West at war with Islam is an ugly lie, says Obama - Reported by Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN, The Times of India, Mumbai, India.

My comments posted on Times of India article:

West at war with Islam is an ugly lie, says Obama

" There are two sides to this ugly demonization of Islam. While Obama for political reasons blames Al Qaida and ISIS for bringing in Islam to fight territorial wars, in fact it all started with the evil theorizing of Zionist Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington that in all reality, unleashed the agenda for Clash of Civilizations, to focus on Islam as their next target after Communism. Again that same group of Neo-cons that had hijacked America's resources to fight wars of their own choosing, own agenda, for self-serving interests of both temporary as well as permanent nature. Obama is very much informed of the vile conspiracies, but needs to be politically correct. And that's the reason he is not bringing in the Zionist War on Islam."

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/West-at-war-with-Islam-is-an-ugly-lie-says-Obama/articleshow/46306257.cms#write

West at war with Islam is an ugly lie, says Obama

Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN | Feb 20, 2015, 02.31 AM IST

READ MORE US President|Rashad Hussain|Obama|Muslim business leaders|islam

US President Barack Obama has praised the work done by the Gang of Eight, the bi-partisan group of eight Senators, on the immigration reform bill
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WASHINGTON: Invoking the success of Muslim business leaders in India - "a country with one of the world's largest Muslim populations" - and appointing Rashad Hussain, Indian-American of Muslim faith as the new coordinator of counterterrorism communications, President Barack Obama on Thursday urged countries and communities to confront the warped ideologies espoused by terrorists like al-Qaida and ISIL, especially their attempt to use Islam to justify their violence, saying the notion that the west is at war with Islam is an "ugly lie."

Addressing a US-led summit on countering violent extremism, Obama told a gathering at the State Department that these terrorists are desperate for legitimacy and "all of us have a responsibility to refute the notion that groups like ISIL somehow represent Islam, because that is a falsehood that embraces the terrorist narrative."

READ ALSO: Religious intolerance in India would have shocked Mahatma Gandhi, says Obama

India will succeed so long as it is not splintered on sectarian lines, says Obama

Muslim communities, including scholars and clerics, have a responsibility to push back, not just on twisted interpretations of Islam, but also on the lie that we are somehow engaged in a clash of civilizations; that America and the West are somehow at war with Islam or seek to suppress Muslims, he said.

Without naming any country, Obama said that narrative sometimes extends far beyond terrorist organizations.

The US President acknowledged that there is a complicated history between the Middle East, the West, and the western leadership should not be immune from criticism in terms of specific policies, but the notion that the West anti-Islam is not true.

Rashad Hussain during a conference in Mumbai (TOI Photo by Prasad Kumar)
While acknowledging the need to address economic grievances, he also contested the idea that poverty is the reason for terrorism. Poverty alone does not cause a person to become a terrorist, any more than poverty alone causes someone to become a criminal, he said, pointing out that there are millions, billions of people who are poor and are law-abiding and peaceful and tolerant, and are trying to advance their lives and the opportunities for their families.
The US pushback against the ISIL narrative that had been attracting Muslim youth from across the world, including from India, will be led by Rashad Hussain, a US-born attorney of Indian origin, who has been the US special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In previous jobs, Hussain has led the Obama administration's Counterterrorism and Anti-Radicalization Efforts.

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Faulted for Avoiding ‘Islamic’ Labels to Describe Terrorism, White House Cites a Strategic Logic - Written by Scott Shane - The New York Times

My Comments posted on following NYT article:

Faulted for Avoiding ‘Islamic’ Labels to Describe Terrorism, White House Cites a Strategic Logic

Ghulam Muhammed

Mumbai, India 56 minutes ago
President Obama's new strategy to separate 1.5 billion Muslims, from a miniscule number fighting the West with unconventional means. This is simple 'divide and rule' tactic. However, as long as Obama does not delve deep into why West is hated over its ' constant war for constant peace' misguided institutionalized state policy, more and more from the 1.5 billion Muslims will not give the West full marks on their neutrality as far as religious wars is concerned and will not fully condemn the extremists. The extremists and 1.5 billions appear to have common enemy, though 1.5 billion are fully for peaceful means of agitation and protests.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/us/politics/faulted-for-avoiding-islamic-labels-white-house-cites-a-strategic-logic.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150218&nlid=28904237&tntemail0=y&_r=0




Faulted for Avoiding ‘Islamic’ Labels to Describe Terrorism, White House Cites a Strategic Logic

By SCOTT SHANE

FEB. 18, 2015

 

Photo

Attendees during closing remarks by President Obama on Wednesday at the “Countering Violent Extremism” meeting. Credit Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — President Obama chooses his words with particular care when he addresses the volatile connections between religion and terrorism. He and his aides have avoided labeling acts of brutal violence by Al Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State and their allies as “Muslim” terrorism or describing their ideology as “Islamic” or “jihadist.”

With remarkable consistency — including at a high-profile White House meeting this week, “Countering Violent Extremism” — they have favored bland, generic terms over anything that explicitly connects attacks or plots to Islam.

Obama aides say there is a strategic logic to his vocabulary: Labeling noxious beliefs and mass murder as “Islamic” would play right into the hands of terrorists who claim that the United States is at war with Islam itself. The last thing the president should do, they say, is imply that the United States lumps the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims with vicious terrorist groups.

But Mr. Obama’s verbal tactics have become a target for a growing chorus of critics who believe the evasive language is a sign that he is failing to look squarely at the threat from militant Islam. The vague phrasing, they say, projects uncertainty and weakness at a time when extremists claiming to fight for Islam threaten America and its interests around the world.

Graphic: From Syria, an Atlas of a Country in Ruins

“Part of this is a semantic battle, but it’s a semantic battle that goes to deeper issues,” said Peter Wehner, a veteran of the past three Republican administrations and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “Self-deception is not a good idea in politics or international affairs. We’re lying to ourselves, and the world knows it.”

While the most vehement criticism has come from Mr. Obama’s political opponents on the right, a few liberals and former security officials have begun to echo the criticism.

“You cannot defeat an enemy that you do not admit exists,” Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014, told a House hearing last week. “I really, really strongly believe that the American public needs and wants moral, intellectual and really strategic clarity and courage on this threat.”

Akbar Ahmed, chairman of Islamic studies at American University and author of a book on Islam in America, said he supported the Obama administration’s care in avoiding a counterproductive smear of all Muslims. But he said the president sometimes seemed to bring an academic approach to a visceral, highly politicized discussion.

“Obama’s reaching a point where he may have to ditch this almost scholastic position,” Mr. Ahmed said. “He sounds like a distinguished professor in the ivory tower, and he may have to come down into the hurly-burly of politics.”

Graphic

Where the Foreign Fighters in Iraq and Syria Are Coming From

A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria.

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Addressing the extremism conference on Wednesday, Mr. Obama acknowledged the complaints and took pains to try to explain his approach.

“Leading up to this summit, there’s been a fair amount of debate in the press and among pundits about the words we use to describe and frame this challenge, so I want to be very clear about how I see it,” the president said. “Al Qaeda and ISIL and groups like it are desperate for legitimacy. They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam.”

But Mr. Obama said that “we must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie.” The operatives of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, “are not religious leaders — they’re terrorists,” he said.

The president’s comments suggest that the criticism has disturbed him. “You know your talking points are no longer working when you have to talk about your talking points,” said Peter D. Feaver, a political scientist at Duke who was deeply involved in shaping President George W. Bush’s language while he worked at the White House from 2005 to 2007.

Choosing what to say about the enemy during the long campaign against Al Qaeda, and now the Islamic State, was a challenge for Mr. Bush as well as for Mr. Obama, Mr. Feaver said. The nation’s terrorist enemies define themselves as fighters for Islam, lace their propaganda with quotes from the Quran and claim to speak for all Muslims. But an overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide reject the Qaeda ideology and condemn terrorist attacks.

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Mr. Bush, too, struggled at times to find the right terms for the fight against Al Qaeda. He used and then quickly dropped the word “crusade” for the American campaign against terrorism, concerned that he was playing into the terrorists’ view of a centuries-long clash of civilizations.

He favored the formula “war on terror,” but was battered by critics inside and outside the government who said that it was impossible to wage war against a tactic, Mr. Feaver recalled. For months before a major speech by the president in 2005, different agencies fought over what, exactly, Mr. Bush should call the enemy.
In the end, he effectively threw up his hands. “Some call this evil Islamic radicalism,” he said in the speech. “Others, militant jihadism. Still, others Islamo-fascism. Whatever it’s called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam.” But he went on to regularly use the term “Islamic radicalism,” which Mr. Obama has shunned.

Many advocates for Muslims appreciate Mr. Obama’s care in keeping their religion separate from the terrorist groups whose claims they reject. “We support the Obama administration and the administration before them for not falling into the Al Qaeda-ISIS trap of saying this is a religious war,” said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a national group.

But even Ms. Khera complained that the name of the White House conference on the topic was too vague. While the label was “violent extremism,” the vast majority of speakers spoke only about Islamic extremism, ignoring all other kinds, she said. “If the summit were called ‘Countering ISIS,’ that would be fine,” she said. “But it’s not.”

Daniel Benjamin, who served as the State Department’s top counterterrorism official from 2009 to 2012, said he believed that the dispute was a “pseudocontroversy” driven largely by domestic politics, even if it has produced some clumsy moments in the White House press room. What the debate has missed, he said, is that any American president has to think about how his words are received overseas.

“Our allies against ISIS in the region are out there every day saying, ‘This is not Islam,’ ” said Mr. Benjamin, now at Dartmouth. “We don’t want to undermine them. Any good it would do to trumpet ‘Islamic radicalism’ would be overwhelmed by the damage it would do to those relationships.”

Julie Hirschfeld Davis contributed reporting.

It Is Time For Iran To Tell The West ‘Goodbye’ — Paul Craig Roberts | MODI OFFERS INDIA TO USA ON A PLATTER -- Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

MODI OFFERS INDIA TO USA ON A PLATTER

The great hoopla that Modi is making covering US President Obama visit, is to fool the people of India, while INDIA is being offered to the predator USA on a platter. This is second coming of the East India Company, who had come as traders and ended up ruling India and inflicting millions of death of India's civilians to consolidate their hold on the acquired territory. The same class of traders are now in the forefront of selling India cheap to a neo-colonial super-power that will never relinquish INDIA from its predatory grip for centuries to come.The merchants of Gujarat are known to even earlier century foreigners to sell commodities at commissions. These commission agents are once again getting their upper hand to offer our great country to exploit its resources and use its cheaply acquired man-power as canon-fodder for their wars that are certain to be unleashed in the region.

Modi the savior of India is the biggest commission agent that has mesmerized its people to rob them of their country, their identity, their independence, their true standing in the comity of nations. Like Iran, India too is a great civilisation and any Superpower worth its salt will have to subdue each and every visage of earlier great civilizations with the notion, that it may be exposed to an existential threat from any such resurgent civilisation. That's their agenda of 'clash of civilisation'.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>
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http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/26/time-iran-tell-west-goodbye-paul-craig-roberts/

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

It Is Time For Iran To Tell The West ‘Goodbye’ — Paul Craig Roberts

January 26, 2015 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |  Print This Article

It Is Time For Iran To Tell The West ‘Goodbye’

Paul Craig Roberts

From all appearances, the Obama regime’s negotiations with Iran, overseen by Russia, were on the verge of ending the contrived nuclear issue. An end to the confrontation is unacceptable to the Zionist Israeli government and to their neocon agents in America.

The Republicans, a political party owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Israel Lobby, hastily invited Netanyahu, the crazed ruler of both Israel and America, to quickly come to tell the Republican Congress, which the insouciant American voters put in place, how to prohibit any accommodation with Iran.

Observing the Israeli-controlled Republican Congress, a collection of warmongers, taking steps to prevent any peaceful resolution of a fabricated issue, Iran’s leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei sent a letter to Western youth advising the youth of the Western world of the mischaracterization of Islam by Western propagandists. http://s15.khamenei.ir/ndata/news/28731/pdf/en.pdf
 
I respect Khamenei’s effort to reach out to Western youth in order to help them differentiate the reality of Islam from the demonized portrait painted of Islam by Western politicians and media.
The question is: How much impact can Khamenei have?  

Khamenei’s voice is important, but it is small in comparison to the Western liars and propagandists.  Even an important representative, such as Khamenei, of a demonized country and a demonized religion can hardly be heard over the din of propaganda against Iran and Islam.

Moreover, secret Western black op organizations can conduct terrorist operations in the name of Islam, such as possibly occurred with 9/11, the Boston Marathon Bombing, and Charlie Hebdo.  The world is told that Islam is behind these attacks, but experts note that no real evidence is ever supplied.  Just official assertions, such as those that proved incorrect about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria, the false accusations against Gaddafi in Libya, and the false accusations against Russia in Ukraine.  The makers of this propaganda have many voices, and their trumpets overwhelm the voice of Iran’s leader.

Instead of appealing to the West, Iran needs to turn away from the West.  The historical time of the West has passed.

The West has devolved into a police state in which government is no longer accountable to law or to the people.  There are no jobs for young people, and no income security for the elderly. The West is actually in the process of looting itself.  Just look at what is happening in Greece. In order to guarantee the profits of the private banks from outside Greece, the Greek people have had their pensions cut, their employment cut, their social services cut, and they have had to sell their valuable public properties at low prices to private purchasers from outside their country. The same looting is now going on in Ukraine, and Italy, Spain, and Portugal face the identical fate.

In America the entire economic policy of the country is conducted only for the benefit of the super-rich One Percent.

If we use J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as a metaphor for the West, the West is Mordor and Washington is Sauron.

It is pointless for Iran to negotiate with the West in hopes of gaining acceptance. Iran is on the same list as Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad. The only way Iran can be accepted by the West is to consent to being an American puppet state. Suspicion about Iran’s nuclear energy program is a contrived issue. If it were not the nuclear issue, it would be some other contrived issue, such as weapons of mass destruction, use of chemical weapons, terrorism, and so forth. Iran’s leaders should understand that the real problem is Iran’s independence of Washington’s foreign and economic policies. Washington cannot say that the US wants regime change in Iran because Washington wants a puppet state, so Washington pretends that Iran represents a threat that must be overcome.
If Iran so much admires the decadent and corrupt West that it is willing to be a servile vassal in order to enjoy Western acceptance, all Iran needs to do is to capitulate and align with Washington’s hegemonic policies.

If Iran, one of the two oldest civilizations and cultures on the planet, wishes to continue its existence without coming under the rule of the “exceptional” Americans, Iran must turn its back to the West, ally with Russia, China, India, and the other BRICS countries, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the Western criminals. It is beyond explanation why a civilization as old as the Iranian one would see anything in the West worthy of being associated with.

Above all, Iran should stop fighting other Muslims, even extreme ones who betray the Prophet Mohammed and soil Islam. Iran should not accept the role of being Washington’s mercenary in the fight against the Islamic State. Iran should never help Washington kill Muslims, even misguided ones who betray the Prophet. Instead, Iran should understand that the Islamic State, even if it should be a creation of Washington, is enjoying its success because Muslim peoples are tired of being ruled by the West, which uses the antagonism between Sunni and Shi’ite to rule them both.

If the Islamic State is a Western creation, the Muslims who support it are not. The Islamic state is supported by Muslims because the Muslim people are tired of being ruled and ruined by America, Great Britain, and the French.

Khamenei should forget about America, where evil has taken hold and about which Khamenei can do nothing. Khamenei should try to unify the Muslim peoples and turn them in a new direction.
Islam is weak because it is not unified. For centuries Muslims, divided by ancient political claims, have permitted their religious differences to make them pawns of other powers. It requires leadership to repair a sectarian split, and that is the leadership Iran should attempt to provide. Iran cannot provide leadership by imposing its view. A unifying compromise among Muslims must be made. Fighting on the side of the Americans against the Islamic State perpetuates the split and seals the fate of Muslim peoples as colonies of the West.

The problems that Muslims face might be too large for leadership to rectify. Not only are Muslims afflicted by their internal split, Muslim populations in the West are now positioned by propaganda such that their leaders are compelled to support war against the Islamic State and Iran in order to protect Muslim communities from pogroms. Have history and propaganda made Muslims forever a colonized people?

 

 

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Obama should sack McChrystal like Truman sacked Macarthur - By Ghulam Muhammed

Sunday, September 27, 2009


Obama should sack McChrystal like Truman sacked Macarthur


Obama seems to have been bogged down in a big quagmire. Too much to do, to little time and attention span to do justice to some very very important issues that will shape the coming world. Perforce, he has to depend on his advisors. That gives ample opportunity to his advisors to use his need to their own pet schemes, lobbied by different groups, not necessarily in tune with Obama’s own world-view.

Obama had held that US should have gone into Afghanistan to fight terrorism supposedly spearheaded by Al-Qaeda, instead of Iraq. But Bush was under the thumb ofAmerica’s Israeli lobby, the Jewish Neo-con cabal. They whipped us big hysteria against Saddam, who was a big hollow drumbeater with his bogus nuclear threat. The world knew about it, US knew about it and even Israel knew about it. But for Israel Saddam’s empty boasts was enough to force Bush to go after him and get an oil rich nation as the war booty. Millions died and misplaced in America’s illegal invasion of a UN member nation, in carpet bombing of a defenseless desert country.

Now that Obama has focused his attention on Afghanistan, and blindly signs all army requests for increased troops to spread out in villages of Afghanistan and commit atrocities on poor village folks, as US troops had unleashed their criminal lust for innocent blood in Iraq, Al Qaeda has quietly left the field and move to other areas of operation in Yemen, Somalia and possibly some western countries as well.
US and NATO casualties are at all time high. And there is enormous pressure building up back in the West, especially UK and Germany to a great extent and in US itself to a lesser degree, against continuing an unending war in Afghanistan.

Obama now in the midst of deeply divisive issues like control on banking and Public Health, America’s army Chief has chosen to go in his own way. Like General Macarthur, he thinks he is bigger than the President. The scenario is exactly like the one seen by the world in Japan war. Macarthur had his own plans on carrying on his personal ego trip to expand the war and later claim nation’s endorsement for a Presidential top spot. Harry Truman was shrewd enough to get the whole picture without getting overwhelmed by the larger than life image of General Macarthur and his victories in the Pacific sector. On a fine day, out goes a Presidential order and General Macarthur is relieved of his command.

That moment seems to have arrived with General McChrystal persisting in his relentless drive to pour more and more troops into Afghanistan, regardless of the damage it is inflicting on innocent people of a foreign country made victim of propaganda by motivated media groups.

This is moment, Obama should sack McChrystal and give a much needed signal to the countries in the region, that US under Obama is not for winning friends and influencing people through drone bombings.

The US and its allies are always welcome to help Afghanistan people, through people who can genuinely give Afghanistan an effective and peaceful government and not be tainted by the artificial electoral games on the behind the scene management of foreign powers. As Obama himself admitted in his UN General Assembly speech; democracy cannot be forced on the people who have their own age-old idea of how consensus works in their societies. If it’s a Jirga that works, Jirga they should have. If it is the Taliban that works for them, Taliban they should have.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Diminished US President Lectures to the World at UN - By Ghulam Muhammed

Thursday, September 24, 2009

A LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Diminished US President Lectures to the World at UN

Another fine piece of rousing oratory and US President had done his bit for the day. He rushed out of the UN premises as if his tail was on fire. In fact, his oratorical high notes were drowned by behind the scene guffaws he earned for trying to tame Israel and falling on his face. Weeks his special envoy has spent in Israel, feeding media with daily photo ops shaking hands with Israel’s indomitable hard-line Prime Minister but there was no news if the Mount Sinai moved even a measly centimeter. And still Barack Obama soldiered on. Though Obama has much tougher challenges testing his mettle, Israel stands out as the barometer to the world of US President’s limits of credibility. If he cannot tackle America’s most lauded ‘ally’, to fall in line with his worldview, the stark gossamer fragility of his presidency could only generate derision among his detractors and pity in his admirers.

Time is flying and given the past record of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, delays and procrastination favour only one side that has dragged on the peace process of any kind for the last forty years. The drama starts with the every new US President taking office and ends with the end of his presidency, with Israel using the interregnum to dug in more and more in ways that would leave hardly any thing left to negotiate. Obama has come with a bold new commitment to change the US and the world with it. But half a way in his first 4-year presidency, he has barely touch the contours of war in Afghanistan, a monumental economic recession, his pet project of universal health care, and the way his cards are played out, he seems to be playing more of a bluff game than a winning hand.

Israel has cleverly positioned Iran as the most pressing issue for the world to come to terms with while it merrily whips up its assembly line in West Bank creating facts on the ground. The UN sponsored Goldstone report on war crimes in Gaza is snowed under by Jewish dominated world press’s cabalist propaganda of bias, even though the South African judge, Richard Goldstone is himself a Jew and a self-confessed Israel supporter. The dire train of event that may land Israel in International Court of Justice at The Hague is so alarming to Israel that it has mounted a concerted attempt to discredit the Human Rights report.

The worst part is that even the Muslim governments around the world are so insensitive to the plight of their brethrens in Gaza; there is no world-wide move to get Israel into the docks for its most horrendous crimes on Palestinian civilians including children, women and old people.

President Obama is seized of the fact that war on Al Qaeda could not get any support from even the well meaning masses in the Muslim world, unless US makes Israel-Palestine settlements its number one priority. Israel will use every trick in the trade to turn world focus away from its rape of Palestinian entity, in any shape it tries to survive. It is up to Barack Obama not to be taken in by Israeli ruses to postpone the inevitable as far into the future as possible. It is for the US, to realize how its acts of commission and omission are encouraging Israel to lead a life of an outlaw nation that thrives in defying international laws and committing genocidal attacks on hapless Muslims of Palestine.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com
www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com