My friend, Union minister MJ Akbar By: Aakar Patel - www.abpliv.in

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My friend, Union minister MJ Akbar

By: Aakar Patel | Last Updated: Saturday, 9 July 2016 3:11 PM

    

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MJ Akbar, who was made a minister on Tuesday, is from a time when English editors were national celebrities. Akbar was in his mid 20s when he became editor of Sunday magazine, published from Calcutta. He was in his 30s when he launched the Telegraph newspaper and in his 40s when he launched his own publication, Asian Age.

All this time, he also had a second career. He was a Lok Sabha MP from Bihar in Rajiv Gandhi’s second election, the one he lost to VP Singh in 1989. Syed Shahbuddin, whom Akbar defeated, said he was physically prevented from filing his nomination. Whether this was true or not it showed how strong was the desire of Akbar to come to power. Unfortunately for him, Akbar was only able to achieve the post of spokesman and after Rajiv Gandhi’s death, he was discarded by Narasimha Rao.

According to a story Akbar told, once he and Rajiv Gandhi were together when Rao entered the room. The old man had a small mishap, I think he tripped over his dhoti, and the two younger men laughed. Rao did not forget and Akbar’s career with Congress was shortlived.

I have known Akbar for over 20 years and believe he was the finest editor of English in India.
Better than Arun Shourie and Vinod Mehta and Pritish Nandy, and he knew it. When Shourie became a minister and Nandy a Rajya Sabha MP in the mid 1990s, Akbar would have felt jealous at seeing people who were his juniors in journalism achieve what he wanted and what he was convinced, he deserved more than they did.

When Sonia Gandhi took charge of the Congress, Akbar was hopeful for some time that he could return to favour but this did not happen. His newspaper also ran into financial trouble and he was fired from his post by the other partners. This began a long spell when he was on the margins and this is when, almost secretly, he began to cultivate Narendra Modi.

To me this is surprising for two reaons. First, because some of the sharpest criticism of Modi has come from Akbar. Attacking Hindutva policies in Gujarat, Akbar wrote an editoral under the headline ‘there must be a difference between a mob and a government’. In his regular column, he wrote “Narendra Modi has done enough by now to win the highest honor that a nation can give. Not our nation. What the chief minister of Gujarat truly deserves is the Nishan-e-Pakistan.”

He said that Modi had “served the interest of Pakistan” by “trying to destroy the idea of India as a nation in which every citizen is equal irrespective of his faith. He has provided the evidence that was once offered only as argument.”

He added: “Till he started his lynch-mob response to the cruel tragedy of Godhra, all the negative focus of South Asia was concentrated on Pakistan.”

The second reason I was surprised was because Akbar is truly secular in a way most of us are not. He keeps dozens of idols of Ganeshji in his office and has belief in the power of that god. He also is a regular, like his namesake the Mughal emperor Akbar, at the dargah of Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer. He is not the sort of person who would ever subscribe to the RSS idea of India.

He can be described as a Nehruvian and his biography of India’s first prime minister is his most serious work of non fiction. Akbar’s ideology has been transferred to dozens of journalists who worked under him, like Sankarshan Thakur and Manini Chaterjee and Seema Mustafa. All were surprised when suddenly the news came that Akbar was joining the BJP, the party he has written against for decades.

But it is true that today, when he is in his mid 60s he has finally achieved his goal somewhat. I say somewhat because Akbar is not a Cabinet minister, nor a minister of state with independent charge. He is merely one among many ministers of state. He will be reporting to another minister and I am certain Akbar will feel that he is that individual’s intellectual superior.

Many years ago he one day said to me he wanted to be prime minister of India but could not because he was Muslim. At least he has become a minister. And if that has required discarding all the principles and disowning all of his own writing, to him that may not be a big price to pay.

Tags: aakar patel BJP MJ Akbar narendra modi Union cabinet expansion

First Published: Saturday, 9 July 2016 3:11 PM

Chilcot Report and Zionist Lobby’s Role in Iraq War – Gilad Atzmon

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Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli peace activist, writer, poet and popular musician who now lives in London. Hisrecent book, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, is available on Amazon.com

Chilcot Report and Zionist Lobby’s Role in Iraq War – Gilad Atzmon

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Since the Iraq war, the same Jewish Lobby has mounted enormous pressure on western governments, promoting more Zio-centric interventionist wars in Syria, Libya and Iran. So why did the Chilcot Inquiry fail to address this topic? This crucial failure by Chilcot was to be expected. In 2010, highly respected veteran British diplomat Oliver Miles had something to say about the Jewish make-up of the Chilcot Inquiry. Two out of the five members of the inquiry were Jews, pro war and Blair supporters 

GILAD ATZMON | Caravan Daily

It took seven years for Sir Chilcot and his team to reach a set of conclusions that every Brit capable of thought understood back in November, 2013.

The inquiry produced a damning assessment of Blair’s conduct as well as the British military. But the Chilcot Inquiry failed to expose the crucial close ties between Blair’s criminal war, the Jewish Lobby and Israel.

At the time Britain entered the criminal war against Iraq, Blair’s chief funders were Lord ‘cashpoint’ Levy and the LFI (Labour Friends of Israel). The prime advocates for the immoral interventionist war within the British press were Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen. The attorney general that gave the green light for the war was Lord Goldsmith.

In 2008 The Guardian revealed that the “Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial.” Israel was conspicuously engaged in the vast production of WMDs. If Britain and America had any genuine concerns about WMDs, bombing Tel Aviv would have been the way to go.

In 2003 some intelligence experts insisted that the Iraq’s WMD dossier was initially produced in Tel Aviv and only ‘sexed up’ in London.

Since the Iraq war, the same Jewish Lobby has mounted enormous pressure on western governments, promoting more Zio-centric interventionist wars in Syria, Libya and Iran. So why did the Chilcot Inquiry fail to address this topic?

This crucial failure by Chilcot was to be expected. In 2010, highly respected veteran British diplomat Oliver Miles had something to say about the Jewish make-up of the Chilcot Inquiry. Two out of the five members of the inquiry were Jews, pro war and Blair supporters.

This is what Miles wrote in the Independent:

“Rather less attention has been paid to the curious appointment of two historians (which seems a lot, out of a total of five), both strong supporters of Tony Blair and/or the Iraq war. In December 2004 Sir Martin Gilbert, while pointing out that the “war on terror” was not a third world war, wrote that Bush and Blair “may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill” – an eccentric opinion that would seem to rule him out as a member of the committee. Sir Lawrence Freedman is the reputed architect of the “Blair doctrine” of humanitarian intervention, which was invoked in Kosovo and Afghanistan as well as Iraq.

Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, and Gilbert at least has a record of active support for Zionism. 

Such facts are not usually mentioned in the mainstream British and American media, but The Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli media have no such inhibitions, and the Arabic media both in London and in the region are usually not far behind.”

Oliver Miles point was valid, and proved correct. The Chilcot Inquiry wasn’t just destined to fail. It was designed to subvert any scrutiny of Israel and its hawkish pro war lobby.

The Chilcot Report gave the British public what it wanted. It blamed Blair for failing in his responsibilities to them. But the report’s focus on Blair, diplomacy, the military and  intelligence failures concealed the Lobby that was pulling the strings.

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