Today marks the fifth anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. On that fateful day my thoughts were only about my neice who was to take up a job as an architect in a firm headquartered in the WTC building. As we live far away we could only think of her safetty on that day until her husband sent an e-mail saying that she was safe. I am writing all this to make tha larger point that the attack on the Towers was felt all over the world in a very personal way. On this day, I stan...

The hilly, mountainous territory lying south of Afghanistan, straddling the trade routes of the ancient world, is now the happy hunting ground of the Pakistani Armay and the Baloach Nationalist Rebels under their leader Nawab Bugti, who was killed a couple of days ago. What is the implication of this development? How is the killing of Sardar Nawab Bugti going to impact on the war on Terror? These questions have been largely ignored and it is time to address them. Baloachistan is an oil ric...

Israel's stated objectives in the just concluded war against Lebanon was (a) degrade the military capability of the Hizbollah and (2) secure the release of the two soldiers captured in the run up to the conflict five weeks ago. After launching a most savage and unrestrained attack on the civilian population of Souther Lebanon, Beirut and Tyre along with Sidon Isreal has had to concede defaeat in that both these objectives reamined beyound realisation. Of course, this has not been a victory fo...

Of the 64 men, women and children who were slaughtered by the Israelis at Qana 37 were children and of the 37, 15 were physically challenged and therefore the refugee party took shelter at Qana for the night. I do not know whether the "embedded" western media has drawn attention to this fact. The roads leading out of Qana had been bombed, the lonf convoys of refugees streaming out of Beirut, Sidon and Tyre have been bombed. Vans carrying choldren have been bombed and in this carnage we hav...

Early this morning around 12:30 Israeli F-16 jets dropped bombs on the southern Lebonese city of Qana. In this attack a building housing refugees who had fled from earlier Israeli bombardment were targetted and the men, women and children sleeping in the basement of the building were killed when the Israeli bombs demolished the building. The dispropotionate use of firepower by the Israelis is causing universal concern and while the world waits for the US to rein in the Israelis the pace of r...

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert looks straight at the camera and says without a touch of irony that Israel is "fighting terrrism" in Lebanon. Two days ago marked the 60th anniversary of the terrrist attack on King David Hotel at Jerusalem carried out by the members of the Irgun Gang whosr leader Menachem Begin rose to be the Prime Minister of Israel. In fact the father of Israel's present Foreign Minister Ms Tzipi Livni was one of the chief members of this gang whose activities Washingto DC will t...

Isaac Deutcher, the Jewish historian whose entire family perished in the Holocaust made the following observation after the end of the 1967 six day war with the Arab states: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service and harm its own long term interests". This statement is relevant today as Israel in a blaze of military tiumphalim is close to achieving abbolute mastery over Lebanon. The unrestrained use of firepower, and the highly self right...

The humanitarian crisis caused by the unrestrained bombing of civilian targets in southern Lebanon and Beirut by Israeli fighter jets has been ignored by the world. Even the Arab nations which are quick to condemn every act of reppraisal by Israel have largely been silent. While the governments of the so-called moderate Arab states have remained prudently silent over the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the opinion in the Arab streets is getting polorised and this is a dangerous trend. The respons...

The recent announcement at Baghdad that the 6 marines responsible for the rape and murder of a 15 yeatr old Iraqi girl and her entire family have beencharged with muder, rape, destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice and the like is a welcome step. The March 12 incident at Mahamoudiya has not received the same attention as the Hadita incident and probably that crime would have been forgotten but for the serious psychological problems displayed by the unit that participated in the March...

I often think about the past. I guess it is a professional hazzard. Faces of friends whom I have not seen since I left graduate school, snatches of conversations, fragments of life, and at times, the grim remindre that even in this day of internet and e-mail some friends have just slipped from our lives. Nearly twenty years ago, just as I was finishing my education at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, I used to work as a store clerk at one of the several shops and departmental stores in the la...

In the June 23 rd edition of New York Times was revealed an on going program of the US government: the monitoring of millions of dollars of banking transactions. The program was carried out withoput court approval as was the case with the telephone tapping. Bush was livid and thundered :"The disclosure of the programme is disgraceful". The argument he made was that US was or is at war and therefore such measures are not onlt necessatry but also required to protect the American People from the...

It is one of the surprising features of the US constitutional history that the power of "judicial review" is not explicity granted to the Supreme Court. In fact it is through a long process of delicate and careful interpretation of the statutes and laws of the US that a doctrine of judicial review came to fashioned.One looks in vain in the writings of Washington, Jefferson and Madison for any suggestion of the principle of judicial review. In fact it was Alexander Hamilton in Fereralist # 78 ...

Link I have provided for the benifit of JoeUsers the link to the site containing the recent judgement. It is 185 pages lonng and I will write after having read the entire judgement.

The domestic debate over the setting of a timeline for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq has been most instructive. On the one hand it dlearly demonstrated to the whole world that there is dwindling support for the war in Iraq and the Republicans barely managed to stave off defeat in the Senate because Democrats like Hilary Clinton went along with the majority. However we have not seen the end of the debate. The Democrats made acrucial tactical blunder by emphasing the timetable for troop...

In the bad old days of the Roman Empire, there was a territory that the Romans tried to conquer for nearly 200 years, but never quite succeded. Known as Parthia, this territory roughly corresponds to south western Afghanistan and parts of the Iranian plateau. USA is meeting stiff resistance in exactly the same region and surprisingly for the same reason--imperial overstretch. While Iraq is getting all the attention, the original war on terror centred on Afghanistan is not receiving adequa...