The junior senator from New York is agusty lady. She is known to be an aggressive speaker and a good orator.. Yet she made a remark about the House Republican Leadership running like a "plantation". This remark on Martin Luther King Day has been considered inappropriate and has stirred a lot of dust. She added: You know what I mean. I think this remark is being twisted out of shape. Leaving aside the appropriateness or otherwise of this remark, the fact is that the REPUBLICANS not Democrat...
Two days back a CIA drone attacked a house located in a thickly populated residential district of the Norh Westy Frontier Province of Pakistan. The reason for the attack: alleged presence of the Al Qaeda leader, Zarqawi. The USA has repeatedly violated the national soverignty of her allies by launching illegal air strikes against targets presumed to be hostile. In the process innocent civillian lives are lost. It is now abundantly cleat that the human intelligence available to the CIA is woe...
It has become fashionable to call the USA an empire. Whatever the term may mean to radicals and conservatives the fact remains the both groups do not see the present international overreach of the USA as imperial. I have some trouble accepting such generalities because they obcure certain hard ground realities. A better mway of phrasing the question would be: Does the USA have the stamina to be an imperial hegemon of the 21st century. With the war in IRAQ going nowhere and no exit strategy in...
George Bush II famously described Iran as part of the "axis of evil". Since then the situation with regard to Iran is perilously close to war. Had the ground reality on Iraq been different, there is no doubt that Bush and the Bushmen would have exported their version of "freedom and democracy" to Iran. Now that the USA is bogged down in an ever widening spiral of violence and destruction and the average mortality rate has increased to 7.5 soldiers per day and the average death toll amongst th...
Ariel Sharon was, may be the past tense is not proper, is a bold politician. His single minded withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza strip, no matter how imperfectly done, represents a radical departure from traditional LIKUD ideology of not vacating seized territories. While his ruthless pursuit of Israeli interests earned him many admirers at home, the policy of targeted assassinations against Palestinian militant groups remains highly controversial. Yet his imminent sign off from the pol...
On December 13, 2005 a few minutes past mid night a well built, healthy man walked the last few hundred feet between his cell on Death Row at San Quentin and the excecution chamber. That Tookie Williams was a ruthless killer no one denies. That he had a violent youth in which a dissipated life careened out of control uder the influence of poverty and drugs too no one denies. He along with Raymond set up a violent street gang, Cripps, this too is a fact. And he killed four people in typical ga...
The recent exposure of the systematic and illegal snooping around building in which American who have opted for the Islamic religion reside or work, has rightly led to an uproar against the brazen manner in which the cherished civil liberies of the citizens have been trampled. There is nothing surprising in this. The liberals who feign outrage at what happened do not understand that this kind of intrusive surveillence over the American people is part and parcel of the Patriot's Act. The Bushm...
Ramsey Clarke, a former Attorney General of the United States, has joined the international team that is now defending Saddam Hussain. It is not an easy task to defend Saddam Hussain in Iraq as 4 of his lawyers have already been shot. However, afair trail according to the standards of existing jurisprudence is something that even Saddam is entitled to. Making the former Preident of Iraq accountable for crimes against humanity on the basis of the alleged violence against the Kurds during the a...
Under George II, the regime now in place in Washington DC has become a law unto itself. Even rougue states like Libya and North Korea did not ever attempt the blatant violations of International Law that has become the norm under the Bushmen. USA is not a party to the Internation Criminal Court of Justice. This perhahs explains the studied impunity with which the Bush regime has trampled upon the very core values of the international order. The illegal war in Iraq and themwanton use of banned...
One of the dangers of writing History in these post modern times is that the traditional tools of historiography, critical evaluation of the documents, evaluation of the biases inherent in historical narratives, assessment of the degree of vermisilitude in historical sources, have all been forgotten. Indeed there are even some historiographers who say a la Hayden White that since historiography presupposes narrative, there is essentially no difference between fiction and history. Of course t...
In a speech in Dubai, Bill Clinton declared that the Iraq War was a "big mistake". The speech was made in the context of rising civillian and US casualities in Iraq. Clinton by referring to the Iraq War as a mistake is obviously playing to the domestic Democratic lobby in order to gather support for the next Pesidential candidate from the Democratic party, who could even be Hiliary Clinton. Of course, a consumate politician like Clinton can paly politics and thetre is nothing wrong in that pe...
It is a delicious bit of irony that the ostensible reason for American invasion of Iraq remains the ABC weapons allegedly developed by Saddam Hussein. It has now become abundantly clear that not only was the intelligence with respect of the WMD program of the erstwhile President of Iraq flawed but there appears to have been what one senator delicately called "cherry picking ." So a savage brutal war was waged against a nation which was down on its heels due to the UN sanctions. The people of...
November 2004. Anyone questioning the wisdom of Bus and the Bushmen rampage in Iraq was wildly hooted, reviled and even their patriotism questioned. November 2005. The Bushmen are on the run, as there are serious questions being asked about the conduct of the war and the sacrifices ordinary law abiding men and women of the USA are being called upon to make. Even in the Bibkle belt voices are being heard questioning Bush decision to go to war. Conservative congressmen are stridently asking for...
November 2004. Anyone questioning the wisdom of Bus and the Bushmen rampage in Iraq was wildly hooted, reviled and even their patriotism questioned. November 2005. The Bushmen are on the run, as there are serious questions being asked about the conduct of the war and the sacrifices ordinary law abiding men and women of the USA are being called upon to make. Even in the Bibkle belt voices are being heard questioning Bush decision to go to war. Conservative congressmen are stridently asking for...
The exposion in the Hyatt Grand Hotel at Amman killed nearly 60 people and injured 300 more. The responsibility for the blast has been taken by Al_Qaeda in Iraq led by the illusive Abu Musab Zarqawi.The attack in Jordon itself is proof, if proof is needed, that the Al Qaeda is capable of pulling of spectacular terror attacks in the region. Jordon has been a key ally of the US in its war of occupation in Iraq. Infact the utility of Jordon is more direct as far as US war efforts are concerned:"...