Madman on the loose

Ahmadinejad repeats his rant!

On Thursday, Iran's Islamofascist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in full flow at the UN General Assembly which is currently in session.

Misusing the platform that is provided to all member-states of the UN, Ahmadinejad delivered, what can only be described as a hate-laden speech, spitting venom at the Christian West, Jewish Israel and 'non-believers' belonging to all other faiths.

He was not speaking on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran alone, but the entire ummah when he

. charged Americans with stage-managing 9/11
. accused the US of conniving with Osama bin Laden
. questioned the veracity of the Holocaust
. blamed 'Zionists' for the woes of the world
. virtually called for the extermination of all those he listed as foes.

A madman on the loose is a threat to the world. A madman who could soon have nuclear weapons in his arsenal is a danger to humankind and human civilisation.

Only those given to unmentionable perversions of the mind and body would find merit in Ahmadinejad's bilious speech which epitomises Islamofascism.

Those nations which value democracy, freedom, liberty and peace would shame and shun a rabid pariah like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran is welcome to have him as its President. The mullahs of Iran are welcome to their favourite boy.

But the world, including India, must deny him -- and those who support him or endorse his rant -- both legitimacy and space.

[Official version of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech in the UN General Assembly.]

PLO pushes for judenrein

Fresh crisis brewing!
Back to the past in West Asia?

West Asia could be rapidly hurtling towards a fresh spell of violent upheaval centred around Israel whose impact would be felt in far corners of the world.

Among the manufactured grievances cited in justification of jihadi terrorism is the ‘Palestinian issue’ – any recrudescence of violence in the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on account of belligerent brinkmanship in the name of statehood would be seized upon by Islamists of all shades in all countries.

The attack on the Embassy of Israel in Cairo which resulted in the Israeli Ambassador and other diplomatic staff of the mission being evacuated and flown to Israel was a precursor to the unfolding drama at the UN whose General Assembly begins its annual session on September 19.

The PLO is pushing for recognition as a full member state by the UN with Turkey furiously lobbying support for the move. This could be Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s moment to seize the leadership of West Asia which till now rested with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Erdogan has lashed out at Israel at the Arab League, choosing to remain silent about the upheaval and its brutal suppression in Syria. If Erdogan succeeds, it would stymie Shia Iran’s efforts to emerge as the leader of Sunni Arabia.

Either way, Arabs seem to be surrendering the right to decide their destiny to the Turks and the Iranians. Meanwhile, the space for American intervention is disappearing rapidly.

Israel is understandably keen to prevent the PLO from going ahead with its move to secure the General Assembly’s recognition as a full state. Such unilateral declaration, if it were to happen, would kill all chances of a negotiated settlement and fan Palestinian adventurism, leading to both sides taking absolutist positions.

That’s undesirable.

A last minute attempt by the Americans to resolve the emerging crisis is unlikely to succeed. The Palestinians are apparently playing for broke.

The PLO’s Ambassador to the UN has gone to the extent of outlining the main feature of the proposed ‘Palestine’: It would not allow any Jew within its territory, making it the first state to officially prohibit Jews since Hitler ordered Germany to be cleansed of Jews and made judenrein.

A flicker of hope of averting a full-blown crisis with global ramifications was offered on Wednesday by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who is said to have reiterated terms for resuming the negotiations that have remained stalled since last year on account of Jewish settlers persisting with building new settlements in the West Bank.

According to the Jerusalem Post:

The Palestinian Authority will agree to return to peace negotiations with Israel if only one of two criteria they had previously set as pre-conditions for talks are reached: An immediate halt to all settlement construction or an Israeli declaration that the borders of the Palestinian state will be based on the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed upon land swaps, a senior aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas told Army Radio on Wednesday.

Will Israel, which has demonstrated wisdom in the face of Islamist belligerence in Egypt and declared that it remains committed to the Israel-Egypt Peace Accord, rise to the occasion and reach out to Abu Mazen? He still remains the best bet for achieving long-term peace through a negotiated settlement of a dispute that has festered too long and which needs to be prevented from being hijacked by Turkish and Iranian carpetbaggers.

L'affaire Shashi Tharoor

Of probity and provincialism

Nobody who is caught with his hand in the till ever admits to his guilt till proven guilty in a court of law; all sense of decency and honour, dignity and respect, evaporates and yields space to belligerence followed by maudlin sentiments of hurt innocence. So also with the disgraced former Minister of State for External Affairs who once famously tweeted to me that he was proud to be associated with the Congress because of its “tolerance” and “liberal values”.

That was in response to my tweet (not the one on 'cattle class' travel which led to his first taste of controversy!) pointing out his irreverent comments about Mrs Indira Gandhi and the Congress’s first family (“Had Indira’s Parsi husband been a Toddywalla rather than so conveniently a Gandhi, I sometimes wonder, might India’s political history have been different?”) in his book India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond. This was soon after Mr Jaswant Singh’s unceremonious exit from the BJP following the publication of his book Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence and Mr Tharoor was all over Twitter, patronisingly gloating over a veteran politician’s fall from grace in his party.

For all its ‘tolerance’ and ‘liberal values’, the Congress has not been particularly tolerant about Mr Tharoor’s extra-ministerial activities or liberal towards his cavalier attitude. When push came to shove, the Congress disowned him and distanced itself from his interest in promoting T20 cricket in Kochi. It would be in bad form and poor taste to gloat over Mr Tharoor’s current plight, but it would be perfectly in order to point out that arrivistes in politics should resist the temptation of excessive preening.

It is not the least surprising that Mr Tharoor, whose Dubai-based fiancée was a beneficiary by way of free ‘sweat’ equity worth Rs 70 crore from IPL’s Kochi franchise deal (hours before he was given marching orders she offered to return the shares which only served to implicate him) should have pretended outrage, flown into a temper with journalists, belligerently asserted that under no circumstances would he resign from office, only to be told to put in his papers last Sunday evening. He has now predictably resorted to mawkish claims of victimhood.

Reading out a statement in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, Mr Tharoor declared, though not for the first time, “My conscience is clear and I know that I have done nothing improper or unethical, let alone illegal… I am deeply wounded by the fanciful and malicious charges that have been made against me.” We have heard similar remonstrations of innocence before by those accused of compromising their integrity.

He could have, however, spared us the claim that he resigned from the Union Council of Ministers to uphold the “highest moral traditions of our democratic system” and to “avoid embarrassment to the Government”. He did not resign voluntarily when unsavoury details (including those of his role which went well beyond that of a neutral ‘mentor’) of the IPL’s Kochi franchise scandal surfaced in media, which would have been the honourable thing to do; he was told to go by his party bosses. Had he resigned immediately, or at least offered to resign, rather than arrogantly cavil at the suggestion that he should do so to uphold the “highest moral traditions of our democratic system” he now cites, his reputation might have been tarred but it would not have been lying in tatters today.

Nor is any purpose served by his informing the Lok Sabha that he has “requested the Prime Minister to have these charges (against him) thoroughly investigated”. Whatever else may be the Prime Minister’s shortcomings, and he has many, he is not known to be a man who acts in haste. Neither is Mr Pranab Mukherjee known for arriving at a decision without carefully scrutinising and considering all available facts. A formal inquiry should be conducted into l’affaire Shashi Tharoor, but irrespective of its findings, which cannot possibly controvert the facts of the case, the smooth-talking former Minister would do well to bear in mind that in politics perception matters more than reality and the past is often, if not always, swamped by the present. Politics is a harsh world far removed from the rarefied confines of the UN headquarters in New York.

It would, however, be churlish to deny Mr Tharoor the right to defend himself and clear his name; others with a far lower integrity quotient have been given that opportunity. After all, as he has eloquently pointed out in his statement in the Lok Sabha, he has “a long record of public service unblemished by the slightest tint of financial irregularity”. That he served the UN under Mr Kofi Annan, who will be remembered as a Secretary-General who fetched immense disrepute to the organisation and whose son was found to have benefited from UN contracts, is inconsequential. Although it could be asked as to whether his conscience troubled him every time media reported about Mr Annan’s, or his son Kojo’s, dubious deeds. Of course, the perks of office can have a numbing effect on the conscience of the most honest person, as can the loaves and fishes of office.

What is reprehensible is Mr Tharoor’s attempt — there’s nothing covert or sly about it — to provoke provincial resentment against his sacking from the Government. No doubt he has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram, but he was a Minister in the Government of India, not the Government of Kerala. As an MP, he is tangentially responsible for minding the interests of his constituency as his primary job is to participate in parliamentary debates on national affairs and help frame laws on national issues. As a member of the Union Council of Ministers, his remit was to mind India’s foreign affairs.

By repeatedly referring to Thiruvananthapuram and Kerala, the “ethos of Kerala”, the people of Kerala (with whom he had no association at all during his growing up years in Kolkata and Delhi and the many decades he spent at the UN) he has tried to link high issues of ministerial probity with low politics of provincial identity. The unstated though clear message he has sought to send out is that an elected representative of Kerala is being unjustly penalised. That’s balderdash and Mr Tharoor, more than anybody else, knows it.

It’s strange that a suave, accomplished person with an impressive track record of serving an international organisation with distinction, and whose last tweet sent out at 11.16 pm on April 16 reads, “U folks are the new India. We will ‘be the change’ we wish to see in our country,” should fall back on the discredited ‘old’ politics of provincial pride and prejudice in his time of trouble. That’s as distressing as his fiancée benefiting from a cricket franchise deal that he ‘mentored’.

(My blog on the mess called IPL/BCCI will appear soon. And no, I am not a fan of Lalit K Modi nor do I fly the flag for IPL.)

[This appeared as the main edit page article in The Pioneer on April 21, 2010.]

Hunger stares us in the face

Hungry kya? But
there’s no food
It’s been a week of disconcerting news. Events at home and abroad, along with grim predictions by those who should know, would suggest that the human race is heading for a Malthusian disaster. The ‘checks’ that the British demographer elaborated on, based on his thesis of rising subsistence levels leading to increasing population growth till the supply of food can no longer meet demand, appear to be coming true. We could, in the not so distant future, find ourselves fighting for rapidly dwindling food supplies. The catastrophic consequences defy imagination.
At home, the most worrying news about hunger and looming starvation has been emanating from two Communist-ruled States, Kerala and West Bengal. Since both are at a distance from Delhi, our so-called ‘national’ media, especially 24x7 news channels, have chosen to gloss over what’s happening in the eastern and southern hinterland. Ms Mayawati calling Mr Rahul Gandhi names and babus demanding more money for their exacting job of spinning red tape, apart from titillating details of the glittering high life of the bold and the beautiful, have been grabbing more media space and time than the spectre of hunger that is stalking vast tracts of West Bengal and Kerala.
It’s difficult to imagine verdant Kerala with its undulating paddy fields, toddy-rich palms, lagoons and backwaters teeming with fish, dazzling jewellery stores the size of shopping malls, booming real estate fuelled by millions of dollars that are dutifully sent to families back home by expatriate Malayalees, could find itself in the vice-like grip of a food crisis that’s worsening by the day. But it’s true. People in ‘God’s Own Country’ are alarmed by the prospect of returning empty-handed from grocery stories, many of which have already put up ‘Rice Not Available’ signs.
According to conservative estimates, Kerala’s annual demand for rice, the staple for Malayali meals, hovers around 30 million tonnes. The State, perched on the Malabar coast, has limited cultivable land and can at best produce up to five million tonnes of rice. The remaining has to be imported from other rice-producing States. Till last year, the bulk of the shortfall was met with imports from Andhra Pradesh, but the situation has radically changed this year.
A new law in Andhra Pradesh limits the export of rice to 25 per cent of the actual produce. This has obviously done with the purpose of increasing supplies, and thus depressing prices, within the State. There is nothing wrong with this approach; after all, the Government of Andhra Pradesh has to look after the State’s interests before it can look after those of Kerala. But the sudden fall in supplies from Andhra Pradesh has left Kerala in a jam. Two other factors have coalesced to make a bad situation worse: The Food Corporation of India has trimmed the amount of rice supplied through the public distribution system by a whopping 96,000 tonnes; and, unexpected heavy rain has destroyed one lakh tonne of processed paddy.
So, Malayalees are now forced to pay an ever-increasing price for rice that is fast disappearing from the markets. Three of the four major markets for rice – Kochi, Kollam, Kozhikode and Thrissur – have run out of stocks; stocks at Kozhikode are depleting fast. On Saturday, parboiled rice in Kerala was selling between Rs 22 and Rs 23 a kilo, way above what it was selling for a couple of months ago. The CPI(M)-led Left Front Government, loathe to admit that there is a food crisis and people, more so the economically disadvantaged, could soon face hunger, however insists that rice is selling for Rs 18.50 a kilo. For once Marxist propaganda stands exposed as fiction, even among the party faithful.
Ironically, retail stores run by Reliance, which have been at the receiving end of Marxist ire and the anger of traders dependent on small retailers, have seized upon this crisis to convert it into a publicity opportunity. Friends tell me that Reliance stores are selling rice at Rs 17.50 a kilo, which is a rupee less than the price touted by the Government and far less than the market price. But such gimmicks are unsustainable and sooner or later Reliance stores will also have to put up ‘Rice Not Available’ signs. Meanwhile, Malayalees are pinning their hopes to promises made by Orissa and Chhattisgarh to supply rice -- by when and how much is anybody’s guess.
In West Bengal, tales of hunger and starvation emanating from districts that witnessed food riots last autumn and where cereals have all but disappeared from ration shops, have a tragic sociological twist to them. Many of the men and women who are on the verge of starvation are elderly and, needless to add, indigent. Abandoned by families which have migrated to Delhi and Mumbai, they can neither work for a living nor afford the prices demanded by hoarders who also happen to be, not so coincidentally, local party bosses on whose support and ill-gotten wealth the CPI(M) is pathetically dependent for its survival in power.
The Left Front Government has opened some feeding centres, but there are reports that only those who are known to vote for the CPI(M) are being allowed access to these emergency facilities. With panchayat elections scheduled for next month, the CPI(M) has decided to cynically exploit the distress of the starving masses to ensure its hold over rural Bengal remains as firm as ever. Earlier, it was the fear of Marxist terror that would make people vote for the CPI(M). This time it is the fear of starving to death.
What is scary is that soon all of India, riding the crest of inflation, could be faced with the grim prospect of food scarcity. Our buffer stocks are not in great health. And given the reality of dwindling international supplies, importing food is no longer an easy option. Mr Jacques Diouf, Director-General of FAO, was in Delhi last week with some frightening statistics: The world’s food grain stock at the moment is just about enough to feed the global population for eight weeks.
To make it last longer till fresh supplies arrive, a whole lot of us will have to go hungry. And hunger does not necessarily kill. It also breeds irrepressible, destructive anger. Witness the food riots that are erupting in country after country.

Coffee Break / The Pioneer / April 13, 2008

Middle East Affairs

UN's favourite terrorist

Kanchan Gupta

This weekend marked the third death anniversary of Yasser Arafat, lionised in life and in death as a ‘revolutionary’ who fought for Palestinian rights. But Arafat was not half the man he was made out to be by his Arab admirers and supporters across the world, notably in India where the lib-left intelligentsia hero-worshipped this false god. Here’s what I wrote after Arafat died – it’s as valid today as it was three years ago.

New York, United Nations: Supreme leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, this morning strode into the hallowed United Nations General Assembly Hall, waving at the assembled gathering of representatives of 191 member states with one hand and holding aloft his trademark AK-56 rifle with the other.
As he took the podium, there was thunderous applause: The entire General Assembly was on its feet, giving a justly deserved standing ovation to the man fittingly described by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as “the courageous symbol of pan-Islamic nationalism”.
An impossible scenario?
Not if you consider a similar despatch filed by news agencies (this was before the days and nights of 24x7 live television) that made waves around the world on November 13, 1974. On that day, the United Nations shamelessly opened its doors to a certain Muhammad Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, alias Abu Ammar, aka Yasser Arafat. Sporting his pistol-in-holster trademark, he was allowed to enter the UN's premises armed, and address the General Assembly which was only to happy to anoint the progenitor of modern day Islamic terrorism as its ‘favourite and favoured terrorist’.
It took Arafat a decade-and-a-half spent masterminding the hijacking and blowing up of civilian aircraft, the massacre of pilgrims at Lod Airport, targeted assassination of diplomats (including one American ambassador), shooting down school children at Ma’alot (an event that played no insignificant role in inspiring the killers of Beslan) and killing Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics, apart from gifting the world with a unique weapon of civilian destruction, the human bomb, and unleashing terror in a myriad forms, to secure legitimacy for his evil deeds from that high institution of low scruples, the United Nations.
A decade from now, that honour could be Osama bin Laden's. If Arafat, who spent his entire life leading a campaign of terror, sowing dragon’s teeth of hatred and fanning religious bigotry in the guise of ‘national resistance’ can be described as 'the courageous symbol of Palestinian nationalism' by Kofi Annan, there is no reason why similar accolades cannot be showered on an unrepentant Osama bin Laden.
After all, the inspirational force behind the ritual beheadings of ‘non-believers’ that are conducted with sickening glee by masked Islamists for Al Jazeera's prime time evening news bulletins is as much Osama bin Laden as Yasser Arafat. It was the undisputed leader of al Fateh, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the president of the Palestinian Authority who made ruthless violence fashionable, even romantic, during the decades of the Cold War; it was he who made terrorism chic among those manning the barricades and in the vanguard of proletarian revolution around the world.
Ironically, notwithstanding his status as the UN’s favourite terrorist and the EU’s favourite despot on whom the latter showered billions of dollars in aid, at the fag end of his life, Yasser Arafat had become irrelevant – in Palestine, in Arabia and in Israel, the country he was determined to obliterate but which reduced him to a pathetic shadow of his past, holding him prisoner in his decrepit and bombed out headquarters in Ramallah.
In the Arab street he was the object of contemptuous ridicule, and not without reason: He was seen as a charlatan who stole from the very people whose interests he claimed to protect. In 2003, when Forbes published its list of the world's richest people in a new category reserved for kings, queens, and despots, President Yasser Arafat ranked sixth, bracketed with Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. According to Forbes, Arafat “feasted on all sorts of funds flowing into the Palestinian Authority”. Even as Palestinians were pushed into increasing impoverishment, desperate to eke out a living, Arafat lavished $100,000 a month on his wife, Suha, safely ensconced in luxury in Paris.
Few remember today that Arafat was not a product of the original Palestinian struggle for nationhood. Licking their wounds after their disastrous campaign against Israel following the birth of the Jewish state, Egypt, Syria and Trans-Jordan hit upon the idea of floating a Palestinian body that would be the Arabs' proverbial cat's paw. Thus was born the Palestine Liberation Organisation, headed by Syria’s nominee, Ahmed Shuqueri, in 1964. Following Israel's triumph in the Six-Day War of 1967, the Palestinian National Conference met in Cairo and the radicals, led by Arafat, whose al Fateh had by then emerged as the dominant group, took charge.
Similarly, few remember that Arafat was not a Palestinian by birth. He was born in Egypt and moved to Jerusalem to live with an uncle after his mother's death. He returned to Cairo for studies, spent his early adult years in Egypt and then moved on to Kuwait. A popular Arab street story has it that he changed his formal name from Muhammad Abdel Rahman Abdel Rauf al-Qudwa al-Husseini to Yasser Arafat not as part of his effort to radicalise his image (that was done with army fatigues, a chequered kafiyeh, dark glasses and a loaded pistol in a hip holster, immortalised by Time) but to erase his kinship with the infamous mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini whose claim to fame was his collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.
After becoming chairman of the PLO in February 1969, Arafat never looked back. Like his fellow despots who rule over their fiefdoms, kingdoms and sheikhdoms in Arabia with an iron fist, he ruthlessly established himself as the sole spokesman, the sole leader and the sole public face of Palestinian nationalism, mastering the art of media spectacle and political timing that contributed in no small measure to his gaining an iconic status among liberals and leftists.
In a post-colonial world looking for symbols of national resistance, Arafat emerged trumps: unlike Che Guevara or Ho Chi Minh, he was the romantic face of revolution. So much so, he is perhaps the only resistance leader in modern times who was able to convincingly justify recourse to violence against civilians, even make it acceptable as a legitimate instrument of struggle against occupation.
But that does not minimise the fact that it was Arafat who fashioned political terrorism and never in his life apologised for the bloodletting that his Al Fatah is responsible for; on the contrary, even in his dying days, holed up in Ramallah, he continued to sanction repeated assaults by al Fateh’s al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade on Israeli civilian targets. After being feted with the Nobel for peace, he unabashedly justified suicide bombings – after a young suicide bomber had blown up Jewish civilians, Arafat consoled the boy’s parents by telling them the “young man who turned his body into a bomb is the model of statehood and sacrifice for the sake of Allah and the homeland”.
After becoming chairman of the PLO in February 1969, Arafat never looked back. Like his fellow despots who rule over their fiefdoms, kingdoms and sheikhdoms in Arabia with an iron fist, he ruthlessly established himself as the sole spokesman, the sole leader and the sole public face of Palestinian nationalism, mastering the art of media spectacle and political timing that contributed in no small measure to his gaining an iconic status among liberals and leftists.
In his lifetime, Arafat proved to be obdurate and intransigent in the face of the most reasoned logic of peace-making. If the Israelis and the Americans learned it the hard way – from Camp David to Oslo to Taba to Aqaba, Arafat moved one step forward only to take a giant leap backward – the Saudis had to rue coming up with their famous proposal that offered Israel full recognition in return of Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state. Arafat merely laughed up his sleeve.
In a sense, Arafat managed to maintain his stranglehold over Palestinian affairs by taking a maximalist position on peace-making. He rejected each and every offer on the specious plea that it did not offer the Palestinians the maximum he desired. By unswervingly insisting on Palestine of pre-1948 vintage, he was able to convince Palestinians that history could be rolled back and Israel wiped out from the map of Middle-East. That, or nothing else, was his consistent stand. Now that he is dead, Palestine is a possible reality.
Arafat saw himself as a modern day Saladin; he preached the language of hate and militated against reconciliation and accommodation. Through a skilful mix of Arab nationalism and radical Islamism, which he had picked up during his association with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, he inspired generations to march to death and disaster. His was a life spent on fighting for Palestinian land, not for Palestinian lives.
In the end, he failed to drive the Jews out of Jerusalem, but has left behind a legacy of hatred that continues to drive Arabs against Jews, Palestinians against Israelis. It is a pity that India, and a large number of Indians, should honour such a wasted, and wasteful, life.

(This article originally appeared on http://www.rediff.com/ on November 19, 2004. See my Rediff homepage at http://www.rediff.com/news/gupta.htm )