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Posts Tagged ‘india’

Indian gun rights group joins international coalition

Posted by Richard on October 11, 2011

The National Association for Gun Rights India (NAGRI) has joined the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights (IAPCAR), a coalition of 16 groups from 8 countries dedicated to protecting the natural human right of armed self-defense.

IAPCAR was founded by Julianne Versnel, director of operations for the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA). Via SAF email:

“It is heartening to see groups like NAGRI who are passionate and active for civilian arms rights joining our coalition,” said IAPCAR executive director, Philip Watson.

 “In the wake of the tragic Mumbai massacre, Indians are rethinking their country’s repressive gun restrictions and see the need to empower citizens. Self-defense is a civil right; the denial of this right should not be tolerated,” Watson observed.

 “NAGRI is delighted to be associated with IAPCAR. All pro-gun associations and civil rights organizations should join hands,” said Rakshit Sharma, a representative of NAGRI.

I'm guessing that the people who founded NAGRI in 2010 are familiar with my favorite Mohandas Gandhi quote

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.

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Unarmed and helpless

Posted by Richard on December 2, 2008

As news of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, unfolded, it seemed unbelievable that just 10-15 attackers could cause that much death and destruction. An excellent detailed account of the attacks in Monday's Wall Street Journal helped shed some light.

For some time, John Lott and others have been pointing out that gun-free zones are the preferred hunting grounds of those bent on wholesale killing because they're full of unarmed and helpless victims. "Multiple-victim public shootings keep on occurring in places where guns are banned."

It's clear from the WSJ account that Mumbai (and apparently the whole of India) is a virtually gun-free zone, and this permitted the ten terrorists to roam across the city, slaying people with impunity. In fact, they didn't even have to fear the police! Two of them moved through Mumbai's railroad station, tossing grenades and mowing down travelers with gunfire. Several dozen police officers were on duty at the station, but that made no difference (emphasis added):

B.S. Sidhu, head of the Railway Protection Force for the Mumbai region, says that while some officers tried to fight back, there was little his force could do. Most police officers at the station — as they are throughout India — were unarmed or carried only bamboo sticks known as lathis. More than 40 people, including three police officers, were killed in just a few minutes, authorities said. The wounded survivors screamed for help amid acrid smoke, piles of slumped, bloodied bodies and spilling suitcases.

The same problem allowed the terrorists to march into the Oberoi and Trident hotels and kill with impunity: 

At about 9:45 p.m., two gunmen, slender and in their mid-20s, ran up the circular driveway at the entrance to the Trident. They shot the security guard and two bellhops. The hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapons because of the difficulties in obtaining gun permits from the Indian government, according to the hotel company's chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi. The gunmen raced through the marble-floored lobby, past the grand piano into the adjoining Verandah restaurant, firing at the guests and shattering the windows.

Later, two of the terrorists ran out of luck at a police roadblock, and the lathis finally served a useful purpose — enabling one of them to be captured alive for later interrogation: 

The three policemen armed with guns drew them. The nine others waved their bamboo sticks. Revving the engine, the car tried to U-turn but got stuck on the median. The man in the passenger seat rolled out and started shooting, killing one officer and wounding another. The surviving baton-wielding officers jumped on him, knocking him unconscious. Policemen with guns shot the driver dead.

In America, the anti-gun crowd is always saying we shouldn't try to defend ourselves, we should dial 911 and let the police protect us. Given that the average response time is 15 minutes, that's not such a good option. But at least if they get there in time, the cops are armed!

In Mumbai, most of the cops were unarmed and helpless victims, just like the civilians they were pretending to protect. In fact, properly trained and equipped forces weren't on hand until they were flown into Mumbai the next morning:

At 6.30 a.m. Thursday, commandos from India's National Security Guard finally arrived — after they first waited for hours while authorities located a plane to pick them up at New Delhi, then waited for transportation from Mumbai's airport to the hotels under attack. The NSG commandos had proper equipment and training. They surrounded both the Taj and the Oberoi complex and a prolonged siege began.

Read the whole thing. It's gripping.

And remember, gun-free zones are helpless-victim zones.

UPDATE: See also this Fox Forum post by John Lott.

UPDATE2 (12/4): Big thanks to Strike the Root for the link, and thanks to everyone who followed it!

Welcome also to Freedom News Daily readers!

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The war continues

Posted by Richard on November 27, 2008

Today's events in Mumbai (a.k.a. Bombay), India, are a grim reminder that we who embrace reason, enlightenment, tolerance, and modernity are still at war with the Islamofascists.

Because they continue to wage that war. And they won't stop until they're destroyed. Or we submit.

No amount of wishful thinking or conciliatory talk by our side will change that.

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Veiled threat, part 2

Posted by Richard on January 3, 2007

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we learned that the burqa is the preferred dress for wanted murderers who’d like to sail through British airport security? Well, now it turns out that the burqa is also popular with jewel thieves in India. And, of course, the jewelry store owners had to apologize for being so insensitive as to suggest that they didn’t want people completely concealed in burqas snatching up jewelry and running off:

Jewelers in western India have apologized to Muslims for proposing to ban women wearing burqas from their shops following a series of thefts by burqa-clad customers.

British radio (BBC) reports that the jewelers association in the city of Pune withdrew its request Friday for a ban on serving women who wear face veils or burqas. The association says it decided not to pursue the ban for fear of offending religious sentiments.

Jewelers asked police for the ban after surveillance cameras showed veiled thieves stealing. Shopkeepers and police say they cannot identify them because their faces are covered.

The jewelers say the request was a security measure and was not targeted at minority Muslims in Pune.

The request sparked tensions among local Muslim leaders who said the ban discriminated against Muslim women.

I’ve got a couple of questions. First, why are women who aren’t supposed to show any portion of their body in public or experience any pleasure so interested in jewelry anyway? Second, when will someone have the stones to tell outraged Muslims, "We’ll tolerate your burqas and niqabs in our jewelry stores and airports as soon as you tolerate our bikinis and beer in Riyadh."
 

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The example of Napier

Posted by Richard on December 13, 2006

Larry Kudlow posted a great little item from "The Week" in the 12/18 edition of National Review (it’s available at National Review Online to subscribers only). It briefly summarized the story of Colorado’s Saudi slaveholder, mentioned the State Department’s pandering to the Saudis, and contrasted that with a wonderful story of how a proper British imperialist handled a stark cultural conflict (emphasis added):

A Saudi Couple living in Aurora, Colo., were convicted of enslaving their Indonesian nanny, taking her passport, forcing her to live in the basement, and paying her less than two dollars a day. The husband, Hamaidan al-Turki, also made her a sex slave, abusing and raping her. Hamaidan’s wife plea-bargained down to 60 days in jail and $90,000 in restitution, but Hamaidan got 28 years to life. “The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors,” he told the judge. And rightly so. Justice wobbled at the end when, at the urging of the State Department, Colorado’s attorney general John Suthers flew to Riyadh to brief King Abdullah on the matter. Better to have followed the example of Sir Charles Napier, a British general in India, when local Hindus complained of a prohibition on suttee. “You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Bravo, Sir Charles! To paraphrase Karl Hess (via Barry Goldwater), certitude in defense of liberty, justice, and civilized customs is no vice, and tolerance of barbarism is no virtue.
 

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Banned in India

Posted by Richard on July 20, 2006

The Jawa Report is one of 17 named blogs that, along with a number of domains, have been banned in India — apparently because they offend India’s Islamist Muslims, and the Indian government is afraid of those Muslims. In response, Dr. Rusty Shackleford wrote about why it matters:

Why did India ban this website? And what is the larger meaning of this action?

The short answer to the first question is that we offended Islamists and India is afraid of its own Muslim citizens. The short answer to the second question is that, sadly, it is increasingly becoming evident that liberty may not be able to exist wherever there is a large population of Muslims.

India has been taken hostage by its sizeable Muslim population. It is afraid of its own citizens. It fears that if they are exposed to that which is religiously offensive, that violence might erupt. That if the government doesn’t do something, then they might just have to do something about the government.

India’s banning of this and other websites, then, is completely rational. It is based on the real fear of real people who do real violence. Thus, it is completely understandable.

While we might understand India’s reason for banning our website, we certainly don’t condone it.

Giving in to violent threats is not, in my book, a winning strategy for defeating the very people who are threatening you. Appeasement only works if your goal is appeasement. If your goal is to drag Muslims who have a 7th century mentality about how the world ought to be ordered into the 21st century, then this is no way to do it.

Read, as they say, the whole thing. And maybe leave Dr. Rusty a note of support.

UPDATE: Welcome, Wall Street Journal readers! Please have a look around. You may see something that interests you in the left sidebar. Or visit my home page for the last week or so of postings, which are mainly about the war against Islamofascism, focusing on the Israeli front.
 

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Identifying India’s enemies clearly

Posted by Richard on July 12, 2006

In my earlier post about the 7/11 attack on Mumbai, I noted that it wasn’t just about Kashmir, even though a Kashmiri Islamist terror organization seemed to be responsible. Dr. Walid Phares’ new article, The Jihadist War Against India, provides much more detail about the "Laskar" (or "Lashkar") organization responsible and its connections to al-Qaeda, other organizations, and the global Islamofascist movement (bold emphasis added):

The main “movement” that starts in Pakistan and stretches into the Indian province of Kashmir is Laskar-e-Taiba, which was founded in the late 1980s by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. … In reality, the “Laskars” are another form of Kashmiri Taliban whose aim is to establish an Emirate in the Indian province of Kashmir before joining forces with the Islamists of Pakistan and the Taliban of Afghanistan to create a massive and powerful “Jihadi Principality” in south Asia stretching from Iran to China.

The Laskar Taiba is under the ideological auspices of a Wahhabi-style foundation in Pakistan, the Markaz Dawa ul-Irshad, also created in the late 1980s. Some reports conclude that the “Dawa” is the mother ship, while the “Laskar” is the army, or one of its armed branches. In the jungle of south Asia’s Islamic fundamentalism, networks are intertwined but well connected. … As in the case of Chechnya, the Islamists hijacked the “ethnic cause” and transformed it into a jihadist onslaught. The “Laskar” and their supporters inside Kashmir and the rest of India have in reality moved the center of their struggle from classical separation from India to the establishment of a Taliban regime in northern India, whose real objective would be to radicalize India’s 100-million-strong Muslim community. Reports indicate that this penetration is now embodied by the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), accused by Indian sources of being an associate of the Laskar. Hence, the “Talibanization” of Kashmir’s issue has become the dominant threat to India and by ripple effect also to President Musharref Pakistan. For the second internal enemy to the aggregation of all jihadists from Waziristan to Kashmir is none other but the president of Pakistan. They believe he is “not helping them enough against India,” as they claim on their websites and, obviously, on al-Jazeera.

But above the clouds of the Pakistani-Indian magma, Osama Bin Laden has issued his mortal fatwas against the south Asian “infidel.” In at least their last four messages – audio or video – aired on al-Jazeera or posted on al Sahhab website, Osama bin laden and Zawahiri blasted the Hindus as an abhorred enemy. Lashing out against one billion Hindus in the subcontinent, not distinguishing between governments and individuals, the chief Jihadists ordered their henchmen to shed the blood of the Indian masses on ideological grounds.

Here again, after the U.S., Spain, Britain, Russia, and other target nations of terrorism, India will have to declare the identity of the criminals, not only in term of their names and the names of their organizations, but the name of their ideology and its content. The more jihadists widen their bloody fault lines against the international community, the more they will isolate themselves among “infidels” and Muslims alike.

I’ll say it again — the enemy isn’t terrorism. That’s a tactic. The enemy is a global jihadist movement of Islamofascists. Their beef isn’t about Iraq, or pictures of the prophet, or U.S. imperialism, or Kashmir, or some unspecified slight in Indonesia or one of the hundreds of other places they’ve struck. Their beef is that everyone isn’t a devout Muslim obeying their 7th-century laws — or at least a submissive and respectful dhimmi.

Everyone — Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, whatever — who refuses to convert or submit must either be prepared to fight or to die.
 

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