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January 2011
Obama's Shift on Egypt
by Stephen Zunes: There has been a major shift within the Obama administration over the weekend regarding its policy toward Egypt. President Obama appears to have finally realized that reform within the regime, as the administration had been advocating until Sunday, will not placate the Egyptian people. The administration has yet to issue an explicit call for the authoritarian President Hosni Mubarak to step down, at least in public. However, yesterday, for the first time, Secretary of State Clinton and other officials began calling for "an orderly transition" to democracy. Read More
The Arab masses have risen
By Saeed Qureshi: The loud and clear message from Tunisia is that despotic or authoritarian dispensations in the Middle East and beyond are destined to disappear sooner than later. Barring Iraq, all the governments in the Middle East and Sahara are family fiefdoms, sham democracies and hereditary possessions. The countries like Egypt have fake democracies as the same potentate returns again and again, through contrived and controlled elections, with intimidations, tampering of results and bogus votes. Read More
Swami Aseemanand exposes Hindu terrorism
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: A jailed leader of India’s extremist Hindu organization "Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sang (RSS)" Jatin Chattenjee alias Swami Assemanand has confessed that he and several RSS activists have a direct role in several terror attacks on Muslims across India during the last three years. His 42-page confession was recorded under Section 164 of the Indian Criminal Procedure Code before Metropolitan Magistrate Deepak Dabas at Tees Hazari courts for his alleged involvement in the Ajmer, Hyderabad, Mecca Masjid, Melagaon, and Samjhota Express blasts. Tellingly, during the last several years dozens of Muslim youth have been picked up, detained, tortured, charged for these blasts — apparently with clearly no evidence, except for custodial confessions. Read More
Gabby Giffords – A victim of the politics of hate
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: “I know nothing about the man who shot Gabby, and what was going through his mind when he did this. But I will tell you this - if he shot Gabby out of hatred, then it wasn't Gabby he was shooting, but rather some cartoon version of her, drawn by her political opposition,” these words of Alan Grayson, Democratic Congressman from Florida, perhaps best describe the motives behind the assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. Read More
Democrats push through yet anotherAnti-Palestinian resolution
By Prof. Stephen Zunes: Though outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has insisted that there just isn't enough time for the lame duck Democratic-controlled Congress to consider much of the progressive legislation on the docket prior to the Republican takeover early next month, she and other Democratic leaders did find time last Wednesday to pass a resolution condemning efforts by Palestinian moderates to seek recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Read More
President Obama’s foreign policy expedition: India, Pakistan and China
By Syed Mahmood:President Obama, on his recent trip to India in the first week of November was trying to play a balancing act of the United States foreign policy as applied to India and Pakistan. Since 9/11, Pakistan has emerged as a strategically important country for the U.S. The Indian economic growth offers American business the impetus to sell their services and products to the Indian market. The American Administration sees that India and Pakistan are both essential countries for American security in the region. The war in Afghanistan will not come under control without the help and participation of the Pakistani Government. America also sees the economic boom and military buildup of China as a threat to her national interest. India could play a balancing role with the help of the United States in the region, but India may not like to take this responsibility and risk confronting China. Read More
America in Pakistan: A brief historical sketch of U.S.-Pakistan relations
By Zakia Isad: The history of Pakistan-U.S. relations has been thorny and a love-hate one. Primarily, their relationship is based on the security issues. The United States has special interest in Pakistan. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is simply too important to ignore for the United States to protect its national security and its interest in Southwest Asia. According to Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Pakistan, “No government on earth has received more high-level attention than Pakistan.” Read More
Richard Holbrooke represented the worst side of the foreign policy establishment
By Stephen Zunes: The many accolades coming out following the sudden death on Monday (December 13) of veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke and his death bed conversion in opposing the Afghanistan war have overshadowed his rather sordid history of supporting dictators, war criminals and military solutions to complex political problems….. It was unclear, then, why Obama chose someone like Holbrooke for such a sensitive post. Indeed, as the past two years have shown, Holbrooke's efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan appear to have little show for them. Perhaps more than any other appointment, Holbrooke epitomized the tragedy of Obama's foreign policy: instead of bringing hope and change, he brought in some of the most notorious figures of the foreign policy establishment to continue to pursue failed and immoral policies. Read More
WikiLeaks cables on Western Sahara show role of ideology in State Department
By Prof Stephen Zunes: Over years, as part of my academic research, I have spent many hours at the National Archives poring over diplomatic cables of the kind recently released by WikiLeaks. The only difference is that rather than being released after a 30+ year waiting period -- when the principals involved are presumably dead or in retirement and the countries in question have very different governments in power -- the WikiLeaks are a lot more recent, more relevant and, in some cases, more embarrassing as a result. Read More
The Politics of the Nobel Peace Prize
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: Alfred Nobel said the Peace Prize should be awarded to an individual who had contributed to "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." This, unfortunately, has not always been the case. The selection of individuals for the Nobel Peace Prize in recent years defeats the will of Alfred Nobel. There is a consensus that it should be given to those whose actions justify the acknowledgment. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the Nobel Peace Prize. Read More
2010 another hard year for American Muslims
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali: American Muslims were hoping that the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry movements will be rolled back with time. However, no such end is coming in the near future, particularly, with Republicans taking control of the House of Representative. Alarmingly, Rep. Peter King, incoming Republican chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has announced a witch hunt targeting the Muslim community. Read More
Peacetime economy, what’s that?
By Mertze Dahlin: Assuming that we have no wars going on at the moment, we are in a peacetime economy, but we are very poor because of the war, not well-to-do as we had become after other wars. Does this mean we should manufacture another war and try to run it as we have in the prior, previous wars? We might, however that would mean we would leave another peacetime economy in order to prosper in another wartime economy; - ad infinitum Read More
Fraudulent Egyptian Election
By Prof Stephen Zunes: The November 28 Egyptian parliamentary elections were a farce. The vast majority of Egyptians boycotted the charade. But even those who did try to vote witnessed massive ballot-stuffing, vote-buying, intimidation, multiple voting in pro-government precincts, interminable delays in pro-opposition precincts, and mass arrests of opposition supporters. Read More
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