UPANISHADS –“Meditation is in truth higher than thought. The earth seems to rest in silent meditation; and the waters and the mountains and the sky and the heavens seem all to be in meditation. Whenever a man attains greatness on this earth he has his reward according to his meditation. ”

UPANISHADS –“Punarapi Jananam, Punarapi Maranam Punarapi Jananeejathare Sayanam. Man is born again and again and again. Birth is followed by death. Adi Shankara, Bhaja Govindam. Birth and death are two illusory scenes In the drama of this world: Really no one is born, no one dies, No one comes, no one goes, It is Maya’s jugglery, It is play of the mind; Brahman alone exists. There is birth for the body alone, five elements combine to form the body; The Atman is birth less and deathless; Death is casting off the physical sheath. It is like deep sleep; Birth is like waking from sleep;/ Be not afraid of death, 0 Ram! Life is continuous. The flower may fade but the fragrance floats; the body may disintegrate, but the immortal fragrance of the soul Always will remain. Learn to discriminate The Real from the unreal; Think always of the Infinite That is birth less and deathless. Transcend Maya and Moha, Go beyond three Gunas, Give up attachment for the body free yourself from birth and death and merge in the Immortal Essence. ”

UPANISHADS –“That Being, of the size of a thumb, dwells deep within the heart. He is the lord of time, past and future. Having attained him, one fears no more. He, verily, is the immortal Self. ”

UPANISHADS –“The Good Earth So long as the earth preserves her forests and wildlife, man’s progeny will continue to exist. This is the Hindu approach towards the conservation of ecology. ”

UPANISHADS –“The wise man ever studiously avoids Extremes in speech and act, himself; and when Others press to extremes in heated speech, He passes by, in quiet, answering not. ”

UPANISHADS –“There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one’s mind and one’s subtle body rest upon that, and not rest upon anything else. God is sound and silence. Attain therefore contemplation, contemplation in silence on Him. ”

UPANISHADS –“Thou art the sheath, the tenement, of God. Abiding-place and treasure-house of Brahma. ”

UPANISHADS –“Where you hesitate between two courses of action, always choose the one which leaves you more alone, more in silence, more in love. Consulate these selves depend on that Self as retainers on their chieftains. ”

UPASAKADASANGA SUTRA –“Falsehood implies the making of a wrong statement by one who is overwhelmed by intense passions. ”

URE –“How singular, and yet how simple, the philosophy of rain! Who but the Omniscient one could have devised such an admirable arrangement for watering the earth?”

URSULA K. LE GUIN- “You can go home again, so long as you understand that home is a place you have never been. ”

URSULA LE GUMMY –“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is; if the journey that matters in the end. ”

US GUN LOBBY SLOGAN –“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. ”

USTAD BADE GHULAM ALI KHAN –“I cannot stop my riyaz due to paralysis, for only my music has the power to heal me. ”

UTTARADHYAYANA –“By deeds, not by birth, is one a Brahmin. By deeds one is a Kshatriya, by deeds is one a Vaishya, and by deeds is one a Sudra. ”

UTTARADHYAYANA SUTRA –“As the fallow leaf of the tree falls to the ground, when its days are gone, even so is the life of men; as the dew-drop dangling on the top of a blade of grass lasts but a short time, even so the life of men. . . ”

UTTARADHYAYANA SUTRA –“The body, they say, is a boat and the soul is the sailor. Samsara is the ocean which is crossed by the great sages. ”

UTTARADHYAYANA SUTRA –“The night passes; it is never to return. The night passes in vain for one who acts not according to the law. ”

UTTARADHYAYANA SUTRA –“Though others sleep, be thou awake. Like a wise man, trust nobody, but be always on the alert; for dangerous is the time and weak, the body. Step carefully in your walk, supposing everything to be a snare. Bestow care on your life till you win the stake. Afterwards, you should despise it, annihilating its sins. ”

VACASPATI MISRA –“Even one thousand scriptural statements cannot transform a jar into a piece of cloth. ”

VACLAV HAVEL –“Hope is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success. Hope is the ability to work for something to succeed. . . Hope gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem. . . hopeless. ”

VACLAV HAVEL –“Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. ”

VAIDYA R K MISHRA –“In winter digestive levels are high, people feel hungrier, and can actually digest food better, nourishing their bodies more. Winter is the time to build up and nourish all systems — the hair, the nails, and the skin. It’s also the best season for taking herbal products. ”

VAJJALAGAM –“Only two virtues are enough; why should the good stand in need of many? Anger lived like a lightning flash And friendship enduring like a line inscribed on a rock. ”

VALMIKI –“Valmiki: 0 Venerable Rishi! Please tell me whether there is a perfect man hi this world who is at once virtuous, brave, dutiful, truthful, noble, steadfast in duty, and kind to all beings. Narada: There is such a one, a prince of Ikshvaku’s line named Rama. He is virtuous, brave, gentle, and wise. He is a great hero. He loves his subjects immensely He is a protector of Dharma. He is firm and steadfast. He is just and liberal. He is well-versed in the Vedas and in the science of arms. Rama is unique in the possession of virtues and matchless in beauty He is an obedient son, a kind brother, loving husband, a faithful friend, an ideal king, a merciful enemy, and a lover of all living beings. All people adore him. ”

VALMIKI’S RAMAYANA –“The gods said to Brahma,’Lord, there is a rakshasa (demon) called Ravana who, having secured your favour, is oppressing us aU. . . We are overwhelmed with terror because of this dreadful creature, Ravana, 0 Lord, please find some means to destroy him. ”

VAN MORRISON –“In order to win you must be prepared to lose something. And leave one or two cards showing. ”

VAN WYCK BROOKS –“If all men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?”

VANAPARVAN –“At Meru the sun and the moon go round from left to right (Pradakshinam) every day, and so do all the stars. The mountain, by its luster, so overcomes the darkness of night that the night can hardly be distinguished from the day The day and the night are together equal to a year to the residents of the place. ”

VANDANA SHIVA –“More women are pro-peace because they care about life. ”

VARAHA PURANA –“One who plants one peepal, one neem, one ber, 10 flowering plants or creepers, two pomegranates, two oranges and five mangoes, achieves the greatest good. ”

VARANASI CITY GUIDE, EICHER –“Shiva is not perfect: He is easy to anger, easier to please, prone to impulsive mistakes. It is because of this that he is loved so deeply by his devotees, somehow, you feel that this many-hued God will listen to your prayers more kindly understand your frailties better. And to seek his blessings you have to come to his special city — the ever luminous Kashi. ”

VARTAN GREGORIAN –“Dignity is not negotiable, Dignity is the honour of the family. ”

VASANT DESAI –“A ceaseless song of spirit hums around Soothing the instrument with joy abound Spirit manifests with a cosmic bang But not disturbing creation’s joy Birth and death are the instrument’s two strings On which life’s music seamlessly rendered. ”

VATICAN CITY, EASTER 2001 –“Rediscover today with joy and wonder that the world is no longer a slave to the inevitable. This world of ours can change. Peace is possible even where for too long there has been fighting and death, as in the Holy Land and Jerusalem. ”

VAUVENARGUES –“All men are born truthful, and die liars. ”

VED MEHTA –“India has an uncanny way of bringing out extremes in people. I suppose because we have been afflicted and enriched by centuries of migrations, moved like a pawn between this ruler and that. Our capacity for a single allegiance has been dulled. Instead we have developed an ability to be compassionate and cruel, sensitive and callous, deep and fickle. ”

VED VYAS –“Adhere there is Krishna, there is dharma, where there is dharma, there is victory Since Duryodhana, leader of the Kauravas, lid not observe dharma, ie did not have Krishna. No Krishna, no victory. ”

VEDANGA JYOTISH –“Just as the crest of a peacock and jewel-stone j of a snake are placed at the highest place of body I (forehead), similarly the (position of mathematics I is the highest in all the branches of Veda and Shastra. ”

VEDANTA –“Raja yoga is the royal path of meditation. As a king maintains control over his kingdom, so can we maintain control over our own “kingdom” — the vast territory of the mind. In raja yoga we use our mental powers to realise the Atman through the process of psychological control. ”

VEDANTA- “Sanyas is the fourth and the final stage of life. It is the stage of surrendering and realizing. ”

VEDANTA- “The truth is one. Sages call it by various names. ”

VEDANTA SOCIETY –“Whatever brings us closer to attaining innate Divinity is ethical and moral; whatever prevents us from attaining it is not. ”

VEDANTA SOCIETY OF NEW YORK –“The Sanskrit word Vedanta can be split into two separate words, Veda and anta, literally meaning the anta (end) or culmination of the Vedas. . . Although most Vedic hymns indicate that polyatheism or the practice of worshipping multiple gods and goddesses prevailed in India during the Vedic period, the notion of One God was distinct as well in many hymns. . . In Vedanta is found a reconciliation of religion with science, of faith, with reason. A Vedantist is a seeker of truth who accepts and respects all religions as paths to the same goal. ”

VEDANTIC WISDOM –“The universe is derived from an ultimate principle of spiritual consciousness, the one and only existent from eternity. The void is to be understood as the Primordial Nothingness — the raw stuff out of which all is created as well as the background against which every creation can be discerned. ”

VEDIC PRAYER –“Oh God, lead us from the unreal to the Real. From darkness to light. Lead us from death to immortality Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. ”

VEDIC RISHI –“Look upon all sentient beings with friendly eyes. ”

VEERAPPA MOILY –“Corruption is not only an ethical issue but it is also hindering our growth. ”

VEGETIUS- “Let him who desires peace, prepare for war. ”

VEMON LAW –“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. ”

VEN WILDER –“Worrying is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do, but gets you nowhere. ”

VERA WANG –“As the mother of two daughters, I have great respect for women. ”

VERGIL – “The mind of man is ignorant of fat, or of coming doom. ”

VERGIL- “Longer shadows fall from lofty mountains. ”

VERNE N ROCKCASTLE –“The water you are about to drink/ Deserves a second thought, I think; For Avogadro, oceans, and those you follow/ Are all involved in every swallow. . . The water you’re about to taste/No doubt represents a bit of the waste/from prehistoric beast and bird, a notion not at all absurd. . . So someone slaking a future thirst/ Could easily drink what you drank first. /The fountains spraying in the park/ Distribute bits from Joan of Ark/And Adam, Eve, and all their kin;/ You’d be surprised where your drink has been. The water you cannot retain/ Will some day hence return as rain, Or be beheld as the purest dew,/ Though long ago it passed through you. ”

VERNON HOWARD –“You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. ”

VERNON LAW –“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward”

VESTAYASNA –“Then that do we choose, 0 Lord of Wisdom, 0 beautiful truth, that do we think, do we speak, and do we practice, which shall be best of the actions of living ones for both worlds. ”

VICENTE FOX –“We are trying to convince the people of the benefits of a migration dad. which is greatly in the interests of the US and Mexico. ”

VICKI BAUM –“Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole. ”

VICKI WOODYARD –“Sitting in surrender you will be present in presence. Gifts will arrive from the magic of the moment — peace, bliss, and all the hell realms will offer themselves to you. . . Sitting in surrender I learned the truth of my being. It is unlimited peace surrounded by limited angst. Once you know how to get to peace, you will be willing to let the angst go. Persevere in peace. Persist in its protection. Surrender into the power of now. ”

VICTOR BORGE –“A smile is the shortest distance between two people. ”

VICTOR BORGE –“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people. ”

VICTOR COUSIN-”You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception. ”

VICTOR FRANK –“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. ”

VICTOR HUGO -“Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“Caution is the eldest child of wisdom. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the same time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“Ideas can no more flow backward than can a river. ”

VICTOR HUGO- “If suffer we must, let’s suffer on the heights. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“The supreme happiness of life is the conviction of being loved for yourself, or more correctly, of being loved of yourself. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“The truth of an upright man must be accepted on his own terms. Moreover, since nature varies, we must agree that all the beauties of human excellence may be fostered by faith that we do not share. ”

VICTOR HUGO –“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. ”

VICTOR KIAM –“Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable. for all its facets. ”

VIDA D SCUDDER –“It is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed. ”

VIDURATO DHRITARASHTRA –“Forgiveness is a virtue of the weak, and an ornament of the strong. Forgiveness subdues (all) in this world; what is there that forgiveness cannot achieve? What can a wicked person do unto him who carries the saber of forgiveness in his hand?”

VIETNAMESE PROVERB –“Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. ”

VIETNAMESE PROVERB –“Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet. ”

VIJAY MALLYA –“Power is a very loaded term. It seems to suggest influence and how much influence I have or don’t have is for others to judge. Power is also a very misunderstood term. Being called powerful tends to boost people’s egos. I have no ego. I just do what it takes to make my businesses thrive. If people say I’m powerful, it’s not going to change my character or my behaviour in any way. ”

VIJAY TENDULKAR –“ What is reality? The coexistence of the observer and the happening makes the reality. Reality becomes reality only when it is seen. There is nothing like absolute reality your perception of what is happening combined with the happening makes the picture of reality complete. ”

VIJAY TENDULKAR –“Good-bad, right-wrong, once you tag things like that, you lose the ability to see the complete truth. . . A murderer can also be a loving father. Don’t tag things. Words are insufficient to describe the picture in totality Try not to get trapped in the dictionary meaning of words. ”

VIJAY TENDULKAR –“Theatre is possibly the medium I’m most comfortable with. There is, I feel, more respect for a writer’s word there. And it is a medium that’s open to change from one performance to the next. Speaking of words, I really envy musicians some- tunes. Vocalists. . . they can transcend the word quite easily, get away from its heaviness and achieve the unsaid element in communication. . . ”

VIJAY TENDULKAR –“There are times when one’s life appears to be a stage. People come, people go. They come in order to go, and go with no intent of return. When they return, they return as one’s past. A past that would make you feel that the present is false. ”

VIJNANA BHAIRAVA –“Let inhalation and exhalation become spontaneous. Then the coiled up Shakti uncoils and straightens upwards. She is the great Goddess, both immanent and transcendent, the highest sanctuary. He who follows the ascent of this energy while preoccupied with this rite that consists of deep bliss, will, thanks to this Goddess and completely absorbed in her, attain Bhairava. ”

VIKRAM BHATT –“Films are not about creativity originality and vision. They are about entertaining audiences. ”

VIKRAM BHATT –“Films are not about creativity originality and vision. They are about entertaining audiences. Once you understand and accept that an idea always existed before you did, then you look at the whole aspect of ‘copying’ in a different light. ”

VIKRAM SETH –“A plump gold carp nudges a lily pad And shakes the raindrops like mercury; And Mr. Wang walks round. ‘Not bad, not bad. He eyes the Fragrant Chamber dreamily He eyes the Rainbow ; Bridge. He may have got The means by somewhat dubious means, but now This is the loveliest of all gardens. What Do scruples know of beauty anyhow? The Humble Administrator admires a bee Poised on a lotus, walks through the bamboo wood, Strips half a dozen loquats off a tree And looks about and sees that it is good. He leans against a willow with a dish And throws a dumpling to a passing fish. ”

VIKRAM SETH –“Cold, cold friend, Frost—Night comes, and I Am dispossessed. Most cold, cold, is this night, and my youth old, my spirit lost. I cannot rest. I walk alone. Frost, burn upon my every bone. ”

VIKRAM SETH –“It was a contract of trust with more than you. I know I left my home too many years ago. I place the golden thread across my wrist, that done, Struggle with my left hand to put it on. You should have done that; I too have lost half the rite. I promise you your gift in’78. Those future numerals look curious; and your brother Too will be strange when next we meet each other. How we must both have changed; only the custom stays, Educing from the past the undying days. ”

VIKRAM SETH –“When every park becomes a highway plain Cemeteries and golf-courses will remain; For every thinking man who is not red Reveres the rich; and, next to them, the dead. ”

VILLARI –“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. ”

VILLARI –“The names and memories of great men are the dowry of a nation. ”

VIMALAKIRTI –“Passions consist of conceptualizations. The ultimate non-existence of these conceptualizations and imaginary fabrications — that is the purity that is the intrinsic nature of the mind. ”

VIMALAKIRTI SUTRA –“One who seeks the Dharma finds it in seeking it in nothing. ”

VIMALAKIRTIS –“Passions consist of conceptualisations. The ultimate nonexistence of these conceptualisations and imaginary fabrications — that is the purity that is the intrinsic nature of the mind. ”

VINAYA PITAKA –“Teaching & Learning The teacher, brethren, should regard the pupil as his son. The pupil should regard the teacher as his father. Thus these two, by mutual reverence and deference joined, dwelling in community life, will win increase, growth, progress in this Norm-discipline. ”

VINAYA-PITAKA –“All the great rivers, that is to say the Ganges, the Jumna, the Aciravati, the Sarabhu, the Mahi — these, on reaching the great ocean lose their, former names and identities and are reckoned simply as the great ocean. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI – “I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“It does not matter how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“It’s easy to have faith in yourself when you’re a winner, when you re number one. What you’ve got to have is faith in yourself when you re not a winner. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“Just play has fun. Enjoy the game. Michael Jordan Football is like life, it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will. Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is loosing. ”

VINCE LOMBARDI –“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-time thing. You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. ”

VINCE PFAFF –“To promote cooperation and teamwork, remember: People tend to resist that which is forced upon them. People tend to support that which they help to create. ”

VINCE PFAFF –“You do not need to know how you’re actually going to achieve a goal when you set it. Just repeatedly visualize the desired result, and the “how” will open up to you. ”

VINCENT VAN GOGH –“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. ”

VINCENT VAN GOGH –“Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence Perhaps it will seem to you that the sunshine is brighter and that everything has a new charm. At least, i believe this is always the result of a deep love, and it is a beautiful thing. And I believe people who think love prevents one from thinking clearly are ‘ wrong; for then one thinks very clearly and is more active than before. And love is something eternal — the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and in that way, one is more fit for one’s work. ”

VINCENT VAN GOGH –“Perhaps it will seem to you that the sunshine is brighter and that everything has a new charm. I believe this is always the result of a deep love, and it is a beautiful thing. People who think love prevents one from thinking clearly are wrong; for then one thinks very clearly and is more active than before. And love is something eternal — the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlit lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and it was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function. And love makes one calmer about many things, and in that way, one is more fit for one’s work. ”

VINCENT VAN GOGH –“The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others. ”

VINCENT VAN GOGH –“There is no blue without yellow and without orange. ”

VIRGIL –“Happy is he who has been able to learn the causes of things. ”

VIRGIL –“The spirit within nourishes, and the mind, diffused through all the members, sways the mass and mingles with the whole frame (of the universe). ”

VIRGIL –“Yield not to misfortunes, but advance all the more boldly against them. ”

VIRGINIA ELLIS –“God bless the loved ones washed out to sea/ and those battered and left on the shore/ And God bless those who watched from the heights/ until they could watch no more. ”

VIRGINIA SATIR –“Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference. ”

VIRGINIA SATIR –“We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth. ”

VIRGINIA VOLF –“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF –“A soulmate is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you’ve had. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF- “Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF –“For most of history. Anonymous was a woman. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF- “It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman mainly, or a man womanly. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF –“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of the emancipation itself. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF –“To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves. ”

VIRGINIA WOOLF- “Trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. ”

VIRNA SHEARD –“Hark! Hark to the wind! T is the night, they say, When all souls come back from the far away — the dead, forgotten this many a day!”

VISHNU DR –“Just as light is diffused from a fire which is confined to one spot, so is this whole universe the diffused energy of the supreme Brahmn. And as light shows a difference, greater or less, according to its nearness or distance from the fire, so is there a variation in the energy of the impersonal Brahmn. Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva are his chief energies. ”

VISHNU PURANA –“Auspicious Beginnings 0 Goddess Lakshmi, freedom from bodily ailments, riches, destruction of enemies, and happiness are not difficult to attain for persons who are in your vision. ”

VISHNU PURANA –“Good Governance The earth is upheld by the veracity of those who have subdued their passions, and following righteous practices, are never contaminated by desire covetousness, and wrath. ”

VISHNU PURANA –“My songs are a part of Him, who wears a form of sound. ”

VISHNU PURANA –“Oself of all beings!. . . We worship you in the genii, the Yakshas. . . 0 Supreme Man! We bow to your fearful evil shapes which wander at night, cruel and deceitful. ”

VISHNU PURANA –“The earth is upheld by the veracity of those who have subdued their passions, and following righteous practices, are never contaminated by desire, covetousness and wrath. ”

VISHNU PURDNA -“All songs are a part of Him, who wears a form of sound. ”

VISHNU SHARMA –“A person seeks friendship for a reason;/ with reason a person incurs enmity/ So, is it not reasonable for a person/ to seek amity rather than enmity?”

VISHNU SHARMA- “Giving and receiving, each other’s secrets sharing, dining, entertaining; these six are sure signs of affection. Unless some act of kindness is done, affection scarcely comes to anyone; the very gods grant their blessings when entreated with offerings. As long as a gift is in the offing so long will affection be forthcoming; once the calf sees the under dry he bids his mother goodbye. ”

VISHNU SHARMA –“Not weighing a full measure; always quoting false prices; swindling consistently one’s regular customers, are despicable practices followed by wild tribes of the hills. ”

VISHNU SHARMA –“One person above all deserves high praise in this mortal world of ours: he who carries out to the last particle the dictates of virtuous conduct: from whom no suppliant turns away, no seeker of sanctuary leaves disappointed, his hopes shattered. . . A chalice of trust and affection, a sanctuary from sorrow, anxiety and fear—Who created this priceless gem, a friend? A word of just two syllables: MITRA”

VISHNU SHARMA –“When a man is penniless, his kinsmen find no time to give him the time of day; his pride takes a beating; his moon of good conduct wanes, vanishes, leaving no trace; in cold indifference his friends turn away; misfortunes swell and burgeon; soon, others misdeeds are imputed to him. Op- pressed by waning fortunes, struck down by cruel Time, a man sees his friends even become foes, while long-standing affection turns cold. ”

VISPARAD –“Do you keep your feet, hands, intellect ready, 0 Mazdayasni Zoroastrians, in order to practise lawful, timely, well-done deeds, in order to undo unlawful, untimely, bad-done deeds. Let one practise here good industry; let one make the needy prosperous. ”

VITARAGASTAVA –“Lord! You are the uninvoked saviour, motiveless compassionate being, a well-wisher even when unprayed, a friend even when unrelated. ”

VIVIAN E GLYCK –“Follow the wisdom provided by nature. Everything in moderation — sunlight, water, nutrients. Too much of a good thing will topple your structure. You can’t harvest what you don’t sow. So plant your desires, gently nurture them, and they will be rewarded with abundance. ”

VIVIAN E GLYCK –“You can’t harvest what you don’t sow so plant your desires, gently nurture them, and they will be rewarded with abundance. ”

VIVIAN M ILLINOISL –“It’s not what you do that defines you. What defines you is how well you rise after you have fallen. ”

VIVIAN Y LARAMOR –“Tomorrow holds no fears for me, since I have found today. ”

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ –“I am a general. My soldiers are the keys and I have to command them. ”

VLADIMIR NABOKOV –“I think, like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child. ”

VLADIMIR PUTIN –“I was educated o the street. To live ad to be educated o the street is just like living in the jungle. ”

VOILTAIRE –“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ”

VOLRAIRE – “JUDGE A MAN BY HIS QUESTION RATHER THAN HIS ANSWERS. ”

VOLRAIRE – “Men use thought to justify their injustice, and speech to conceal their thoughts. ”

VOLRAIRE –“If we do not find anything pleasant, at last we shall find something new. ”

VOLRAIRE –“In speaking against fanaticism, let us not imitate the fanatics: they are sick men in delirium who want to chastise their doctors. Let us assuage their ills, and never embitter them, and let us pour drop by drop into their souls the divine balm of toleration, which they would reject with horror if it were offered to them all at once. ”

VOLRAIRE –“It is funny rather than taste which produces so many new fashions. ”

VOLRAIRE- “It is new fancy rather than taste which produces so many new fashion. ”

VOLRAIRE –“Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable. ”

VOLRAIRE –“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy: the mad daughter of a wise mother. ”

VOLRAIRE –“Thank for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too. ”

VOLRAIRE –“The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. ”

VOLRAIRE –“The secret of’ being a bore is to tell everything. ”

VOLRAIRE –“The sentiment of justice is so natural, and so universally acquired by all . mankind, that it seems to be independent of all law, all party, all religion. ”

VOLRAIRE- “Truth is fruits which should only be plucked when quite ripe. ”

VOLTAIRE –‘When it is a question of money, everybody is of same religion. ”

VOLTAIRE –“All most all human life depends on probabilities. ”

VOLTAIRE –“By appreciating we make excellence in others our own property. ”

VOLTAIRE –“Fear follows crime and is its punishment. ”

VOLTAIRE –“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. ”

VOLTAIRE –“He who has not the spirit of his age has all the misery of it. ”

VOLTAIRE –“If there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism, if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats, but there are 30, and they live in peace and happiness. ”

VOLTAIRE –“We are rarely proud when we are alone. ”

VOLTAIRE –“We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth. ”

VOLTAIRE –“When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. ”

VOLTAIRE- “Who shine in the second rank, is eclipsed in the first. ”

VOLTAIRE–“My prayer to God is a very short one “Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous!”

VS APTE –“Etymology: Dhanvantri means Dhanu or medicinal knowledge; Antari is one who has reached the pinnacle. ”

W B PRESCOTT –“In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience. ”

W B YEATS –“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire. ”

W C FIELDS –“I never vote for anyone. I always vote against. ”

W I E GATES –“Victory has a hundred memories but defeat has amnesia. ”

W SOMERSET MAUGHAM –“People ask for criticism, but they only want praise. ”

W SOMERSET MAUGHAM –“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. ” Winston Churchill –“I do not resent criticism even if for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality. ”

W WORDSWORTH –“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting/ The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star/ Hath had elsewhere its setting/ And cometh from afar: / Not in entire forgetfulness/ And not in utter nakedness/ But trailing clouds of glory do we come/ From God, who is our Home. ”

W. B. YEATS-“The blood dimmed tide is loosed the ceremony of innocence is drowned the best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. ”

W. BAGEHOT –“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. ”

W. CLEMENT STONE –“There is very little difference between people — it is called attitude, and it makes a really big difference. The big difference is whether it’s positive or negative. ”

W. CLEMENT STONE/NAPOLEON HILL –“Every negative event contains within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. ”

W. S. LANDOR –“There is nothing on earth divine except humanity. ”

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM –“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. ”

W. B. YEAST –“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. ”

W. C. FIELDS –“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. ”

W. E. B. DU BOIS –“There is in this world no such force as the force of a man determined to rise. The human soul cannot be permanently chained. ”

W. E. GOLDSTONE- “This is the negation of God erected in to a system of government. ”

W. H. ALIEN –“The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle aged has all their five senses in keeping their wits. ”

W. J. CAMERON –“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money. ”

W. M. LEVIS –“The tragedy of life is not that it ends soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. ”

W. R. WILLIAMS –“Youth is the season of hope, enterprise and energy, to a nation as well as an individual. ”

W. W. ZIEGE –“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from reaching his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. ”

WAIKMAN –“Civilisation varies with the family, and the family with civilisation. Its highest and most complete realisation is found where. . . woman is exalted to her true and lofty place as equal with the man; where husband and wife are one in humour, influence, and affection, and where children are a common bond of care and love. This is the idea of a perfect family. ”

WALLACE D WATTLES –“The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two. But inspiration can cause them to rise out of their misery If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich. Prove it by getting rich yourself. ”

WALLACE STEVENS –“Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse Without a rider on a road at night. The mind sits listening and hears it pass. ”

WALLY AMOS –“Life is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you. ”

WALPOLA RAHULA –“Be aware and mindful of whatever you do, physically or verbally during the daily routine of work in your life, private, public or professional. . . That is to say, that you should live in the present moment, the present action, when and where it is relevant. ”

WALPOLA RAHULA –“Sometimes you see a man in a restaurant reading while eating. . . You wonder whether he eats or reads. One may say that he does both. In fact, he does neither, he enjoys neither. He is strained and disturbed in mind. . . and he does not live his life in the present moment, but unconsciously and foolishly tries to escape from life. ”

WALT DISNEY – “Somehow I can’t believe that there are any heights that can’t be scaled by a man who knows the secret, of masking dreamed come true. The special secret it seems to me can be summarised in four C’s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way. ? Implicitly and unquestionably. All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. ”

WALT DISNEY – “You have not realise it then, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. ”

WALT DISNEY –“A dream is a wish your heart makes. ”

WALT DISNEY –“I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing — that it was all started by a mouse. ”

WALT DISNEY –“I’d rather entertain and hope that people learn something and educate people and hope they’re entertained. ”

WALT DISNEY –“Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end. . . I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing —that it was all started by a mouse. ”

WALT DISNEY –“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence. ”

WALT DISNEY –“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. ”

WALT DISNEY –“Too many people grow up. That’s the real trouble with the world, too many people grow up. They don’t remember what it’s like to be 12 years old. They patronise, they treat children as inferiors. Well I won’t do that. ”

WALT DISNEY –“When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity. ”

WALT DISNEY –“When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. And one thing it takes to accomplish something is courage. ”

WALT DISNEY –“Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children’s approach to life. They’re people who don’t give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disney land every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought — sometimes it isn’t much, either. ”

WALT DISNEY –“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality. ”

WALT DISNEY –“You can dream, create, design, and build the most wonderful idea in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality. ”

WALT DISNEY –“You may not realize it then, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. ”

WALT DISNEY:- “You have not realize it then, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. ”

WALT DISNEY’S WISDOM –“All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable. ”

WALT WHITMAN –“Are not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious infidels, who believe in nothing? Shall a man lose himself in countless masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that, and the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave parts of him are reduced and clipp’d away, like the bordering of a box in a garden?”

WALT WHITMAN –“Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity When I give I give myself. ”

WALT WHITMAN- “Behold, I do not give Pictures or a little charity. When I give I give myself. ”

WALT WHITMAN –“Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself. ”

WALT WHITMAN –“Do I contradict, myself?/ Very well then I contradict self/I am large, I contain multitudes. ”

WALT WHITMAN –“In the faces of men and women, I see God. ”

WALT WHITMAN –“To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand!. . . To be this incredible God I am!. . . 0 amazement of things, even the last particle! 0 spirituality of things! I too carol the Sun, ushered or at noon, or as now, setting; I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth. . . . ”

WALTER ANDERSON –“I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude towards the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have —life itself. ”

WALTER ANDERSON –“If you’re angry at a loved one, hug that person. And mean it. You may not want to hug — which is all the more reason to do so. It’s hard to stay angry when someone shows they love you, and that’s precisely what happens when we hug each other. ”

WALTER BAGEHOT –‘It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations. ”

WALTER BAGEHOT –“The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be. ”

WALTER BAUER –“The Arctic expresses the sum of all wisdom: Silence. ”

walter benjamin –“He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying. ”

WALTER CHRYSLER –“I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom. ”

WALTER GAGEBOT –“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. ”

WALTER GROPIUS –“If your contribution has been vital there will always be somebody to pick up where you left off, and that will be your claim to immortality. ”

WALTER J TURNER –“Everything has a cause and for everything there is an effect. ”

WALTER LIPPMAN –“When all men think alike, no one thinks very much. ”

WALTER LIPPMAN –“When all think alike, then no one is thinking. ”

WALTER LIPPMAN –“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers. ”

WALTER PATER –“To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. ”

WALTER REUTHER –“If you are not big enough to lose, you are not big enough to win. ”

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR – “We talk on principal, but act on motivation. ”

WALTER SCOTT –“O, what a tangled web we weave, when we first practise to deceive!”

WALTER WINCHELL –“Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid. ”

WANG YANGMING –“The state of having neither good nor evil is that of principle in tranquility Good and evil appear when the vital force is perturbed. If the vital force is not perturbed, there is neither good nor evil, ‘ and this is called the highest good. ”

WANGARI MAATHAI –“I am working to make sure we don’t only protect the environment, we also improve governance. ”

WANGARI MAATHAI –“We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind. ”

WANGARI MAATHAI –“We can work together for a better world with men and women of goodwill, those who radiate the intrinsic goodness of humankind. ”

WARREN BENNIS –“Managers are people who do things right, leaders are people who do the right things. ”

WARREN BUFFEN –“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful. ”

WARREN BUFFET –“Let’s suppose the stock market is a single individual, Mr. Market. Sometimes he feels euphoric and can see only the favourable factors affecting the business. When in that mood, he names a very high buy-sell price because he fears that you will snap up his interest

WARREN BUFFETT –“A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought. ”

WARREN BUFFETT –“If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. ”

WARREN BUFFLETT – “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are beautiful. ”

WARREN BUFFLETT – “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful. ”

WARREN G. HARDING –“My God, this is a hell of a job. I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my goddamn friends. They’re the ones that keep me walking the floor nights. ”

WARREN HUTCHERSON –“In school you were told that in case of fire you have to line up in a single file from smallest to tallest. What was the logic? Do tall people bum slower?”

WARREN THOMAS –“It’s relaxing to go out with my ex-wife because she already knows I’m an idiot. ”

WASHINGTON LIVING –“Great minds have purposes; others have wishes. ”

WASSILY KANDINSKY –“Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, and the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul. ”

WAYNE DYER – “In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people. ”

WAYNE DYER – “You are always a worthwhile human being not because anybody says so, not because you’re successful, not because you make a lot of money, but because you decide to believe it and for no other reason. ”

WAYNE DYER –“A real friend never gets in your way- unless you happen to be on the way down. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Advance confidently in the direction of your own dreams to live the life that you have imagined. That’s when you have success. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now; you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Examine the labels you apply to yourself. Every label is a boundary or limit you will not let yourself cross. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Feelings are not just emotions that happen to you. Feelings are reactions you choose to have. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Forgiveness is an act of self-love. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Happiness is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it. ”

WAYNE DYER –“I am realistic. I expect miracles. ”

WAYNE DYER –“I cannot always control what goes on outside, but I can always control what goes on Inside. ”

WAYNE DYER –“If you want to materialize more prosperity, then start the process of thinking abundantly and acting that way also. Give) thanks for all that has manifested in your life. Examine ways in which to be grateful and take some risks, knowing that what you want to attract is already an energy that you share. Buy yourself something special and ; donate something to Someone less fortunate, even if your ego balks!”

WAYNE DYER –“In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Look at yourself as someone who is reaching for healing, and at the complexity of what needs to be healed. Do not think that you exist alone without other human beings of equal complexity. ”

WAYNE DYER –“No one can create anger or stress within you. Only you can do that by virtue of how you process your world. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Positive thoughts keep you in harmony with the universe. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Practice being kind rather than being right. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Real magic in your relationship means the absence of judgment of one another. ”

WAYNE DYER –“The only evidence of life is growth. ”

WAYNE DYER –“There is a power within you that allows you to form a thought or picture. This is the energy of attraction that is in all creative processes. In using this power you are not in any way attempting to interfere with the laws of nature. You are fulfilling the laws. This undifferentiated power is the basis for the mysterious attraction that draws your desires to you. ”

WAYNE DYER –“There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Thoughts, when properly nourished and internalized, will become a reality in your world of form. Thoughts are extremely powerful things. ”

WAYNE DYER –“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself. ”

WAYNE DYER –“When you think positive, happy, loving thoughts, there’s a different chemistry that goes into your body than when you think depressing, negative, anguished thoughts. The way you decide to think has a dramatic effect on your chemistry and on your physiology. ”

WAYNE DYER –“You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. ”

WAYNE DYER –“You cannot be lonely if you Iike the person you’re alone with. ”

WAYNE DYER –“You don’t need anything to experience prosperity. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live, rather than what all you say. ”

WAYNE DYER –“Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say. ”

WAYNE DYER R –“I can not always control what goes on outside, but I can always control what goes on inside. ”

By Mamnoon Ahmad Khan

Introduction

I clearly remember that thirty years back I haven’t heard the word terrorism or terrorist. There was only one term in use which was Israel’s aggression on Arabs and Palestinians. But after the Russian (formerly USSR) invasion on Afghanistan, the scenario changed. Russian brutalities were not hidden from the world. They not only destroy this independent country but they destroy its future generations. On many villages after killing their inhabitants they crushed the whole village with bulldozers. Even they did not forgive innocent children. Russians threw toy bombs in towns and villages from helicopters and when a child found it and started to play with it blew up. As a result so many Afghan children died or became handicapped.  

Soviet Aggression in Soviet-Afghan War

Over 1 million Afghans were killed. 15 million Afghans fled to Pakistan and Iran, 1/3 of the prewar population of the country. Another 2 million Afghans were displaced within the country. In the 1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan. 2 Along with fatalities were 1. 2 million Afghans disabled with the blessings of the Russian  landmines (mujahedeen, government soldiers and noncombatants) and 3 million maimed or wounded (primarily noncombatants). 3

Irrigation systems, crucial to agriculture in Afghanistan’s arid climate were destroyed by aerial bombing and strafing by Soviet or government forces. In the worst year of the war, 1985, well over half of all the farmers who remained in Afghanistan had their fields bombed, and over one quarter had their irrigation systems destroyed and their livestock shot by Soviet or government troops, according to a survey conducted by Swedish relief experts 4

The population of Afghanistan’s second largest city, Kandahar, was reduced from 200,000 before the war to no more than 25,000 inhabitants, following a months-long campaign of carpet bombing and bulldozing by the Soviets and Afghan communist soldiers in 1987. 5Land mines had killed 25,000 Afghans during the war and another 10-15 million land mines, most planted by Soviet and government forces, were left scattered throughout the countryside to kill and maim. 6 A great deal of damage was done to the civilian children population by land mines. A 2005 report estimated 3-4% of the Afghan population was disabled due to Soviet and government land mines. In the city of Quetta, a survey of refugee women and children taken shortly after the Soviet withdrawal found over 80% of the children refugees unregistered and child mortality at 31%. Of children who survived, 67% were severely malnourished, with malnutrition increasing with age. 7

Critics of Soviet and Afghan government forces describe their effect on Afghan culture as working in three stages: first, the center of customary Afghan culture, Islam, was pushed aside; second, Soviet patterns of life, especially amongst the young, were imported; third, shared Afghan cultural characteristics were destroyed by the emphasis on so-called nationalities, with the outcome that the country was split into different ethnic groups, with no language, religion, or culture in common. 8

The Geneva Accords of 1988, which ultimately led to the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in early 1989, left the Afghan government in ruins. The accords had failed to address adequately the issue of the post-occupation period and the future governance of Afghanistan. The assumption among most Western diplomats was that the Soviet-backed government in Kabul would soon collapse; however, this was not to happen for another three years. During this time the Interim Islamic Government of Afghanistan (IIGA) was established in exile. The exclusion of key groups such as refugees and Shias, combined with major disagreements between the different mujahedeen factions, meant that the IIGA never succeeded in acting as a functional government. 9

Before the war, Afghanistan was already one of the world’s poorest nations. The prolonged conflict left Afghanistan ranked 170 out of 174 in the UNDP’s Human Development Index, making Afghanistan one of the least developed countries in the world. 10

 Once the Soviets withdrew, US interest in Afghanistan ceased. The US decided not to help with reconstruction of the country and instead they handed over the interests of the country to US allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Pakistan quickly took advantage of this opportunity and forged relations with warlords and later theTaliban, to secure trade interests and routes. From wiping out the country’s trees through logging practices, which has destroyed all but 2% of forest cover country-wide, to substantial uprooting of wild pistachio trees for the exportation of their roots for therapeutic uses, to opium agriculture, the past ten years have caused much ecological and agrarian destruction. 11

Captain Tarlan Eyvazov, a soldier in the Soviet forces during the war, stated that the Afghan children’s future is destined for war. Eyvazov said, “Children born in Afghanistan at the start of the war. . . have been brought up in war conditions, this is their way of life. ” Eyvazov’s theory was later strengthened when the Taliban movement developed and formed from orphans or refugee children who were forced by the Soviets to flee their homes and relocate their lives in Pakistan. The swift rise to power, from the young Taliban in 1994, was the result of the disorder and civil war that had warlords running wild because of the complete breakdown of law and order in Afghanistan after the departure of the Soviets. 12

Israeli  Brutalities since the Arab-Isreal War 1967

       According to eyewitness accounts by Israeli officers and journalists, the Israeli Army – the army that claims to hold itself to a higher moral standard than other armies – executed as many as 1,000 Arab prisoners during the 1967 war.

Historian Gabby Bron wrote in the Yediot Ahronot in Israel that he witnessed Israeli troops executing Egyptian prisoners on the morning of June 8, 1967, in the Sinai town of El Arish.

Bron reported that he saw about 150 Egyptian POWs being held at the El Arish airport where they were sitting on the ground, densely crowded together with their hands held on the back of their necks. Every few minutes, Bron writes, Israeli soldiers would escort an Egyptian POW from the group to a hearing conducted by two men in Israeli army uniforms. Then the man would be taken away, given a spade, and forced to dig his own grave.

I watched as (one) man dug a hole for about 15 minutes, Bron wrote. Afterwards, the (Israeli military) policeman told him to throw the shovel away, and then one of them leveled an Uzi at him and shot two short bursts, each of three or four bullets.

Bron says he witnessed about ten such executions, until the grave was filled. Then an Israeli Colonel threatened him with a revolver, forcing him to leave the area.

The reality is that Israel encouraged and then took advantage of that war for many political, economic, and territorial reasons. To grab these advantages, Israel attacked on Syria and captured the Golan in the last days of the war.

Sabra and Shatila Massacre Sep. 16, 1982

Today, 27 years later, Israeli aggression against Palestinians continues.

The scars left by the Sabra and Shatila massacres are indescribable. Photo courtesy: Piotr_360

On Sept. 16, 1982, members of the Lebanese Christian Phalange militia – with direct approval and support of then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon – entered Sabra and Shatila and initiated a 36-hour long assault, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of unarmed Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Journalist Robert Fisk, who was on the scene on September 19, 1982, reported seeing the “blackened bodies of babies tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded U. S. army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey. ”

The infants had been shot in the head. Some had had their throats slit. Scores of men had been shot in the back of the head or mutilated by axes. Women had been raped. Pregnant women had fetuses torn from their bodies.

The United Nations, which issued a formal declaration of genocide in 1982, also calls the Sabra and Shatila massacre one of the most heinous events in the 20th century.

How many died is not known, but figures range from about 1,000 to at least 3,500, a number estimated by the late Israeli journalist Amnon Kapeliouk.

“The exact figure (of victims) can never be determined because, in addition to the approximately 1,000 people who were buried in communal graves by the International Committee of the Red Cross or in the cemeteries of Beirut by members of their families, a large number of corpses were buried beneath bulldozed buildings by the militia members themselves,” wrote Dr. Laurie King-Irani, an adjunct professor of anthropology at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. “Also, particularly on 17 and 18 September, hundreds of people were carried away alive in trucks towards unknown destinations, never to return. ”

Dr. King-Irani also was the North American Coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice for the Victims of Sabra and Shatila, which hosted the Web site indictsharon. net.

Yet the perpetrators of the massacre were never brought to justice. An internal Israeli investigation called the Kahan Commission – which was political and not judicial – found Sharon to be indirectly but personally responsible. He resigned as defense minister but retained a government cabinet position. He served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006. A case that had been filed in November 2001 on behalf of some survivors against Sharon and others for committing war crimes under Belgium’s universal jurisdiction law was later rejected by a Belgian appeals court.

Sharon told the Israeli Knesset that the decision to send in the Phalangists had been made at 3:30 p. m. on Sept. 15. The Israeli Command received the instructions that the “mopping up of the camps will be carried out by the Phalanges or the Lebanese army,” Dr. King-Irani writes, citing the Kahan Commission report, page 125.

Today, 27 years later, Israeli aggression against Palestinians continues. Operation Cast Lead in December and January killed more than 1,400 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 5,300. Israel’s continuing siege has squeezed the 1. 5 million residents there into an inhumane and unthinkable crisis.

All the Muslims of the world should honor the victims and survivors of Sabra and Shatila by keeping their memories alive. Where their voices have been silenced, we must raise our voices loudly and clearly and call for an end to the brutal occupation of Palestine and for the right of refugees to return to their homeland.

The Jenin Massacre of April 2002

A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed. Its troops have caused devastation in the centre of the Jenin refugee camp, reached yesterday by The Independent, where thousands of people are still living amid the ruins.

A residential area roughly 160,000 square yards about a third of a mile wide has been reduced to dust. Rubble has been shovelled by bulldozers into 30ft piles. The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust, under a field of debris, criss-crossed with tank and bulldozer treadmarks.

In one nearby half-wrecked building, gutted by fire, lies the fly-blown corpse of a man covered by a tartan rug. In another we found the remains of 23-year-old Ashraf Abu Hejar beneath the ruins of a fire-blackened room that collapsed on him after being hit by a rocket. His head is shrunken and blackened. In a third, five long-dead men lay under blankets.

A quiet. sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis led us across the wasteland, littered now with detritus of what were once households, foam rubber, torn clothes, shoes, tin cans, children’s toys. He suddenly stopped. This was a mass grave, he said, pointing.

We stared at a mound of debris. Here, he said, he saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank. We could not see the bodies. But we could smell them.

A few days ago, we might not have believed Kamal Anis. But the descriptions given by the many other refugees who escaped from Jenin camp were understated, not, as many feared and Israel encouraged us to believe, exaggerations. Their stories had not prepared me for what I saw yesterday. I believe them now.

Until two weeks ago, there were several hundred tightly-packed homes in this neighbourhood called Hanat al-Hawashim. They no longer exist.

Around the central ruins, there are many hundreds of half-wrecked homes. Much of the camp — once home to 15,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war — is falling down. Every wall is speckled and torn with bullet holes and shrapnel, testimony of the awesome, random firepower of Cobra and Apache helicopters that hovered over the camp.

Building after building has been torn apart, their contents of cheap fake furnishings, mattresses, white plastic chairs spewed out into the road. Every other building bears the giant, charred, impact mark of a helicopter missile. Last night there were still many families and weeping children still living amid the ruins, cut off from the humanitarian aid. Ominously, we found no wounded, although there was a report of a man being rescued from beneath ruins only an hour before we arrived.

Those who did not flee the camp, or not detained by the army, have spent the bombardment in basements, enduring day after day of terror. Some were forced into rooms by the soldiers, who smashed their way into houses through the walls. The UN says half of the camp’s 15,000 residents were under 18. As the evening hush fell over these killing fields, we could suddenly hear the children chattering. The mosques, once so noisy at prayer time, were silent.

Israel was still trying to conceal these scenes yesterday. It had refused entry to Red Cross ambulances for nearly a week, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Yesterday it continued to try to keep us out.

Jenin, in the northern end of the occupied West Bank, remained a closed military zone, was ringed Merkava tanks, army Jeep patrols, and armoured personnel carriers. Reporters caught trying to get in were escorted out. A day earlier the Israeli armed forces took in a few selected journalists to see sanitised parts of the camp. We simply walked across the fields, flitted through an olive orchard overlooked by two Israeli tanks, and into the camp itself.

We were led in by hands gesturing at windows. Hidden, whispering people directed us through narrow alleys they thought were clear. When there were soldiers about, a finger would rise in warning, or a hand waved us back. We were welcomed by people desperate to tell what had occurred. They spoke of executions, and bulldozers wrecking homes with people inside. This is mass murder committed by Ariel Sharon, Jamel Saleh, 43, said. We feel more hate for Israel now than ever. Look at this boy. He placed his hand on the tousled head of a little boy, Mohammed, the eight-year-old son of a friend. He saw all this evil. He will remember it all. So will everyone else who saw the horror of Jenin refugee camp. Palestinians who entered the camp yesterday were almost speechless.

Rajib Ahmed, from the Palestinian Energy Authority, came to try to repair the power lines. He was trembling with fury and shock. This is mass murder. I have come here to help by I have found nothing but devastation. Just look for yourself. All had the same message: tell the world.

Recent Israeli aggression in Gaza

Israel has perpetrated an unprecedented barbaric slaughter on defenseless civil Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel’s intent seems to have been not only the destruction of some locations in the Gaza Strip, but the annihilation of Gaza and the burial of its population under piles of rubbles and blood lakes.

The time chosen by Israel to launch its aggression mounts anxiety amongst Arabs.

Worldwide concerns about the deep financial crisis, the transitional period in the White House, and Hamas’s declaration of the end of its truce with Israel without any Palestinian or Arab support that may halt Israel’s hostile intentions, all trigger anxiety that Israel is preparing for the worst to terrorize the entire Arab region.

Israel launched its aggression on Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008 on three stages:

Stage One: Air bombardment as of Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 2, 2009. Stage Two: Ground attack as of Jan. 3 to 10, 2009. Stage Three: Starting on Jan. 10 with advance inside large cities, occupying more  territories and setting a buffer zone along the borders of the Strip, which finally ended on Jan. 18.

Throughout the three stages, more than 1300 people have been killed and more than 5300 injured of which more than a half are women, children, and aged persons.  

Blame the Victim, Not the Aggressor US Foreign Minister, Condoleeza Rice accused Hamas for the violence. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon could only express “deep alarm,” and where was Barack Obama? An AP photo showed him on vacation “working out” at the Semper Fit Center at the Marine Corp Base Hawaii in Kailua, Hawaii on Saturday, and CBS News reported that he’s “closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time,” according to Brooke Anderson, his chief national security spokesperson. In a July 2008 interview, The New York Times asked Obama if Israel should negotiate with Hamas in Gaza. He replied that “I don’t think any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens. . . . I expect Israelis to do (all they can to stop them). . . . In terms of negotiating with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, (and) has consistently used terror as a weapon. Hamas is a terrorist organization. . . . it’s hard for Israel to negotiate with a country like that. “Hamas was democratically elected. It’s the legitimate Palestinian government. It’s falsely called a terrorist organization, and it has every right to resist an illegal occupation under international law. It observed a unilateral ceasefire for months and extended peace overtures numerous times in the past. Israel spurned them by dividing Gaza and the West Bank, co-opting Mamoud Abbas, inciting Fatah against Hamas, isolating Gaza, and pursuing a policy of aggression, killings, targeted assassinations, mass incarcerations, and torture with full support from Washington, the West, and (from his comments above) the incoming Obama administration. The UN Refugee Works Relief Agency’s (UNWRA) operations head for Palestinian refugees, John Ging, expressed outraged on what’s happening. Earlier he said: Gazans got nothing from the months of ceasefire. There was no “restoration of a dignified existence. We had our supplies restricted (during the period) to the point where we were left in a very vulnerable and precarious position” with very little food left until it ran out. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) campaigns for Palestinian justice in areas of civil, human and political rights according to international law. Along with the Palestine Return Centre (PRC), the Palestinian Forum of Britain (PFB), the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), Stop the War, Friends of al Aqsa, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and Respect, Islamic Human Rights Commission it organized emergency protests opposite Israel’s London Embassy on December 28 and 29 to demand an end of the Gaza siege and ongoing aggression. The urgency was highlighted by saying: Israel’s Cynicism (Is) Supported by the West’s Complicity” as it called for public solidarity to end it. For her part, Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni ordered the Ministry to “take emergency measures (to) open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign,” according to Haaretz. In other words, Israel will spin its wanton aggression into justifiable self-defense and get dominant media help to sell it. On December 27, The New York Times took the lead. It reported that “Israeli airstrikes hit Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire. . . . Israeli military officials (called the attack) an effort to force Hamas to end its rocket barrages into southern Israel. Thousands of Israelis hurried into bomb shelters amid the hail of rockets,” making it seem like Israel resembled London during the blitz when, in fact, Hamas attacks are mere pin pricks and only respond to first-strike Israeli attacks. The Times and dominant media are silent on this. They continue spreading spurious lies about Hamas being “officially committed to Israel’s destruction, and when it won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and then ‘forcibly’ took over Gaza in 2007, it said it would not recognize Israel, honor previous Palestinian Authority commitments to it, or end its violence against Israelis. “All of the above is untrue. The Times continues to report falsely. Hamas wants peace, has repeatedly been conciliatory, and its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said earlier that armed struggle would end “if the Zionists ended (their) occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians. “Israel rejects all overtures. More recently, Hamas offered peace and Israeli recognition in return for a Palestinian state inside pre-1967 borders – its Occupied Territories that it’s entitled to under international law. As early as 1988, the PLO under Yasser Arafat accepted a two-state solution with Palestinians willing to settle for only 22% of their pre-1948 homeland – a generous offer that, if accepted, would have had two sovereign states living peacefully alongside each other as neighbors. Israel rejects this out of hand. It chooses dominance over peace, violence over reconciliation, and imperial conquest above the rule of law. It’s colonizing the West Bank, ethnically cleansing the population, and continues to terrorize Gaza. “The newspaper of record” is selective about “fit news to print,” so uncomfortable truths are suppressed. It reported that one Israeli was killed Saturday and another four wounded, one seriously, but didn’t explain that previous rocket attacks caused no deaths or injuries. After many months of siege compounded by ongoing attacks, Gaza is gravely affected, but so is the West Bank. Under the Fatah government, no rockets are launched, yet Israel maintains a violent occupation, continues to seize Palestinian land, expand its illegal settlements, and lets its residents terrorize Palestinians with impunity, even in cases of wanton killings and destruction of property.

 US administration supports Israeli aggression against Gaza

 On 31 December, Associated Press reported that the UN Security Council had held an emergency meeting on an Arab request for a legally binding and enforceable UN resolution that would condemn Israel and seek to force the Zionist state to stop its military attacks on Gaza. The draft resolution also called for the immediate protection of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the opening of border crossings for humanitarian aid. But the draft, which was presented by Libya on behalf of the 22-member Arab League, was immediately rejected by the United States as “unbalanced”. Despite this US veto, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer, told Associated Press that Arab nations would be working “day and night” to get the UN Security Council’s approval for a binding resolution in the announced terms. As with the 2006 war in Lebanon, the government of President George W. Bush has strongly supported the Israeli attack on Gaza. White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe even called Hamas “nothing but thugs”. Moreover, the US administration has been working to block all diplomatic proposals for a cease-fire in order to give Israel the green light to increase its attacks on Gaza. While Israeli fighters, warships and artillery continued to destroy civilian buildings, bridges and mosques, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice did not hesitate to blame Hamas for the Israeli aggression and showed US backing for Israel’s rejection of cease-fire initiatives from the European Union and several Arab capitals. Washington and Israel did not accept the victory of Hamas in the 2006 parliamentary election. In June 2007, they promoted a coup d’état to bring down the national unity government that Fatah and Hamas had previously set up during their negotiations in Jeddah. The coup failed and from then on, the Bush administration backed the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip, which has often prevented 1. 5 million Palestinians from receiving food, fuel, medicines and so forth. The goal of this blockade is to make life for the people of Gaza so intolerable that the Hamas administration will fall. The United States is not only protecting Israel in the diplomatic front but it has also given Israel some weapons that have been used on the Palestinians, including the GBU-39 missile — a new bunker-buster weapon. Israel received 1,000 missiles of this type in early December in addition to the 3 billion dollars a year in US military aid, including F-16 fighters and Apache helicopters and the fuel and spare parts needed to keep them in operation. Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Palestinians (scores of them children), while the US Administration continues to insist that Hamas is “responsible” for the fighting. US President Barack Obama’s Senior Adviser, David Axelrod repeated the same lies as President George W. Bush: that Hamas had been the first to break the ceasefire agreement. Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi agreed. She issued a statement concerning the Israeli aggression on Gaza in which she wrote, “When Israel is attacked, the US must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally. ” On the night of November 4, the day of the US election, Israel fired missiles on Gaza. It then continued to bomb Gaza over the following six weeks killing dozens of Palestinians. “The escalation towards war could, and should, have been avoided. It was the State of Israel which broke the truce, in the tunnel raid . . . two months ago,” the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom wrote in a press release. The army continued its calculated raids and killings. The truth is that the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza is a crime against humanity for which not only the Israeli government but also the American one bears full responsibility. In fact, for the US to support and be an accomplice in Israeli war crimes is serving a far more strategic purpose. What it is actually doing is setting up a “new order” in the Middle East which will ensure continued US domination in the region and control over its oil resources. Israel is but a small partner in this bloody effort. The US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats against Iran and Syria and the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006 are all part of this US application of the Israeli doctrine to dominate and divide the Arab and Muslim worlds. In spite of all this military and diplomatic support, the officials of the US Administration fear a possible Israeli failure, similar to what happened in Lebanon in 2006 and have urged Israel to settle a timetable and exit strategy, foreign diplomats told the Los Angeles Times. “US officials are concerned that the campaign could drag on without destroying Hamas, and might even bolster support for the militant group – just as the Israeli campaign in Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah. You are not hearing that same confidence you did in 2006 that the Israeli military can impose a new strategic reality,” said one Arab diplomat in Washington. According to numerous observers, the war will weaken the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas and strengthen his Hamas rivals, even though Israel will continue its Gaza invasion. The fighting has also ruined the already damaged reputation of the US-backed regimes of Egypt and Jordan, both of which have diplomatic relations with Israel and are regarded by the Arab people as corrupt and accomplices in the Israeli aggression. The stability of these regimes is seriously threatened. Some observers believe that Israel wanted to create an international crisis at a time when Obama was on the verge of becoming the US President, in order to gauge the new Obama government’s sensibilities to the killing of Palestinians. Israel wanted to determine Obama’s policies even before they are decided by his administration in order to make it complicit in its crimes against the Palestinians. Obama’s submission to Israel has been put in doubt by the Israeli media. In March 2007 Obama told a small gathering of Democratic activists in Iowa: “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people. ” The comment made headlines and earned him the outrage of pro-Israel groups. As a candidate in the recent presidential election, Obama changed his tone and said that Israel had the “right” to full sovereignty over all of Al Quds (Jerusalem), a position that guarantees that there will not be a lasting peace in the region, as Arabs and Muslims will never renounce their legitimate rights to the city. Obama’s right-hand man, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, is a rabid Zionist who worked for the Israeli army during the 1991 [Persian] Gulf War. Now, these measures were seen as a means to avoid criticism by the influential pro-Israeli lobby in Washington, which has deeply infiltrated both the US Republican and the Democratic parties. Obama’s initial reaction to the Gaza massacre was “no comment”. This has led many people to start wondering if his self-declared principles of safety and dignity are also going to be applied to the Palestinian people. There is no doubt that the United States will pay a high price for its support of Israel’s state terrorism. Many protesters from all over the world are burning US flags and showing their complete rejection of US policies that promote Zionist terror. Although US mainstream media, which are under Zionist or corporate control, continue to falsify the reality regarding the extent of Israeli aggression and occupation, the internet and satellite channels of the Muslim world are offering professional coverage of the developments in Palestine. Washington’s continued support for Israeli crimes will lead any initiative aimed at recovering its destroyed credibility in the Muslim and Arab worlds to failure.

How the CIA created Taliban and Osama bin Laden

 Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden’s notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?

In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today’s supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy war against the “evil empire”, was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The “evil empire” was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities — the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New York and Washington on September 11 — bin Laden the “freedom fighter” is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass media as a “terrorist mastermind” and an “evil-doer”.

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt — and perhaps the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

Mujaheddeen

In April 1978, the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country’s repressive government.

The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan’s relationship with the Soviet Union.

Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organising resistance to the government’s progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.

Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government’s radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujahedeen, as the “contra” force was known.

Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan’s leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government’s fall. This only galvanised the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a “national liberation” struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.

The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujahedeen captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.

Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujahedeen factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.

Washington’s policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread religious fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilise the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski’s grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq’s own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the “Islamic revolution” that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979).

Washington’s favoured mujahedeen faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West’s distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavoury “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.

After the mujahedeen took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar’s forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujahedeen from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world’s single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.

In 1995, the former director of the CIA’s operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. . . There was a fall out in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan. ”

Made in the USA

According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA Chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).

John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujahidin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA’s spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.

The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden’s operatives” in 1989.

These “operatives” were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar’s forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army’s elite Green Berets.

The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved plan called “Operation Cyclone”.

In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujahedeen factions by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services — MAK).

MAK was a front for Pakistan’s CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of MAK.

Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to bomb New York landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.

The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was also part of Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA’s approval. A confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center blast, the Independent reported.

Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate, arrived in Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and business tycoon, bin Laden specialised in recruiting, financing and training the estimated 35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujahidin.

The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling class, with close personal, financial and political ties to that country’s pro-US royal family.

Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia’s minister of public works as a favour by King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies lucrative contracts to rebuild Islam’s holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the process, the bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world’s largest private construction company.

Osama bin Laden’s father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the dividends from this ill-gotten business empire.

(Bin Laden junior’s oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million has been arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today’s value of the bin Laden family net worth — estimated to be US$5 billion — by the number of bin Laden senior’s sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family disowned Osama and took control of his share. )

Osama’s military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing of the bin Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close working relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his activities.

Milt Bearden, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, admitted to the January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin Laden, “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did . . . [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It’s an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden did. ”

In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built “training camps”, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.

These camps, now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.

Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujahedeen told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns . . . Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate. ”

Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden’s organisation, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company — albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with “legitimate” business operations.

Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980s — fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is his primary customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today, his services are utilised primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.

Bin Laden only became a “terrorist” in US eyes when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be stationed on Saudi soil following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War, bin Laden’s anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi Arabia and other regimes — such as Egypt — in the Middle East were puppets of the US, just as the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet Union.

He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the duty of all Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf States. In 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were frozen.

After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He refurbished the camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the facilities and services — and thousands of his mercenaries — to the Taliban, which took power that September.

Today, bin Laden’s private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a key prop of the Taliban regime.

Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical.

In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujahedeen, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden would become.

“It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union. ”

Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military retaliation.

Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since the attack has been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of “counter-terrorism operations”.

Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their “work”. He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980s. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan mujahedeen for the US National Security Council.

The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: “What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Conclusion

A moment’s thought would show that any invasion that replaced the Taliban with a western puppet in Kabul would merely restore the Taliban as champions of Afghan sovereignty. The Americans sponsored them to be just such a puppet in the 1980s, funding some 60,000 foreign mercenaries to join them against the Russians. Intervention reaps what it sows.

Americans don’t want to acknowledge their mistakes but this is realty that [currently] Americans have made Taliban look like illegitimate child.  It was the Pakistani ISI with the blessing of CIA, who brainwashed Taliban when they were small kids living in the Tents in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, next to Afghanistan. They taught them to hate Russians. They taught them to fight, and they didn’t teach them anything else. Then they were just children growing up in Pakistan. And they are the ones who made them very religious and they are the ones who made them terrorists. They are the ones to teach them kill people and they did not teach them anything else.

Now America is savagely killing her own made Taliban without any mercy as they are non living things. These killings comprised of Taliban and a large number of Pakistani and Afghani civilians.

America has spread the circle of its drone attacks to Pakistan Administered Tribal Areas in the doubt of Taliban hideouts. Resulting a heavy loss of civilian lives consisting of innocent women and children while no or few Taliban causalities. The remaining members of these ill-fated families bearing fire of revenge in their hearts became suicide bombers. These suicide bobbers commonly known as terrorists, attack Pakistani forces and civilians causing heavy loss of life and property. Pakistan is paying an unbearable price for killing her own people (American made Taliban) in the so called War against Terror. America has injected terrorism in the form of Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort to defeat Russia. Now this jinni of Aladdin (Taliban) is out of the lamp while American and Pakistani forces are not capable enough to put this jinni back into the lamp. If military operations against Taliban succeeded in restoring law and order in the region it would not be durable. Dialogue and a policy of tolerance is the only way to win the hearts of these Pukhtoons, otherwise the history showed us that they are born fighters and no military might is capable to subdue them. In the light of all historical facts I come to this conclusion that Israel, Russia and America are equally responsible of recent wave of terrorism which has engulfed the major portion of Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan. If American policy makers don’t react on time then these acts of terrorism can happen any where around the globe!!

Notes

10.    Panetta L. (2002) Collateral Damage and the uncertainty of Afghanistan. Daily Dawn Karachi August 17, 2002.

11.    Kirby, A. (2003). War ‘has ruined Afghan environment. ‘  National Journal of Environment, Fall 2007edition,(p. 75)

12.   Hauner, M. (1989). Afghanistan and the Soviet Union: Collision and transformation. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. (p. 51)

Should a woman carry a gun for protection?

was originally written by MANASEE WAGH at Bucks County Courier Times.

Half of Steve Rementer’s students at the shooting range are women these days. In fact, he has designed his course around teaching women how to shoot firearms in self-defense.

“If a woman can protect herself, it’s the first line of defense. She is 30 to 40 percent more likely to be attacked than a man,” said Rementer, a police firearms instructor at Pistol People, a shooting range in Bensalem, and a Philadelphia police officer for 30 years. He said he’s met many women who have been raped and attacked.

“Women are better students than men. They are more focused, and they don’t want to be victimized. Every woman I could teach, I would. ” The National Sporting Goods Association reported In 2006 that 50 percent more women are now target shooting. The association attributed rising gun ownership in part to self-defense.

The National Rifle Association has several women’s programs, including teaching women how to shoot. Web sites selling defense gear to women have been popping up sellings tasers, stun guns and pepper spray. Three women at southern university campuses were slain within one week recently.

The body of Lauren Burk, 18, an Auburn University student, was found five miles from the campus. Eve Marie Carson, a 22-year-old attending the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, was shot and killed. And Katharine Wood, 24, a senior at the University of Arkansas, was shot dead in her off-campus apartment.

Last April, 32 people at Virginia Tech were murdered by a mentally unstable gunman. A failed 2006 bill would have allowed students who have a concealed weapon permit to carry firearms anywhere on a Virginia campus. The Bureau of Justice’s research shows that in 2005 alone, 5. 2 million crimes of violence were committed in this country.

In Bucks County, more people are getting gun permits. In 2006, 4,874 gun permits were issued. The number jumped to 5,392 in 2007, according to the sheriff’s office. In the first two months of this year, the county issued nearly 1,000 permits. While Sheriff Edward J. Donnelly did not have gender statistics, he said the percentage of gun permits issued to women probably has stayed at about 10 percent to 11 percent for years.

People interviewed in Lower Bucks expressed differing opinions about gun permits for women.

William Miller of Levittown said he worries when his girlfriend goes to Philadelphia alone.

“I recently told her to take a can of Mace into the city. It’s dangerous,” he said. Some said that people would face less risk if strangers think they may be carrying lethal weapons.

“We have the right to bear arms by the Constitution,” said John Chester of Trenton. “Law-abiding citizens are sane enough to use them just for self-defense, as opposed to criminals. Law enforcement can’t be everywhere. You need the ability to fight back. ”

However, Susan Perry, who was visiting Yardley from New Jersey, said she is against women carrying guns. “They should bring Mace, or anything they can use to protect themselves. ”

Her husband said even a knife would be better than carrying a gun. “And never walk alone. Take a defensive action course,” he said. Some agreed avoiding risk is best.

“There’s safety in numbers,” said Lucy Sanderson of Falls. “I’m not sure if a woman should be carrying a gun. And education is the key — how to defend yourself besides using a weapon. ”

She liked a recent citizens’ police academy workshop in Bristol Township, which taught people ways to avoid an attack. Like checking the back seat of your car before you climb in and not bringing your pocketbook into a mall during the holiday shopping rush. Brian Buchanan of Bristol Township agreed.

“When someone has a weapon, it’s too risky. I’m not in favor of people arming themselves. That’s something for law enforcement,” he said. As the brother of five sisters and uncle to nieces, Buchanan was concerned.

“But the best way is not to attack a violent criminal. We should have more security patrolling the streets,” he said.

Mary Morse, a professor of women’s studies and English at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N. J. , said she’s thought about it a lot. But she’d never buy a gun to defend herself, said the Morrisville resident.

“I feel the same about Tasers. Pepper spray is the furthest I’ll go. I’ve discussed it with my students, though I’m not sure they would all agree. ” Her husband, Steve Morse, thinks the same way.

Regardless of what type of protection you need, it is clear that the discussion is a strong and ongoing one, and the decision as to how to protect yourself – especially if you are a woman – is a personal choice.

by: Andres Montejo, Esq.

A question was posed. . .

I am a resident alien, and I am interested in filing for Bankruptcy. I am also interested in applying for citizenship. Will the Bankruptcy have an effect on my application for citizenship?

The simple answer is NO. In general one cannot be denied citizenship because of a financial hardship that ended in the filing for Bankruptcy.

But citizenship is handled by another part of the Federal Government. While Bankruptcy is handled by the judicial part of the Federal Government, applications for citizenships are handled by the Department of Homeland Security.

Citizenship, may be denied by crimes of moral turpitude, and an example of some of those include:

 Crimes Against The Person

Murder/Intentional HomicideVoluntary ManslaughterHomicide by Reckless ConductInvoluntary Manslaughter w/ Reckless DisregardAttempted MurderKidnapping MayhemAssault or Attempted Murder Upon Government OfficersCarrying a Concealed Weapon w/ Intent to Use  Against the Person of AnotherAssault w/ a Deadly WeaponAssault w/ Weapon Likely to Produce Bodily HarmInterfering w/ a Law Enforcement Officer  w/ Use of Deadly ForceAttempting to Obstruct/Impede the Progress  of JusticeAggravated Assault Against a Peace Officer

Crimes Against Property

Attempted ArsonBlackmail/ExtortionForgeryUttering a Forged Instrument/Forged PrescriptionMaking False Statements of Financial ConditionRobbers’EmbezzlementLarceny/TheftGrand theftPetty TheftReceiving Stolen PropertyConcealing Assets in BankruptcyEncumbering Mortgaged Property w/ Intent to DefraudFraudulently Issuing Check w/ Insufficient FundsFraudulently Issuing Worthless CheckIllegal use of ATM or Credit CardPassing Forged InstrumentAttempted FraudUsing Mails to DefraudMaking False Statements in Acquisition of FirearmSecurities FraudWelfare FraudTransporting Stolen PropertyObtaining Money by False PretensesBriberyMalicious Trespass

Sexual and Family Crimes

Assault w/ Intent to Commit AbortionAttempted Assault w/ Intent to Commit Carnal AbuseStatutory Rape/RapeIndecent Assault/Sexual BatteryAdulteryBigamyProstitutionSodomyGross IndecencyContributing to the Delinquency of a Minor/Sexual ActsTaking Indecent Liberties w/ a ChildIncestOral Sexual Perversion

Crimes Against the Government

Falsely Issuing a Narcotic PrescriptionOffering a BribeMaking, Passing, or Possessing Counterfeit CoinsConspiracy to Violate IRS LawsSecurities FraudCounterfeitingSmuggling MerchandiseImpersonating Federal OfficerFalse Statements/FirearmFalse Statements or EntriesHarboring a FugitiveUsing False Names & Addresses to Violate Postal LawsUttering/Selling False/Counterfeit Immigration DocumentsFalse Statements to Obtain a PassportFalse Statements in LPR ApplicationPerjuryTheft from U. S. MailTaking KickbacksReceiving Funds by False StatementsTrafficking in NarcoticsFailing to Report IncomeUnion Official Unlawfully Accepting a LoanKickbacks on Government ContractsFalse Statements/Selective ServiceFalsely Representing Social Security NumberFalse Statements/Unemployment Benefits

Filing for Bankruptcy certainly doesn’t fall in any of those previous categories. That being said, it is important that you have a well versed attorney before filing for Bankruptcy, since you could jeopardize your citizenship if you have committed any of the prior mentioned acts. It is possible that in a hearing or meeting during your bankruptcy proceeding, you are asked questions that may cause you to give answers, which could incriminate you, or spill over to your citizen application.

Please have an attorney and consult with him/her your specific situation before taking any affirmative steps in any direction.

Visit our website at www. andresmontejolaw. com. Call us at (305) 817-3677 or email us at info@andresmontejolaw. com.

Dinesh Kumar Agrawal, Ex-IRS

Khaitan & Co. , Mumbai

(article was published in Excise Law Times)

Section 104 of the Customs Act, 1962 (the â??Customs Actâ?) empowers the Commissioner of Customs to order arrest of a person for an offence punishable under Section 132, 133, 135, 135A and 136 of the Customs Act. In terms of sub-section (2) thereof, every person arrested under sub-section (1) is required to be taken to a magistrate without any delay. Sub-section (3) thereof confers same powers to customs officer for the purpose of releasing arrested person on bail as enjoyed by the police under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 (â??Codeâ?). In terms of sub-section (4) of the Section 104, offences under the Customs Act are non-cognizable. However, it has not been declared in the Customs Act as to whether said offences are bailable or non-bailable.

Punishable offences and quantum of punishment

Different kinds of offences under the Customs Act are punishable with varying amount of imprisonment or with fine or both. A summary of punishable offences and consequent punishments are given below: 

Section

Nature of offence

Punishment

132

Making false declaration, false documents, false statement etc.

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine, or with both

133

Obstructing the customs officer

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years or with fine, or with both

134

Refusal for screening of X-ray or medical procedure for detection and bringing out goods secreted inside body

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to six months, or with fine, or with both

135(1)

 

(a)    Misdeclaration of value or fraudulent evasion or attempt at evasion of any duty or of any prohibition on import or export of goods; or

(b)  Possession, carrying, removing, depositing, harbouring, keeping, concealing, selling or purchasing or dealing with prohibited goods

(c)    Attempts to export prohibited goods; or

(d)  Fraudulent availment or attempts to avail drawback or any exemption from duty on export:

See below

(i)    If the offence relates to,â??

(A) any goods the market price of which exceeds Rupees One crore; or

(B) the evasion or attempted evasion of duty exceeding Rupees Thirty lakh; or

(C) notified prohibited goods; or

(D) amount of drawback or exemption from duty exceeds Rupees Thirty lakh

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years and with fine

(ii)   If the offence relates to any other case

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both

135(2)

Second conviction under Section 135 or 136 of the Customs Act

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years and with fine

135A

Preparation to export any goods in contravention of the provisions of the Customs Act

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both

136

Offence committed by customs officers

Imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both

Provisions of Section 135 of the Customs Act have been amended by the Finance Act, 2003 (w. e. f. 14 May 2003) and recently by the Finance Act, 2007 (w. e. f. 11 May 2007). Prior to the amendment by the Finance Act, 2003, offences viz. fraudulent evasion or attempt at evasion of any duty or of any prohibition on goods or dealing with imported goods which were prohibited, and notified under Section 123 of the Customs Act and the market price of which exceeded Rupees One lakh were punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years and with fine. Other offences were punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both. There was a view that provisions of Section 135 were not applicable to cases involving duty free export goods or fraudulent availment of duty drawback or other export incentives. Therefore, provisions of Section 135 were amended to include offences pertaining to the export goods.

The Finance Act, 2007 substituted old provisions of Section 135(1) to make punishment more stringent in some case whereas in some other case quantum of punishment was reduced. Earlier, a maximum imprisonment of seven years was prescribed only for the following offences:

(A)       Offending goods were notified goods under Section 123; and

(B)       Market value of the offending goods exceeded Rupees One lakh.

In all other cases, maximum imprisonment prescribed was three years only. Since the majority of offences pertained to non-notified goods and therefore maximum prescribed imprisonment was three years only.

Now, pursuant to amendment by the Finance Act, 2007 offencesor evasion of customs duty or circumventing the prohibitions on import or export pertaining to the following goods are punishable with maximum imprisonment of seven years:

(A)       Market value of offending goods exceeds Rupees One crore; or

(B)       Evasion or attempted evasion of duty exceeds Rupees Thirty lakh; or

(C)       Offending goods are prohibited goods as notified by the Central Government; or

(D)       Cases of fraudulent drawback or other export incentives exceeding Rupees Thirty lakh.

In other words, offences for evasion of customs duty or circumventing the prohibitions on import or export pertaining to following goods are punishable with maximum imprisonment of three years:

(A)       Market value of goods is lower than Rupees One crore; and

(B)       Evasion or attempted evasion of duty is lower than Rupees Thirty lakh; and

(C)       Goods are not notified by the Central Government; and

(D)       Fraudulent claim of drawback or other export incentives is lower than Rupees Thirty lakh.

A comparison between the old and new provisions reveals that on one hand market value of the offending goods has been raised from Rupees One lakh to Rupees One Crore, whereas on the other hand goods other than goods notified under Section 123 have also been brought within the ambit of maximum imprisonment of seven years i. e. now, for a maximum imprisonment of seven years, it is not necessary that offending goods should be goods notified under Section 123 of the Customs Act. The new provisions are well in tune with the present economic scenario and to curb white collar crimes detected in recent years where there has been manifold raise in the cases of fraudulent claim of export incentives. However, it is surprising and intriguing to note that there was no mention either in the explanatory notes or memorandum to the budgetâ??2007 about these significant changes.

Bailable and Non-bailable offence

In terms of Section 2(a) of the Code, â??bailable offenceâ? means an offence which is shown as bailable in the First Schedule, or which is made bailable by any other law for the time being in force; and â??non-bailable offenceâ? means any other offence.

Although the Customs Act declares that offences under the Customs Act are non-cognizable, there is no declaration as to whether such offences are bailable or non-bailable. Offences against other laws are classified under Part II of the First Schedule to the Code. Relevant entries under Part II of the First Schedule to the Code are reproduced below:

Classification of offences against other laws:

Offence

Bailable or

Non-bailable

By what court triable

If punishment with death, imprisonment for life, or imprisonment for more than seven years

Non-bailable

Court of Session

If punishable with imprisonment for three years and upwards but not more than seven years

Ditto

First class Magistrate

If punishable with imprisonment for less than three years or with fine only

Bailable

Any Magistrate

Punishments with imprisonment for three years and upwards are classified as non-bailable offence and can be tried at the Magistrate of the first class. On the other hand, punishments with imprisonment for less than three years are classified as bailable offence and can be tried at any Magistrate.

Also, Section 138 of the Customs Act provides for summary trial by a Magistrate of the offences other than punishable under Section 135(1)(i) or 135(2) of the Customs Act.

Nature of offence under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act â?? A Dichotomy

The maximum imprisonment prescribed for offences under Section 132, 133, and 134 is for two years, therefore there is no qualm that these offences are bailable offences. In the case of offences under Section 135(1)(i) of the Customs Act, maximum punishment is seven years, therefore there is no qualm that these offences are non-bailable offences. In the past, there had been cases involving smuggling of gold or other notified goods where the prescribed maximum imprisonment was seven years and most of the courts have held that such offences were non-bailable.

The maximum imprisonment prescribed for offences under Section 135(1)(ii), 135A and 136 is for three years. The question whether offences under these sections are bailable or non-bailable is a contentious issue. The expression used â??which may extend to three yearsâ?? in Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act vis-à-vis relevant entries under Part II of the First Schedule to the Code has always been a bone of contention before various judicial forums. Each of them has interpreted this expression vividly at different occasions considering the law, facts and circumstances. Although there are plethora of judgments which discusses the nature of offence committed under Section 135(1)(ii), but every time the approach taken by judiciary is so diverged that it was almost impossible to ascertain the settled position under the law.

In the case of Mohan Lal Thapar v. Y. P. Dabara [2002 (143) ELT 44 (Del. )] the offence under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act was held as non-bailable offence. The Delhi High Court held that â??Controversy at hand mainly revolves around the interpretation and construction of the word â??forâ?? as used in the entries against the column of â??offenceâ?? in the Table. Word â??forâ?? used before the term of sentence of imprisonment in Table I if read with corresponding sections providing punishment, would clearly indicate that it refers to the term of sentence of imprisonment which may extend up to the period of punishment provided for the offence(s). Thus, the word â??forâ?? occurring before the words â??three years and upwards but not less than seven yearsâ?? in said second entry in Table II would include the offences under other laws wherein punishment may extend up to three years. The offences for which punishment provided may not go up to three years, only will be governed by third entry in Table II. â?

In the case of Subhash Chaudhary Vs Deepak Jyala and Ors. [2005 (179) ELT 0532 (Bombay)], offence under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act was held as bailable. The Bombay High Court held that â??â?¦. firstly, the said offence has been made a non-cognizable offence by virtue of the non obstante clause in Section 104(4) of the Customs Act. Secondly, it is triable â??summarilyâ? by a Magistrate by virtue of Section 138 of the Act. Moreover, Section 135(1)(ii) provides for punishment as imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both. Indeed, it is provided that imprisonment may extend to three years; but the same provision also provides for alternative punishment of fine (only) or imprisonment and fine both. The question is, merely because the punishment of imprisonment provided for is for a term which may extend to three years i. e. three years, does it mean that it will fall in Entry 2 of Part II of First Schedule of the Code and not in Entry 3 thereof. â? On examination of the Code, the court found non-cognizable offences punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years, have been treated on par with offences where imprisonment is for â??less than three yearsâ?, so as to make them bailable. Subsequently, same position was reiterated by the Bombay High Court in the case of Sangit Krishna Kumar Agrawal Vs UOI [2007 (219) ELT 0143 (Bom. )], and Kuresh Taherbhai Rajkotwala Vs UOI [2007 (209) ELT 0347 (Bom. )].

Even the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the case of Kulbhushan Goyal Vs Joint Commissioner of Customs [Crl. Misc. No. 71789-M/05] held that offence under Section 135(l) (ii) is a bailable offence.

On the other hand, Kerala High Court in the case of C. K. Boban Vs UOI [2005 CriLJ 2801], while interpreting the Section 135(1)(ii) held that â??the position would be clear from the second item in Part II of First Schedule to the Code which provides that if the offence is punishable with imprisonment for three years and upwards, the offence is non-bailable. The expression used is “three years and upwards” which would definitely include an offence punishable for a term upto three years. Part II of First Schedule is clear that if the offence is punishable for a term of three years and upwards, that offence is non-bailable. What is bailable is an offence punishable with imprisonment for a term of less than three years. The question can be answered in another way as well. Can you punish an accused with imprisonment for a term of three years under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act? If the answer is ‘yes’, then the second item in Part II of the First Schedule to the Code would apply. Obviously, the offence would be non-bailable in such a case. Therefore, the contention that the offence under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act is bailable does not deserve acceptance. That was the law as existed before the amendment carried out by the Finance Act, 2007. â?

Again, the Delhi High Court in the case of Inderjeet Nagpal Vs DRI [2006 (193) ELT 0408 (Del. )] and Lalit Goel Vs CCE [2008 (224) E. L. T. 216 (Del. )] has differed with views expressed by the Bombay High Court in Subhash Chaudhary (supra) and followed itâ??s earlier decision in Mohan Lal Thapar (supra).

It can be seen from the above discussion that apparently, there was no unanimity of views between various High Courts on the issue. However, there are some other enactments wherein identical provision for imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine or with both has been provided and discussed.

Comparison with other existing laws

In the case of Ranjit Kumar Bag Vs State of West Bengal, [2006 (1) CHN 445] the Calcutta High Court without examining the issue in detail accepted the finding of the lower court that punishment term which may extend to three years is a non-bailable offence and the term â??extending upto three yearsâ?? should fall in Part II to the Code.

In the case of Tapan Biswas Vs  State of Assam  [2001 (3) GLT 13], the Court held that in respect of offence under Section 7(1)(a) of the Cinematograph Act, which is punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years or with fine, is a bailable offence. For the purpose of interpreting this clause the Court had relied on the Supreme Court decision in Rajeev Chaudhary case (infra).

In the case of Hridyananda Sharma Vs State of Assam [2003 (27) PTC 219 (Gau)], the question came up before the Gauhati High Court was whether the offence punishable under Section 68A of the Copyright Act, provides for imprisonment which may extend to three years with fine is a bailable offence? The High Court dissented from the Tapan Biswas case (supra) and Rajeev Chaudhary case (supra) and stated that reliance on them was erroneous. The High Court stated that for an offence under Section 68A the punishment may be three years. Since the punishment can be for three years, it has to be held as non-bailable in the light of the contents of Part II of the First Schedule of the Code.

In the case of Amarnath Vyas Vs State of Andhra Pradesh [2007 CriLJ 2025], the question came up for consideration before the Andhra Pradesh High Court was whether the offence punishable under Section 63 of the Copyright Act providing for imprisonment for a term which shall not be less six months but which may extend to three years with prescribed fine is bailable offence? The Court analyzed the contentious provision of the Copyright Act with that of the Code in juxtaposition. The Court found that the expression â??punishment for a term which may extend to three yearsâ? under Copyright Act is certainly not similar to the expression â??punishment for three years and upwardsâ? of the Code and relied on the findings of Rajeev Chaudhury case (infra) and held that â??â?¦there may be certain other class of offences which may fall in between classification II and classification III of Part-II of First Schedule. Merely because they are not coming squarely within the domain of classification-III, they cannot automatically be treated as included in the classification-II. By default, they cannot be considered as coming within the purview of the classification-II. â?

Differing from the above position, the Kerala High Court in Sureshkumar Vs The Sub Inspector of Police [2007 (3) KLT 363], held that offence under Section 63 of the Copyright Act undoubtfully falls under Part II of the First Schedule making them non-bailable offence.

In view of the above, it is clear that even in other enactments also, there was a raging controversy.

Supreme Court of India

Supreme Court of India also in some occasions dealt with similar issues. In Rajeev Chaudhury Vs State (NCT), Delhi, [2001 (5) SCC 34] the moot question came up before the Supreme Court was regarding the interpretation and construction of the expression offence punishable with imprisonment â??for a term not less than ten yearsâ?? occurring in the proviso (a) to Section 167(2) of the Code in the context of the expression imprisonment â??which may extend to ten yearsâ?? occurring in Section 386 of Indian Penal Code, 1860 (â??IPCâ?), for an extortion case. The Court while interpreting both the clauses on terms of the punishment held that:

â??Hence in cases where offence is punishable with imprisonment for ten years or more, the accused could be detained up to a period of 90 days. In this context, the expression “not less than” would mean imprisonment should be ten years or more and would cover only those offences for which punishment could be imprisonment for a clear period of ten years or more. Under Section 386 punishment provided is imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years and also fine. That means, imprisonment can be for a clear period of ten years or less. Hence, it could not be said that minimum sentence would be ten years or more. Further, in context also if we consider Clause (i) of proviso (a) to Section 167(2), it would be applicable in case where investigation relates to an offence punishable (1) with death; (2) imprisonment for life; and (3) imprisonment for a term of not less than ten years. It would not cover the offence for which punishment could be imprisonment for less than ten years. Under Section 386 IPC, imprisonment can vary from minimum to maximum of ten years and it cannot be said that imprisonment prescribed is not less than ten yearsâ??.

The decision of Supreme Court clearly states that the expression â??imprisonment for a term not less than ten yearsâ? could not be equated with â??imprisonment for ten years or lessâ? and that the expression would cover only those offences which are punishable with imprisonment for a clear period of ten years or more. It is worthwhile to mention here that applicability of the instant case as precedent has been questioned in various cases as mentioned above, whereas, on the other hand other courts have taken it as the â??stepping stoneâ? for delivering judgment on the nature of offence under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act. The finding of instant case can be interpreted simply by saying that the duration in the form of upper and lower limit should be taken into consideration at the time of determining the nature of offence. For instance, if the statue provides for period of punishment â??which may extent to three yearsâ?, then the same will not fall into the category of punishment which includes a term of â??three years or moreâ?. The reason being that the former category has the maximum term prescribed as three years and the latter begins with it.

In the case of Alpesh Arvind Lal Gandhi Vs UOI [2006 (075) RLT 5 (SC)] a matter pertaining to anticipatory bail under the Customs Act, the Supreme Court had got the opportunity to examine the issue in details but without doing so the apex court granted temporary relief to the applicant. Further, the orders of Bombay High court in Subhash Chaudhary case and Sangit Krishna Kumar Agrawal case have been appealed by the Union of India vide appeal SR 5369-5370/2004 and SR 7194/2007 which has been duly admitted by the Apex Court, therefore the issue was kept in limbo.   

Avinash Bhosale, a builder from Pune was arrested by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (â??DRIâ?) at Mumbai Sahar Airport on 27 May 2007 for alleged smuggling of four diamond studded wrist watches worth more than Rupees Thirty lakh and branded spectacle frames, perfumes and other expensive consumer items worth more than Rupees Eleven lakh. The alleged duty evasion worked out to Rupees Seventeen lakh. Based on the facts available on arrest memo, it appears that the case falls under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act as firstly the cumulative value of offending goods were lower than Rupees One crore and secondly the duty allegedly evaded was lower than Rupees Thirty lakh. It is also pertinent to mention that Government of India is yet to issue a notification for goods falling under Section 135(1)(i)(C) as notification issued under Section 123 is not applicable for Section 135(1)(i)(C). However, prior to 11 May 2007, same offence would have fallen under Section 135(1)(i) for the simple reason that firstly watches are notified goods under Section 123 and secondly the value of offending watches were more than Rupees Two lakh.

Subsequently, Avinash Bhosale was released on bail by the Magistrate on the basis that offence was bailable in nature. On appeal, the Bombay High Court set aside the Magistrate order for the reason that arrest memo did not contained the relevant provision i. e. Section 135(1)(i) or 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act. DRI contested the bail on the ground that his offence falls under Section 135(1)(i) and not under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act. There was no plea by the customs that offences under Section 135(1)(ii) are not bailable. The Apex Court in Criminal Appeal No. 1138/07 held that â??On the basis of material placed on record, and the amended Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act, it appears to us that apparently the offence which is alleged to have been committed is a bailable offence and thus the Magistrate has rightly granted bail to the appellantâ?. Against this order, the Government has filed Review petition (Criminal) No. 130/08, which has also been dismissed by the Supreme Court on 7 May 2008.

The Delhi High Court even in the case of Lalit Goel decided on 2 November 2007 and Arun Kumar Gupta Vs DRI decided on 18 February 2008, held that the order of Supreme Court in Avinash Bhosaleâ??s case was per incuriam as the same was stayed by the Supreme Court and therefore is not a binding judgment. The Delhi Court following the precedents held that the offence under Section 135(1)(ii) is non bailable.

Since, the review petition against the apex court order in the case of Avinash Bhosale  has been dismissed by the Supreme Court, the issue is res-judicata and the contrary views of Delhi High Court are no longer valid.

In view of the above, it can be concluded that the offence falling under Section 135(1)(ii) of the Customs Act is a bailable offence. With the dismissal of review petition, the Supreme Court has finally closed the door of interpretations on the issue and accordingly offences punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years are bailable offence not only under the Customs Act but also various other enactments.