The great historian E J Hobsbawm has rightly caalled the twentieth century an "age of extremes". The German Holocaust during the course of the World War and the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will for ever be seared in the momory of humankind as the most horrendous instances of mans' inhumanity ro fellow human beings. The moral evivalence between the two cannot be disputed because both were political decisions taken in order to achieve certain strategic and political goals during th...
The London Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard need to be congratulated for the quick detection of the identities of the 4 youth who pertetrated the horricfic act on 7/7/05. It took the US Administration a good two weeks before the names of the 21 9/11 killers were made public. The CCTV images caught pictures of the 4 British citizens entering King's Cross station at 7:50 in the morning. Less than an hour later all four of them were dead, making this the first insatace of suicide bombing in...
The bomb attaks in London took place when Londoners were going about their normal work. The tube trains were probably targetted because of their symbolic value and also provided an easy soft target. This was an attack on civillian non combatants and there fore needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. This kind of terrorist attackis not onlo bad for Islam but if it is done in the name of Islam damages the very cause for which it was done in the first place. LIke the Madrid Train...
The Bolton nomination has once again got stuck in the Senate. By putting the entire weight of his political office behind him in the struggle to make Bolton his man at the UN, Bush has lost out politically. Seldom does a re-elected President lose ground politically so swiftly as did George Bush II. Bus and his neo conmen think that their narrow agenda will ispire the American people. Unfortunately they have seen through the game and are not responding. The War in Iraq is going very badly an...
All over the world people are reading alarming news coming out of Karbala, Iraq. Three days age, the Anglo-American Forces launched a combined attack on Karbala. TThe British, who unlike the Americans are somewhat sensitive to world public opinion,for the first time decided to use their air force against the civillian piopulation of Karbala. The US ariforce has trained bombs and cluster boms at civillian target in Falujjah and other places including Bagdad, but this is the first time since t...
France is one of the founding members of the fore runner of the E U the European Common Market, which later evolved into the gargantuan European Union. Why are the French upset? They do not want to take on board Turkey. France has a huge Moslem population and obviously will not find Turkey's presence in the EU welcome. Second, France has had to surrender its leadership role in Europe to the Atlantic union which is essentrially USA and UK. General de Gaulle had vowed to keep the Brits out of t...
Cardinal Josef Ratzinger has been selected the Pope of the Roman Catholic denomination by his fellow cardinals. Being an arch conservative, he is probably the best man to succeed the late pope, John Paul II. The great American historian, David Goldhagen in his book the Moral Reckoning refers to this particular pope in one of his chapters. Even the meticulous research by this Princeton trained historian did not lead to the discovery of the singgular fact that Ratzinger spent his entire youth ...
The recent killing in the shools at Minnesota is only the latest in a long and dreary stream of killings. After each such massacre there is the ususal voive of reason and moderation asking for gun control. The sane voices are soon drowned by a cacophony of noises emanating fro the gun lobby. The time has come to move a constitutional ammendment to out law the sale of guna to any one under thwe age of 30. The guns sold must be registered at the AFT of the Federal Government. The sale of hand...
Even before the dust had settled on the Atlanta killing another horrific event took place. In a church a seeingly educated, educated suburban dwelling parishner pulled out an automatic weapon and killed 7 people before shooting himself. This event like the Atlanta Killings suggests that it is time to consider seriously a law against owning guns. The argument trotted out by the spokesmen of the NRA that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right is misplaced, because the Bill of Rights p...
The spate of events in the USA, most importantly the senseless killing of the presiding judge at the circuit court at Atlanta,leads to one overwhelming conclusion:It is time to seriouly think of gun control. Of course, it nay be argued that the murder of Justice Barnes has nothing to do with gun control because the hand gun used in the crime was snatched from a police woman. This argument is a false one in that the easy availability of hand guns makes it possible for the fugitive Nicols to th...
George Orwell in his masterpiece called 1984 and his Politics and the English Language identified a new kind of cognitive disorder in the world: the inability of a so called thinking human being to understand the implications of his words. This is only symptomatic of a moral personality marinated in the politics of violence racism and in short sheer street smart thuggery. When men, women, and children are being killed for no reason except that a Governemnt sitting fatr away with a pile of wea...
In a recent article in the Washinton Post, BushJr was given an appropriate title: President of Fabricated Crises. Whenever the USA wants to flex its muscles in any part of the world a crisis is generated and acting on exaggerated inputs from field operatives a full fledged war is launched. We have seen the is Afghanistan, Iraq and now the President and his Secretary of State Rice are making familiar noises against Syria, Iran and North Korea. The recent assasination of Rafik Hariri has come ...
The bonhomie displayed by the civilised,urbane, sophisticated and yes, diplomatic Europeans seem to have led the American media to pro offer the unwarranted conclusion that the "bridge " with Europe has been built, and the differences over the war and aggression in Iraq are settled. Norhing could be further than the truth. The fact the Bush was a state guest in the Eropean capitals meant that no major controversey was allowed the syrface. A show of polite welcome does not agreement make. The ...
On the 30 th of this month Iraq will go to the polls. The violence unleashed in Iraq has already made the whole excersise suspect. Candidates are afraid of going before the people. The Sunni population is not at all ken about the poll process, and hence the Shias are likely to benefit from the Sunni boycott of the polls. Thus the elections in Iraq will throw up a government that lacks basic legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Bush has already stated that he wil withdraw his troops from ...
The U S marines have only one rule in Iraq:shoot first clear the mess later. Any vehicle approaching within 100 meters of a US military humvee is peppered with bullets before questions are asked. Similarly any ordinary Iraqi with a cell phone risks having his guts ripped out by a splatter of M-16 gunfire. Deadly force has become the norm as for as the Anglo American forces are concerned. All this makes for a horrendous loss of civillian life. A 20 something U S soldier says proudly that "w...