Category Archives: Vatican

A Hard Look at Syria, the Exodus and Epic Numbers?

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Syria is entering year 6 of a civil war and no exact numbers can be posted with regard to those that have fled, have been wounded or have died. There are good numbers of the countless fighting factions there are other statistics including Russian and Iranian supporting Bashir al Assad.  Yet there are no consequences for terror in the country, except for a few deadly missile strikes or chemical; weapons use.

So assuming what various organizations report including Human Rights groups and respective militaries, taking a look at the United Nations numbers posted by the New York Times, which are likely skewed, the conditions are disgusting. Remember, entering the 6th year is horrible enough when no world power stepped in to stop or contain the instability or death in the region, including the United States taking a leadership role in any sort.

***  New York Times:

Death in Syria

By KAREN YOURISH, K.K. REBECCA LAI and DEREK WATKINS

More than 200,000 people have been killed in the four-and-a-half-year Syrian civil war.

The constant violence has forced more than four million to
flee the country, fueling a refugee crisis in the Middle East
and Europe. The country is so dangerous that a definitive tally
of deaths is not possible, but several groups are trying to
document how many Syrians have died, and what killed them.

For the interactive map and full photo essay, go here.

“With each passing day there are fewer safe places in Syria,” Paulo
Sérgio Pinheiro, chairman of the United Nations panel investigating
human rights abuses in Syria, wrote in a recent report. “Everyday
decisions — whether to visit a neighbor, to go out to buy bread
— have become, potentially, decisions about life and death.”

At least 28,277 civilians have died in shootings and mass killings.

Thousands of civilians have been victims of mass shootings and gunfire between government forces and insurgents. In one case documented by the United Nations, more than 100 people, including at least 49 children, were killed in Homs on May 25, 2012. Most were shot at close range.

The U.N. reports that armed opposition groups have also executed children, but lack of access in areas controlled by the Islamic State has prevented systematic documentation. “In places like Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, it’s almost impossible to verify the information,” said Bassam al-Ahmad, spokesman for the Violation Documentation Center in Syria.

At least 27,006 civilians were killed in mortar, artillery and rocket attacks.

Both government and insurgent forces have used “weapons that are guaranteed to cause civilian damage,” said Geoffrey Mock, a Middle East specialist at Amnesty International. Children account for about 20 percent of these deaths.

The Syrian government has repeatedly fired imprecise rockets and unguided bombs, according to the United Nations and other monitoring groups. Insurgent groups have used so-called “hell cannons” — improvised artillery devices fitted with explosive gas canisters that cause widespread damage.

“What we are seeing in Syria is war crime on both sides,” Mr. Mock said.

SYRIA-CRISIS_.jpg

At least 18,866 civilians were killed in Syrian government air attacks.

Syrian warplanes and helicopters have blasted civilian targets like mosques, schools and shopping markets in insurgent-controlled areas with barrel bombs — large containers filled with explosives and projectiles — and other weapons. As the government lost control of the country, said Mr. Ahmad of the Violations Documentation Center, “they began using new tactics by dropping air bombs.” More than a quarter of the dead are children.

At least 8,871 civilians were killed after being kidnapped, detained and/or tortured.

The United Nations and others have documented rampant use of torture by both government and opposition forces, including crimes against children targeted for appearing to be pro-government. In March, thousands of photos surfaced showing detainees who were said to have died in Syrian prisons. The photos were smuggled out of Syria by a former Syrian military photographer. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the photos showed evidence of torture.

At least 984 civilians were killed by exposure to chemical or toxic substances.

The Syrian government has been accused of using chlorine-filled barrel bombs. An attack in 2013 killed hundreds of people (some estimates were upward of 1,500) in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus controlled by the opposition, when the area was struck by several rockets containing sarin, a nerve agent known to be part of the Syrian military’s stockpile. There are also reports that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has used mustard gas in northern Syria.

POY_.jpg

At least 654 medical workers were killed in attacks on hospitals.

The United Nations has accused the Syrian government of using attacks on hospitals as a “weapon of war.” Physicians for Human Rights documented nearly 300 attacks on hospitals through July, most of them carried out by pro-Assad forces in opposition-controlled areas.

At least 565 civilians died from starvation, dehydration or lack of basic medical care.

The death toll, documented by the Syrian American Medical Society through January 2015, does not capture the many people — estimates range from 200,000 to more than 600,000 — who have been under siege for more than a year and are at risk of starving to death or dying from other preventable causes. The majority of those besieged are trapped by the Syrian government in the Damascus area, according to Valerie Szybala, the primary author of a report by the Syrian American Medical

An estimated 181 civilians were killed in the American-led air campaign against ISIS.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has estimated that 181 civilians have been killed in the coalition airstrike campaign against the Islamic State, as of mid-August. Other groups have given higher estimates, and all say that the United States and its allies understate the civilian toll. The United States Central Command says it has confirmed the deaths of only two civilians since the start of the campaign.

Criminal Network Tactics on Europe’s Refugee CrISIS

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ISIS Terrorist Arrested in Stuttgart “Refugee” Center; “Boxes” of Fake Syrian Passports Intercepted

 

An ISIS terrorist posing as an “asylum seeker” has been arrested by German police in a “refugee” center in Stuttgart, and German customs officers have seized boxes containing Syrian passports being smuggled into Europe.

masked-ISIS

According to a report carried by RTL’s German language service, the terrorist is a 21-year-old Moroccan using a “false identity” who had registered as an asylum seeker in the district of Ludwigsburg. He was identified after police linked him to a European arrest warrant issued by the Spanish authorities. He is accused of recruiting fighters for ISIS, where he acted as a contact person for fighters who wanted to travel to Syria or Iraq.

This first confirmed arrest of a bogus “asylum seeker” came simultaneously with the admission by a German finance ministry spokesman that “boxes” of fake Syrian passports, destined for sale and distribution to the hordes of nonwhite invaders seeking to settle in Europe as bogus “war refugees,” had been seized.

That news, carried in a report by the German Tagespiegel newspaper, also revealed that 10,000 fake Syrian passports were seized by police in Bulgaria, on their way to Germany.

The finance ministry official said both genuine and forged passports were in the packets intercepted in the post. Possession of these passports is a vital part of claiming “asylum” as “war refugees.”

The Tagespiegel also revealed that the fake Syrian passports are being sold for about $1,500 each—and the fact that many of the “refugees” can afford to buy multiple passports is yet another indication of the bogus nature of their claims to be “asylum seekers.”

Significantly, the Tagespiegel article continued, “It is not only Syrians who are interested in Syrian passports. Refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan want to become Syrian in order to secure their recognition as asylum seekers in Western Europe. According to press reports, nine out of ten refugees who came from Macedonia to Serbia claimed they were Syrians.”

The trade in fake Syrian passports was also confirmed by the head of the EU frontier police, Fabrice Leggeri, in a recent interview with the Europe 1 TV station.

Leggeri told Europe 1 that the trade in fake Syrian passports originated in Turkey. “There are people who are now in Turkey, buying false Syrian passports because they have obviously realized that it is a windfall since Syrians get asylum in all Member States in the European Union,” he said.

“People who use false Syrian passports often speak in Arabic. They may originate in North Africa or the Middle East, but have the profile of economic migrants.”

*** Second Tactic

Muslim Migrants Converting to Christianity to Improve Asylum Chances

Muslim migrants in Germany are converting to Christianity “in droves” in the hope it will improve their chances of winning asylum.

Hundreds of Iranians and Afghanis have been baptised at Trinity Church, a Lutheran church in Berlin, where Pastor Gottfried Martens offers a three-month “crash course” for new converts.

AP reports on one baptism where Martens asked Iranian refugee Mohammed Ali Zonoobi: “Will you break away from Satan and his evil deeds? Will you break away from Islam?” To which Zonoobi fervently responded: “Yes”.

Martens then baptised him “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” Mohammed renamed himself Martin.

Martin Zonoobi, a carpenter from Iran, arrived in Germany with his wife and children five months ago. He is one of many who have converted, with many claiming true belief has prompted them.

However, Pastor Martens admits that some convert just to improve their chances of winning asylum in Germany – as Christians who have apostatised from Islam they are likely to suffer heavy persecution if they are sent home.

Martens says motive is not important, however. “I know there are – again and again – people coming here because they have some kind of hope regarding their asylum,” he said.

“I am inviting them to join us because I know that whoever comes here will not be left unchanged.”

Many are so taken by the Christian message that they end up genuinely changing their beliefs anyway, Martens says. He adds that of those who have converted, only around one in ten stop attending church afterwards.

Although being Christian alone does not mean they will automatically win asylum – Merkel has even said that Islam “belongs in Germany” – many hope this will be enough to sway authorities.

None will openly admit converting just for asylum purposes as it could lead to them being deported as Christian coverts, possibly facing the death penalty when they return home.

Martens’s church is now reporting a surge in the congregation from 150 two years ago to more than 600 now. Some of the migrants coming to be converted are travelling from places as far afield as Rostock on the Baltic coast.

There no official figures on how many Muslims have converted to Christianity in Germany over the past few years, and the number is still tiny compared to the country’s four million strong Muslim population. Nonetheless, Martens describes the rate of conversions as a “miracle”.

He also claims to have at least 80 people, mostly migrants, waiting to be baptised.

Zonoobi’s wife Afsaneh, now known as Katarina, said the Christening marks a new beginning.

“Now we are free and can be ourselves,” she said.

“Most important, I am so happy that our children will have a good future here and can get a good education in Germany.”

*** Third Tactic

Since 2013, human smuggling of Syrians and other Middle Easterners into is viable industry

With The Help Of Smugglers, Syrian Refugees Sneak Into Europe

The 27-year-old Syrian, who once smuggled arms for Syrian rebels, is now waiting in Istanbul for a human smuggler to get him to Europe. He says his name is Mohammed. He does not offer a second name. He will go by air, he says, the safest route. He has paid a smuggler more than $8,000, and he’s sure he will get to Austria.

In the past week, he connected seven friends with smugglers.

“I know that most of them made it,” he says, with a tight smile. He is traveling light. Everything he owns is in a backpack.

“I am leaving Syria under a lot of pressure,” he explains.

He seems exhausted by the waiting. Twenty days ago, he got into a fight with an al-Qaida-linked group while helping a friend in the Syrian town of Sarqib. Mohammed says he killed two of their men.

“I needed to leave Syria because I was facing death,” he says.

He joins a surge of Syrian refugees smuggled to Europe. Many are from Syria’s educated, professional class, and have the means for the underground routes. The preferred destination is northern Europe, where economies are strong and the Syrians believe they can start over again.

The numbers seeking asylum in European Union countries doubled this year to more than 36,000, according to EU officials. The journey is long, but the travel is safe, depending on how much you are willing to pay.

Air routes are top of the line. The price tag for Sweden, the most desired destination, is $16,000.

The most dangerous route is by sea, where smugglers sell space on overcrowded fishing boats. The Italian coast guard recently rescued 120 mostly Syrian refugees off the Italian coast. In October, 30 Syrians drowned in a shipwreck between Malta and Italy.

More than 2 million Syrians have fled their homeland since Syria’s civil war broke out more than two years ago. Most have resettled in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

Many believed it was a temporary move. But as the war grinds on, some Syrians are making a different calculation. There may be nothing to go home to for years.

Negotiating The Best Deal A Matter Of Life And Death

Over the past several months, the Syrian exodus has increasingly focused on Europe. For many, the journey starts in Turkey, where the human smuggling trade has long flourished.

In the Fatih district of Istanbul, past an outdoor market and down a narrow alley, the tea houses and kabob shops caters to Syrian refugees.

The menus are in Arabic, and so are the conversations. This is the place to make contact with a smuggler and begin the negotiations over price and destination. The tables are full. Syrian men drink sugary tea and swap stories about the best routes and prices.

Abdel Ghani, a medical technician from Qamishli, in northern Syria, sold his house to finance his trip. He’s on his third try.

“It becomes an addiction. I would try 100 times,” he says and shakes his head and laughs at his latest failed attempt. His smuggler got him a fake Swiss passport, but the birthdate made him 20 years older than his actual age.

He grew his beard, tried to stick out his lip like the man pictured in the passport. He made it to the Istanbul boarding gate before his documents were spotted as fakes.

He watched other Syrian families with fake passports board the plane. His documents were confiscated, but he wasn’t detained.

“I’m going to try again the day after tomorrow. I hope to get to Sweden,” he pledges.

Another Syrian at the table, a real estate agent before the revolt, says he sold everything he owned, and paid a smuggler $35,000 to get his wife and daughters to Germany. The trip took four months to arrange. He interviewed more than one smuggler.

“I had to pick a smuggler for my kids; it’s a matter of life and death,” he says, noting that his family arrived safely in Germany a month ago. “We got the right smuggler.”

Every part of a smuggled trip is a matter of luck. Hiring the right smuggler is only the first hurdle; getting into Europe is just the beginning of the journey.

There’s been a surge in the number of Syrians arrested in Romania, Macedonia and Bulgaria. Thousands of Syrian refugees are languishing in Greek detention camps. These are the perils of the route to northern Europe that begins with an air ticket, but usually involves trains, buses and sometimes a final border crossing on foot.

As Demand Rises, So Do Prices

A smuggler, who gives his name as Abu Salman, doesn’t want to talk in the restaurant. He invites us to a shabby hotel lobby next door. He’s in his 50s, wearing a frayed gray suit. He says he owned a successful restaurant in Syria before the revolt. Now, his trade is in people.

“There are Turks we’ve been working with; there is a relationship of trust,” he says.

Since February, Abu Salman says he has arranged for more than 500 Syrians to get to Europe. Most made it, though 150 are still stuck in Bulgaria.

As he explains the business, his cell phone rings. His cousin is calling from the Netherlands, where he just arrived.

“There was a delay of a month,” explains Abu Salman. His cousin had to spend time in Bulgaria and Serbia before finally getting to the Netherlands. The delays add to the cost. But this still counts as a success. Abu Salman is building a reputation.

“People are starting to call me from Syria, ‘Please make all the arrangements,’ they say,” according to Abu Salman.

The prices are rising as the demand grows.

“It used to be $6,000 for a boat to France,” he says. Now it’s $10,000, and some smugglers are asking for more. But desperate Syrians continue to sell everything they have and pay whatever it takes.

Pope Francis is Breaking the Catholic Doctrine, Revolt at Vatican

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On the very same day that the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis is ordered released from jail by a local judge for adhering to her inalienable rights to her belief system, a religious debate is underway throughout America.

Anyone remember the Obama administration suing the Little Sisters of the Poor due to Obamacare and birth-control?

Inalienable rights, cannot be surrendered, sold, suspended or transferred at the behest of any government and Kim Davis stood stern.

Meanwhile, while so many issues challenge America, one place to normally seek stability, sense or morality is church, but such is not the case with the Catholic Church or the Vatican.

Due to Pope Francis and what most of the media is not saying, the Papacy and the Vatican is in crisis, in Rome and honestly across the globe.

The edge of a movement is underway at home and worldwide, the rise of the moral and religious compass.

A Conservative revolt is brewing in the Vatican as Pope Francis introduces more inclusive measures

VATICAN CITY — On a sunny morning earlier this year, a camera crew entered a well-appointed apartment just outside the 9th-century gates of Vatican City. Pristinely dressed in the black robes and scarlet sash of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church, the Wisconsin-born Cardinal Raymond Burke sat in his elaborately upholstered armchair and appeared to issue a warning to Pope Francis.

A staunch conservative and Vatican bureaucrat, Burke had been demoted by the pope a few months earlier, but it did not take the fight out of him. Francis had been backing a more inclusive era, giving space to progressive voices on divorced Catholics as well as gays and lesbians. In front of the camera, Burke said he would “resist” liberal changes — and seemed to caution Francis about the limits of his authority. “One must be very attentive regarding the power of the pope,” Burke told the French news crew.

Papal power, Burke warned, “is not absolute.” He added, “The pope does not have the power to change teaching (or) doctrine.”

Burke’s words belied a growing sense of alarm among strict conservatives, exposing what is fast emerging as a culture war over Francis’s papacy and the powerful hierarchy that governs the Roman Catholic Church.

This month, Francis makes his first trip to the United States at a time when his progressive allies are heralding him as a revolutionary, a man who only last week broadened the power of priests to forgive women who commit what Catholic teachings call the “mortal sin” of abortion during his newly declared “year of mercy” starting in December. On Sunday, he called for “every” Catholic parish in Europe to offer shelter to one refugee family from the thousands of asylum-seekers risking all to escape war-torn Syria and other pockets of conflict and poverty.

Yet as he upends church convention, Francis also is grappling with a conservative backlash to the liberal momentum building inside the church. In more than a dozen interviews, including with seven senior church officials, insiders say the change has left the hierarchy more polarized over the direction of the church than at any point since the great papal reformers of the 1960s.

The conservative rebellion is taking on many guises, in public comments, yes, but also in the rising popularity of conservative Catholic websites promoting Francis dissenters; books and promotional materials backed by conservative clerics seeking to counter the liberal trend; and leaks to the news media, aimed at Vatican reformers.

In his recent comments, Burke was also merely stating fact. Despite the vast powers of the pope, church doctrine serves as a kind of constitution. And for liberal reformers, the bruising theological pushback by conservatives is complicating efforts to translate the pope’s transformative style into tangible changes.

“At least we aren’t poisoning each other’s chalices anymore,” said the Rev. Timothy Radcliffe, a liberal British priest and Francis ally appointed to an influential Vatican post in May. Radcliffe said he welcomed open debate, even critical dissent within the church. But he professed himself as being “afraid” of “some of what we’re seeing”

Rather than stake out clear stances, the pope is more subtly, often implicitly, backing liberal church leaders who are pressing for radical change, while dramatically opening the parameters of the debate over how far reforms can go. For instance, during the opening of a meeting of senior bishops last year, Francis told those gathered, “Let no one say, ‘This you cannot say.’ ”

We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches

Since then, liberals have tested the boundaries of their new freedom, with one Belgian bishop going as far as calling for the Catholic Church to formally recognize same-sex couples.

Conservatives counter that in the climate of rising liberal thought, they have been thrust unfairly into a position in which “defending the real teachings of the church makes you look like an enemy of the pope,” a senior Vatican official said on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely.

“We have a serious issue right now, a very alarming situation where Catholic priests and bishops are saying and doing things that are against what the church teaches, talking about same-sex unions, about Communion for those who are living in adultery,” the official said. “And yet the pope does nothing to silence them. So the inference is that this is what the pope wants.”

A measure of the church’s long history of intrigue has spilled into the Francis papacy, particularly as the pope has ordered radical overhauls of murky Vatican finances. Under Francis, the top leadership of the Vatican Bank was ousted, as was the all-Italian board of its financial watchdog agency.

One method of pushback has been to give damaging leaks to the Italian news media. Vatican officials are now convinced that the biggest leak to date — of the papal encyclical on the environment in June — was driven by greed (it was sold to the media) rather than vengeance. But other disclosures have targeted key figures in the papal cleanup — including the conservative chosen to lead the pope’s financial reforms, the Australian Cardinal George Pell, who in March was the subject of a leak about his allegedly lavish personal tastes.

More often, dissent unfolds on ideological grounds. Criticism of a sitting pope is hardly unusual — liberal bishops on occasion challenged Benedict. But in an institution cloaked in traditional fealty to the pope, what shocks many is just how public the criticism of Francis has become.

In an open letter to his diocese, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote: “In trying to accommodate the needs of the age, as Pope Francis suggests, the Church risks the danger of losing its courageous, countercultural, prophetic voice, one that the world needs to hear.” For his part, Burke, the cardinal from Wisconsin, has called the church under Francis “a ship without a rudder.”

Even Pell appeared to undermine him on theological grounds. Commenting on the pope’s call for dramatic action on climate change, Pell told the Financial Times in July, “The church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters.”

In conservative circles, the word “confusion” also has become a euphemism for censuring the papacy without mentioning the pope. In one instance, 500 Catholic priests in Britain drafted an open letter this year that cited “much confusion” in “Catholic moral teaching” following the bishops’ conference on the family last year in which Francis threw open the floodgates of debate, resulting in proposed language offering an embraceable, new stance for divorced or gay Catholics.

That language ultimately was watered down in a vote that showed the still-ample power of conservatives. It set up another showdown for next month, when senior church leaders will meet in a follow-up conference that observers predict will turn into another theological slugfest. The pope himself will have the final word on any changes next year.

Conservatives have launched a campaign against a possible policy change that would grant divorced and remarried Catholics the right to take Communion at Mass. Last year, five senior leaders including Burke and the conservative Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy, drafted what has become known as “the manifesto” against such a change. In July, a DVD distributed to hundreds of dioceses in Europe and Australia, and backed by conservative Catholic clergy members, made the same point. In it, Burke, who has made similar arguments at Catholic conferences, issued dire warnings of a world in which traditional teachings are ignored.

The pope does not have the power to change teaching (or) doctrine

But this is still the Catholic Church, where hierarchical respect is as much tradition as anything else. Rather than targeting the pope, conservative bishops and cardinals more often take aim at their liberal peers. They include the German Cardinal Walter Kasper, who has suggested that he has become a proxy for clergy members who are not brave enough to criticize the pope directly.

Yet conservatives counter that liberals are overstepping their bounds, putting their own spin on the pronouncements of a pope who has been more ambiguous than Kasper and his allies are willing to admit.

“I was born a papist, I have lived as a papist, and I will die a papist,” Caffarra said. “The pope has never said that divorced and remarried Catholics should be able to take Holy Communion, and yet, his words are being twisted to give them false meaning.”

Some of the pope’s allies insist that debate is precisely what Francis wants.

“I think that people are speaking their mind because they feel very strongly and passionately in their position, and I don’t think the Holy Father sees it as a personal attack on him,” said Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich, considered a close ally of the pope. “The Holy Father has opened the possibility for these matters to be discussed openly; he has not predetermined where this is going.”

Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.

The Other Muslim Massacre Ignored in History

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For a short summary background, click here.

‘In 1971, Muslims murdered 2.4 million Hindus and raped 200,000 Hindu women’

Will the Muslim violence against the Indian people, and the contamination of barbaric Islamic ideals blended into their culture, ever end? The Israeli’s and Hindus are the largest victims of perpetural Islamic invasions and violence lasting for more than 1,000 years. Muhammad Ali Jinna, a member of the Indian National Congress and later of the All-India Muslim League (a Khilafat movement that also germinated the Palestine conflict), demanded a two-state partition, creating the Lahore Resolution, which formed the separate creation of Pakistan.

This partition of people created a domin effect of other tensions and problems spreading from Khalistan to Bangladesh, to Kashmir, to Balochistan and to continued terrorism and tension existing even today. The British tried to discourage Muhammad Ali Jinna against rallying for the partition and warned against it many times, which ended in riots, mass exodus, clashes and deaths of millions. The article covers a poorly exposed incident of Muslim massacres of Hindus that we never hear about. It’s a pity the article forms a common Hindu anti-Western mindset, and fails to acknowledge any attention to the simple fact that Britain saved India from Muslim rule. India would bend to Mecca today had it not been for the clever rulers of South India who formed an alliance with Britain for exclusive trade agreements which developed into British rule and the expulsion of Muslim rule and Sharia law. You never hear Indian people admit to this fact. Instead they are focused purely on anti-Western rhetorics. It’s not Britain who destroyed India. It’s Islam that looted, massacred and destroyed Indian culture from within. Muslim terrorism, attacks, tensions continue in India to this day.

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Understanding Islamic violence; how to defend our freedoms

Interview by People of Shambhala.

In the wake of renewed violence against Hindus in Pakistan, and with more than 100 Hindu families seeking asylum in India, Director of the Canadian Hindu Advocacy group spoke to People of Shambhala. Mr. Banerjee talks about the background to the conflict, and why Pakistan was created in 1947. Why the West should include Hinduism, not just the “Judeo-Christian” tradition. And he also discusses Islam and violence against Hindus and the West, and how we can defend our values and freedoms.

PoS: At the moment about 100 Hindu families are seeking asylum in India, from Pakistan, and are claiming discrimination and violence. There were four doctors murdered on the first day of Eid, and, I think, a Sikh was stabbed as well. Can you tell us a little about that situation?

RB: Sure. The situation is very natural. Most people don’t understand what Pakistan is. Pakistan is a country that was formed for the Muslims. India is a multi-ethnic country for everybody. So Pakistan was formed with the very idea that the only people that should be in Pakistan are Muslims. There is nothing strange about what’s going on in Pakistan today. It’s being going on for a long time.

At independence Pakistan’s population was about ten percent Hindu and Sikh. Now it’s less than one percent. So the question is where did that nine percent go? Well, they were either ethnically cleansed, driven away, or slaughtered in large numbers in the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. In East Pakistan an estimated 2.4 million Hindus were slaughtered in just one year, and hundreds of thousands of Hindu women were raped.

There is nothing surprising about any of this because Islam was introduced into the Asian subcontinent with the objective of occupying and exterminating the Hindus. According to the historian William Durant, and other historians, an estimated 80 million Hindus were killed, were slaughtered, and thousands and thousands of Hindu temples were smashed, and mosques were built on top of them. The Muslims of India tried very hard over the period of their 700 years [of occupation] to wipe out the Hindus. But there was resistance from some of the Hindu kingdoms. They never had full control over India so they were unable to achieve that goal. But that’s the eternal goal. According to Islam, Hinduism is the lowest form of life on the planet. Because Hindus, according to them, they’re polytheistic, they believe in multiple gods. They believe we worship idols, and idol worship is a sin in Islam.  

PoS: One thing that has struck me is just the extent of the attacks on Hindus, Buddhists, Yezidis, Zoroastrians, Kalash. Yet we don’t hear anything about this. You mentioned the war of 71; 2.4 million dead, 200,000 Hindu women raped, but we don’t hear anything about that in the West.

RB: No you don’t, because there’s a systematic effort by Muslims and petrodollars to cover it up. The reason you don’t hear about it is because they make tremendous effort to silence it.

PoS: In all fairness, some Middle Eastern newspapers that probably cater mostly to Muslims have covered some of it, but you don’t seem to find it in the West, which is even more incredible. Why do you think Western journalists won’t cover something like that? The West always portrays itself as caring about minorities and being the people that always stand up to stop genocide, and that are always campaigning against violence against minorities. But nothing.

RB: This may offend you a little bit.

PoS: It won’t [laughs].

RB: It probably will [laughs]. But, it’s because the West have been hypocrites.

PoS: Yeah.

RB: If you look at Britain, for example, when they went to India they did not stop genocide or massacres, they expedited them. They actually supported the Muslims against the Hindus, helped them to perpetrate massacres. In terms of the establishment of the state of Pakistan, if you read people like William Dalrymple, a British historian, it becomes quite clear that the British encouraged the creation of Pakistan in order to divide the [anti-colonial] independence movement. [*Dalrymple’s theories are inaccurate and merely theories. The Britain discouraged against the partition of India, but the decision was created by Indian-Muslim voters themselves spearheaded by Muhammad Ali Jinna]

PoS: Do you think there is still a kind of colonial residue in the atmosphere. Do you think there is some kind of patronizing attitude in the media? Is that why we don’t see atrocities reported?

I’ve heard this question before. That it’s a form of racism that they don’t condemn Muslims for their human rights violations is because they are non-Western and [therefore] they are expected to be barbaric. There might be some of that, but these days it’s rather more a culture of fear. I mean, if you publish a cartoon of Mohammed, even if you’re in the West, you get threatened, and you possibly get killed, and you have riots going on. So now it’s more of a culture of fear.

PoS: On that note, Subramanian Swamy, the Hindu professor at Harvard, was fired because he wrote an article on how to wipe out Islamic terror [in India]. I read it. I didn’t find it shocking… I suppose [at the most controversial point] he’s saying that non-Hindus would have to appreciate their Hindu roots or they wouldn’t be allowed to vote. What was your take on his article and on his being fired?

RB: The article was a hundred percent correct. He did not say – as has been claimed – that all non-Hindus should be forced to convert to Hinduism or anything like that. He didn’t even say that non-Hindus should be oppressed or treated badly within India. He just said they should have a respect for Hinduism, and that they should acknowledge the proper history, especially the history of the Muslims in India. There was no such thing as Islam in India before about 1,000 AD. Muslims invaded and forcibly converted millions of Hindus to Islam. That’s just a historical fact. And that they should acknowledge that historical fact.

PoS: Why is it when it comes to Islam, we don’t stick for minorities? We don’t stick up for women’s rights? We don’t stick up for gay rights? All the things that we would stand up for at any other time.

RB: It’s a combination of different things. Political correctness is part of it, but it’s not the whole explanation. It’s more a simple combination of fear and bribery. In many cases it’s just the money and influence pouring in from the Middle East demanding that no negative aspects of Islam be spoken about. It’s the carrot and the stick, the carrot being the money being the money flowing in from petrodollars, and the stick being [the fear of] rioting and beheading over a cartoon or any slight to Islam.

PoS: In 2008, there was the Mumbai attacks. A couple of things about that were striking. One thing was the way the Western media covered it. If memory serves me correctly – and I think it does – it was implied that the attacks in Mumbai were against essentially Western targets, such as the Taj Mahal Hotel. Do you think they were going after Western targets or do you think there was another incentive?

RB: Well, most of the people that were killed were Hindus. So, I wouldn’t call them Western targets… again it’s the stupidity of the West, reporting it in this way… It’s not necessarily the case that they [the terrorists] were trying to kill as many White people, or White tourists, as possible. They just wanted to attack the most visible, or the wealthiest, or the most high profile, targets. Those aren’t Western targets. The only target that they went out of their way to attack that was not related to Hinduism was the synagogue, the Jewish target.

PoS: You probably follow what is going on in Europe, where we hear a lot of calls for sharia. And some people are trying to defend liberal democracy, but they don’t always seem to know what they’re defending. You believe that Hindu values and the values of liberal democracy and modernity are the same. Can you tell me what those would be?

RB: The one mistake that Westerners all make – including conservatives – is that they define Western values and the values of liberal democracy strictly as Judeo-Christian. And I don’t think that’s the case. I believe Hindu values have to be included in that as well because India is the world’s largest democracy and it’s 80 percent Hindu, so how can it just be Judeo-Christian. Most people will tell you that it [democracy] comes from the British, which is obnoxious and insulting and racist. I would think that you should want to give credit to the people of that country rather than to an invasive force a hundred years ago.

The values of democracy are more in tune with Hinduism than with many, many, many other faith traditions, because if you look at Hinduism there was an openness – the ability of people within Hinduism to have different gods, multiple deities, and to worship as they please… The ability to allow this freedom, to worship as one pleased without being excommunicated or called a heretic, that’s one of the factors that makes Hinduism a more democratic religion than many others.

When people say that the West is a result of Judeo-Christian civilization, it’s also a combination of that and Socrates, Aristotle, and others, and they were in pre-Christian times, and they were not Jewish either. They were part of a faith that was somewhat similar to Hinduism in the sense that it had multiple gods. I think, on the one hand, it’s difficult because, it [the conception of democracy and the West] has to be more inclusive; it can’t be just Judeo-Christian. You’ve got to embrace some of those other traditions as well. On the other hand let’s not start saying Islam had something to do with it as well; [because] no it didn’t.

PoS: Are there historical links between the ancient Greeks and Hinduism?

RB: I’m not a historian, so I’m not a hundred percent certain, but some of the words and names… Sanskrit is the original Indo-European language… so there are some similarities between ancient Greek and Sanskrit.

PoS: Yes, that’s from Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European is the root of many European languages and Indian as well. And some of the ancient Greeks were influenced by Buddhism(1) as well, so there must be some links [to Hinduism].(2)

RB: Yeah, yeah, I understand there were. There must be some linkages.

PoS: That would be pretty interesting [to research into]. Sort of on that note, today we have a lot of Christian groups that embrace interfaith dialogue with Islam, and they have imams up on stage, and it’s all very lovey-dovey. Yet they react hysterically to New Age spirituality – which is a very pacifistic form of spirituality – but they are extraordinary hysterical about that and think it’s all Satan. It strikes me, whether you like it or not, New Ageism is a big part of Western culture and has been for some time. They’re obviously frightened by it, and think it’s going to destroy civilization. But, I don’t know if you know this, but Hindu nationalism and Buddhist nationalism [and anti-colonialism] were partly revived – or were encouraged to be revived – through a couple of Western proto-New Age people of the Theosophical Society.(3)

RB: Yes, I heard about that… the Theosophical Society in Calcutta.

PoS: Related to that, do you think we should be forming alliances between Hindus, and people who practice Yoga, and spiritual people, and then Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians?

RB: Yes, I think Hinduism, and Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism, are a better fit for Western democracy and liberalism than Islam. I think maybe why some Christians feel kinship with Islam is that – for example, with the Inquisition – Christianity has behaved more like Islam than the peaceful, tolerant, Hindus and the Buddhists…[*this is a lack of historic accuracy. Christian history is filled with battles against Islamic invasions and barbarity]. I think you need a combination of tolerance and as strength. You shouldn’t tolerate the intolerant.

PoS: No.

RB: Maybe if you could meld together the toughness of Christianity with some of the tolerance of Hinduism and Buddhism, and form an alliance, you may be able to get the elusive Holy Grail that everyone seems to be looking for, which is how to be strong enough to deter [political] Islam, while not sacrificing our values and principles of liberalism and human rights and democracy.

_________________

Notes:

(1) For those interested in the fusion of ancient Greek and Buddhist culture see:

The Buddhist Channel: Gandhara artist’s lasting contribution to Greco-Buddhist art;

Wikipedia: Greco-Buddhism;

UNESCO: images of Greco-Buddhist art;

(2) For those interested in the historical links between ancient Greece and India, see Fordham University: Greek Reports of India & Aryavarta;

Author Thomas McEvilley on Ancient Greek and Indian philosophy .

Hindu Wisdom: India and Greece;

Wikipedia: Indo-Greeks;

(3) For more information of the Theosophical Society and its relationship to Hindu and Buddhist anti-colonialism see:

Imperial encounters: religion and modernity in India and Britain by Peter van der Veer [Google Books].

BlavatskyNeet: Blavatsky and Buddhism.

Hindu nationalism: origins, ideologies and modern myths by Chetan Bhatt [Google Books].

Immediate yet Temporary Solution to Global Refugee Crisis?

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There is some agreement with Barack Obama, the civil wars, the unrest, the terror conditions in the Middle East is an Islamic problem to solve. When however, outside influences have manifested the state of order in the region, not only is the Obama administration culpable due to lack of leadership, but filling that void is Iran, Russia, the Gulf States and China.

This is not a new condition by any stretch and the cost to the United States has yet to be realized or accounted. In 2013, the United States had already provided $339 million and additional humanitarian aid to the Syria crisis. That is but one small portion to the costs which have mounted still in 2015.

The refugee crisis festering across the globe is worse than what is being reported and the moving parts are countless.

So there are some short term and creative solutions that would provide some relief such that other cures can be devised in the interim.

  1. Call on affected nations to step up assets to rescue and safe haven to the refugees by offering respective naval vessels to the Mediterranean Sea and to ports involved. Each country has decommissioned ships or ships that are expendable for immediate use, including cruise ships. The United States alone has decommissioned countless naval assets and sold many of them to other countries for use. Further, after generally 25 years, cruise ships are taken out of service where some would take minor upgrades to deploy for the cause.
  2. The United Nations along with involved countries call to duty personnel to work resources for humanitarian means. This would include medical, safety, transportation, educational and early vetting.
  3. Place intelligence operations on the entry-way path to interview, fingerprint and background personnel files that are matched with global intelligence services that would and could find the terrorists and jihadis among the crowds.
  4. Set rules aboard the ships for order, when violations occur, aggressive consequences are invoked. This may include prison, deportation or other detention sentences.
  5. Contain the problem and then manage it. Stop spreading the destruction, crisis and despair. The cost of this program would come under that of the Gulf States, Russia and Iran that have offered zero assistance and are in fact guilty of exacerbating the calamity. The global community has a role and for those that ignore, sanctions and isolation is the consequence.
  6. Countries where war and unrest is proven are the target of a worldwide military solution beyond that of today’s feeble strategy. NATO membership is accountable for a tactical strategy in locations such as Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Turkey, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more.
  7. Determine Muslim countries that may be conditioned to take refugees on a medium term basis until stability is gained, one country at a time. Those countries may include Maldives, Malaysia or perhaps even Kyrgyzstan.

It is time to think out of the box for a semi-lasting yet immediate solution during which time Islamic State, al Nusra, Boko Harem, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are defeated.

This post is up for debate and further discussion, yet today, there must be robust collaboration, cures, humanitarian and military strategies on the table. Your comments are invited and welcomed.