report, folks… statistically and otherswise, they are there. I’ll leave it for another comment.
Please… take the time to go through these links. Its no waste of time.
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Afghanistan: Charlie Wilson's War: The missing pieces

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BOOK REVIEW: What was the Moplah Revolt? by Khaled AhmedPakistan Movement—

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BOOK REVIEW: What was the Moplah Revolt? by Khaled AhmedSubaltern Studies: Muslims, Dalits, and the Fabrications of History
Edited by Shail Mayaram, MSS Pandian & Ajay Skaria
Permanent Black, Delhi 2005
Pp322; Price Rs 1390

If you vaguely remember having read a potted account of the Moplah Revolt in the 1920s in your Pakistan Movement textbook, you should read this latest research into what really happened in Malabar in Kerala that made the Muslims there rise in bloody revolt. First let us get the word Moplah right, which no one explained because the textbook had to pass over quickly to more urgent sections of the communal conflict in India. Like ‘Moses’ in Biblical Egypt, ‘Pillah’ means child in Malayalam. It is treated as an honorific in Kerala.

Moplah is written in many different ways (Mappilla, Maplah, Moplah, Mopla, Moplar, Moplaymar) and means differently with every version. Many think that it is a contraction of maha-pilla, the big child, a title of honour bestowed on immigrants. It can be ma-pilla meaning mother’s child, implying a foreign paternity; it can be mappila meaning bridegroom or son-in-law. When Ibn Battuta happened along in the 14th century, he noted that the Muslims were the most respected community in Malabar, but the locals didn’t let them into their house or eat with them.

The paper Refiguring the Fanatic Malabar1836-1922 by MT Ansari at the University of Hyderabad, India, tells us that in 822 AD a king of Kerala called Perumal secretly left for Mecca to meet Prophet Muhammad there. Before disembarking, he changed his name to Abdur Rehman Samiri, and there is a grave in Zuphar (Dhofar?) today with a tombstone with that name! Samiri could not return from Mecca because of ill health but sent his representatives with letters of recommendations to the rulers of Malabar. These representatives were thereafter allowed to build mosques in Kodungallur, Kollam-Koolam in Kurumbranad and Chaliyam in Ernad. There is another version of the legend which says that King Perumal actually returned and ruled as Zamorin, which was actually changed form of the Arabic word Samuri (mariner).

Killings that followed the Moplah Peasant Revolt in northern Malabar in 1921 happened as one of the series of violent uprisings that took place in the wake of the Khilafat Movement. The Jallianwalla Bagh massacre of 1919 took 379 people killed; the Chauri Chaura (Gorakhpur) incident accounted for 23 policemen burnt alive in 1920; and the Malabar (or Moplah) rebellion saw 2,337 rebels killed although an unofficial count put the dead at 10,000. The Moplah rebels took over and ruled for five months an area that also contained 40,000 Hindus. According to an Arya Samaji count, the Moplahs killed 600 and forcibly converted another 2,500. The Moplahs claimed Arab descent and were thought to be descended from the Arab traders who came to Malabar in the 4th century AD and were welcomed by the local rulers.

At the time of uprising the Moplahs were not from the privileged class. They were dispossessed peasants who, when pushed to the wall, found their leader in a bullock-cart driver Variamkunnath Kunhamed Haji. The decline of the Muslim Moplahs began in 1836 after a change in the land tenure laws against which the Moplahs kept agitating violently from 1836 to 1919, with the doctrine of shahadat underpinning their desperate campaigns. They began to be dubbed fanatic Muslims and the Congress Party under whose new politics of Khilafat the Moplahs had arisen condemned them under the same labelling.

The Moplahs in 1921 were only 33 percent of the population of Malabar in Kerala, but in three talukas of northern Malabar – called the fanatical zone – they formed two-thirds of the population. They were overwhelmingly poor, comprising cultivating peasants, landless labourers, petty traders and fishermen. Their landlords were Namboodiri Brahmins and the rich Nair caste. The British came in with the intent to undo the effects of Tipu Sultan’s rule in the area through a ‘land reform’ – based on fixed rent as opposed to the old practice of sharing the produce according to ratio – which made peasant evictions easy. This allowed the British to count on the support of the landed aristocracy.

Evictions went ahead with the British administrators receiving thousands of complaints each from the evicted Moplahs but to no effect. Any suggestions of reform from within the British system were brushed aside as it was feared that reforms would offend the Hindu elite. Instead, the Moplahs were categorised as mindless fanatics whose way of life was that of violence. This spared everyone of the obligation to inquire into the real causes of the peasant revolt. When 1921 came around, the Moplahs were fired by two causes, the Tenancy injustice, and the Khilafat Movement in which Hindus and Muslims were supposed to fight together.

The protest began after hearing the news that the Ali Brothers had been arrested by the British. When the Moplahs came out waving Khilafat and Congress flags, they were mishandled by the police and one mosque was desecrated and their leader Ali Musalyar, a Gandhian, was arrested and later hanged. In fact he had surrendered to the police after being advised by the local Congress leaders to do so. After this incident, the Moplahs spread around and killed the local Hindus (janamis) in what was seen as guerrilla tactics.

The Hindu press covered the incident with editorial remarks like: ‘The Muslim lion and the Hindu lamb have lain together but the lamb is inside the belly of the lion’. Gandhi also made disparaging remarks about the fanaticism of the Moplahs – ‘our Moplah brothers, undisciplined all these years, have now gone mad’ – and the Congress generally tried to obfuscate the very clear nexus of the Moplah uprising with the Khilafat Movement.

It was the distancing of the Congress Party from the peasant revolt that made the Muslims of the rest of India aware of the categorisation of fanatic for the Muslims.

Although not much is written in the textbooks about the Moplah uprising, it has become a part of the Pakistan Movement literature as an example of how the Hindu-dominated Congress betrayed its Muslim followers. The case made above by Mr Ansari is much more nuanced that what it was made out to be in the communally divided India later on. *

BOOK REVIEW: What was the Moplah Revolt? by Khaled AhmedPakistan Movement—

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The PPP splinters? Competing to join the new government?

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The party was founded in 1967, on November 30 and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto became its first chairman. The party creed is: “Islam is our faith; democracy is our politics; socialism is our economy; all power to the people.”

The Pakistan Peoples Party is considerably more liberal than other political parties in Pakistan and is known to fight for such issues as women’s rights (its previous leader was a woman) and the rights of the poor and the oppressed.

The Pakistan Peoples Party originally funded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is about to get splintered into several pieces. Without the glue of Ms. Benazir Bhutto the party is unlikely to have the cohesive force to stay together. The centrifugal forces will be too strong to resist.

It is being predicted that the party is going to get splintered soon. The break-up may happen before the elections, or most probably after the the elections with each factions  vying to outdo each other to join the government. Some of these will be purchased, some disgruntled ones will be dismissed and others may want to get into power, for the sake of power.  

AITIZAZ AHSAN AND JEHANGIR BADAR:

Aitizaz Ahsan was repeatedly ignored by Ms. Benazir Bhutto. These are seasoned leaders in their own right and must have been deeply insulted by the appointment of the 19 year old to run the Peoples Party.

FATIMA AND GHINWA BHUTTO:

Fatima has dropped some hints about her political career. She and Ghinva have tried to profit from the Bhutto name, but Fatima now denies that she wants to take advantage of the “Bhutto tag”. 

BILAWAL AND ZARDARI:

This wing may splinter if political expediency dictates that Mr. Bilwal Zardari gets away from the tutelage of Mr. Zardari

How will this play out, only time will tell!

The PPP splinters? Competing to join the new government?

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Neocons Shaken, But Not Deterred by Jim Lobe

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Jacob Heilbrun has written a new book on the Neocons.

They have been around for decades, but simply put, the architects of the aggressively conservative policy makers in the current Republican government are known as Neocons. This is the reason for American involvement in Iraq. Neocons were very popular in the wee years of this century, but their influence has declined a little bit.

The neocons have become at once the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history. Critics on left and right describe them as a tight-knit cabal that ensnared the Bush administration in an unwinnable foreign war.

Who are the neoconservatives? How did an obscure band of policy intellectuals, left for dead in the 1990s, suddenly rise to influence the Bush administration and revolutionize American foreign policy?

Jacob Heilbrunn wittily and pungently depicts the government officials, pundits, and think-tank denizens who make up this controversial movement, bringing them to life against a background rich in historical detail and political insight. Setting the movement in the larger context of the decades-long battle between liberals and conservatives, first over communism, now over the war on terrorism, he shows that they have always been intellectual mavericks, with a fiery prophetic temperament (and a rhetoric to match) that sets them apart from both liberals and traditional conservatives.

Neoconservatism grew out of a split in the 1930s between Stalinists and followers of Trotsky. These obscure ideological battles between warring Marxist factions were transported to the larger canvas of the Cold War, as over time the neocons moved steadily to the right, abandoning the Democratic party after 1972 when it shunned intervention abroad, and completing their journey in 1980 when they embraced Ronald Reagan and the Republican party. There they supplied the ideological glue that held the Reagan coalition together, combining the agenda of “family values” with a crusading foreign policy.

Out of favor with the first President Bush, and reduced to gadflies in the Clinton years, they suddenly found themselves in George W. Bush’s administration in a position of unprecendented influence. For the first time in their long history, they had their hands on the levers of power. Prompted by 9/11, they used that power to advance what they believed to be America’s strategic interest in spreading democracy throughout the Arab world.

Their critics charge that the neo-conservatives were doing the bidding of the Israeli government — a charge that the neoconservatives rightfully reject. But Heilbrunn shows that the story of the neocons is inseparable from the great historical drama of Jewish assimilation. Decisively shaped by the immigrant exerience and the trauma of the Holocaust, they rose from the margins of political life to become an insurgent counter-establishment that challenged the old WASP foreign policy elite.

Far from being chastened by the Iraq debacle, the neocons continue to guide foreign policy. They are advisors to each of the major GOP presidential candidates. Repeatedly declared dead in the past, like Old Testament prophets they thrive on adversity. This book shows where they came from — and why they remain a potent and permanent force in American politics.

About the Author
Jacob Heilbrunn writes regularly for the New York Times, Washington Monthly, and National Interest. He is a former member of the Los Angeles Times editorial board and was a senior editor at the New Republic. He lives in Washington, DC.

Mr. Guliani was the “great white hope” of the Neocons. Like bees to honey they congregated towards him and he bought into their philosophy “lock stock and barrell”. Mr. Guliani was declared by the front runner by the drive by media, but the primaries have shown that Mr. Guliani may be discarded into the dust bin of history along with the Neocons and their policy that has brought disrepute to America and has exponentially increased Anti-Americanism in the world.

No Democratic candidate will reverse the policy, but there will be a slightly different direction.

Neocons Shaken, But Not Deterred by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON – Almost exactly five years after it reached its zenith with the invasion of Iraq, the influence of neo-conservatives has waned sharply in Washington, as their nemeses, the ‘realists’ in the national security bureaucracy, have increasingly asserted control over U.S. foreign policy.While battered, however, neo-conservatives have not yet been forced from the field. And while their hopes that President George W. Bush would ‘take out’ Iran’s nuclear programme before leaving office appear to have diminished substantially, their hawkish voice is still heard loud and clear both in the White House – courtesy of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and Deputy National Security adviser Elliott Abrams – and in this year’s Republican presidential race, where neo-conservative favourites include former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain, and, until earlier this week, Fred Thompson.

Indeed, as pointed out in Jacob Heilbrunn’s new book ‘They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons’ (Doubleday), the neocons, despite the fiasco in Iraq, are already trying to detach themselves from both Bush and the Mesopotamian adventure they so avidly championed and entrench themselves ever more deeply into institutional Washington.

‘Whether it’s the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies or the National Endowment for Democracy, the Weekly Standard or the New York Sun, the neoconservatives are battle-hardened fighters who have created a permanent base for themselves. They will not disappear,’ according to Heilbrunn, a former neo-conservative himself and senior editor at the Nixon Centre’s The National Interest journal.

Heilbrunn’s much-anticipated book, which coincides with the publication of a not entirely unsympathetic biography entitled ‘Prince of Darkness’ of the movement’s most influential hard-liner, Richard Perle, affirms a number of central truths about neo-conservatism that are generally ignored or avoided in mainstream discussion of what he correctly calls a ‘mind-set’ rather than an ‘ideology.’

First, neo-conservatism ‘is in a decisive respect a Jewish phenomenon,’ even if many adherents – albeit a minority – are not Jewish and even if, it should be added, most U.S. Jews are not neo-conservatives. Moreover, neo-conservatives, both Jew and gentile, are bound by a ‘shared commitment to the largest, most important Jewish cause: the survival of Israel.’

Second, its substance is largely determined by the lessons its followers draw from what they see as causes of the Nazi Holocaust: the alleged failures of German ‘liberals’ in the Weimar Republic to stand up to the twin challenges of Nazism and Communism and of the western European liberal democracies to stand up to Adolf Hitler in the run-up to World War II; and the necessity of having overwhelming military power to crush any new Hitler pre-emptively.

As Heilbrunn, whose Jewish father fled Germany before the war, correctly notes, neoconservatives ‘see new Munichs everywhere and anywhere’ – a reference to the 1938 Munich pact by which Britain and France tried to ‘appease’ Hitler by ceding part of Czechoslovakia to Germany.

Indeed, it is characteristic of neo-conservatives to depict virtually every foreign policy challenge – from the Sandinista government in Nicaragua 25 years ago to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – to U.S. (or Israeli) hegemony as a potentially cataclysmic replay of the 1930s. The neo-conservatives, according to Heilbrunn, ‘have shaped a romantic narrative for themselves in which they are the new Churchills staring down the forces of evil.’

Fear that Saddam Hussein intended a ‘second holocaust’ against Israel served as one of the main motivations for the neo-conservative promotion of war with Iraq, according to Heilbrunn. ‘As Jews, they (and their Catholic conservative allies) were haunted by the memory that the allies had not stopped the Holocaust – and they strongly believed that it was America’s obligation to act preemptively to avert another one.’

Third, the movement’s Trotskyist roots – incarnated by its ‘founding father, Max Shachtman – among the Jews from Central and Eastern Europe in the first half of the 20th century not only imbued its members with a distrust, even a hatred, of liberalism (despite their latter-day purported embrace of democracy promotion). They also largely shaped their polemical and political tactics, even as they moved rightward – into the Democratic Party after World War II and thence, after the traumas of the 1960s and early 1970s, including two Arab-Israeli wars – into Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party.

‘Their fling with Trotskyism [endowed] them with a temperament as well as a set of intellectual tolls that many never completely abandoned – a combative temper and a penchant for sweeping assertions and grandiose ideas.’ The fact that they see themselves as ‘a kind of aristocratic intelligentsia,’ according to Heilbrunn, derives from their Trotskyite origins.

Fourth, ‘the social exclusion experienced by Jews at the hands of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) elite’ that persisted in the U.S. into the early 1960s stirred a ‘deep resentment’ among many of the movement’s most influential leaders, notably Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz.

Indeed, Podhoretz, who edited Commentary magazine from the early 1960s until the mid-1990s and now advises Giuliani, sees the movement as the war against the ‘WASP patriciate’, according to Heilbrunn.

Neo-conservatives ‘know that they will never be accepted by the establishment,’ he writes in a passage about Perle. ‘Indeed, they outwardly revel in the knowledge that they are outsiders. But beneath the veneer of confidence is a seething rage at the government bureaucracy and social elites.’

These insights are the strongest part of the book, but, unfortunately, virtually all of them are made within the first 100 pages.

A lapsed neo-conservative himself, Heilbrunn offers useful, if unoriginal, accounts of the influences of German-Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss and military strategist Alfred Wohlstetter on the movement and its worldview. But he gets lost in his recounting of the evolution of the neo-conservatism and its various factions – particularly the supposed divides between the Straussean/realist wing led by Irving Kristol and Jeane Kirkpatrick, on the one hand, and the Podhoretz-Abrams wing – from the moment it first enjoyed power during Ronald Reagan’s first term to the disastrous aftermath of the Iraq war.

While the reason for the subsequent incoherence of his account was probably due to deadline pressures and poor editing, it may also be attributable both to the ideological contortions of the neo-conservatives themselves and to the disappointing fact that Heilbrunn accepts and endorses the narrative of their own history. Indeed, his descriptions of liberal or left-wing foes, from the New Left and the Black Power movement to Democratic politicians, such as George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and even Bill Clinton, echo those of the most radical neo-cons.

Thus, Clinton’s first national security adviser Anthony Lake and secretary of state Warren Christopher ‘apparently saw the United States, not its enemies, as the main problem in the world.’ And had the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, ‘which funneled money to …Ahmed Chalabi …been heeded [by Clinton], it might have helped avoid the chaos that the toppling of the Saddam Hussein created.’

Ultimately, Heilbrunn is critical of the neoconservatives, but he accepts much of their worldview.

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Neocons Shaken, But Not Deterred by Jim Lobe

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"Geert Wilders Anti-Qur'an Film: Silence will be the best response" by Tariq Ramadhan

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Noticias de Rupia | Nouvelles de Roupie | Rupiennachrichten | ??????? ????? | ???? | Roepienieuws | Rupi Nyheter | ??????? | Notizie di Rupia | PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | RUPEE NEWS | Janauary 26th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? |

Rupee News had recommended Silence on the Wilder’s film. Mr. Wilders had hoped to garnish a huge response from the Muslim world..The Muslim world responded to Geert with a yawn and dismissed his rant as irrilevant.

Geert Wilders anti-Quran film. Silence will be the best response

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As of Jan 26th, 2008, Geert has postponed airing of his film

Dutch fundamentalist Cees Van der Staaij, the SGP leader, the SOI and thier Neocon backers must be disappointed that Muslims are responding with a concerted campaign of “silence” against Mr. Wilders. Ignoring the racists worked in cold shouldering Robert Spencer and his band of thugs. Their anti-Muslim campaign failed campaign on  American campuses. Regular Americans booed them out of Emery and other universities. 

Mr. Geert Wilders will launch very soon a short movie, about which nobody knows anything, where it is said that he is going to unveil the true negative essence of Islam, the unhealthy character of the Prophet or maybe the Qur’an’s insanities. Whatever is the content, one understands it is a pure provocation! Silence would be our best response!

The noise surrounding this movie’s launch and the public statements of Mr Geert Wilders are always so extreme that anyone can understand his objective is to provoke a reaction and to get media coverage and attention. For the time being he seems to succeed beyond hope: everybody speaks about a movie nobody has watched being afraid (or hoping) the scandal. M. Geert Wilders is a populist: having no serious real social policy, he is trying to get voters by feeding and using their fears! This is so clear that the Muslims must pass over : Mr Geert Wilders is now revealing his true nature and the best response is to ignore him. The worst case scenario he can expect is indeed not reaction… silence!

Yet we know that in these times of tensions, anything could happen. Governments in the Muslim majority countries, organisations, politicians can use it for the sake of other political stakes. As it happened with the Danish cartoon crisis, some governments and/or religious organizations (radical or not) instrumentalised the whole story to mobilize the people either to divert them from the true problems in their own countries or to get popular support by attacking “the West” represented as “the enemy”. An uncontrolled over-emotional reaction is always possible and some can shape it through some inflammatory statements or kinds of a “protest orchestration” (by some governments or organizations). Thus no one can predict where it is going to end.

People have learned from the cartoon crisis and many will try to calm down the atmosphere but some other presidents or leaders have other agendas and this kind of crisis is very much an opportunity. Actually it is exactly what Mr Geert Wilders himself is looking for! One may hope that the fact that Mr Geert Wilders is known (and that it is clearly a provocation) would help the people to understand it is a trap and they must refuse to be driven into it. This would be the best case scenario.

The Dutch government need to have a preemptive policy built on a clear discourse that the government is not supporting (or even rejecting or condemning) the film and its content but it does not want to interfere in the name of freedom of expression. If any ambassador or politician from a Muslim majority country is asking for an audience, she or he should be received and this positioning should be clearly stated. Wilders should not be prevented from speaking, or be put in jail (as some have suggested) : one should only respond to his argument when there is an argument and simply ignore him when he is acting out of an orchestrated provocation. Geert Wilders Anti-Qur’an Film: Silence will be the best responseNetherlands: A movie-provocation about which everybody is talking while nobody knows anything ! Silence will be the best response By Tariq Ramadan. Originally published at Alarab online

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RUPEE NEWS | January 26th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? |

"Geert Wilders Anti-Qur'an Film: Silence will be the best response" by Tariq Ramadhan

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