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Tag Archives: law

Pakistan – “The Eighteenth Amendment: From Feudalism to Modernism” – Guest Blog by Tammy Swofford

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Pakistan

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

18th Amendment, Eighteenth Amendment, law, Pakistan

The following was written to a law student approaching matriculation.



The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan became the law of the land when it passed from the Majlis-e-Shoora to receive the signatory approval of the president on 19 April 2010. With this amendment Pakistan made massive movement toward being a progressive state with the welfare of the citizens a primary concern.

One of the greatest accomplishments, one whose benefit is as of yet not fully realized nor wielded as a legal tool for social justice is the following clause:

“Every citizen shall have the right to access to information in all matters of public importance subject to regulation and reasonable restrictions imposed by law.”

Let’s break this down into smaller parts to show both the beauty and strength of this carefully crafted sentence.

“Every citizen . . . ”

Yes! Every citizen must have equal status under the law. Minus equality there is injustice. So the baker seeking an explanation as to why the price of his wheat flour has risen to quadruple the price in six months is as worthy an explanation as the landowner who grows and sells the wheat for a reasonable profit margin. Between the farm and the bakery lie the roads in between. It is there, that the answer can be found. The answer to this question (extortion for right to passage) requires access to information through legal channels.

“Every citizen shall have the right….”

The rights of the one are the rights which belong to all. You are called to be a community – al-jama’ah. It is the duty of government to assure that all dealings and responses toward the community are uniform and binding.

Guardianship of the constitution is the beginning point for societal cohesion.

“Every citizen shall have the right to access to information…”

Modern governmental bodies are dependent on chain of command and chain of custody for information. While all citizens are not part of a formal chain of command they must be included in various chain of information regarding issues of state. It was one word – Recite – which opened up a chain of information which eventually brought about a nascent Islamic state in Madinah. Information is important because minus information we cannot make the important decisions.

“Every citizen shall have the right to access to information in all matters of public importance subject to regulation and reasonable restrictions imposed by law.”

Let’s explore the complete sentence a bit further by placing the burden for the adjudication of this clause of the Eighteenth Amendment firmly where it belongs.

This adjudication belongs within the hands of the holders of authority – ulu-‘l – amir. In the truest sense, those entrusted with authority are those which are known to be of noble character. Within the annals of Islamic history it can be seen that there are those who lay claim to noble lineage and others who lay claim to noble character. While not all can be categorized as the former, all, who are vested with the authority of the state must be of the latter category.

To be anything less is to be base, corrupt, and incompetent.

Perhaps this thought can be best expressed with the words of Muhammad ibn Yazdad, a minister of al-Ma’mun:

“Whoever is a guardian of this world, it is not fitting that he sleep while all the people are asleep; and how can there be rest for the eyes of the one who must address the difficulties of his affair; resolving and contracting (the affairs of others).

In the case of the Eighteenth Amendment and the issue of access to freedom of information for the public you are distinctly admonished to intervene in the affairs of others.

When a mighty upheaval brought about the birth of Pakistan, Muhammad Asad wrote an essay titled “Islamic Constitution-Making” and it was published in Urdu and English under the auspices of the Government of the Punjab in March of 1948. These early thoughts were later penned in his book, “The Principles of State and Government”. In Chapter I, he has this to say:

“In the life of every nation there comes, sooner or later, a moment when it seems to be given a free choice of its destiny; a moment when the decisions as to which way to go and what future to aim at, seem to be freed from the pressure of adverse circumstances, and when no power on earth is able to prevent the nation from choosing one way in preference to another. Such historic moments are extremely rare and fleeting, and it may well be that if a nation fails to avail itself of the opportunity thus offered, it will not be offered for centuries to come.”

On 19 April, 2010 the nation of Pakistan was gifted with a unique opportunity in the form of a wisely crafted Constitutional Amendment.

I continue to wish for you the best in your struggle to consider the merits of the law with regard to the health which it brings to your nation.

Corruption is never the “best kept” state secret nor is it meant to be so.

Clear lines of communication, fairness toward all, and public accommodation of requests for information strengthen the state and her standing with the citizens.

–33–

FTAC – Counterterrorism and Intercession

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Religion

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counterterrorism, intercession, law, law enforcement

There would seem to me multiple components involved in intercession, starting with bag searches and metal detectors in proximity to potential targets. However, we have been asking law enforcement to produce a response to _anticipated_ crimes. To do that, we need to do some new things:

1. Acknowledge that a limited “opposition” — “Islamists”, not Islam — believes that it is at war with us, including most Muslims, and that it is — in this order — talking, walking, planning, operationalizing, and acting.

2. Broaden — by reducing strictures on — detention periods and surveillance of persons of interest, so that the talker and walker who pings the FBI radar, as has happened many times now, may enjoy some surreptitious follow-up as needed (say as when acquiring new weapons from the local gun shop).

3. In the region of freedom of speech, we need law recognizing “jihadi-talk” as involving conspiracy and incitement, and then we need permit to act against those who mix the poison that gets in through the ears and eyes and those who deliver that poison by publishing it. There have long been traditional limits to freedom of speech — conspiracy, incitement, libel, and slander. In the area of conspiracy and incitement, we have expected direct contact or cooperation between parties, but today we well know that mediated contact perhaps bolstered by related presentations in the mosque are sufficient to contribute to the motivation of an attack.

4. In the region of freedom of religion, we have to recognize that a religion that has in several aspects the motivation of subduing the world by force in fact represents an alien and invasive political program. As regards those aspects, challenge, confrontation, and reformation involve time, short or long, and the kind of time required is long as regards determining what options are forward and then very short, i.e., the time it takes a person to make a small decision in a good direction.


On those “options forward”, there are today many channels, some congruent with leaving scripture alone but interpreting it more deeply — or tortuously depending on one’s perspective; some unabashedly reformist and determined to eliminate “Political Islam” — and then rejection of the the faith through the abandonment of religion altogether, conversions to other faiths or traditions, and any number of adjustments as seem fit to those who flatly reject extremist programs.

Cynically Scripted? East Jerusalem Riots

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by commart in Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Fast News Share, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Middle East, Politics, Regions

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anti-Semitism, East Jerusalem, Israel, justice, Khdeir, law, lawless, rioting

Hate, mindless hate, manipulated, ignorant, pointless would seem to course through East Jerusalem at the moment.

While police continue to investigate the murder of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, rioting crowds have erupted in East Jerusalem on the assumption — no evidence — that the crime must relate directly to revenge associated with the murder of three Israeli teens.

Posted to YouTube yesterday:


By AFP yesterday:


Posted to YouTube about an hour ago.

The basis: martyrdom, for the sake of martyrdom.


Without investigation, without process in the courts, the explanations for the murder are many, including a Palestinian false-flag operation to provoke and condone today’s rioting.

Prove it’s not so.

Prove the Palestinians now rioting are not being played into doing just that by their own handlers.

No investigation?

No proof of anything.

Additional Reference

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-braces-as-palestinians-bury-mohammed-abu-khdeir-jerusalem/ 7/4/7014.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/07/02/benjamin-netanyahu-warns-vigilantes-against-trying-to-avenge-slain-israeli-teens-after-abducted-arab-boy-reportedly-found-dead-in-jerusalem-forest/ – 7/3/3014.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.602736 – 7/3/2014.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-braces-as-palestinians-bury-mohammed-abu-khdeir-jerusalem/ – 7/3/2014.

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Comment-After-the-horror-361106 – 7/1/2014.

FTAC – The Idea of Justice – Not On A Whim

10 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in A Little Wisdom, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philosophy, Politics

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Tags

conflict, cultural evolution, culture, justice, law, politics

That contemptuous phrase “the whims of man” applies well to autocratic societies in which, indeed, the whims of one man control a great swath of humanity, but with those, one knows the methods: to those who humiliate themselves before their regimes: bribery, nepotism, and patronage: i.e., those get fed like dogs; to those who threaten such regimes: blackmail, intimidation, murder.

In contemporary realpolitik, the path ends with the suffocation of the constituent humanity or the overthrow of the regime.

Syria’s a good case in point today: I cannot figure out on whose side God has appeared. From the survey of that unfolding tragedy, He would seem altogether absent.

One more thing: the struggle for truly just systems of law beneficial, invested in, and trusted by all has not come about through whim.

The struggle for decency in human relationships by way of ethical and moral argument that finds expression through the law has a millennial existence, one that would seem to have its roots in the depths of tragedies, small and large, attending the human experience across oceanic time.

 # # #

Reference for the European Commission – Scheppele’s Proposal to Counter Resurgent (Hungarian) Nationalist Urges

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Politics

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

barbarism, European Commission, European rules, European Union, infringement, law, legal analysis, nationalism, nationalist, political backsliding, politics, treaties

I propose a new approach, a simple extension of an existing mechanism: the infringement action. The Commission could signal systematic complaints against a Member State by bundling a group of individual infringement actions together under the banner of Article 2 of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) which guarantees:

the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity, and equality between women and men prevail.

A systematic infringement action would share with ordinary infringement actions specific complaints against the national law or consistent practices of a Member State for violating particular provisions of EU law.

Scheppele, Kim Lane.  “What Can the European Commission Do When Member States Violate Basic Principles of the European Union?  The Case for Systematic Infringement Actions.”  European Commission, November 2013.

Kim Lane Scheppele is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and University Center for Human Values, as well as Director, Program in Law and Public Affairs, Princeton University.

The paper would seem to address a slew of issues sensitive now in central and eastern European states slipping along with resurgent medieval to Nazi-era nationalist movements.  Certainly, returns to anti-Roma and anti-Semitic incitement would obviate the “rights of persons belonging to minorities.”

In the post-WWII generations, one would have hoped that so much bigotry, license, and hate had been consigned to historic memory and the coffin lid on that pounded sufficiently to keep it closed forever.

The realpolitik, as Hungary’s Jobbik might exemplify, would seem not quite so.

As the direct memory of such monsters fade with the dying of the “Greatest Generation”, it has been left to the children and grandchildren to detect the same poisonous blood in contemporary bodies politic and keep it from seeping back to the surface and — as it may do so, however slowly — drowning again another generation to come.

Scheppele’s proposal goes on to deal more directly with Hungary’s “democratic backsliding” toward fascism, as with this example:

The structural weakness of the individual infringement action was illustrated by the creative, bold, important, and successful case that the Commission brought with regard to the decapitation of the leadership of the judiciary that the Hungarian government accomplished through the sudden, forced early retirement of senior judges.  By lowering the retirement age from 70 to 62 with immediate effect, the Hungarian government forced the departure of the most senior 10% of the judiciary, including fully one quarter of the Supreme Court justices and half of the appeals court presidents.  The government then replaced these senior judges with judges of its own choosing, using a new legal procedure that put the choice of such judges into the hands of the president of a new political institution, the National Judicial Office, taking that power away from the judiciary itself. (pp.3-4).

______

Szaniszló’s harangue begins with a rehash of the Kennedy assassination, a topic he talked about earlier. Here the story serves as an introduction to the main theme. Kennedy was assassinated by “financial powers that conquered the United States.” According to Szaniszló, Kennedy was not the first victim of this financial power group because “there were earlier presidents, vice presidents, and secretaries” who were killed by these people. I myself couldn’t come up with any president whose assassination was in any way connected to the financial world. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a Southerner; James Garfield’s assassin was mentally unbalanced; and William McKinley was killed by an anarchist. As for vice presidents, no vice president of the United States has ever been assassinated. And as for secretaries, there was an assassination attempt on the life of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s secretary of state, at the same time as the president’s assassination, but he survived.

Soon enough Szaniszló moves to more dangerous grounds. With a quick turn we are at 9/11, which is according to him “the biggest lie of world history” because it was a “willful self-provocation, one of many.”

The Hungarian far right’s attack on the United States | Hungarian Spectrum – 12/1/2013.

Ferenc Szaniszló hosts a twice-weekly news show in Hungary on “Echo TV”.  Says Wikipedia (as viewed 12/2/2013) about him: “One of Echo TV’s better known broadcasters is Ferenc Szaniszló, known for his racist and anti-Semitic statements.[9][10][11][12][13][5] In 2011, Hungary’s media regulator fined Echo 500,000 Forints after Szaniszló compared Roma people to “monkeys”.[14]

Nice guy.

Such as Szanisló may represent should have a country, preferably one where they may be left by themselves.  Until that day, other more genuinely democratic and open societies may need in their region-wide transnational law some astute, defensive, and enforceable legal guidance and law.

# # #

Syria – Define Your World

01 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Middle East, North America, Politics, Regions, Syria, United States of America

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

chemical weapons, conflict, ethics, good society, law, morals, political science, politics, rules of engagement, rules of war, Syria, war

Chemical and biological weapons are absolutely prohibited under international humanitarian law. Debates and questions surrounding the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria are not fading away. Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Near and Middle East, explains the organization’s position.

ICRC.  “Chemical weapons: An absolute prohibition under international humanitarian law”.  July 18, 2013.

Tell me about the world in which you would like to live.

Will it be a world that holds itself to time honored ethical and moral standards?

Will it be a world in which self-awareness and the awareness of others inspires an integrating compassion and consideration for the humanity shared?

Will it be a world in which the most notable and powerful of public speakers may be trusted to keep their own laws, to restrain themselves from excessive or unbridled appetites, and to tell the truth whether it becomes them or not?

If you should wish to live in some other world, don’t bother with this blog.

* * *

Unknown to Syrian officials, U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials. Those records and intercepts would become the core of the Obama administration’s evidentiary case linking the Syrian government to what one official called an “indiscriminate, inconceivable horror” — the use of outlawed toxins to kill nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children.

Warrick, Joby.  “More than 1,400 killed in Syrian chemical weapons attack, U.S. says.”  The Washington Post, August 30, 2013.

Additional Reference

BackChannels.  “Syria – Chemical Warhead Launch Ascribed to 155th Brigade – 4th Armored Division – Syrian Army.”  August 28, 2013.

Bishara, Marwan.  “US and Syria: the calculus of war.”  Al Jazeera, August 30, 2013.

Boerma, Lindsey.  “U.S. has firm evidence sarin gas was used in Syria chemical weapons attack, Sec. Kerry says.”  September 1, 2013.

ICRC.  “The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols”. PDF Address: The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949.

ICRC.  “War and international humanitarian law”.

Raum, Tom.  “Syria: Conflict, an alleged chemical attack, and fallout.”  MPR News, August 31, 2013.

Warrick, Joby.  “Even after 100,000 deaths in Syria, chemical weapons attack evoked visceral response.”  The Washington Post, September 1, 2013.

Wikipedia.  “American Way”.

Wikipedia.  “Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907”.

Wikipedia.  “Laws of War”.

Wikipedia.  “Lieber Code”.

# # #

Dubai – Normative Remirroring

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Politics, Psychology, Regions, United Arab Emirates

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cultural norms, Dalelv case, diplomatic incident, Dubai, law, normative behavior, politics

Having become apprised of the “knowledge of good and evil,” Adam and Eve leave Eden equipped with human consciousness, self-consciousness, and conscience as well as perhaps rather fashionable skins sewn for them by God Almighty Himself (Genesis 3).

The arrival of that language — inspired, invented, disseminated, borrowed, and twisted — within the monotheist psyche sets the stage for progressive awakening across time, for we know ourselves to be conscious, self-conscious, and possessed of conscience, and there is nothing quite like the expression of all of that in legal code to tell the character of separable related cultures along psychological axis made plain through reflection in the eyes of others.

Until today in the Arab world, it was perfectly fine to arrest the complainant in a rape incident, find her guilty of having in various ways tempted the man or men by way of behaviors forbidden by Koranic edict, and sentence her to a term in jail.

Enter Marte Deborah Dalelv, that shameless hussy who broke the first rule by which dictatorships are sustained: silence!

“The AP does not identity the names of alleged sexual assault victims, but Dalelv went public voluntarily to talk to media.”

It sounds so harmless “to talk to media.”

What Dalelv did by doing so was drag Dubai’s ethical, legal, and moral confusion out into the sunlight, and while not for the first time in the vicinity — the 2008 setup and gang rape of Alicia Gale at a Starwood Hotels outpost in the United Arab Emirate played in the news earlier this year as a related lawsuit with publicity made its way into the courts — it has proven such an embarrassment (remember: God made us self-conscious and possessed of conscience) that Dubai, ever conservative — or inclined to mask its shame for the time being — maintained Dalelv’s “conviction” but truncated her 16-month sentence with a swift pardon.

CBS News.  “Marte Deborah Dalelv: Norwegian woman’s 16-month sentence in Dubai after rape claim draws outrage.”  July 21, 2013.

WA Today.  “Dubai pardons rape case woman.”  July 22, 2013.

Whether or not Dubai’s legal atmosphere and code change to align with a modern philosophy of human rights, and whether slowly or swiftly, we shall see, but to judge by the Dalelv case, it may be on its way, for if nothing else, Dubai wants to push this latest eye-roller away from its brand.

Dubai, however, cannot push the same away from its consciousness or conscience.

By the graces of the World Wide Web, the world’s largest social feedback system, it’s greatest mirror, it’s learning what it looks like in and through the eyes of others.

Additional Reference

Normative Remirroring

Women Emerging in Leadership – Dubai (the page may be thin and possibly outdated, but the signaling content would seem immense and irreversible).

# # #

  • Compassion
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____________

Caution: The possession of anti-Semitic / anti-Zionist thought may be the measure of the owner's own enslavement to criminal and medieval absolute power.
___________

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Epigram

Hillel the Elder

"That which is distasteful to thee do not do to another. That is the whole of Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study."

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? If not now, when?"

"Whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whosoever that saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

Oriana Fallaci
"Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon...I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born."

Talmud 7:16 as Quoted by Rishon Rishon in 2004
Qohelet Raba, 7:16

אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

Kol mi shena`asa rahaman bimqom akhzari Sof shena`asa akhzari bimqom rahaman

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate.

More colloquially translated: "Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind."

Online Source: http://www.rishon-rishon.com/archives/044412.php

Abraham Isaac Kook

"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.

Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).

Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."

Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."

"The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision."

Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.

Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."

Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."

Malala Yousafzai
“The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”

Tanit Nima Tinat
"Who could die of love?"

What I Have Said About the Jews

My people, not that I speak for them, I nonetheless describe as a "global ethnic commune with its heart in Jerusalem and soul in the Land of Israel."

We have never given up on God, nor have we ever given up on one another.

Many things we have given up, but no one misses, say, animal sacrifice, and as many things we have kept, so we have still to welcome our Sabbath on Friday at sunset and to rest all of Saturday until three stars appear in the sky.

Most of all, through 5,773 years, wherever life has taken us, through the greatest triumphs and the most awful tragedies, we have preserved our tribal identity and soul, and so shall we continue eternally.

Anti-Semitism / Anti-Zionism = Signal of Fascism

I may suggest that anti-Zionism / anti-Semitism are signal (a little bit) of fascist urges, and the Left -- I'm an old liberal: I know my heart -- has been vulnerable to manipulation by what appears to me as a "Red Brown Green Alliance" driven by a handful of powerful autocrats intent on sustaining a medieval worldview in service to their own glorification. (And there I will stop).
One hopes for knowledge to allay fear; one hopes for love to overmatch hate.

Too often, the security found in the parroting of a loyal lie outweighs the integrity to be earned in confronting and voicing an uncomfortable truth.

Those who make their followers believe absurdities may also make them commit atrocities.

Positively Orwellian: Comment Responding to Claim that the Arab Assault on Israel in 1948 Had Not Intended Annihilation

“Revisionism” is the most contemptible path that power takes to abet theft and hide shame by attempting to alter public perception of past events.

On Press Freedom, Commentary, and Journalism

In the free world, talent -- editors, graphic artists, researchers, writers -- gravitate toward the organizations that suit their interests and values. The result: high integrity and highly reliable reportage and both responsible and thoughtful reasoning.

This is not to suggest that partisan presses don't exist or that propaganda doesn't exist in the west, but any reader possessed of critical thinking ability and genuine independence -- not bought, not programmed -- is certainly free to evaluate the works of earnest reporters and scholars.

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