Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Hong Kong Protests: The World Should Not Watch A Possible Massacre

The political solution is one country, two systems. That is what Beijing accepted when it reclaimed the territory of Hong Kong.

The protests are so large scale. They represent the sentiment of the people in Hong Kong.

This is not about changing the political system in China. This is about keeping the political system in Hong Kong. Beijing should not have problems with that.

More than 10 weeks of protests with the Hong Kong airport shut down --- that is enough. The message is loud and clear and it needs to be heard.

The agreement of one country, two systems was between Britain and Beijing. Britain has a moral responsibility to speak up.

This revolution is being webcast live. China should not think there is a military solution to this. There has not been a police solution. Obviously. What are you going to do that the Hong Kong police has not already done? Any attempt by the Chinese military to try to mow down the protesters out in the streets is going to infect the Chinese mainland. China could see large scale protests inside China itself. 1989 will have come to China.

Or, it could negotiate with the protesters. Accept their demands. They want the CEO of Hong Kong - or whatever her title is - out. Well, let her go. They want the extradition bill scrapped. Well, scrap it. They want the chief executive of Hong Kong to be directly elected by the people of Hong Kong. Well, do it already. They want all members of the Hong Kong legislature directly elected by the people. I say, why not? They want the one country, two systems to be permanent. Make it permanent.

Carrie Lam does not have the authority to accept or reject these demands. The Hong Kong protest leaders seek to negotiate with Xi Jinping.

Accept the demands or prepare for the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party inside China itself. Should that happen, finally the unification with Taiwan can happen. Taiwan is proof Chinese people can prosper without a communist party running the show. Maybe what China needs is to get rid of the communist party to avoid the middle-income trap. You don't want to get trapped.

The Chinese constitution actually has provisions for things like free speech and other parties besides the communist party. But the fact on the ground is otherwise.

A 25% tariff on 100% of Chinese exports to the United States will bring 1989 to China. Hong Kong is leading the way. If there is a military crackdown in Hong Kong, the rest of the world should follow the US lead and also slap tariffs on Chinese exports. You might only have to do it for a few short weeks.

The world can not watch idly by. No massacre can be allowed to happen. When the people revolt like they are revolting in Hong Kong, they are always right.

A 1989 will create a federal China. Tibet will become the Arunachal Pradesh of China.

Military intervention in Hong Kong will be the death knell for the Chinese Communist Party in China. 30 years after 1989, the winds are blowing again.

There are protests also in Moscow.

The Hong Kong protesters are not organized enough. Become one organization with an elected central committee and leadership. Elect one person to be your leader and spokesperson. Basically, form one political party.

So far the protest organizers have focused on organizing the protests themselves. And they have done a fabulous job. The scale of the protests is incomparable to anything in recent history anywhere. But the organization has to go one level up. It has to become political. Five million people need to form one democratic political organization. It can be done quickly through digital tools.

These protests are like New Year's Eve in Times Square, only much, much larger, and much more sustained. One year I stood for 10 hours near Times Square. This has been going on for 10 weeks.

Ordinary citizens in the 100 biggest cities of the world all need to gather in their own cities to express solidarity with the people of Hong Kong. The governments of the world need to speak up against any possible military interventions before they happen.

There are Chinese in Hong Kong. But then there are also Chinese in London, and New York City, and Sydney. They should form the nucleus around which the non-Chinese should also congregate. One solidarity protest gathering on a Saturday or Sunday will send a strong signal to the leaders of the world. The Chinese diaspora needs to wake up.

Freedom is truly an internal matter. It is a matter of the heart.
































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Monday, August 12, 2019

The Kashmir Debate (4)

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The Kashmir Debate (3)

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Sunday, August 11, 2019

The Kashmir Debate (2)

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काश्मीर समस्या का समाधान कर्फ्यु और मार्शल लॉ नहीं हो सकता

इतिहास में क्या है उसी के तहत समस्या का समाधान ढुंढते रह जाएँगे तो फिर इतिहास में तो सब कुछ है। इतिहास में काश्मीर भारतका भी है और पाकिस्तान का भी। इतिहास में काश्मीर स्वतन्त्र देश भी है। इतिहास में भारत देश है भी और नहीं भी है। इतिहास में पाकिस्तान है भी और नहीं भी है। सिर्फ इतिहास को जिक्र कर के समस्या का समाधान ढूँढा नहीं जा सकता। इतिहास में तो एक से अनेक घाव हैं। पुरानी घावों को आप ताजा करेंगे?

इतिहास को बिलकुल नजरअंदाज भी नहीं किया जा सकता। लेकिन आपको सिद्धान्त पर चलना होगा। समस्या का समाधान सिद्धान्त पर चल के भी कठिन है लेकिन संभव है। कौन सा सिद्धान्त? कैसा सिद्धान्त? दुनियाकी सबसे बड़ी लोकतन्त्र का सिद्धान्त और क्या हो सकता है? लोकतन्त्र का सिद्धान्त।

जो लोकतन्त्र को मानते हैं वो ये मानते हैं कि ईश्वर ने प्रत्येक मनुष्य को बराबर का बनाया है। उसी सिद्धान्त के गणित को एक व्यक्ति एक मत भी कहते हैं। लेकिन लोकतन्त्र का मतलब बहुमत जो चाहे वो कर ले ये नहीं निकलता। लोकतन्त्र व्यक्ति से सम्बन्धित है। आप कह रहे हैं कि प्रत्येक मनुष्य के कुछ आधारभुत अधिकार होते हैं। उन अधिकारों को बहुमत तो क्या पुर्ण मत से भी नहीं छिन सकते हैं।

ये रियल इस्टेट की बात नहीं है। लोकतन्त्र का जमीन से सम्बन्ध होता तो दुनिया की सबसे बड़ी लोकतन्त्र भारतको नहीं माना जाता। छोटा सा देश भारत। भारत से लगभग तीन गुना बड़ा सहारा मरुभूमि है। सहारा को ही भारत से बड़ा लोकतन्त्र या देश कहते लोग। नहीं कहते हैं।

काश्मीर का मसला जमीन का नहीं है। काश्मीर का मसला वहाँ के अवाम से है।

एक होती है जमीनी यथार्थ। एक होती है क्लेम। यथार्थ है लाइन ऑफ़ कण्ट्रोल। क्लेम है कि पाकिस्तान और भारत दोनों पुरे के पुरे काश्मीर को क्लेम करते हैं। जब तक दोनों वो क्लेम करते रहेंगे टेंशन बना रहेगा। टेंशन बना रहेगा तो दोनों देशो में गरीबी बनी रहेगी। जितने गरीब लोग भारतके भितर हैं उतने दुनिका के किसी देश में नहीं।

गृह मंत्री कह रहे हैं ३७० हटा दिया। अब पाकिस्तान के अधीन जो काश्मीर है वो भी लेंगे। अक्साइ चीन भी लेंगे। कैसे लेंगे? ३७० तो हटाया बल प्रयोग कर के। बाँकी काश्मीर और अक्साइ चीन लेने के लिए पाकिस्तान और चीन से युद्ध करेंगे क्या? वो भी जानते हैं कि युद्ध असंभव है। बाँकी काश्मीर और अक्साइ चीन भारतका हो जाना असंभव बात नहीं है। लेकिन वहाँ तक पहुँचने का रास्ता युद्ध नहीं है। तीनो देश बातचीत करें। शायद रास्ता निकल जाए। आप ५० या १०० सालका टाईमटेबल निकालिए। शायद रास्ता निकल जाए।

नहीं अगर निकट भविष्य में ही हल निकालना चाहते हैं तो लोगों को इस तरह गुमराह मत किजिए।

जो लोकतन्त्र बिहार या महाराष्ट्र में है वही लोकतंत्र काश्मीर को भी दे सकते हैं तो कुछ हद तक माना जा सकता है कि चलो अकेले जितना कर सके किए। नहीं तो ये तो तानाशाही बात हो गयी। ये फ़ासिस्ट कदम हो गया।

वार्ता में होता है पॉस्चरिंग। थोड़ा बढ़चढ़ के बोलना होता है। बाद में वार्ता के दौरान थोड़ा पिछे हट जाते हैं और डील करते हैं।

ये जो कदम है ये स्थायी समाधान नहीं है। अस्थायी समाधान भी है कि नहीं ये कुछ समय बितने पर पता चलेगा। स्थायी समाधान है वार्ता। वार्ता किजिए। पाकिस्तान से। चीन से। फोर्मुला तो यही है कि तीनों देश लाइन ऑफ़ कन्ट्रोल को स्थायी सीमा मान लें और व्यापार पर फोकस करें। ताकि गरीबी को हटाया जा सके।


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Protests In Hong Kong

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Saturday, August 10, 2019

Bernie And Andrew

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The Kashmir Debate

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Monday, August 05, 2019

Big BJP Move On Kashmir

The abrogation of Article 370 which had been giving special status to Kashmir in India and the bifurcation of the state into two to be governed by the central government in Delhi has been a big step. That Kashmir has been put under martial law is telling. There are fears this is an attempt to turn Kashmir into a Gaza Strip. One hopes the martial law aspect is, at best, temporary. If India takes away democracy from Kashmir, it will be a deep wound to India's very soul.

India keeps saying all of Kashmir belongs to India. Pakistan keeps saying all of Kashmir belongs to Kashmir. They are untenable positions. The two powers should come together to recognize the Line Of Control as the final border between the two countries and help bring down the tension levels in the state. Ordinary Kashmiris suffer daily inconveniences and regular cruelties. That is a blight on the Indian conscience. No democracy, no India.



















Article 370: Will revoking special status be good for Kashmir, India? We have grown so used to the status quo that a change of this magnitude challenges our intellectual faculties......... GoI’s decision to revoke Article 370, scrap Article 35A and reorganise J&K (into two Union territories) will go down as one the most audacious decisions taken by New Delhi since Independence.
New J&K to be like Puducherry: Here is how India's new Union territory J&K will function
Modi government's new roadmap in Kashmir Change is in the air, with a sharper focus on recasting the political and administrative structure that allowed separatism to fester in the Valley and squeezed the space for governance.
This Amit Shah photo reveals Modi govt's top secret plan on Article 370
Government's decision on Article 370 as a "betrayal of trust": Omar Abdullah
Article 370: Why is Kashmir tense about it & what can India do According to this article, except for defence, foreign affairs, finance and communications, Parliament needs the state government's concurrence for applying all other laws. Thus the state's residents live under a separate set of laws, including those related to citizenship, ownership of property, and fundamental rights, as compared to other Indians. As a result of this provision, Indian citizens from other states cannot purchase land or property in Jammu & Kashmir. Under Article 370, the Centre has no power to declare financial emergency under Article 360 in the state. It can declare an emergency in the state only in case of war or external aggression. The Union government can therefore not declare emergency on grounds of internal disturbance or imminent danger unless it is made at the request or with the concurrence of the state government. ....... "Article 370 under the Constitution has been ascribed as a temporary provision and not a special provision. There are provisions in the Constitution - temporary, transitional and special. Temporary is the weakest. The question is - how can be it ended and when shall be ended"
What is article 35A and why is everyone in India talking about it now When the J&K Constitution was adopted in 1956, it defined a permanent resident as someone who was a state subject on May 14, 1954, or who has been a resident of the state for 10 years, and has lawfully acquired immovable property. ......So under this clause no outsider can own property in J&K or get a state job.
J&K and Ladakh: Union Territory with legislature and without legislature Jammu and Kashmir being an UT with legislature, will have the option of forming their own governments and having a legislature with elected members and a chief minister (like New Delhi and Puducherry), yet the powers of such governments will be lesser than the state governments. ....... UTs with their own Legislatures -- Delhi, Puducherry and now Jammu and Kashmir -- will send representatives to the Rajya Sabha, besides the Lok Sabha. Other UTs send representatives only to the Lok Sabha.
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Sunday, August 04, 2019

America's Insane Gun Laws, Hate Ideologies, Mass Shootings: Recipe For Domestic Terrorism

When you kill one person, that is murder. When you kill one person for what their background might be, that is a hate crime. And it is important to distinguish. Just like it is important to distinguish between a killer and a serial killer. If someone fell to a serial killer in your area, the citizens need to be alerted. The killer might strike again. Say if a hate crime is committed against a Sikh in a particular town, the Sikhs in that town might want to take notice. Because it might happen again.

Terrorism is when one person or a group of people kill indiscriminately a bunch of people in a public place driven by a particular ideology of hatred. The FBI has been mislabeling too many acts of domestic terrorism. There can be lone-wolf terrorism. Someone might not be an official member of some organized group, but might be inspired by some ideological teachings online, and they might go perpetrate a well thought out act of violence. It is not true America has not seen acts of terrorism on its soil since 9/11. It just saw two. Most mass shootings, if properly investigated, will be found to have been acts of domestic terrorism. Some might be mental health fail scenarios.

Which makes the ideology of hate very relevant. Hate speech is not harmless. When you openly incite violence from a podium, that has got to count. What do you think Al Qaeda and ISIS do in their online videos?

You can not whitewash terrorism. Just because a white male opened fire inside a black church does not make it any less of an act of terrorism.

Mass shootings hit America with greater regularity than hurricanes and tornadoes. Gun deaths far exceed war deaths in this country. The gun laws, as they stand, are insane.







Deadly violence heightens concerns about domestic terrorism and white supremacists Investigators recovered extremist materials during a search of 19-year-old gunman Santino William Legan’s home in Nevada, according to one law enforcement source, and Legan had posted a photo on Instagram urging people to read a novel widely associated with white supremacists....... the Gilroy attack fell into into an increasingly common category of domestic threat: those associated with white supremacy...... in the El Paso massacre. The suspected assailant taken into custody, Patrick Crusius of suburban Dallas, is believed to be the author of a hate-filled manifesto posted online ..... In July, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that a majority of domestic terrorism cases the bureau has investigated are motivated by white supremacy. ..... the bureau was investigating about 850 cases of domestic terrorism...... the gunman in the Parkland, Fla., shooting in February 2018 that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School fixated on racist imagery, but authorities did not designate the attack as a hate crime ...... political polarization and a rise of far-right nationalism is contributing to hate crime around the globe....... Louisville resident Ed Harrell told the Louisville Courier-Journal that as he crouched in the parking lot and grabbed his own revolver, the gunman walked past and said: “Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites.” ...... For months before the attack, Bowers posted angrily on social media, calling immigrants “invaders” and said Jews were the “enemy of white people.” ...... Tarrant livestreamed the shooting and left a 74-page manifesto in which he detailed how he grew to hate immigrants and specifically Muslims, and aimed to kill them and encourage others to do the same.

Trump briefed on Ohio mass shooting In a second tweet , he wrote, “God bless the people of El Paso Texas. God bless the people of Dayton, Ohio.” ...... Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley says the gunman in a mass shooting that killed nine people in Ohio was wearing body armor and had extra magazines. ...... Two women who were in a bar across the street from the Dayton, Ohio, shooting say they are in shock...... The 23-year-old says people her age “don’t think something like this is going to happen.” ..... Tianycia Leonard says she heard “loud thumps” she initially thought were people pounding on a dumpster. The 28-year-old says she then realized “it was gunshots and there was a lot of rounds.”..... the Dayton shooting is the 22nd mass killing and sixth public mass shooting in the U.S. in 2019. It came just hours after 20 people were killed in an El Paso, Texas, shooting...... the second mass shooting in the U.S. in less than 24 hours took place in “a safe part of downtown.” .... The Oregon District is a historic neighborhood known for its entertainment offerings.

2020 Dems back gun limits after El Paso mass shooting “It’s not just today, it has happened several times this week. It’s happened here in Las Vegas where some lunatic killed 50 some odd people,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said as he and 18 other White House hopefuls were in Nevada to address the nation’s largest public employees union. “All over the world, people are looking at the United States and wondering what is going on? What is the mental health situation in America, where time after time, after time, after time, we’re seeing indescribable horror.”...... Sanders blasted Republican Senate leadership for being “more concerned about pleasing the NRA than listening to the vast majority of the American people” ...... O’Rourke appeared shaken as he told the union forum he’d heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying the country needs to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield. Do not bring it into our communities.” ....... O’Rourke said the U.S. may require direct action, urgency and in some cases nonviolent civil disobedience, to make real change. ...... “This is a sickness,” Biden said. “This is beyond anything that we should be tolerating.” He added: “We can beat the NRA. We can beat the gun manufacturers.” .......

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, noted: “We are the only country in the world with more guns than people.”

...... New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said, “This has got to be a movement, politics or not, we’ve got to make ending this nightmare a movement before it happens to yet another community or another person dies.” ........ Elizabeth Warren tweeted: “Far too many communities have suffered through tragedies like this already. We must act now to end our country’s gun violence epidemic.

Ideology Kills. How Do You Police It? The manifesto that appeared just before the El Paso shooting opposed racial mixing...... Is Donald Trump—recently seen on Twitter gloating over the burglary of a congressman’s home in Baltimore—capable of a statesmanlike response that acknowledges and repudiates his support from those who openly or tacitly celebrate the crime? ...... no debate will be necessary about what motivated the killer, or what fountains of ideas he drank from. ...... The author of the manifesto pronounced himself in “general” agreement with the Christchurch murderer. He opposed racial mixing; he thought America was committing suicide by letting Hispanics “invade.” He intended to kill to counter these trends, and he claimed to be ready to die in the act. He even endorsed, tactically, the targeting of innocent and unarmed people, using the phrase “low-security targets” (imagine the type of subhuman consciousness that would refer to cowering children this way)........ The ideal, he suggests, would be automation without immigration, so the low-paying jobs would go to robots, and non-immigrant Americans would get the good jobs. ...... To my knowledge only one politician on the national stage has done all of these things. ........ These conspiracies have been snatched from the buffet line of bad ideas, then served up as a form of fascism. .......

keep in mind how commonplace, on a sentence-by-sentence level, portions of that manifesto are.





The Death Rattle of White Supremacy In the past week alone, three American cities have experienced three mass shootings, with gunmen killing at least 32 people. Yesterday, police say that Patrick Crusius, 21, walked into a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, a border town with an 80 percent Hispanic population, opened fire, and killed 20 people. Several hours later, police say that Connor Betts, 24, shot and killed at least nine people in a busy downtown district of Dayton, Ohio. At the beloved annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, 19-year-old Santino William Legan allegedly opened fire on the crowd and killed three people. ....... The El Paso shooter allegedly wrote a four-page note to explain his deadly rampage. The author of the manifesto claimed that he was inspired to target Hispanics after reading the manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand, terrorist who attacked two mosques and killed 51 people in March. He wanted to kill Hispanic immigrants as an “act of preservation” to reclaim his country from “destruction,” he explained. He referred to Hispanics as “invaders with high birth rates” and expressed his fear of “shameless race mixers,” “the threat of the Hispanic voting bloc,” and the “cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by invasion.”...... President Donald Trump used invasion to describe a caravan of immigrants trying to cross the border. The Fox News host Tucker Carlson has called immigrants “invaders” who “pollute” the country and make it dirtier. In the past few weeks, President Trump told four congresswomen of color, all U.S. citizens, to go back to where they came from. He stood onstage at a campaign rally while the crowd chanted “Send her back!” for 13 seconds. He retweeted Katie Hopkins, a British extremist who has called migrants “cockroaches” and called for a “final solution” for Muslims. Some Trump supporters now openly flash white-power signs in front of cameras........

Hate that was once hidden has now been given permission to come out of the closet and drop its white robes and masks. This has real-life consequences for communities of color, Jews, and immigrants.

Robert Bowers, the terrorist who shot and killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, wanted to punish Jews for allegedly helping to bring “invaders”—immigrants and Muslims—into the country.......

My local mosque now has an armed guard with a bulletproof vest standing outside our weekly Friday prayers.

My Jewish friends say their synagogues have amped up security in the past year. We no longer feel safe in our houses of worship. .......

If you have been in power your whole life, equality looks like oppression.

Some white Americans feel that people of color are “replacing” them with each success, each publication, and each promotion. Those who have historically been marginalized, excluded, or cast as permanent sidekicks, though, finally feel that we have the chance to taste the American dream, which in my home tastes like goat biryani......

For them, our success is the American nightmare.

...... the FBI has recorded about 100 domestic-terrorism arrests in 2019, most of them involving ties to white supremacy ...... As a Muslim American, I have been asked for 18 years to denounce violent Muslim extremism done by terrorists I’ve never met. My loyalty and patriotism are interrogated, questioned, and treated as suspect. So what do we say to those who enable and promote a white-nationalist ideology?



He’s Getting Worse Trump is turning the American presidency into a platform for the wholesale demonization of minorities. ....... The current, and (to date) most debased, phase of the Trump presidency—the phase that includes the unceasing demonization of minority legislators and the endorsement of North Korean communism—began, in retrospect, on May 8, in the Florida Panhandle, at a rally in Panama City. It was there that Donald Trump gave tacit approval to the use of violence against immigrants. ..... His message was typically soulless. He tried to provoke feelings of deep insecurity among his followers ....... Late in his disorderly presentation, as he discussed the work of Border Patrol officers, he raised, and then dismissed, the idea of allowing them to use violence against migrants. ...... “And don’t forget—we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons,” he said. “We can’t. Other countries do. We can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people? You can’t. There’s—” ...... It was then that he was interrupted by a woman in the crowd. “Shoot them!” she yelled....... The president found this funny, as did his audience...... he encouraged—in the greasy, joking-not-joking style he has perfected—the normalization of violence....... In March, in an interview with Breitbart News, he made it plain that he was sympathetic to those of his supporters who might feel compelled to become violent on his behalf. “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough—until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” And he has spoken about the press in such a way as to possibly stimulate thoughts of violence among his more fervent adherents. ...... But in this latest phase, his rhetoric has become particularly sweeping. Brown people in general have become his targets. And there is no reason to hope that he will reform. His followers reward his radicalism, and his handlers are among the most cynical figures in American political history...... there is no one of any influence in his party who is willing to confront him. ...... As Trump faces the possibility that he will lose the presidency next year, he may become more enraged, and more willing to deploy the rhetoric of violence as a way to keep his followers properly motivated. The Panama City speech was an important moment in Trump’s ongoing effort to make the American presidency a vehicle in the cause of marginalizing and frightening racial minorities; the killings are a possible (and predictable) consequence of such rhetoric. ........ Three years ago, The Atlantic, in its endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president (an editorial motivated not by love for Clinton but by fear of Trump), stated, “In one of the more sordid episodes in modern American politics, Trump made himself the face of the so-called birther movement, which had as its immediate goal the demonization of the country’s first African American president. Trump’s larger goal, it seemed, was to stoke fear among white Americans of dark-skinned foreigners.” ....... It is depressing to realize that we were correct (though, if anything, understated in our analysis), and it is depressing to think that there is no immediate way out of this crisis.
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