Recent Appearances...

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Hello !
Recent Appearances...

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Biden, Harris say Nasrallah’s death is ‘justice for countless victims,’ urge diplomacy; UK calls for immediate ceasefire, France demands IDF stop

2024-09-29

Please express some strong language on my behalf, dear Reader. I lack the vocabulary, a clear fault in my education.

[IsraelTimes] US State Department orders some employees at Beirut embassy to leave Lebanon amid escalating tensions following assassination.

US President Joe The Big Guy Biden
...46th president of the U.S. We get to suffer the consequences...
on Saturday welcomed Israel’s liquidation of Hezbollah leader His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
as bringing a "measure of justice" for his many victims, but called for diplomatic agreements to end the fighting in Leb
...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
and Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
"Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians," Biden said in a statement.

He noted that the Friday strike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut that killed Nasrallah was a response to the terror group’s decision to open up a "northern front" against Israel after Hamas
Hamas

..one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,...
’s October 7 onslaught.

"The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iran's Houthi sock puppets
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews They like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him...
s, and any other Iranian-supported terrorist groups," Biden stressed, adding that he had directed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday to bolster the US military’s force posture in the Middle East in order to deter Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
from further escalation.

"Ultimately, our aim is to de-escalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means," the US president asserted, referencing the efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza and an agreement that would allow civilians in south Lebanon and northern Israel to return to their homes.

Notably, he didn’t explicitly refer to the 21-day ceasefire initiative for Lebanon that he announced on Wednesday, which has all but fallen apart.

Some reports in Hebrew media Friday had indicated there was anger in Washington at Israel for carrying out the strike that killed Nasrallah since the Americans were attempting to secure a ceasefire agreement for Lebanon.

"It is time for these deals to close, for the threats to Israel to be removed, and for the broader Middle East region to gain greater stability," Biden concluded.

US Vice President Kamala Harris
What can be, unburdened by what has been
echoed Biden’s sentiment that Nasrallah’s killing brought a measure of justice for "countless innocent people in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and around the world."

Harris added that she had an "unwavering commitment" to Israel’s security and would "always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups."

However,
man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them...
she also said that she and Biden "do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war" and were working on a diplomatic solution.

"Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region," she argued.

US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, echoed the praise for Nasrallah’s killing, saying it ended his "reign of bloodshed, oppression, and terror," but rejected their call for a diplomatic solution.

"A puppet of the Iranian regime, [Nasrallah] was one of the most brutal Death Eaters on the planet, and a coward who hid behind women and kiddies to carry out his attacks. Thanks to the brave men and women of the Israeli military, justice was delivered for Israeli victims of his heinous crimes, their families, and the United States. The world is better off without him," he wrote.

Johnson also called on the "Biden-Harris administration to end its counter-productive calls for a ceasefire and its ongoing diplomatic pressure campaign against Israel."

"Nasrallah’s death is a major step forward for the Middle East, and today’s victory for peace and security should be used to reassert America’s ironclad support for Israel as it fights for its very right to exist," he concluded.

Nasrallah’s killing came at the end of an intense week of Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in which the IDF killed the vast majority of the terrorist organization’s top leadership.

Following the liquidation, the US Department of State ordered some employees at its embassy in Beirut and their eligible family members on Saturday to leave Lebanon amid escalating tensions.

"US Embassy Beirut personnel are restricted from personal travel without advance permission," the State Department said in a statement. "Additional travel restrictions may be imposed on US personnel under Chief of Mission security responsibility, with little to no notice due to increased security issues or threats."

UK reiterates call for immediate ceasefire in Lebanon
[GEO.TV] British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said he had spoken with Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Saturday, following an Israeli airstrike on Beirut which killed Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

"We agreed on the need for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the bloodshed. A diplomatic solution is the only way to restore security and stability for the Lebanese and Israeli people," Lammy said.
Ohferwgawdsake. Dipshits like Nasrallah start wars. Militaries like Israel's end them. Diplomacy extends the agony. Ask any Tamil Tiger.

France calls for immediate end to Israeli strikes on Hezbollah, voices opposition to IDF ground op in Lebanon
[IsraelTimes] France calls for an immediate end to Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, also saying that it was opposed to any IDF ground operation in Lebanon.

In a statement following a call with Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot also calls on Hezbollah and Iran to refrain from any action that could destabilize the region further, after Israel yesterday assassinated the Lebanon-based terror group’s chief, Hassan Nasrallah.

Link

Sri Lanka

Sri Lankans' fury forced the powerful Rajapaksa clan out. Now its heir is running for president

2024-09-16

[DHAKATRIBUNE] When an uprising ousted Sri Lanka's president, many saw it as the end of his powerful family's hold on the island nation after more than 12 years of rule.

Now, as Sri Lanka prepares to elect a new leader, Namal Rajapaksa is running for president. The 38-year-old is the son of former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and the nephew of the ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Namal is presenting himself as an agent of change, but many see his bid for presidency as an attempt by the controversial political dynasty to regain power.

By mid-2022, the clan's political career seemed in ruins. Some of its members were forced into hiding in military camps after angry protesters stormed their residences. Others simply gave up their seats in the government as people blamed them for hurtling the country of more than 20 million people into an economic crisis.

Two years later, the family — shunned and pushed to political wilderness — is trying make a comeback via the Rajapaksa heir apparent who is styling himself as someone who could deliver Sri Lanka into a prosperous future.

But for Namal, it's more than just a political choice — it's a deeply personal one. He wants to shed the widespread allegations that the Rajapaksa clan ran the country as a family business that led to the economy crashing in 2022 — as well as the guilty verdict on corruption charges against them.

''The corruption charges are not something common to my family or to myself. If you look at all politicians in this country or in the world, including our region — all have been accused of being corrupt,'' Namal told the News Agency that Dare Not be Named (AP) on a recent afternoon. ''People will understand, you know, because if you look at the current stage, everyone is blaming each other.''

Sri Lanka was once an economic hope in South Asia, before it plunged into an economic crisis in 2022 when unsustainable debt and the Covid-19 pandemic led to a severe shortage of essentials. The crisis morphed into a popular uprising, with angry street protesters taking over the president's and prime minister's offices and other key buildings, forcing Gotabaya to flee the country and later resign.

Many blamed the Rajapaksas.

The family still had a big parliamentary majority, and voted Ranil Wickremesinghe to serve the remainder of the presidential term. Wickremesinghe ensured them protection in return for their support to pass laws in Parliament, enabling the clan to mark a return in politics.

''We didn't run away, we never bravely ran away. It's just that some people thought we were hiding,'' said Namal.

Namal's prospects for a political comeback appear grim, as the main contest appears to be between three other candidates: Wickremesinghe, the parliamentary opposition leader and a left-leaning politician with a powerful alliance.

Alan Keenan, senior consultant on Sri Lanka at the International Crisis Group, said the younger Rajapaksa's bid for the presidency is a test run that would establish ''his position as the heir apparent'' of the political dynasty.

''I think they (the Rajapaksas) know that Namal will not win. But his candidature effectively reasserts the family's ownership of the party,'' Keenan said.

The Rajapaksa family has been a mainstay in Sri Lankan politics for decades. They influenced nearly everything — from bureaucracy to courts, police, business and sports.

Namal's father was a prime minister and then a two-term president from 2005 to 2015. Even though Mahinda Rajapaksa was adored by the country's majority Buddhist Sinhalese for defeating the ethnic Tamil separatists after a 26-year bloody civil war, allegations of human rights
...which are often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
violations and corruption led to his defeat in 2015.

The family, however, returned more powerful four years later, when Mahinda's brother was elected president. Gotabaya Rajapaksa whipped up majority Buddhist Sinhalese sentiments after the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings, blamed on Islamic krazed killer groups, killed 290 people.

But the family's popularity quickly eroded under a tanking economy and alienation among ethnic Tamils, Moslems and other minorities.

With hopes to reinvent himself as a young, modern leader removed from his family's tainted past, Namal's efforts mirror that of his father, who still enjoys considerable support among some voters who credit him for crushing the Tamil separatists.

Like his father, Namal wears the trademark outfit that highlights his Buddhist Sinhalese culture, with a maroon scarf around his neck, a sarong and a white robe. During campaigns he can be seen touching his father's feet in reverence, a practice most locals consider noble. He is also promising to free the island nation from its debt crisis, create more jobs and eradicate corruption by digitizing the administrative systems.

Five key runners in Sri Lanka's presidential race

[DHAKATRIBUNE] The majority-Buddhist island nation of around 22 million people will head for polls on September 21

More about each at the link.

Ranil Wickremesinghe: incumbent, free marketer, keen on financial austerity including raising taxes, got IMF bailout loan after the financial crash

Sajith Premadasa: split from Ranil Wickremesinghe to run against him, same financial program except no tax increase

Anura Kumara Dissanayaka: keen on the IMF bailout, but against privatization, dRk horse with little popular appeal

Namal Rajapaksa: late entrant, looks like a practice run for future efforts

Sarath Fonseka: former general who crushed Tamil Tigers, has been running unsuccessfully since 2010.

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

German FM says 'purely military approach' not the solution in Gaza; CIA, MI6 urge Israeli ‘compromises’ to get hostages back, detailed ceasefire proposal imminent

2024-09-08

[GEOTV] German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday that a military approach alone was not the solution to Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

It took all-out war to drive out the Nazis, but that’s different somehow.

"The past weekend has dramatically demonstrated that a purely military approach is no solution to the situation in Gaza," she told reporters after meeting with her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz in the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
That's what they always said about the Tamil Tigers, too. Anybody remember them?

Everybody is full of advice for those stupid juices:

CIA, MI6 chiefs urge truce-hostage deal; Burns calls for ‘hard political compromises’

One is forced to note that Hamas is not asked to sacrifice anything…

[IsraelTimes] As new proposal being finalized, spymasters issue unprecedented joint plea for ceasefire to end Gaza civilians’ ‘appalling loss of life’ and hostages’ ‘hellish confinement’.

CIA director says more detailed Gaza ceasefire proposal due in days
[GEOTV] CIA Director William Burns, the chief US negotiator trying to help secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages by Hamas, said a more detailed proposal on the ceasefire would be made in the coming days.

"We will make this more detailed proposal, I hope in the next several days, and then we'll see," Burns said at an FT event in London on Saturday.

Related:
Annalena Baerbock</strong> 09/07/2024 Germany Boosts Gaza Aid And Tells Israel To Stop Provocation
Annalena Baerbock 08/19/2024 Phone taps, sabotage and an assassination plot: Is Germany in Cold War 2.0?
Annalena Baerbock 06/02/2024 German FM Baerbock Is Considering German Participation In Gaza Protection Force

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International-UN-NGOs

UN Special Coordinator says 'no such thing as military solution' after Dahieh strike

2024-07-31

Just ask the Tamil Tigers.

What do they think after the Tehran hit on Ismail Haniyeh?

[An Nahar] U.N. Special Coordinator Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert on Tuesday said she is "deeply concerned" after Israel's strike in "the densely populated southern suburb of Beirut which resulted in multiple civilian casualties."

"The Special Coordinator underscores once again that there is no such thing as a military solution and calls on both Israel and Leb
Leb

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Bou Saab: War is not the solution

2024-01-11

[An Nahar] Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said he met with Speaker Nabih Knobby Berri
...Speaker of the Lebanese parliament, head of the Amal Shiite party aligned with Hezbollah, a not very subtle sock puppet of the Medes and Persians...
on Wednesday was to put him in the picture of the meeting that he has held in Rome with U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein.

"Of course Mr. Speaker knew of the visit before I went to Rome. The Rome meeting was aimed at preparing for the meetings that will be held in Beirut with the U.S. envoy," Bou Saad said after the Ain el-Tineh talks, hoping Hochstein’s visit "will be a step towards achieving the needed stability in Leb
Leb

...an Iranian satrapy currently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
."

Addressing the Israelis, Bou Saab stressed that "war cannot return the settlers to their settlements."

"It will subject them to further displacement, perhaps to more distant settlements," he warned.

"It might make this issue protract, not for months but maybe for years to come," the Lebanese official cautioned.

"War is not the solution.
"Just ask the Tamil Tigers, the Nazis, and Napoleon Bonaparte."
"If the objective is to return settlers to their settlements, we have the same objective, which is the return of all (Lebanese) villagers to their border villages and farms. The solution should come through diplomatic means and efforts and no one can find any other solution," he emphasized.

Nearly three months of cross-border fire have killed more than 185 people in Lebanon, including over 140 Hezbollah fighters, but also more than 20 civilians including three journalists. In northern Israel, nine soldiers and at least four civilians have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of Israeli and Lebanese residents on both sides of the border.

Link

India-Pakistan

How NIA’s 'Operation Dhvast' Is Breaking The Gangster-Terror Nexus

2023-05-26

[OneIndia] The National Investigation Agency is cracking down heavily on the gangster-terror nexus. Last week under an operation codenamed, 'Operation Dhvast' the NIA raided 324 locations across six states and Union Territories in collaboration with the Punjab
1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots....
and Haryana police.

While on one hand the agency is cracking down on the gangster-terror nexus on the other it is probing pro-Khalistan elements in London. A five member team of the NIA is in London to probe the vandalism that took place in which the Indian High Commission was targeted.

'Operation Dhvast' is aimed at breaking the network of gangsters such as Arsh Dalla, Lawrence Bishnoi, Chhenu Pehalwan, Deepak Teetar, Bhupi Rana, Vikash Lagarpuriya, Ashish Choudhary, Gurpreet Sekhon, Dilpreet Baba, Harsimrat Simma and Anuradha, an official tells OneIndia.

Under this operation the NIA is focus on the financial operations, logistic providers and hawala operatives who are associated with these hardcore members. These gangs have also been found to be working closely with Pakistain based groups who indulge in arms and narcotics trade. Many of these operatives coordinate from Canada with their Pakistain based handlers, an official in the know of the probe details said.

Further the agency has learnt that many of these gangsters are operating from the jails. Several jail officials are also under the scanner as it is suspected that they may be helping these elements with mobile phones so that they can make calls and plot attacks. The murder of Siddhu Moosewala too was planned from jail, investigations have found.

Not just Canada, the NIA has also found that there are gangsters who are operating from countries like Malaysia, Pakistain and Australia.

These groups have been carrying out assassinations and raising funds for nefarious activities through smuggling of drugs, weapons, hawala channels and extortion, an NIA official said.

Following the recent raids, the NIA said that it had recovered one pistol, assorted live and used ammunition, 60 mobile phones, 5 DVRs, 20 SIM cards, 1 hard disk, 1 pen drive, 1 dongle, 1 Wi-Fi router, 1 digital watch, 2 memory cards, 75 documents and about Rs 39,60,000 in cash.

Link

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka to get new president next week amid political and economic meltdown

2022-07-12

[NYPOST] Sri Lanka’s parliament will elect a new president on July 20, its speaker said on Monday, after protesters stormed the residences of the current president and prime minister, who have both offered to quit amid an economic meltdown.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had overseen a ruthless crushing of the Tamil Tigers snuffies as defense secretary, is set to resign on Wednesday. His brothers and nephew earlier quit as ministers as Sri Lanka began running out of fuel, food and other essentials in the worst crisis since independence from Britannia in 1948.

Parliament will reconvene on Friday and will vote to elect a new president five days later, Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said in a statement.

"During the party leaders’ meeting held today it was agreed that this was essential to ensure a new all-party government is in place in accordance with the Constitution," the statement added.

"The ruling party has said the prime minister and the Cabinet are ready to resign to appoint an all-party government."

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, whose private home was set alight by protesters, has said he will step down. His office said Rajapaksa had confirmed his resignation plans to the prime minister, adding that the cabinet would resign once a deal was reached to form an all-party government.

Link

India-Pakistan

An unlikely profile

2022-04-28

[Dawn] TUESDAY’s suicide kaboom at the Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
University may be the harbinger of a new and unexpected dimension in the dynamics of terrorism in Pakistain, particularly the Baloch insurgency.

It was appalling enough that a jacket wallah had targeted the faculty of the Confucius Institute on campus, killing three Chinese nationals and their Pak driver on the spot. But the shock was further compounded when the identity of the attacker came to light. Less than an hour following the incident, the banned Baloch Liberation Army took to social media to claim responsibility and announce that the bomber was a woman named Shaari Baloch.

Details emerging later revealed her to be a highly educated mother of two young children, belonging to a well-established family and working as a school teacher in her native Turbat, Balochistan
...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it...
. Moreover, it appears that no one in her close family was missing or had ever been forcibly disappeared — all of which adds up to an unlikely profile for a suicide bomber. It does, however, suggest that the insurgency is evolving in a direction that makes it imperative for the authorities to revisit their approach to it.

Suicide attacks, which involve an implicit belief in a reward in the afterlife for the act of ’self-sacrifice’, have almost always been the preserve of religious Death Eater groups, with some notable exceptions such as Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers. Much like the latter, the Baloch insurgency too is based on a secular ideology, and the KU bombing is among few such attacks perpetrated by the separatists.

The phenomenon of ~~exploding trollop~~ female suicide bombers is also rare in Pakistain, and except for the very first instance in the 1980s — the details of which remain unknown — three other such attacks, in 2010 and 2011, were claimed by the TTP. For a woman like Shaari Baloch to choose to go down this route despite her not disadvantageous circumstances is significant, and speaks to an increasing frustration in Baloch society.

Enforced disappearances, profiling of Baloch students at university campuses, the province’s lack of agency over the proceeds of its natural resources, etc have exacerbated the yawning deficit between the people and the state. That combined with increasing access to information via social media and deeper engagement in nationalist discourse has seen young Baloch become less reticent about expressing their anger and resentment, even in interactions with the military’s big shotship. It is a critical point in time.

That said, to attack soft targets is utterly reprehensible. And for teachers to be singled out, as happened in the latest instance, is all the more surprising given that the current insurgency is distinguished from its previous iterations by the fact that its support base largely comprises educated young Baloch.

For there to be any possibility of peaceful coexistence, the Baloch must shun such acts of senseless violence and the authorities reach out to them.

Link

Terror Networks

The Case of the Missing Archive

2022-02-06

by Theodore Dalrymple

[TakiMag] Some people come to hate what their profession suggests that they should love: Many librarians hate books, for example, at least if their way of treating them is any indication. Not a few would like to dispense with books altogether, replacing them by computer terminals so that they no longer have to deal with fatuous requests by scholars and would-be scholars for obscure volumes hidden in the back shelves.

When librarians sell off books that they deem to be surplus to requirements—libraries no longer being repositories of knowledge but more like fast-food outlets, so that something that has not been in demand for a certain length of time is struck off the menu—they take their revenge on the hated, tyrannous objects by defacing them with marker pens, in the process reducing their market value so that the library will have fewer funds with which to replace them by other hateful books. You can just imagine the joy of Quebecois librarians as 30,000 children’s books, deemed poisonous to children’s minds, were cast onto bonfires, the ashes used to fertilize newly planted trees in order to save the planet.

“It is difficult to imagine a whole archive being thrown away thoughtlessly; it is much easier to imagine it being thrown away, or rather destroyed, thoughtfully.”
Book burning, which Heine warned led eventually to the incineration of people, is essentially futile, at least in the long run, for it is rarely that every last copy of any book can be burnt; the burnt book is able to take its revenge by reappearing at some time in the future. Far worse than book burning, then, is the loss of an archive that contains unique and original documents. This is what happened, or was done, to an archive that a friend of mine, Jillian Becker, sold to Leicester University.

Having published novels with success about her native South Africa, she researched and wrote a world best-seller about the Baader-Meinhof gang called Hitler’s Children. She then researched and published a book about the Palestine Liberation Organization. Not surprisingly, she was now fascinated (and appalled) by the phenomenon of terrorism and set up an Institute for the Study of Terrorism in London. I visited it several times in its unmarked basement offices. At the time, I enjoyed the slightly cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of this. I was still a young man.

For the six years of its existence, the Institute researched terrorism around the world, often at some risk to its staff. It was consulted both by governments and by companies anxious to reduce their risks, and it published booklets on such movements as the Tamil Tigers and Sendero Luminoso. Newspapers and other media called on it for confidential and reliable information. With the end of the Cold War, however, its funding dried up. The Institute had discovered that much of the terrorism in Europe was encouraged and funded by the Soviet Union, from which the funders drew that natural but mistaken corollary that with the downfall of the latter, the problem of terrorism was more or less solved. Jillian Becker knew otherwise but was unable to persuade her donors that the Islamists would take over from where the Soviets had left off.

The Institute was therefore wound up, but in its six years of active existence it had accumulated a valuable archive that it was imperative to preserve. It contained unique documents retrieved from terrorist headquarters, interviews with former terrorists who had repented of their activities, confessions, photographs of crime scenes, names and biographies of perpetrators, and the like. In 1993, the Institute sold the archive to the University of Leicester for safekeeping.
Read the rest at the link

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India-Pakistan

NIA arrests former LTTE intel wing member in Kerala arms, drugs smuggling case

2021-10-08

[OneIndia] The National Investigation Agency has arrested a key conspirator in the Vizhinjam arms case.

The agency arrested Satkunam alias Sabesan, a Sri Lankan national in connection with the case. The NIA said that he was a former member of the intelligence wing of the LTTE

...the Tamil Tigers, formally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, is a plain vanilla Socialist ethnic liberation movement in northern Sri Lanka, crushed in 2009 after a 26-year civil war. Their claim to fame was normalizing the civilian suicide bomber, subsequently copied with great enthusiasm by various jihadi movements. Despite having been crushed, the remnants pop up from time to time, because revolution is much more fun for some than getting a job and getting on with life...

and was residing at Valsaravakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He was involved in arms and drug trafficking from Pakistain to Sri Lanka. The funds were being used for the revival of the LTTE, the NIA said.

The case was registered by the NIA based on the complaint by the NCB that five AK 47 rifles and thousand rounds of 9mm ammunition were seized along with 300kgs of heroin off Minicoy coast upon interception of the fishing vessel Ravihansi by the Coast Gaurd on March 18 2021.

The probe has revealed that the accused had arranged conspiracy meetings of LTTE sympathisers in India.

He had also played a crucial role in routing the proceeds of drug trafficking to former LTTE cadres in Sri Lanka for the revival of the outfit.

Link

India-Pakistan

NIA raids in TN after Facebook post calls for Jihad against India

2021-07-26

[OneIndia] The National Investigation Agency conducted raids at six locations in the four districts of Thanjavur, Madurai, Theni and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu.

The NIA raided the residence of accused Abdullah Saravanakumar and his associates. The case was registered after Abdullah posted incendiary messages on Facebook earlier this year in which he instigated people to wage a war against India on religious grounds.

He had also urged through his posts to establish Khilafat, thus threatening the unity, security and illusory sovereignty of India. During searches,22 digital devices including mobile phones, hard disks, memory cards, pen drives, laptops and many booklets containing incriminating materials have been recovered, the NIA said.

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Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka scraps Tamil national anthem at Independence Day

2020-02-05

[DAWN]

Rajapaksa was a top defense official in the civil war and played a major role in defeating the rebel Tamil Tigers. Many ethnic Tamil civilians were killed or went missing in the war.https://t.co/wWteOzQuZR
— Dawn.com (@dawn_com) February 4, 2020

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