How famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy fights her own war against terror and defends the rights of the silenced in her country.
Showing all posts tagged terrorism
A lone Tamil politician urges Sri Lanka to look deep into its heart
Sivagnanam Sritharan is a newly elected Tamil politician in Sri Lanka. The following is his maiden speech to Parliament on 8 May: Honourable speaker, respectable members, on behalf of my people who have sent me as their representative and my self I wish to express my congratulations and greetings to you all. I stand here…
Give a gun to every American and see how that goes
What an insane country (via the New York Times editorial page): Congress, for example, is cowering before the gun lobby insistence that even terrorist suspects who are placed on the “no-fly list” must not be denied the right to buy and bear arms. Suspects on that list purchased more than 1,100 weapons in the last…
No concern with cuddly Americans killing for Israel
In case anybody was unsure, this story in Politico includes a key point about the profound hypocrisy of America’s foreign policy (and the situation is little different in Australia). It’s alright for Jewish, American citizens to visit Israel and kill Arabs in the name of “fighting terrorism” but anybody caught on the side of the…
How Blackwater would like to police the world
The ongoing saga over private military contractor Blackwater continues (mostly exposed by journalist Jeremy Scahill) in this exclusive report: Erik Prince, the reclusive owner of the Blackwater empire, rarely gives public speeches and when he does he attempts to ban journalists from attending and forbids recording or videotaping of his remarks. On May 5, that…
Debating Zionism’s boundaries
My following essay appears in the current edition of Jewish, American magazine Tikkun: IMPOSSIBLE PEACE: ISRAEL/PALESTINE SINCE 1989 by Mark LeVine Zed Books, 2009 THE MAKING OF MODERN ISRAEL, 1948–1967 by Leslie Stein Polity, 2009 POLITICS AND VIOLENCE IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE: DEMOCRACY VERSUS MILITARY RULE by Lev Luis Grinberg Routledge, 2009 ISRAEL AND PALESTINE: REAPPRAISALS, REVISIONS,…
Iran is the enemy and must be stopped/destroyed/killed
A handy guide to neo-conservative thinking on Iran and Israel (bomb/suffocate the former and love to death the other):
Drone pilots should hire lawyers immediately
Killing civilians from the air may be illegal. Thank you for stating the bleeding obvious: The pilots waging America’s undeclared drone war in Pakistan could be liable to criminal prosecution for “war crimes,” a prominent law professor told a Congressional panel Wednesday.
How the media lies about Muslims and terror
A useful reminder that the tabloid media (in fact, most corporate press since 9/11) like to smear “terrorists” first and ask questions later: Express Newspapers apologised in the high court today and agreed to pay substantial damages to four trustees of a UK charity after falsely claiming it had links to an al-Qaida commander. The…
Are Western reporters also just printing Pakistani spin?
Wondering how much we really know about Pakistan’s war against “terrorism” (so writes a Pakistani journalist below)? The Pakistani army has killed at least 71 civilians in an air strike in the Khyber Agency. As news gets around, people are slowly beginning to express their shock about this incident. But no one should be surprised,…