London’s Hour of Reckoning Re: # 2

Ana

You might be cognizant of Jehad but many Chowkies have a flawed understanding of this spiritual precept. TERROR-MONGERS and mischief-makers always distort the `essence` of jehad, irrespective of their political ethnic or religious spectra.

The most arduously attained is `Jehad of the Nafs` (soul cleansing). The concept of Dharma in Hinduism `an application of good conscience` can be equated to Jehad of the nafs.

Blinkered eyes conveniently neglect the blood-splattering history of other calamitous trouble-makers. True justice should always be race, colour and religion-blind.

Our Turkic Connection
Nazar Khan

My mother is Turkish. My dad hails from Pakistan. Your article very insightfully threads these two cultures with opulent heritage. Musharraf`s dad was a Defence Attache in Ankara, and as a child Musharraf spent several of his formative years in Turkey, to my pleasant surprise he speaks a rich dose of Turkish. In Ankara one of our main avenues is called ``Muhammed Ali Jinnah Caddessi (Avenue). The same goes for Ataturk Avenue in Islamabad.

The amity and river of similitude between Turkey and Pakistan runs into the deepest stream. The very word ``Urdu`` derives from the Turkish ``ordu`` denoting ``millitary``. Cellaludin Rumi`s tomb in Konya has soil from Allam Iqbal`s in Lahore. Iqbal was greatly inspired by Rumi and Konya`s dervishes (PS Naqshbandi you will be eager to know this).

Pakistan, amongst the comity of Islamic nations, was the first to, de jure and de facto recognise the Northern Republic of Turkish Cyprus. In fact Islamabad is one of the very few capitals graced with a Northern Cypriot Turkish Embassy.

Turkey is a craddle of civilisation. My mum is from Istanbul, where a bilateral cornucopia breeds:

Between East and West.

Turkey is where the twain meet.

Cok Selamlar

Ve gorusmek uzere.

Kendinizi iyi bakin.

A Moment of Silence
``The Loss of a Judicial Mind``

By Ozer Khalid

An addendum to SR`s interact #60

SR

You reflectively accentuate the weighty flaws of the Patriot Act. Whereas you highlight the obliteration this causes ``domestically`` I will, merely to complement your previous interact, illustrate how Uncle Sam thrashes treaties ``internationally``. This was a piece I had written published in a legal journal a while back.

Harking back to the infamous “torture memos” the US president had the “inherent constitutional authority” to approve any interrogation techniques required to protect the nation`s ``self-interest``— Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib testify to the ugly verity that the US circumvents and circumcizes the very foreskin of the 1949 UN Convention Against Torture, ratified by America itself in 1994. Human Rights Watch, a neutral non-partisan monitoring group, claims that America`s abuse of detainees makes a ``mockery out of the 1949 Convention``.

In virtually every jurisdiction, governed by civil or common law, an international treaty on becomes ``supra-national`` and once ratified, overrides national law. Not so in the ``land of the eagle of freedom, the stars and the stripes`` where it simply becomes a corpus of domestic law. As such, it is given the cold shoulder whenever

It tickles the political fancy.

To nail the point with a hammer: after the World Court rendered a verdict against the United States in 1986 for mining Nicaragua`s harbours, Cowboy Ronald Reagan counselled his advisers to tear up the relevant treaty giving the court jurisdiction as if it were some movie script of his. When informed that this necessitated a two years` notice, he compelled them to tear it up even quicker. From the frying pan to the flames.

The very non-binding nature of most public-international law makes it little more than “soft” satire for armchair-activists to dwell upon. The ICC is America`s favourite ``bête noire``. Just adding that tad bit of salt to the wound, America has entered into bilateral agreements with 100+ countries granting its citizens umbrella immunity from ICC prosecution. Under what mandate ? Your guess remains as good as mine !!!!

Yet America grinningly supports other international tribunals such as those set up to deal with genocide and other atrocities in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. Pelting stones at glass houses !!

Something even Dante`s inferno, in its sheer ``Divine Comedy`` could not have foreseen. Republicans have been further inflamed by the momentous frequency of Supreme Court references to foreign ``doctrines of precedence``. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, recently lambasted Justice Anthony Kennedy for his “incredibly outrageous” citation of international views in the court`s ruling outlawing the death penalty for juvenile killers.

Republicans have now choked a resolution down Congress`throat banning inappropriate vomit of foreign judgments in interpreting the constitution. Baron Montesqieu`s ``separation of power`` has jilted up in flames.

Yet moderates such as Justices Kennedy, Sandra Day O`Connor, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Ginsburg do warm the seats of the US Supreme Court, arguing with legal sagesse, that when confronted by a particularly intractable point of law, it simply makes sense to examine experiences and rulings outside America.

Laws are organic, and they benefit from cross-pollination.

This is judicial suicide and anathema for uptight stiff-upper-lipped SC conservatives, such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The court should not impose “foreign moods, fads or fashions” on Americans, argues Justice Scalia. To him, the practices of the “world community” are irrelevant: Scalia obviously belongs to a different century and needs to be tele-ported back.

Beam him backward Scottie. Beam him front-ward. Beam him anywhere. But not here.

Yet Americans are happy to impose their own “fads and fashions” on others. A London court once ruled that Ian Norris, the former head of Morgan Crucible, a British engineering firm, could be extradited to the United States because of price-fixing by two of the firm`s US affiliates. The ``alleged`` offences were in 2000, when cartel activity was not deemed a criminal activity in Britain. Mr Norris`s lawyers said the case, the first involving extradition for an alleged antitrust offence, meant that no English executive with American subsidiaries or stripes could be sheltered in safe haven.

Under extradition rules America no longer bears the brunt of supporting any substantive evidence against someone it wants to extradite. It simply has to prove that an “extraditable” offence occured. But lo and behold if Britain wants to extradite an American suspect, it still has to make out a prima facie case against him/her.

Foreign companies are feeling the rash. Their allergy- Uncle Sam`s use of America`s Alien Tort Claims Act, passed in 1789 !!!! which grants jurisdiction to American federal courts over “any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States”.

This feverishly augments American whims to sue global companies for ``alleged`` wrongs suffered outside the United States. One can imagine the rumpus if such a law were invoked, abroad, against a US company.

Often disputes sprawl over several domains. An instructive case in point was when the Supreme Court rejected, in a 5-4 ruling, a death-sentence appeal by a Mexican citizen in Texas who had claimed that he and 50 other fellow Mexicans on death row in the US were black-listed from any help from the Mexican Consulate.

The World Court upheld the Mexicans` claim. By cutting the oxygen valve of consular assistance, America unjustifiably violated the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, ratified by the United States in 1969. Mr Bush, the then governor of Texas, signed with profound ink many of the men`s death warrants, roaringly boasting America`s withdrawal from the protocol giving the court jurisdiction over such disputes.

But for how long will the roar last ?

Epilogue:

America`s Alien Tort Claims Act 1789, the 1949 UN Convention Against Torture, the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the ICC protocol, inter alia, all teeter into misuse. Your honour we have before us the

Loss of A Judicial Mind

Today

Tomorrow

And for all times to Come

A Moment of Silence Re: # 65

Dear Beejay,

With every interact of yours, my respect for you augments. We may have started on the wrong footing. Yet it is becoming apprent that you are now making a paradigm-shift, and giving me your objective views about the ``poem`` rather than the ``poet``. This is a gladdening change in focus. And temperament.

Welcoming as fresh roses are the comments you make about the ``style and content`` of my poem. Admittedly my ``genre`` of poetry is imbued with thorns. I see no point in exposing the ``petals``. For my poetry is gut-wrenched from the heart. Suffice that I know it.

Every rose has its thorn. Beejay Do not thorns give the roses more character ?

Even though we both embrace completely different political maxims, I respect your take as an axiomatic diversity for it

Breadeth life into intellectual stimuli.

You see my cynical lens, and your ``microscopic mop`` must surely be able and agile to question the quavery voice and double-speak with which a morally hobbled superpower polices the world and governs its own polity.

The Aristotelian claim that ``man by nature is a political animal`` reasonates with truism even today and ``benign janitors`` must surely not overlook the steamy trysts in any foreign policy where human lives are

disposable toys to be jerked around with.

Many human rights activists are labouring under the faux-delusion that the current UN auspices, Bretton Woods structures and international socio-economic legal infrastructure have any semblance of equality. This is naivete and a false assumption to start with.

Just for how long can a superpower leave a

Trail of broken souls,

Streams of gushing blood

Torn legal treaties and

Grope about in a nebulous fog blaming it on the

War on terror.

Surely Nobody with a clear conscience can swallow that ?

A Moment of Silence
``Independence Day``

By Ozer

Common Lets Celebrate it is
``Independence Day- Halleyloooyaaaah``

Michael Moore inevitably seeps through the pores of a vacuous moral skin, whilst oil-rich ``rentier banana republics`` and the petro-dollars such as those of the House of Saud rain through the corridoors of Capitol Hill.

The drums beat. The bells toll. The eagles fly
In a vapid sky.

Are the Gulf kingdoms rich in oil poor in morality
ever finger-pointed for HR violations ?
US foreign policy satire is a Holocaust to justice.

Capitol Hill has played the life-buoy to regular repressive regimes
including the
bearded brigade Mujahideens,
civil liberties are a farce on the breath of our conscience

Let us wag the dog. Prepare American apple crumble pie.
While the tears in Rwanda dry...

The White House`s marriage of convenience with Fidel Castro to oppose a United Nations agreement on torture is an illustriuos fire-starter for Independence Day. Is it not ?
Are the chop sticks ready? Let the barbeque begin...
Have enough people been grilled in Iraq ? In Colombia ?
Who won the World Series ? And the NBA ?
Ayyyymen

The current Convention Against Torture, signed by Papa George Bush Senior, requires governments to punish torturers but does little in terms of preventative measures. Hence Abu Ghraib.

Abu what ? Ghraib eh yo what yo say ? common for now Lets Celebrate for it is our sacred
``Independence Day- Halleyloooyaaaah``

Let us mow the lawn. Wear the cap. Strike with a baseball bat
All these minority hood-rats....

Bush ends up in bed with the Sheikhs, makes irreedemable handshakes and nods,
Shakes, rattles and rolls
Walking into an obliterating sunset....

The White House has no aching desire to let international inspectors visit and interview ``enemy combatants`` detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in military brigs.
Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore come party with us

For it is Independence Day Halleylooooooyahhhh ?
Bring on Katie Holmes as well Tom would you ?
Good Scientologist that you are....
For this is a War of the Worlds...

Start filming.

Justice Department officials do not allow international inspections of state prisons since they would breath oxygen for prisoners` privacy rights.

Other ``selective stirrings`` and sound bites of conscience are bohemian rhapsody.
Today let us hymn and sing the National Anthem
The stars and the stripes

Let the Texan cowboy dance in his boots
While Robert John and Charlie shoot
The Iraqi toots.....

Let us peer at one specific shamble: US opposition to the International Criminal Court on the grounds that the court would conduct politically motivated prosecutions of Americans--even though the ICC statute requires that all cases involving Americans be referred to the U.S. for investigation and any resulting prosecution. The ICC can take the case back only if it later finds that the U.S. proceeding was a sham, designed to obstruct rather than to achieve justice.

Such a finding--by judges chosen mainly hand-plucked by Uncle Sam`s ``democratic brethren`` is exceedingly unlikely. Yet its mere possibility is enough to send shivers down Texan spines for the administration to oppose an ICC that may offer the only hope for justice in many cases of crimes against humanity !!

Not only has the president withdrawn the U.S. signature from the ICC treaty, but he has signed a bill that authorizes him to use military force against the ICC. Hats off to the red-neck buffalos at the Pentagon.

US diplomats hold UN peacekeeping missions hostage (enter Nicole Kidman) to their demand that U.S. soldiers be immune from the ICC, and they pressure individual nations to sign agreements promising not to turn over U.S. soldiers to the ICC.
Now a legal birdie whispereth to my ear that this in itself is stretching the Vienna and Geneva Conventions towards

A leviathon of lunacy.

But for now
Bring on the Turkey, sweetcorn, coleslaw and hamburgers
For it is Independence Day Halleylooooooyahhhh
Oh what is that noise ?

It is a Jaguar screeching its way on the motorway of immorality: (please take note of this ``Husna Angelique`` for it relates to your interact #9) When Indonesian courts recently rendered ``not guilty`` verdicts against the first six military personnel tried for the 1999 atrocities in East Timor, despite strong evidence of guilt, the State Department said it was ``slightly disappointed`` but ``hoped`` that future trials will bring a sunnier forecast.

Furthermore, when victims recently sued ExxonMobil for murders and disappearances allegedly committed by Indonesian troops guarding the company`s oil wells and pipelines (exit Kidman enter JR Ewing) the State Department asked the federal judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that it could prejudice U.S. relations with Indonesia. Bleeding paradox or what ?

Let the reader of Chowk decide.

The scant regard for human rights is evident to the blind. No amount of wool can cover our retinas. Since 9/11 1,000+ foreigners have been detained in secret, some for months on end not privy to legal counsel and sheepishly deported after closed hearings for minor immigration offenses.

When a federal judge ruled that their immigration hearings must generally be public, the Justice Department got the Supreme Court to stay the order. When another federal judge ruled that their names, at least, must be made public, the government got that order, too, stayed pending appeal.

Since today is the 4th of July, all hail to Will Smith and ``Independence Day`` 2 U.S. citizens themselves --Jose Padilla and Yasser Esam Hamdi--were held incommunicado in military brigs in the U.S., without access to judicial recourse. Under the convenient label of ``unlawful combatants.`` So, too, are hundreds of foreign citizens at Guantanamo.

But lets celebrate Independence Day !! Halleluyahhhhhhhh

Global moral credibility is undercut.
Due process is short-curcuited.
Legal hearings, if any, are considered VIP events.
The ``collateral damage`` body count is countless.
Enter Arnie Schwarzeneggar.

Lights.

Camera.

INACTION.

But today, on ``independence day`` the stars and the stripes do not fly their flag half-mast

Instead they herald a full-fledged

``flag of treacherous convenience``

No ``moment of silece`` today thank you

For it is Independence Day

A Moment of Silence

Beejay thanks for sharing your views in interact 54.

Regards.

A Moment of Silence

Beeay thanks for sharing your views in interact # 54

Regards.

A Moment of Silence Re: # 52

Dearest Janitor:

``Some appear to be more interested in the poet rather than the poem.``

The interest, if any, should only be geared towards the ``poem``. Its ``content``. And nothing else.

Thanks anyways Pink Panther.

A Moment of Silence

Dear Naqshbandi

Heartening it is to finally witness some mature and savvy comments being made.
Naqshbandi these `defenders of freedom` feed ``misinformation`` with opaque and usurous hands. The truism that a white man`s life is kindled and considered 100 x more precious than that of the rest of the world is a menacingly aching neo-colonialist reality, an intoxication which afflicts us all- the developing world. No matter what our stripes.

The neo-con hang-over can only be undone by ``revolutions from below`` as opposed to ``revolutions from above``. In ``revolutions from below`` state apparatchiks are deemed null and void and the people render the uprising thereby legitimising ``authority`` through constant referenda.

``Westoxification`` spasms brown sahebs and chachas into ``paroxysms of mourning`` while the bleaker fields of casualties around the developing world harvest not a modicum of despair amongst Machiavelli`s children.

Naqshbandi as you acidly observe the ``ba-ba blacksheeps, uncle toms, mental slaves`` , the blah blah Blairs, the blahdy-daah Bushes shed selective crocodile tears when decorum dictates and protocol summons.

All consciousness has been eclipsed.
All Kalimah`s rebuked.
Except for ``la ilaha il America``

Though the pendulum of justice will swing over one day.

But justice is never served on a silver platter. Or fed with grapes.

Justice is never benignly granted. It must always be taken.

The question is not if.

But how and when.

This ought to be ``our`` struggle.

From cradle to grave.

From womb to tomb.

A Moment of Silence Re: # 46

Beejay you vacuously and predictably require me to respond to items (1)-(5) in #33. But you have not asked a single question ! Your innate contradictions are becoming quite a transparent paradox on this fora. You merely rendered lofty assertions in #33. So there is nothing to answer. The one question you ask about Kashmir has already been given coverage to in the poem itself.

Now courteously take your broom and mop elsewhere. Good janitor that you are.

A Moment of Silence Re: # 48


Farzana

As always thanks for the insight-driven feedback. I do acquiesce with thee that my interact #28 was below the belt. I’m not proud of it. I normally do rise above the fray and the mass hysteria in the infant-like playgrounds of Chowk, yet if you see all of Hamid M`s and his lackey appendage Beejay`s numerous slanderous comments, both merited a long overdue type-lashing. Though I must concede my type-lashing could have been done more gracefully. Point taken.

Now that one of them, Beejay, has comeback with an “iota” of pseudo-intellect I will counter him diplomatically of course. A certain cyber-ghost says to a certain cyber-witch that life is all about “grace”. I have realised how very infantile interactions can be on these fora and I will ONLY answer the relevant ones, as I have hitherto done so.

As for any purported allegations by cyber-war mongrels of a “hoax” a simple adage would suffice:

“For those who believe no explanation is necessary. For those who do not none will suffice”.

My Fascination With The Bottle Akhtar Chaudhary

Your “message in a bottle” was quite intriguing. Your uncanny ability to mesh South Asian poetry verses, mythical folklore along with religious symbolism is epic. Congrats…

A Moment of Silence

Kulsum Beig you accuse this author of political myopia yet how can you disregard the glaring chariots of fire stoked by Uncle Sam and its cohorts who are refueling the flames of racism?

The US Patriot Act is merely one case in point. Political quiescence may portend to the norm for you Kulsum and human rights a romantic idealism to your ilk, yet it is your demagoguery of the status quo that impels an uphill battle bringing all moral consciousness into dishonorable disrepute.

Public information on illegal detention post 9/11 remains scant. It is brazenly clear that many POW`s were forcibly held incommunicado. Muslim detainees suffered physical and verbal abuse from despotic guards under the cruelest conditions of solitary confinement and the wearing of shackles during non-contact visits.

In Afghanistan hundreds of innocent Muslims were massacred in Qala-i-Jhangi. Despite international humanitarian law yelling for a moratorium on the use of cluster-weapons. Both Uncle Sam and Her Majesty`s government denied Amnesty International’s request for an investigation into the incidents at Qala-i-Jhangi fort.

A number of banana republics sold all their oranges short and jumped onto the ‘anti-terrorist’ bandwagon to stifle political dissent. Since it is de rigueur. Legally definitions of ‘terrorism’ are hazardously vague. The terrorist attacks fuelled a climate of hysteria garnering a useful cloak behind which to make inroads to curb the ambillical chord of democratic rights and civil liberties.

Here where I live in the UK, the “Blairite” government passed scantily clad ‘emergency’ legislation which provided for detention of foreign nationals without charge or trial, thereby tailoring a nebulous shadow criminal justice system.

The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 cataclysmically contravenes Article 5(t) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] in order to allow for indefinite detention. Under the Act, the Secretary of State may order such detention, without charge or trial and without recourse to judicial review.

Kulsum what this poem attempts to portray is the hypocrisy and selectivity of governments and their handmaiden: the media. For example why do those who condemn human rights violations in Iraq negligently not protest against human rights violations by Russian troops in Chechnya, or by the authorities in Uzbekistan against Muslims who peacefully practice their faith outside the state apparatus?

A Moment of Silence Re: # 36

Dear Dr Lokraj

Your noteworthy points are well-received. Especially when you pin-point that ``Some appear to be more interested in the poet rather than the poem.``

The interest, if any, should only be geared towards the ``poem``. Its ``content``. And nothing else.

A Moment of Silence
Kulsum Beig you accuse this author of political myopia yet how can you disregard the glaring chariots of fire stoked by Uncle Sam and its cohorts who are refueling the flames of racism?

The US Patriot Act is merely one case in point. Political quiescence may portend to the norm for you Kulsum and human rights a romantic idealism to your ilk, yet it is your demagoguery of the status quo that impels an uphill battle bringing all moral consciousness into dishonorable disrepute.

Public information on illegal detention post 9/11 remains scant. It is brazenly clear that many POW`s were forcibly held incommunicado. Muslim detainees suffered physical and verbal abuse from despotic guards under the cruelest conditions of solitary confinement and the wearing of shackles during non-contact visits.

In Afghanistan hundreds of innocent Muslims were massacred in Qala-i-Jhangi. Despite international humanitarian law yelling for a moratorium on the use of cluster-weapons. Both Uncle Sam and Her Majesty`s government denied Amnesty International’s request for an investigation into the incidents at Qala-i-Jhangi fort.

A number of banana republics sold all their oranges short and jumped onto the ‘anti-terrorist’ bandwagon to stifle political dissent. Since it is de rigueur. Legally definitions of ‘terrorism’ are hazardously vague. The terrorist attacks fuelled a climate of hysteria garnering a useful cloak behind which to make inroads to curb the ambillical chord of democratic rights and civil liberties.

Here where I live in the UK, the “Blairite” government passed scantily clad ‘emergency’ legislation which provided for detention of foreign nationals without charge or trial, thereby tailoring a nebulous shadow criminal justice system.

The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 cataclysmically contravenes Article 5(t) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Article 9 of the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] in order to allow for indefinite detention. Under the Act, the Secretary of State may order such detention, without charge or trial and without recourse to judicial review.

Kulsum what this poem attempts to portray is the hypocrisy and selectivity of governments and their handmaiden: the media. For example why do those who condemn human rights violations in Iraq negligently not protest against human rights violations by Russian troops in Chechnya, or by the authorities in Uzbekistan against Muslims who peacefully practice their faith outside the state apparatus?

A Moment of Silence Re: # 33

Dear Beejay,

Finally you have dispensed your opinion, in your own unique style, on the ``subject matter`` of the poem. Fair enough it is not your cup of ``chai`` and I respect that. Anyways I would still seek to ask you the question to a previous comment:

`` And where were you, O great, great knight
When Saddam’s thumb crushed rank and file``

Beejay by making the above comment are you legitimising the attrocities that are ravaging Iraqi civilians under US soldiers post-Saddam ? Seems so to me....and are you saying that what happened in Abu Ghraib is any better than Saddam`s regime ?

RSVP. Thanks.