Dear Sukla and Jai,
Thanks for an non-stop learning venture on day-by-day basis about the
state-of-the world, which suggests that we should try once more an exercise
to deliberate about how interpretation about world affairs.
We tried it once in a meeting of the IC a few years ago, in Holland I
believe.
Such activity should be better organized than just lining up to vent our
views to the wind, two minutes assigned to each person :-)
Wish to enlist your support for a campaign going on in Perú in support of
Máxima Chaupe, who was accused by a judge in Cajamarca, Northern Perú
representing the thoroughly corrupt judicial system in Perú.
I will send this appeal from another email address.
Gracias in advance!
Abrazos from Uppsala.
Azril

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Sukla Sen <sukla.sen@...> wrote:

>
> I guess just a few points need be made in the given context.
>
> 1. The brutal war launched on Iraq by the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld cabal
> in 2003, in pursuance of US state interest as defined by the neo-con
> project to dominate the world by way of establishing an iron grip over
> Iraq's huge hydrocarbon resources, on the utterly false pretexts of
> WMD or al-Qaeda connections must be condemned in the strongest
> possible terms.
> 2. The "regime change" brought about at an enormous human and other
> costs also caused a sort of perpetual anarchy by destroying the
> equilibrium presided over by Saddam and his Baath Party. No doubt
> about that.
> 3. But at the same time, one has to keep in mind that Saddam himself
> was a brutal dictator who had physically eliminated all political
> opposition, including the Communists, and cruelly suppressed the
> (majority) Shias and the Kurds, carried out genocides against them.
> That's how he had maintained the equilibrium.
> 4. We've also to seriously explore the issue whether a power vacuum
> *ipso facto *gives rise to barbaric religious extremism?
> 5. Like Saddam, Assad is also a brutal dictator. And the Free Syrian
> Army (FSA), who had initiated the fight against Assad demanding
> democracy, is very much engaged in bitter bloody, even if seemingly
> losing, battles with al-Qaeda, ISIS and al-Nusra.
>
> Sukla
>
>
> On 23 August 2014 11:47, Feroze Mithiborwala <feroze.moses777@...>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Javed Anand <javedanand@...>
>> Date: 22 August 2014 10:16
>> Subject: Fwd: Fw: Tomgram: Patrick Cockburn, How to Ensure a Thriving
>> Caliphate
>> To:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   [image: TomDispatch.com: A Regular Antidote to the Mainstream Media]
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=f950ff61a9&e=680f604aeb>      August
>> 21, 2014
>> Tomgram: Patrick Cockburn, How to Ensure a Thriving Caliphate
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=5e0d08ad7d&e=680f604aeb>
>> Think of the new “caliphate” of the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic
>> State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's gift to
>> the world (with a helping hand from the Saudis and other financiers of
>> extremism in the Persian Gulf).  How strange that they get so little credit
>> for its rise, for the fact that the outlines of the Middle East, as set
>> up
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=d62068da1e&e=680f604aeb>
>> by Europe’s colonial powers in the wake of World War I, are being swept
>> aside in a tide of blood.
>>
>> Had George and Dick not decided on their “cakewalk” in Iraq, had they not
>> raised the specter
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=98c9113d27&e=680f604aeb>
>> of nuclear destruction and claimed that Saddam Hussein’s regime was somehow
>> linked
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=b90c7444fd&e=680f604aeb>
>> to al-Qaeda and so to the 9/11 attacks, had they not sent tens of thousands
>> of American troops into a burning, looted Baghdad (“stuff happens
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=0f0e98ad9d&e=680f604aeb>”),
>> disbanded
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=32851cb146&e=680f604aeb>
>> the Iraqi army, built
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=3322ae00e1&e=680f604aeb>
>> military bases all over that country, and generally indulged their
>> geopolitical fantasies about dominating the oil heartlands of the planet
>> for eternity, ISIS would have been an unlikely possibility, no matter the
>> ethnic and religious tensions in the region.  They essentially launched the
>> drive that broke state power
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=513b6e007f&e=680f604aeb>
>> there and created the kind of vacuum that a movement like ISIS was so
>> horrifically well suited to fill.
>>
>> All in all, it’s a remarkable accomplishment to look back on.  In
>> September 2001, when George and Dick launched their “Global War on Terror”
>> to wipe out -- so they then claimed -- “terrorist networks” in up to 60
>> countries
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=aa1ed96cd9&e=680f604aeb>,
>> or as they preferred to put it, “drain the swamp
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=c3bfe10857&e=680f604aeb>,”
>> there were scattered bands of jihadis globally, while al-Qaeda had a couple
>> of camps in Afghanistan and a sprinkling of supporters elsewhere.  Today,
>> in the wake of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and an air power
>> intervention in Libya, after years of drone (and non-drone) bombing
>> campaigns across the Greater Middle East, jihadist groups are thriving in
>> Yemen and Pakistan, spreading through Africa (along with
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=873ddd72ec&e=680f604aeb>
>> the U.S. military), and ISIS has taken significant parts of Iraq and Syria
>> right up to the Lebanese border for its own bailiwick and is still
>> expanding murderously, despite a renewed American bombing campaign that may only
>> strengthen
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=d303e69a25&e=680f604aeb>
>> that movement in the long run.
>>
>> Has anyone covered this nightmare better than the world’s least embedded
>> reporter, Patrick Cockburn of the British *Independent*?  Not for my
>> money.  He’s had the canniest, clearest-eyed view
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=9600b3e443&e=680f604aeb>
>> of developments in the region for years now.  As it happens, when he
>> publishes a new book on the Middle East (the last time was 2008), he makes
>> one of his rare appearances
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=59de1a65c4&e=680f604aeb>
>> at TomDispatch.  This month, his latest must-read work, *The Jihadis
>> Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=26703f39ad&e=680f604aeb>,
>> is out.  Today, this website has an excerpt from its first chapter on why
>> the war on terror was such a failure (and why, if Washington was insistent
>> on invading someplace, it probably should have chosen Saudi Arabia).  It
>> includes a special introductory section written just for TomDispatch.
>> Thanks go to his publisher, OR Books
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=e28cd3a07a&e=680f604aeb>.
>> *Tom*
>>
>> *Why Washington’s War on Terror Failed *
>> *The Underrated Saudi Connection *
>> By Patrick Cockburn
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=6f431cf353&e=680f604aeb>
>> [*This essay is excerpted from the first chapter of Patrick Cockburn’s
>> new book, *The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=9c8449086e&e=680f604aeb>,
>> *with special thanks to his publisher, **OR Books*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=c2472a31b7&e=680f604aeb>*.
>> The first section is a new introduction written for TomDispatch
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=adeaac5c11&e=680f604aeb>.*
>> ]
>> There are extraordinary elements in the present U.S. policy in Iraq and
>> Syria that are attracting surprisingly little attention. In Iraq, the U.S.
>> is carrying out air strikes and sending in advisers and trainers to help
>> beat back the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (better
>> known as ISIS) on the Kurdish capital, Erbil. The U.S. would presumably do
>> the same if ISIS surrounds or attacks Baghdad. But in Syria, Washington’s
>> policy is the exact opposite: there the main opponent of ISIS is the Syrian
>> government and the Syrian Kurds in their northern enclaves. Both are under
>> attack from ISIS, which has taken about a third of the country, including
>> most of its oil and gas production facilities.
>> But U.S., Western European, Saudi, and Arab Gulf policy is to overthrow
>> President Bashar al-Assad, which happens to be the policy of ISIS and other
>> jihadis in Syria. If Assad goes, then ISIS will be the beneficiary, since
>> it is either defeating or absorbing the rest of the Syrian armed
>> opposition. There is a pretense in Washington and elsewhere that there
>> exists a “moderate” Syrian opposition being helped by the U.S., Qatar,
>> Turkey, and the Saudis.  It is, however, weak and getting more so by the
>> day. Soon the new caliphate may stretch from the Iranian border to the
>> Mediterranean and the only force that can possibly stop this from happening
>> is the Syrian army.
>> Click here to read more of this dispatch.
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=fa83ba6449&e=680f604aeb>
>>
>>  *Visit our sister sites:*
>> [image: The Nation Institute]
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=e883187e80&e=680f604aeb>
>> [image: Nation Books]
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=94ff0d9ccb&e=680f604aeb>
>> [image: The Investigative Fund]
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=fb1cb344cd&e=680f604aeb>
>>  Recent Posts
>> 2 days ago...
>> *Tomgram: William Astore, The Bomber Will Always Get Funded -- and Used*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=71c7534cd7&e=680f604aeb>
>>
>> 4 days ago...
>> *Tomgram: Eduardo Galeano, A Lost and Found History of Lives and Dreams
>> (Some Broken)*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=daf32ee47c&e=680f604aeb>
>>
>> 1 week ago...
>> *Tomgram: Matthew Harwood, One Nation Under SWAT*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=24fdb442d5&e=680f604aeb>
>>
>> 9 days ago...
>> *Tomgram: Sandy Tolan, Going Wild in the Gaza War*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=98b688a98e&e=680f604aeb>
>>  Recent Highlights
>> 6 weeks ago...
>> *Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, America's Real Foreign Policy*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=244bb92798&e=680f604aeb>
>>
>> 7 weeks ago...
>> *Tomgram: Juan Cole, Waiting for the Arab Summer*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=6aef5fc136&e=680f604aeb>
>>
>>       Consider supporting TomDispatch by making a donation. Click here.
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>    Sent to bindu621@... — *why did I get this?*
>> <http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/about?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&id=1e41682ade&e=680f604aeb&c=e90028de28>
>> unsubscribe from this list
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *Javed Anand*
>> +919870402556
>> +91-22-26602288
>> Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu
>> Mumbai 400049
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Feroze Mithiborwala
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Peace Is Doable
>
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