Daughter of the East returns home to add maximum US flavour to the comrador polity of this divided geopolitis
India and Pakistan reaffirmed their commitment to a nearly four-year military truce
Palash Biswas
Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: alashbiswaskl@gmail.com">palashbiswaskl@gmail.com
White House leaked classified info to FOX News, tipped off al Qaeda to secret surveillance, destroyed year-long spy effort
Published: October 9, 2007
http://www.americab log.com/2007/ 10/bush-staff- revealed- surveillance- of-al.html
Unbelievable. Seriously. Leaking national security info to Fox News and destroying a year-long surveillance of Al Qaeda should put someone from the Bush Administration in jail. We are in greater danger because of the continued incompetence of George Bush and his minions. From the Washington Post:A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified...
India and Pakistan reaffirmed their commitment to a nearly four-year military truce on Thursday as they launched a new series of peace talks that are expected to achieve little due to domestic political pressures.Dismissing India's contention that ISI could be involved in recent blasts in its cities, Pakistan on Thursday said that such allegations could vitiate the atmosphere for the Composite Dialogue process.
''I will work for the betterment of the nation,'' Bhutto said while talking to media persons soon after she landed in Karachi.
Bhutto further added that her sole concern is to ensure victory to the people. “I want peace, progress and employment for the poorest of poor”, said Benazir. Her return marks the end of an eight year self-exile. Benazir promises to help restore democracy by fighting general elections due early next year.
Daughter of the East returns home to add maximum US flavour to the comrador polity of this
divided geopolitis.She successfully landed in Karachi and had not to face deportation like Nawaz Sharif. Well, she has been planted by the galaxy order to execute the strategy of War and civil war in Indian Ocean region as the War against terrorism is well escalated in this part of Asia after annihilating Man and Nature in middle east.Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who returned to her homeland after eight years of self-imposed exile Thursday, vowed to rid Pakistan of the military dictatorship and serve the people who are ''facing several threats''.Earlier, PML (N) leader Nawaz Sharif had arrived in Islamabad only to be bundled back to Saudi Arabia. He has announced that he would make a second attempt to return after November 15. Taking into consideration that there might be an assassination attempt by forces owing allegiance to al Qaeda and Taliban, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has ensured that multi-layered security arrangements are put in place at the airport. The Sindh province of which Karachi is the capital - seen as the stronghold of PPP- is completely geared-up to welcome its most famous daughter. Banners and hoardings in the PPP’s green, red and black colours are all over the place and people are waiting to welcome their ‘Mohatarma’.
Reportedly wearing a bulletproof jacket inside her green salwar kameez with a gown of the same colour and a white chador, the lifelong chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) thanked the people for coming to Karachi airport to welcome her.
''I am grateful to the people - my brothers and sisters - who have come to welcome me in a big numbers,'' said Bhutto.
''Today my country is facing several threats including insecurity, unemployment, terrorism and hunger. I have come back to give people food, clothing and shelter,'' she said while shouting a slogan 'Roti, Kapra aur Makan' - the same which her father and former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had raised during his election campaign in early 1970s.
Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan after a deal with the military regime led by President Pervez Musharraf, vowed to take the country back on the democracy track.
''I will get the country rid of military dictatorship. I haven't come to rule the country but to serve my people, to serve them with all my abilities,'' she said.
She said that during her stay in exile she studied Islamic literature. ''Now I feel that I am more close to the religion,'' said Bhutto, who faces threats from the extremist forces in Pakistan.
Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto landed in Karachi on Thursday after eight years of self-exile. Bhutto arrived in Karachi from Dubai and is accompanied by her sister, nephews, friends and supporters..A commercial flight carrying Bhutto from Dubai landed at about 1:45 pm local time (2:15 pm IST) at the Karachi International Airport. The 54-year-old leader is accompanied by her London-based younger sister Sanam, two nephews, several close friends and party workers apart from a large media contingent. Meanwhile,amid speculation that martial law will be declared if it rules against President Pervez Musharraf [Images], Pakistan's Supreme Court on Thursday said it attached "no value to such threats." The apex court said that it will give its judgment on legal challenges to the General's re-election within 12 days.Benazir Bhutto's second homecoming on Thursday in two decades had some of the trappings of her first return from exile in 1986 to successfully take on the dictatorship but challenges to the Muslim world's first woman premier this time are more daunting. Hoping for her political revival after being in self-imposed exile in London for eight years, the charistmatic 54-year-old leader of the Pakistan People's Party(PPP) is pinning her hopes to become the country's premier for the third time after getting a rousing welcome in her hometown of Karachi. Lakhs had greeted Bhutto when she returned from London in 1986.
Meanwhile,India and Pakistan pledged to maintain a ceasefire after resuming talks as part of their slow-moving peace process but reported no specific progress on issues under discussion.A joint statement said a meeting between mid-ranking diplomats here was "cordial and constructive," despite fresh accusations from India ahead of the talks of Pakistani support for terror groups.
"Consultations continued with the aim of strengthening the ongoing process of confidence building," the statement said. "The two sides reiterated their commitment to uphold the ceasefire."
The nuclear-armed neighbours have observed a ceasefire since November 2003 along the Line of Control, the de facto frontier dividing the region of Kashmir, the trigger of two of their three wars since 1947.The Indian foreign ministry said earlier the day-long meeting would focus on reducing tensions along maritime borders and the repatriation of people who inadvertently stray across land frontiers.
At present, fishermen, farmers or other people caught by Indian or Pakistani coast guards or border troops are usually suspected of being spies and can languish in prison in legal limbo even after serving sentences.
The statement did not say if any progress was made on these or any other issues.
The talks will be followed on Friday by discussions on nuclear safeguards, or ways of keeping their respective nuclear arsenals under control.On Monday, Indian and Pakistani officials will revisit efforts to put in place a regular joint anti-terrorism mechanism designed to share intelligence on militant activity.The latest round of talks came in the wake of renewed accusations from New Delhi that Islamabad continues to support terrorist attacks in India.
India's national security advisor M.K. Narayanan said Pakistan, already accused of backing Islamic rebels in insurgency-hit Indian Kashmir, was also trying to revive Sikh militancy in the northern state of Punjab.
The allegation came after a weekend bomb attack in a Punjab cinema killed six people and injured 32.Although no breakthroughs are expected in the latest round of talks, Indian foreign ministry officials said it was nevertheless "significant" that dialogue was continuing.
"The atmosphere between the two sides has improved. There are delegations crossing the borders. More people-to-people contacts are in place with improved bus and train links," a foreign ministry source told AFP.
"On October 1, we started a truck service to improve trade. Also significant is that despite all the political issues in Pakistan today no party there has questioned the dialogue process," he added.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Iran are close to finalising a gas purchase agreement for the $7.4 billion IPI pipeline during technical talks here, even as officials said India's decision not to take part in the talks did not mean it had pulled out of the trilateral project.
"These threats have no value for us. This is an issue to be decided in accordance with the law and according to the merits," Justice Iqbal, who heads the 11-member bench, said as he resumed hearing on the five petitions challenging Musharraf's candidature while in uniform for the October 6 presidential poll.
Justice Iqbal told the court that the bench will decide on the petitions within 10 to 12 days.Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had on Tuesday rejected the bench's recommendation that all 18 judges of the Supreme Court, including the CJ, should decide whether Musharraf was eligible to contest the poll without quitting the post of army chief.
Musharraf swept the presidential election, boycotted by the Opposition due to his decision to contest in uniform, but has not been sworn in for a new five-year term as the Supreme Court had directed that the poll result should not be formally notified till it decided on the petitions.
On the other hand,Exiled former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party is planning to delay his second return bid to Pakistan till after November 15, when a neutral caretaker government is expected to be in place to supervise next year's general election.Sharif, who was exiled after being ousted by General Pervez Musharraf [Images] in a bloodless coup in 1999, was deported back to Saudi Arabia within hours of landing in Islamabad on September 10 despite a Supreme Court ruling that he could return to the country.A final decision on Sharif's return will be taken at a meeting of the PML-N's central working committee to be held shortly in London [Images] after the former Prime Minister arrives there from Saudi Arabia, party officials were quoted as saying by The Dawn.
The officials said the decision to delay Sharif's return till after November 15 was made in the wake of his deportation when he made an abortive attempt to land in Islamabad.
Hailed as the "Daughter of the East" ever since she confronted military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in 1986 and became the country's premier two years later when she was just 35, Bhutto left Pakistan on her own before a court convicted her of corruption charges in April 1999 when Nawaz Sharif was the prime minister.
The conviction was later quashed and Bhutto's brush with law turned a full circle this month. As part of a possible power-sharing deal, Musharraf signed a corruption amnesty on October 5 covering other cases against Bhutto,paving the way for her return.
Born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family in southern Pakistan, the mother of three children inherited the heavy political legacy of her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was hanged by Gen Zia in 1979.
The former president and prime minister sent his eldest daughter to study politics and government at Oxford and Harvard.
But his ouster in a 1977 military coup and execution over the death of a political rival put Benazir, just in her twenties, on a violent brush with the country's treacherous politics.
Some 20,000 airport security personnel, policemen and paramilitary personnel as well as bomb disposal squads have been deployed in Karachi to protect Bhutto, who return was facilitated following secret parleys with President Prevez Musharraf for a power-sharing arrangement.
Bhutto will be using at least two bullet-proof vehicles with 'radio jammer' technology similar to the one being used to protect President Pervez Musharraf [Images]. At least two bullet-proof or resistant vehicles will be used by Bhutto from Karachi's Jinnah terminal to her residence at Bilawal House, Pakistan People's Party sources said, adding they apparently have the ability to defuse explosives after detecting them.
Musharraf promulgated an ordinance early this month, which granted amnesty to Bhutto in corruption cases, paving the way for her return ahead of the general elections, but its legality has been challenged in the Supreme Court.
In the face of threats of suicide bombings by pro-Taliban and Al Qaeda militants, authorities in Karachi have thrown a massive security blanket over the airport and the route to be taken by 54-year-old Bhutto to Mazar-e-Quaid, the mausoleum of Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Several thousand flag-waving supporters chanting 'Benazir welcome' gathered outside the airport. On the streets of Karachi, thousands of PPP workers, who have converged on the city in caravans coming from the country's four provinces, danced to frenzied drum beats and chanted slogans, waving the party's flag.
Through the night, her supporters drove through the roads of the city in trucks and buses decorated with lights and burst firecrackers. Banners and posters featuring pictures of Bhutto and her father, late Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, hung from almost every lamppost and power pylon.
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's [Images] second home coming after eight years of self-imposed exile has come amid a political crisis in Pakistan.
Following is a brief chronology of the major developments in Bhutto's political life:
April 4, 1979: Benazir Bhutto's father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is executed by military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. Bhutto allowed to leave for England [Images] in 1984 after three-years of imprisonment.
April 1986: Bhutto arrives in Lahore [Images] from exile to a rapturous welcome by millions of supporters to lead the Pakistan People's Party against Zia-ul-Haq.
November 16, 1988: Zia-ul-Haq killed in an air crash. The PPP wins in the ensuing general elections
December 2, 1988: Bhutto sworn in as Pakistan's first woman prime minister.
August 1990: Bhutto dismissed by president Ghulam [Images] Ishaq Khan on charges of corruption and misrule. Her husband Asif Zardari arrested on kidnapping charges.
October 1990: PPP loses in the general elections and sits in Opposition for three years while Nawaz Sharif becomes prime minister.
October 1993: PPP returns to power and Bhutto is re-elected prime minister for a second term.
October 1996: President Farooq Ahmed Leghari sacks Bhutto on charges of corruption and abuse of power. Zardari arrested once again and imprisoned on a range of corruption and criminal charges.
April 1999: A Pakistani court convicts Bhutto and Zardari of receiving kickbacks worth millions of dollars for awarding a contract to two Swiss firms during her 1993-96 rule. The conviction is overturned two years later.
April 1999: Bhutto goes into self-imposed exile in London [Images] and Dubai, vowing to return to Pakistan and contest elections in 2002.
October 12, 1999: Army chief Musharraf overthrows prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a coup after Sharif tries to sack him.
July 2002: Musharraf issues a decree barring former premiers who have served two terms from serving a third, widely viewed as targeting Bhutto and Sharif.
October 10, 2002: Nationwide polls are held without Bhutto who is warned that she will be jailed if she returns. The PPP wins 80 of the 342 National Assembly seats.
July 2003: A Swiss court finds Bhutto and Zardari guilty of laundering US $12 million through Swiss bank accounts and hands them a six-month suspended jail term. The sentence is later overturned on appeal.
November 2004: Zardari is released from prison after serving eight years on corruption charges and reunites with Bhutto in exile.
January 2006: Interpol issues international notices following a request by Pakistan for the arrest of Bhutto and Zardari on corruption charges.
July 3-10, 2007: Pakistani troops besiege and storm the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad, killing at least 100 people.
July 13, 2007: Bhutto praises the operation, sparking outrage among hardliners. A suicide bomber later attacks her party headquarters, killing 15 people.
September 2007: Musharraf and Bhutto aides step up talks in London and Dubai over a power-sharing pact.
September 14, 2007: PPP announces that Bhutto will return on October 18.
October 4, 2007:Bhutto and Musharraf agree on a national reconciliation accord. Musharraf signs deal for an amnesty which clears Bhutto of graft charges.
October 6, 2007: Musharraf wins presidential election.
October 13: The government urges Bhutto to delay her return until a court rules whether the amnesty deal is legal.
October 17, 2007: At a press conference in Dubai, Bhutto confirms she will return as planned, saying "Pakistan's future is at stake."
India's policy flounders on Burma
Praful Bidwai
October 17, 2007
Nothing has exposed the grave failure of India's recent policy towards its immediate neighbourhood as thoroughly as New Delhi's support for Burma's military dictatorship -- just when the hated junta was confronted with the greatest pro-democracy upsurge since 1988.
Thanks to this support, backed by lethal arms supplies, India has become complicit in the ruthless repression of the popular movement, which killed up to 200 people and led to the detention of 6,000. The repression hasn't ended. Opposition leader Win Shwe reportedly died due to torture by the ruling State Peace and Development Council.
India has reluctantly, unconvincingly, revised its stand under international and domestic pressure, but this hasn't salvaged its credibility. Last week, India voted at the United Nations Human Rights Council for a resolution calling for the release of incarcerated National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and condemning the 'violent repression' of demonstrations, 'including thorough beatings, killings, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances.' The motion called for a 'reinvigorated national dialogue with all parties with a view to achieving genuine national reconciliation, democratisation and the... rule of law.'
India voted for the motion, but only after regretting that its text isn't 'fully in conformity' with its own 'forward-looking, non-condemnatory' approach. India's 'explanation of vote' said the resolution's tone won't contribute to 'engaging constructively' with the Burmese authorities. India's kid-glove approach to the junta sits ill with the latter's grave human rights violations, against which the world community is duty-bound to protect the Burmese people.
India wants the Burmese regime to conduct an investigation into the violence which saw soldiers raining bullets and tear-gas shells upon peaceful demonstrators. What this investigation will achieve is unclear. The violence was clearly state-ordered and -- executed.
Yet, India opposes economic sanctions or other tough measures against the Burmese regime. Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in New York: "We should instead try to engage [them] in negotiations... Sanctions... [can]... end in the suffering of innocent people." Blanket sanctions can be ineffectual. But 'engagement' has proved futile in Burma. This was again confirmed on September 23-24 when Petroleum Minister Murli Deora accepted an invitation to visit Burma to sign a $150 million gas deal -- just when state repression was peaking.
"This sent a terrible message," said Soe Myint, a Burmese pro-democracy activist exiled in India, and editor of the Mizzima news agency (www.mizzima.com). "The message was that democratic India wouldn't lift its little finger to restrain the Burmese regime. Instead, India would tail the generals as they butchered innocents. We were greatly disappointed."
Mukherjee has again given a clean chit to the junta. On October 7, in Guwahati, he pledged India's commitment to Burma-specific projects "in diverse fields such as roads, railways, telecommunications, information technology... and power" --- as part of the so-called 'Look East' policy, itself linked to 'a strategic shift' in India's world vision.
Ironically, he was only reading out excerpts from an earlier speech he made in Shillong in June! So much for the attention India pays to 'Look East!' Now, India is about to reward Burma with a $100 million transportation project (Kaladan), which will give it overland access to Sittve port.
India's ultra-conservative Burma position derives from four considerations: eagerness to enlist Burma's help in fighting insurgencies in the Northeast; interest in Burma's natural gas; anxiety to counter China's regional influence; and concern for 'stability' in the neighbourhood.
It's shameful that India's Burma policy should be determined by such narrow, parochial factors. This involves jettisoning universal principles and doctrines, including democracy and human rights, which India loudly stresses in the Western-sponsored Concert of Democracies. This speaks of double standards. 'Look East' also means turning a blind eye to dictatorship.
Yet, Burma isn't just another country. It is India's land bridge to Southeast Asia. Until 70 years ago, it was part of India, and bound to it through close cultural, economic and political ties. Without 'Burma Teak,' Asia's best-known hardwood, many of our historical buildings might never have been built. Burmese rice was as important in our kitchens as is Afghanistan's heeng.
Rangoon, now Yangon, was as Indian/subcontinental in ethnic composition and character as Bombay, Madras or Karachi. Many eminent Indians -- BG Verghese and Prakash Karat, to name two -- were born in Rangoon. Not long ago, we had a Burmese-origin First Lady (Usha Narayanan). India's South, East and Northeast all have major 'Burma connections.'
Like India, Burma is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious society. The two share a great modern legacy as well -- the Freedom Movement. Aung Sang, Suu Kyi's father, who led Burma's anti-colonial struggle, was inspired by Gandhi and Nehru. Suu Kyi studied here and regards India as her second home, with which she has a deep, abiding relationship.
The SPDC stands for the destruction of all these bonds. It represents the dominant ethnic group (Burman) and excludes 17 others. This predatory and super-corrupt regime has brutalised 50 million people with a huge 490,000-strong army. (This is like having an Indian army 10 times its present size!) It consumes a third of Burma's budget -- 10 times the allocation to education.
The military is selling Burma's magnificent resources cheap and perpetuating the poverty of three-fourths of its people. It routinely practises forced conscription, slave labour and torture. Its censorship is so drastic that anyone with an 'unauthorised' fax machine or computer is jailed for 7 to 15 years. The SPDC conducts extra-judicial executions, 'disappears' dissidents, and recruits child soldiers. It stands accused of arbitrary detention and violating freedoms of belief and religion, and of association and assembly. Regime-sponsored or tolerated drug smuggling and gun-running are Burma's biggest businesses.
India's Burma approach was spelt out in a crudely forthright manner by the new army chief, Gen Deepak Kapoor. He said the state violence is Burma's "internal affair", and "we should maintain" our "good relations" with its government. This policy statement is an intrusion into the executive's prerogative. Yet, it captures the essence of the government's 'realism'-driven stand, which hypocritically professes 'non-intervention' when that suits it, while practising the opposite when it can. In fact, serious rights violations anywhere are everybody's concern.
Ironically, India's policy has yielded none of the desired results. Burma has been ineffectual in preventing Northeastern insurgents from establishing camps on its soil. It has only restrained the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang), with which it has a ceasefire agreement. It has taken token or desultory action against other groups. Burma has played China off against India, while milking both for assistance. India has walked into this trap.
India's famed 'interests' in Burmese gas have produced international embarrassment. Four Indian companies figure among the 'Dirty 20' implicated in terrible human rights violations and environmental destruction, detailed by EarthRights International and other groups.
However, India has received no gas or gas supply contracts from Burma. Just recently, Burma awarded two gas blocks off the Arakan coast to China. Originally, two Indian public-sector companies had a 30 percent stake in these. India does have other gas sources. Besides, Burma's gas delivery will crucially depend on transit through Bangladesh. Bangladesh isn't cooperating.
It's specious to argue that India should befriend Burma's regime to contain China. Those who demand that India must act as a countervailing force to China advocate a new Asian Cold War -- with disastrous consequences for India's long-term security. An arms race with China -- that too with a nuclear component -- will sharply raise India's already bloated military expenditure.
Finally, 'stability,' defined independently of legitimacy, is a recipe for freezing existing iniquities. India's long-term interests don't lie in a neighbourhood with 'stable' but tyrannical regimes.
India's major political parties, including the Congress, the Communists, and even the Bharatiya Janata Party, have demanded a change in its Burma policy. So have civil society groups. Particularly significant here are Northeastern groups whose ethnic identities cut across the Burma border.
Their pressure can bring Indian policy more in line with the position of the early 1990s, when India advocated a dialogue with Ms Suu Kyi, who had won the 1990 election with a thumping majority, and awarded to her the 1993 Nehru Prize for International Understanding. India made a strong political point -- without severing its relations with the Burmese government. But it soon shamefully reversed its stand.
There's a lesson in this: India can stand its ground if it wants to. In the 1960s, it did so on Vietnam despite its 'ship-to-mouth' dependence on the US for food. Later, India backed the African National Congress in the face of Western pressure. The ANC eventually triumphed.
India can and should follow a broad-horizon policy based on a universal international vision, which gives it many options in the neighbourhood too. Ironically, India's vision is shrinking just when its global profile has risen, opening up new opportunities to engage with the world. This isn't a sign of a confident rising power with an independent foreign policy.
Praful Bidwai
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Together, We Can Change The World, One Mind At A Time!
Have a great day,
Tommy
David Podvin: Eternal Nightmare
Sunday, October 14 2007 @ 01:41 EDT
Contributed by: Caro
Views: 18
From MakeThemAccountable .com:
ETERNAL NIGHTMARE
By David Podvin
When Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez commanded the American troops in Iraq he passionately insisted that the United States was winning. Now that Sanchez has retired he describes our nation's occupation of Iraq as being "a nightmare with no end in sight." This statement not only reverses Sanchez' pronouncements made while in uniform, it also contradicts the optimistic congressional testimony of current commander General David Petraeus... who apparently really did betray us. Sanchez says it was his duty to obey orders and not dissent publicly when he was on active duty, but that in retirement he feels obliged to speak the truth. By acknowledging candor is incompatible with military service the former officer has mocked the Senate resolution that condemns questioning the integrity of warriors. According to the prevailing wisdom, Sanchez must be regarded as a traitor.
He is not alone. Everyone who tells the truth about the Iraq War is deemed to be a traitor, just as everyone who lies about the Iraq War is exalted as a patriot. Modern America is reality inverted, a fabulist's Wonderland that transcends the wildest imagination of Lewis Carroll. Once, the United States destroyed Vietnamese villages in order to save them. Now, we are winning a glorious victory in Iraq by getting our asses kicked. Surrealism is a wonderful artistic device, but it is even more effective as a governing tool. The American people have become so disoriented by ambient fantasy that they are subsidizing the war as they oppose it. Yet when the fairy tales are cast aside, it becomes clear that America is losing in Iraq and will continue to lose in Iraq because there is nothing to win in Iraq.
Except for oil.
MORE MORE MORE
The price of crude oil reached a new high on Friday, so the estimated Iraqi petroleum reserves are now worth eighteen trillion dollars. It should not be hard to believe that people will lie when so much money is at stake, especially when you consider that most people are willing to lie for free. But when the mammon is vast the lies become correspondingly enormous, with presidents and generals and senators and journalists all brazenly insisting that truth is fiction and vice versa.
It is not conspiracy.. . it is self-interest. In American politics those who lie on behalf of Big Business prosper, which explains why Democrats campaign by opposing the war but govern by supporting the war. Our system functions on the principle that you can fool most of the people most of the time, and that when you fool them to benefit the wealthy you share in the spoils…
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"the republican party..supporting life right up until birth!" - Mark Binder
London: More than 130 Muslim scholars from around the globe on Thursday called for peace and understanding between Islam and Christianity, saying "the very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake".
In an unprecedented letter to Pope Benedict and other Christian leaders, 138 Muslim scholars said finding common ground between the world's biggest faiths was not simply a matter for polite dialogue between religious leaders.
"If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace. With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world's inhabitants," the scholars wrote.
"Our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake," they wrote, adding that Islam and Christianity already agreed that love of God and neighbour were the two most important commandments of their faiths.
Relations between Muslims and Christians have been strained as al Qaeda has struck around the world and as the United States and other Western countries intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such a joint letter is unprecedented in Islam, which has no central authority that speaks on behalf of all worshippers. The list of signatories includes senior figures throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe and North America.
They represent Sunni, Shia and Sufi schools of Islam. Among them were the grand muftis of Egypt, Palestine, Oman, Jordan, Syria, Bosnia and Russia and many imams and scholars.
War-torn Iraq was represented by both Shias and Sunnis. Mustafa Cagrici, the mufti who prayed with Benedict in Istanbul's Blue Mosque last year, was also on the list, as was the popular Egyptian television preacher Amr Khaled.
'Mainstream Voices Drowned Out'
The letter was addressed to the Pope, leaders of Orthodox Christian churches, Anglican leader Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the heads of the world alliances of the Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist and Reformed churches.
