In 58 posts with close to 100k words, we shared a lot in 2024! Explore 2024’s biggest geopolitical shifts, cultural battles, and bold insights with Drishtikone’s year in review. See you in 2025! Happy New Year! Be safe!
When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
Dive into the shadowy world of the Deep State—its hidden structures, powerful networks, and the far-reaching impact on global events and control.
A Baloch activist in Canada was found dead this week and a Baloch journalist's body found floating in Sweden in May. A genocide is being committed by an army that orchestrated 9-11. Why the Silence?
(Photo by Duncan Stevens on Unsplash \ Art Nouveau inspired street art piece on a brick wall)
“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
You don’t have to kill an obscene number of animals in the most horrendous ways to be an inhuman slaughterer of other beings. You can simply buy their corpses off the grocery shelves and feel great about your humanity that facilitates such mindless slaughter.
That is the deception of outsourcing your crime by providing the ecosystem that enables violence, killing, genocides while you sign the certificates “No Crime Committed.”
Bodies of the hunted journalists come floating by. The persecuted end up on the shores cut up. Just as they feared they would be.
For, even in their refuge in your home, they could see how the demons had enmeshed themselves in your milieu.
You knew. They knew. The, now butchered, also knew.
But the denials, the facade, the silence in the face of the most horrible crimes have become the way to outsource the crimes and the guilt that comes with them.
Those who have had no sophistry of state-craft or the guile of the genocidal butchers have often, like the innocent and naive cows and sheep in the slaughterhouse walked along with their killers believing in a humane vein of normal existence that wasn’t.
Like, the butchers at the slaughterhouse, these killers were not killing because they were hungry. But because it was a sport. Or worse, an order from another to establish control over their lands.
They were paying for the unending greed of the multitudes of faceless demons. Demons who feel good in their sainthood, for the slaughter had been outsourced.
In May this year, the decomposed body of Baloch journalist, Sajid Hussain, was found floating in Fyris river, Uppsala, Sweden, over 50 days after he had disappeared. The case was being investigated by the Swedish National Unit against Organized Crime (NUOC).
In July, the investigation was closed by the Swedish authorities - because, and get this - “crime was committed!”
The Swedish prosecution authority has closed a preliminary murder investigation opened when the body of a missing Pakistani journalist was found in Uppsala in April, saying they no longer suspect a crime has taken place. (Source)
39-year old Hussain was a Balochi who used to report on corruption, forced disappearances, and human rights violations in Balochistan. His life was under threat so he had to leave Pakistan in 2012. Those close to him understood that it was the handiwork of Pakistani agents in Europe who had committed the crime on orders from the Pakistani consulate.
This new development has confirmed the suspicion of Hussain’s friends, relatives and other journalists pursuing the case that Hussain, as is being alleged by people close to him, was killed by private agents that were working on the orders of the Pakistan embassy in Stockholm. This “killing” has led to a heightened sense of fear among Baloch nationalists and other Pakistan dissenters staying in European countries. (Source)
Now, the Pakistanis have concluded another ‘hit-job’. Baloch activist Karima Baloch who went missing last week was found dead in Toronto. Her body was found at the Harbourfront, near a lakeshore in Toronto. (Source). She had been living in Canada since 2016, after several failed assassination attempts on her life in Pakistan.
She was included in the ‘BBC 100 Women 2016' list for her contribution to “campaigns for independence for Balochistan from Pakistan.” In her many speeches, she would warn about the growing influence of Pakistani ISI and the Army in Canada. But to no avail.
Many Pakistani generals and their families have built business interests and empires in the US and Canada. For example, Nadeem Bajwa, the CEO of Bajco Group, which owns several Dairy Queen and Papa John's outlets is the brother of a “three-star general” Lt-Gen (retd) Asim Saleem Bajwa. Nadeem Bajwa had opened the first franchise in 2002. Now it is an empire worth $39.9 million.
Soon after in 2004, three more franchises were opened. In 2006-07, another 20 and another 28 in 2008. According to the report by Fact Focus, this would involve an investment of approximately $52.2 million, raising red flags on how the family was sourcing such massive investments to fuel their multi-million dollar pizza franchises in the US. (Source)
The ISI keeps its interests alive via these ex-Army personnel and their families, often backed by the ISI network.
To understand why Pakistan is after the Baloch people, we need to appreciate how this free country was occupied by Pakistan after the freedom from the British by brute force.
Even in the run up to the 1971 War that created Bangladesh, Pakistani Army unleashed a reign of terror and genocide that is unparalleled in the modern world. That “Army”, if you were to call these war criminals (Source) that, killed close to 3 million people in a matter of months! (Source)
Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed, a London School of Economics alum is a psychopath. A story from the time when he and his Jihadi buddies kidnapped three British tourists in 1994 clarifies his mindset.
In October 1994, a gleeful young kidnapper walked into a house in Saharanpur, north of New Delhi, to tell three British tourists chained to the floor that he had sent authorities an ultimatum: Release a group of Islamic militants from Indian jails, or the hostages will die. ''We've just told the press we're going to behead you,'' said Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a 21-year-old who once studied at the London School of Economics, as Rhys Partridge, one of the hostages, remembered it. ''He was laughing,'' Mr. Partridge said in a recent interview. ''The prospect excited him.'' (Source)
Sheikh was arrested and his plan foiled at that time. However, in the ill-fated Indian Airlines IC-814 hijacking, the Indian government had to free him. He went on to kidnap Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and was instrumental in his beheading.
In January 2000, when Masood Azhar formed Jaish-e-Mohammad, Sheikh worked with him. Daniel Pearl was killed on February 1, 2002. In this article, published on February 25, 2002, Omar Sheikh was to be tried in the US and/or the UK. But that was put on hold. Why? No one knows.
Mr. Sheikh's growing profile among Islamic militants did not go unnoticed in the West. A year ago, the American and British governments seemed interested in taking him out of circulation, or so Rhys Partridge and Bela Nuss, two of the 1994 hostages, say they were told when they were questioned by British and F.B.I. agents. The F.B.I. agents indicated that the former hostages would be giving evidence to a grand jury in the United States last spring, but then backed off, saying they were not needed.
Sheikh was responsible for Pearl’s abduction and beheading both in terms of planning and execution. After the killing, he “surrendered” himself to a former ISI officer, Brig. Ijaz Shah, who concealed Sheikh's whereabouts from the Karachi police for a week. (Source).
But a year before killing Daniel Pearl, Omar Sheikh was busy with another planning and attack. The 9-11.
Between June and September of 2000, over $100,000 was transferred to Mohammad Atta (the lead hijacker of 9-11) by someone in the United Arab Emirates. Also, in August of 2001, just a month before the 9-11, another tranche of $100,000 was sent to Mohammad Atta by Omar Sheikh.
In 2002, Indian Intelligence gave evidence of the calls to the author of the book “Who Killed Daniel Pearl?” – Bernard-Henri Levy about the calls between Omar Sheikh and Lt. Gen. Mahmoud. Washington sources confirmed that to be true. In fact, Indian intelligence actually gave the phone number of Omar Sheikh used to call Lt. Gen Mahmoud before the sending of money to Mohammad Atta.
Yes, Omar Sheikh, who had abducted three Brits in 1994 and worked with Jaish-e-Mohammad to get Daniel Pearl in 2002, but he had also worked with the ISI Chief in early 2001 to send $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, the main 9-11 hijacker.
Interestingly, as per the CNN report, Atta did not just receive that money, he also distributed it to the other hijackers. (Source)
This source said U.S. investigators now believe Sheik Syed, using the alias Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad, sent more than $100,000 from Pakistan to Mohammed Atta, the suspected hijacking ringleader who piloted one of the jetliners into the World Trade Center. Investigators said Atta then distributed the funds to conspirators in Florida in the weeks before the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil that destroyed the World Trade Center, heavily damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. (Source)
Now, here is the funny thing - Atta not just receive the funds and distributed it to the other hijackers, he wired the “excess funds” back to Omar!
In addition, sources have said Atta sent thousands of dollars -- believed to be excess funds from the operation -- back to Syed in the United Arab Emirates in the days before September 11. (Source)
Very strangely, this important detail was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report!
Sheikh is also reputed to have wired US$ 100,000 on behalf of ISI DG General Mehmood Ahmed to one of the hijackers of the World Trade Center attack, Mohammad Atta. Interestingly, this detail was not mentioned by the 9/11 Commission Report yet discussed in different publications around the world. Dennis Lormel, director of the FBI’s financial crimes unit also confirmed it. (Source)
When you factor in how Osama Bin Laden was found bang in the middle of the Pakistani Army’s compound in Abbottabad, you have to wonder at the silence of the world. Was it the silence of ignorance or the Silence of Collusion?
Is there any, and I really mean, ANY QUESTION, on who orchestrated 9-11? (Please read our past edition for a detailed discussion - Issue #122 - Who REALLY carried out the 9-11 attacks?)
The next obvious question that we all need to ask is -
How is it possible that Pakistan’s Army and the ISI backs, supports, orchestrates, and executes some of the most heinous crimes in the US, Canada and Europe and yet goes without a mention?!
That Pakistan’s intelligence chief wired $100,000 to the main hijacker of 9-11 is a fact. A fact that is known by the highest echelons of US intelligence. And, therefore, by other main Western intelligence agencies as well.
So, how did Pakistan escape the blame for 9-11? Or at least basic questioning?
Everyone knew that Pakistan was behind the Jihadi and Khalistani terrorists who were taking refuge in the US, UK and Canada. These terrorists were props of the Pakistani intelligence, not ‘refugees’. They had nothing to do with ‘human rights’ but everything to do with terrorism.
Was the molly-coddling by Western countries of these monsters in Pakistani establishment navette? Or collusion?
What leverage does Pakistan have over the US, Canada and Europe? What are these countries afraid of?
Will Karima Baloch’s fate be the same as that of Syed Hussain? Will the police and the investigators say, honestly enough, that her death was a crime?
190 police and intelligence officials are currently involved in a major terror raid in Berlin.
They are trying to foil a major Islamist terror explosives attack.
From 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the Berlin police searched the apartment of a suspected Islamist person in a prefabricated building in Berlin-Marzahn. The suspicion of preparing a serious crime has not yet been confirmed or substantiated, said the public prosecutor's office, Martin Steltner. According to his information, it was about the suspicion of having prepared an explosives attack. The investigation continued. 190 officers were involved in the operation. (Source)
In January earlier this year, German police had raided 'Islamists' suspected of a violent attack plot in Berlin's Marzahn-Hellersdorf district. (Source)
In July later in the year, another raid unearthed more illegal activities linked to a number of crimes, including terrorist financing. The suspects were involved in threats and fraud.
Berlin police found a large sum in cash, forged and suspected stolen documents and an indoor cannabis plantation during raids early Wednesday targeting 12 suspects "from the Islamist scene," state prosecutors said. (Source)
And, it is about this same district that Vice shared how the “far-right” was making strong inroads into this district, which was hitherto a “left” stronghold.
Die Linke ("The Left," or Left Party) has long been the most popular in the district, Germany's 85th. But in this past weekend's national elections—in which Angela Merkel and her center-right coalition won a fourth term as German chancellor—the Left Party's share of the vote declined nearly 13 points from 2013, down to 26.1 percent. Meanwhile, every fifth voter in Marzahn-Hellersdorf voted for the right-wing populism of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Nowhere else in Berlin did this party, the electoral vehicle for the closest thing Germany has to an Alt Right movement, gain so much support.
And, DW very innocently asks the question “How far-right crept into left-wing strongholds?”
The eastern outskirts of the German capital have remained bastions of support for the left ever since the collapse of the GDR. But in the district of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, the far-right AfD made staggering gains. (Source)
Unfortunately, the leftist press in Germany does the same spin work with their interviews and people’s response as the ones in the US and India. Let us pause here and remember the context of the district we are talking about. It is a hotbed of Chechen/Muslim terrorism with numerous illegal activities going on as the many raids, including the most recent one have proved. THAT is the district, where the White Germans are refusing to buy the Left kool-aid of “racial harmony” because it is not about race. But about their own lives!
"What did we expect?" asks one man in his 40s, finishing his cigarette outside a shop. "I've always thought that different cultures don't fit together. The idea that Europeans have to make compromises for the Muslims – I don't know if I can put it like that, but I will anyway – people don't understand that, and neither do I." But he also wants to make it clear he didn't vote for the AfD: "I like some of their policies, but there are too many right-wingers in there. That's it. If we're not careful, it could develop into the kind of party we've seen before – in 1933."
This case study above explains the dilemma of perfectly normal people very well. They are not for some loony right-wing violent uprising. But when the Left is shamelessly sucking up to the Islamists and takes that to be the paragon and touchstone of everything “liberal”, then people who protest the Islamists’ right to kill them, will look like Hitler-incarnates to them.
The problem is not with the “right-wing” or people who don’t want the Islamists who are a constant threat to them and their society. But with the loony left-liberal ideological prostitutes who have now come to believe that murder by an Islamist is akin to liberal heaven!
High HP Locomotives: India has become the sixth country in the world to join the club of countries producing high horsepower locomotives indigenously. Indian Railways will deploy these high-speed locomotives for operations on major freight routes, including the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) (Source)
US backs Tibet: The US Congress has passed a bill that reaffirms the right of Tibetans to choose a successor to their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The law has been described by Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, as a historic move and a clear message to China. (Source)
Indian TikTok rival: Josh is a TikTok rival tailored to its home nation and variety of local languages, touting it’s “Made in India” at a time when TikTok and dozens of other China-made apps have been banned over privacy and national security concerns. Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. joined an investment round of more than $100 million in VerSe Innovation Pvt, maker of India’s Josh short-video app and Dailyhunt news aggregator, valuing the company at more than $1 billion. (Source)
SFJ Stunt: The Ottawa-based think tank Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) has said that a civil defamation lawsuit filed against it by the separatist group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ) is a “meritless attempt to silence public debate”. The reaction came after SFJ filed a complaint with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice over the institute’s report ‘Khalistan: A Project of Pakistan’, claiming it was a “malicious attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Referendum 2020 and to threaten SFJ’s viability as a not-for-profit organization”. (Source)
Filthy Delhi Air: Air pollution woes have quadrupled for Delhi, as the state suffered the highest per-capita economic loss due to air pollution last year, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal Lancet suggests. Economic loss due to lost output from premature deaths and morbidity from air pollution was 1.36 percent of the GDP in India in 2019. In Delhi, the loss due to lost output from premature deaths and illness attributable to air pollution as a percentage of state GDP was 1.06 percent. Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest loss to GDP at 1.34 percent followed by Punjab at 1.22 percent. "Delhi had the highest per-capita economic loss due to air pollution, followed by Haryana in 2019, with 5.4 times variation across all states," said the findings. (Source)
Telangana Road bonanza: Nitin Gadkari laid the foundation stone for over ₹13,000 cr highway projects in Telangana. These NH projects include 765.663 kilometres long roads worth ₹13,169 crores. Gadkari said that there has been a growth of 55.71% NH length in the last 6 years in Telangana. (Source)
Global Kashmiri Pandit Diaspora in association with ‘I Am Buddha’ Foundation has organized ”The Kashmir Festival.” It is a month-long festival where detailed discussions are being organized on issues and topics related to Kashmir and Kashmiris.
This is a fascinating and very informative discussion, anchored by Mr Rakesh Kaul, with Dr Bharat Gupt on 'The Land of Natyashastra'. Dr Gupt is a retired Delhi University professor. He is an Indian classicist, theatre theorist, sitar and surbahar player, musicologist, cultural analyst, and a newspaper columnist.
Check out today’s “The Drishtikone Daily” edition.
If you consider our work important and enriching and would like to contribute to our expenses, please click on the button below to go to the page to send in your contribution. You can select the currency (for example, INR or USD, etc) and the amount you would like to contribute.
If you like this post - please share it with someone who will appreciate the information shared in this edition
If you like our newsletter, please share it with your friends and family
Every Sunday AM (US Time)/ PM (India time), we send out a weekly detailed newsletter. We also share other insightful notes during the week. Its free. Do sign up and share with friends!
