Paris attack could be the handiwork of Pakistan-based terror groups

How is the Paris terror strikes related to the Mumbai attack staged by Pakistan?

There are striking similarities between the two and it is quite possible that the master-minds of the two were the same. The ISIS has laid claim for the Paris terror strikes, but it carries the hall-marks of alquaida more. The alquaida is based in Pakistan where its leader Osama Bin Laden was found in a safe house of the Pakistan army and assassinated by the US commandos. Mulla Omar recently died a peaceful death in a similar safe house in Karachi. Both were in cahoots with the Pakistani army and ISI as also their non-state actors like Lashkar-e-Toiba headed by Hafiz Saed, the international terrorist on whose head the US has placed a 10 million dollar bounty. Hafiz Saed master-minded the Mumbai attack in which over a hundred people including American citizens were killed. Hafiz Saed is a hero in Pakistan for successfully carrying out this attack and has been provided the protection of the Pakistan army to keep him safe from the US who could do a rerun of Osama Bin Laden on him and also from bounty hunters. The Lashkar-e-Toiba has also declared its support to the Caliphate founded by the IS and has been sending hundreds of its trained commandos to support the IS in the Iraq-Syrian war against the US. Interestingly, the caliphate declared by the IS also includes Afghanistan and Pakistan in its territorial jurisdiction.

The alquaida, ISI, Lashkar-e-Toiba all converge in Pakistan, and they have perfected the strategy of a small band of well-trained, well-motivated, well-armed Islamic jihadists attacking an enemy in a foreign territory. This strategy was very successfully implemented in Mumbai. The Paris terror attacks has clear parallels to Mumbai, and therefore it is quite possible that it is actually an alquaida operation and not an ISIS operation, even though the latter has claimed it as its own.

The ISIS and alquaida are actually rival organizations, with ISIS having eclipsed the alquaida by its spectacular successes in its war against the US and its success in holding on to territory on which it has declared the Islamic caliphate, a long cherished dream of all Muslims. This has helped it to attract Muslims from all over the world including countries like Britain, France, Australia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The alquaida could have carried out the Paris attack to reclaim the jihadi upper-hand over the ISIS.

Also the Paris attack does not fit in with the style of operation of ISIS which has so far mostly confined its activities with the territories it holds, ie its caliphate, and has rarely ventured to attack targets outside Syria-Iraq. International terrorism is more in line with the strategy of the Pakistan-based alquaida, ISI and the various non-state arms of the Pakistani army such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Haqqani network and the Jamat-e-Islami.

TOI's strange love affair with Urdu

The English media is particularly fond of casting the Muslims in a certain stereotype adopted by the British to divide Indian society into two warring camps which eventually led to partition.

Recently there was a report in Times of India in which it had hyped up as news the relay of a programme in an Urdu TV channel which had shown a recipe involving pig meat. The news item harped on this as being offensive to Muslims. In doing so the paper unthinkingly reinforced the falsehood that Urdu is the language exclusively of Muslims and the Urdu language should pander only to their sensibilities. Anyone who knows the background of Urdu needs no telling that Urdu is an entirely secular language used extensively by all communities.

Curiously enough, this very paper is also running a campaign Aman ki Aasha which purports to bring together the societies of India and Pakistan. The first step towards making Aman ki Aasha a success is to undermine the divisive tactics practised by the British which the English-speaking elite of India which collaborated with colonialism and imperialism have also internalized, a clear example of which are the likes of Times of India.

Readers would also have noted how this paper routinely quotes Urdu newspapers on matters concerning Muslims - such as the hanging of Afzal Guru or the sentence of Sanjay Dutt to five years in jail, and never quotes Urdu papers on other matters, thereby also signalling that Urdu is the language of Muslims.

The paper should immediately stop such anti-national propaganda and do more to understand the linguistic dynamics of the country.

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Australia has a long history of racism

Australia has a long history of racism. In fact from 1901 to 1975, they were openly racial and would allow only whites to emigrate into their country. They even imposed a kind of housing tax on Chinese people, which one can think of as similar to the Jajia tax that the Taliban is levying from the Sikhs in Pakistan. The only difference is the Taliban is discriminating on the basis of religion, the Astralians were discriminating on the basis of race.

Here is a quote from the father of racism in Australia, Alfred Deakin who was their Prime Minister, regarding Chinese and Japanese:

It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible energy, their power of applying themselves to new tasks, their endurance and low standard of living that make them such competitors.

We cannot also forget Pauline Hanson, the Australian politician, who in 2007 fought the election on a white Australia plank. She even formed a political party for this. It shows that there is a deep sympathy in the white Australians for such a cause, which was sensed by the astute politician.

The truth is, racism is deeply ingrained in the white Australians, even though they make a sham of being multi-cultural because it suits them. But the wolf hiding within the sheep-skin sometimes becomes visible as in the case of recent incidents. Every cricket match the Australian team plays is marred by one or two racist remarks or gestures.

Another sobering instance of their racism is the way the Australian police cooked up charges on the Indian doctor Muhammad Haneef from Bangalore of being a terrorist and even deported him from Australia. They later had to eat their words.

According to one report in the Times of India, there have been 1,447 incidents of violence against Indians in the last 12 months in Melbourne, which works out to 4 incidents per day.

This by no means is a sporadic case. There could be a calculated move to drive away Indians from Australia, and if we don't play our cards wisely, we could be having another Uganda on our hands.

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