Breivik’s Terror: Was It a Deep Event?The most surprising aspect of the recent unexpected terrorist violence in Norway is that, in retrospect, it is not surprising. Our revived hopes after the end of the Cold War, that we might finally be emerging into a world of diminishing bloodshed, have been abundantly disabused. Events of seemingly rando
There is startling synchronicity between Amethi MP Rahul Gandhi’s speech on the Lokpal issue in the Lok Sabha on Friday and the draft of the Jan Lokpal bill. This lends weight to suspicions that one objective of the Ramlila Maidan blitz is to destabilise Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and elevate Mr Rahul Gandhi to the office. Mr Gandhi
After a brief interlude, it seems Kashmir is back on Washington’s agenda. Why do I think so? There are a number of reasons. Pakistan-US relations are in deep doo-doo, but no Afghan solution of any kind is possible without a favourable nod from Pakistan. So why not massage Pakistan by bringing up Kashmir? Further, those in Washington who are k
With the end of the Gadhafi regime seemingly in sight, it is an opportune time to step back and revisit one of the themes we discussed at the beginning of the crisis: What comes after the Gadhafi regime? As the experiences of recent years in Iraq and Afghanistan have vividly illustrated, it is far easier to depose a regime than it is to gover
In September, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether to recognize Palestine as an independent and sovereign state with full rights in the United Nations. In many ways, this would appear to be a reasonable and logical step. Whatever the Palestinians once were, they are clearly a nation in the simplest and most important sense — namely,
(San Francisco) Two 10,000 lb (4,545 kg) uranium poison gas “dirty” bombs with small nuclear dispersion devises set Japan on the road to extinction on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A row of six modified and enlarged US Navy submarine reactors pioneered by US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover an
Like most Indians, this writer have been following the anti-corruption movement that has taken center stage in India over the past few months. Anna Hazare and his friends have been staging protests seeking a tough anti-corruption law. The attention this movement has commanded is indeed remarkable, too remarkable for comfort to be a spontaneous vent
Is India’s export performance too good to be true? Has the world suddenly become enamoured of Indian merchandise? Or is the illicit wealth stashed abroad by unscrupulous Indians coming back as export proceeds? Undeniably, India’s export performance in recent months has been nothing short of spectacular. In July, exports grew
The term ‘civil society,’ as wisely noted by Shri K. Ashok Rao, president, National Confederation of Officers’ Associations (NCOA), is an integral part of neo-con lexicon. It denotes a group created by Capital and supported by Corporate Media. In this scheme of things, campaigns launched by foreign-funded NGOs are R
Several days of unprecedented revolt by the most impoverished minority populated neighborhoods of London has shaken the normally staid and reserved British aristocracy. Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his Italian vacation in sunny Tuscany to return to the red-orange glare of a burning city. The prime minister was not the only one inconvenien
After a conflagration of arson attacks, riots and looting in several British cities, including the capital, London, there is a sense of order having been restored from a massive mobilisation of police forces. There now follows the tracking down and prosecution of individuals involved in the mayhem. Conservative Prime Minister is leading “the
As the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon approaches, the decade-long cover-up of the actual authorship of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history is continuing to unravel. Just in the past week, two dramatic revelations have surfaced, challenging some of the most fundamental features of th
The shooting down of a US Chinook helicopter early Saturday morning in Afghanistan killed 38 soldiers, including 30 Americans and eight Afghans. Among the dead were 22 Navy SEALs, an elite special forces squad. Seven helicopter crew members and air combat controllers, a dog handler, seven Afghan soldiers and an Afghan interpreter died along with th
When the underground vaults of the Sri Padmanabha Swami Temple of Trivandrum were opened, the world was astounded. The value of the invaluable treasures found in the vaults cross millions and billions of rupees. More startling was the fact that this was the savings [surplus] of a small principality [Travancore] of British India in a short duration
|
by
S Faizi
|
on
21 Aug 2011
|
27 Comments
|
While condemning the short detention of Anna Hazare and his colleagues, it is nevertheless pertinent to understand what the Magsaysay Award really is, especially in the wake of the United States’ official support to the anti-corruption agitation led by three Magsaysay awardees (Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal). Washing
On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in a show of public protest. The self-immolation triggered unrest in Tunisia and ultimately the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This was followed by unrest in a number of Arab countries that the global press dubbed the “Arab Spring.” The
[With Shri Anna Hazare beginning his fast at Ramlila Maidan today, the Government has bought time and begun diffusing the situation - Editor] After blundering and dithering, the Manmohan Singh cabinet seems set to tide over the mini-crisis created by the inept arrest of social activist Anna Hazare. Politically, the UPA is the loser. Firs
In late July, the US State Department issued a word wide alert warning of potential terrorist attacks against US citizens and interests overseas due to an enhanced potential for anti-American violence following the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. Current information suggests that al-Qaeda and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist a
With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 just a month away, the intelligence failures leading up to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have started to attract fresh scrutiny from former counterterrorism officials, who have called into question the veracity of the various government probes that concluded who knew what and whe
If a single event encapsulates the corruption, sleaze and political callousness that bedevils the common man today, it is the Commonwealth Games of 2010, whose reverberations are still roiling the polity and the ruling Congress party. Even as unending price rise drives the middle class and poor to despair, and the Finance Ministry and Reserve Bank
I completed the manuscript for Nickel and Dimed in a time of seemingly boundless prosperity. Technology innovators and venture capitalists were acquiring sudden fortunes, buying up McMansions like the ones I had cleaned in Maine and much larger. Even secretaries in some hi-tech firms were striking it rich with their stock options. There was loose t
Classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by itself. They always used the term “political economy.” For classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics without economics or economics without politics. The two fields are certainly different but they are also
I am not surprised that Piers Morgan has been outed for allegedly hacking phones (listening, in one case, to personal messages between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney.) I learned about the creepy antics of this one-man TV-host crime spree the hard way: as a victim of his crime-and-slime form of “journalism.” On September
With the fresh eruption of violence in southern Afghanistan, it is evident that the much-touted US-Taliban secret talks are going nowhere. Reports indicate that the International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) have handed over seven areas of Afghanistan to the control of local authorities, and the plan has failed. What worries Washington is tha
Since the 7/22 terror attack, a number of Christian writers ( here and here for instance) have hastened to point out that Anders Breivik, though painted as a “Christian fundamentalist” by the media, does not appear to have been deeply religious and mainly seems to have been Christian in name only. While this may be true, what it overloo
64 years ago, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs ever used as instruments of mass destruction was dropped on the defenseless civilian city of Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew who had been training for this mission for months. The crew was only “doing its job,” and they did it with military effici
Whether the July 22, 2011 terror attack in Norway was, or was not, a false flag operation - and whether Anders Breivik did, or did not, act alone - one thing is for certain. Insofar as children and teens were the principle and deliberate targets, the atrocity revealed a level of malevolence scarcely seen or imagined before. Perhaps the only thing t
According Uthayakumar, the Malaysians Indians, 70 % of whom he estimates to be in the poor and hardcore poor categories and another 25 % in the lower middle and middle income categories, unaided by UMNO government ridden with racism and religious bigotry, are left to fend for themselves. Even the change, much anticipated and hoped for, post 2008 el
As the Russians went into Afghanistan at the end of December 1979, a cautious Soviet official is said to have remarked to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko that the British had got themselves into serious trouble there a century earlier. “Are you comparing the imperialist British to our gallant Soviet boys?” spluttered the indignant mini
In a move reminiscent of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s startling decision to will her political party, including its workers and presumably also its voters and supporters, to her eldest son, Bilawal, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi secretly flew off to the United States for medical treatment, leaving behind a demi-testam
This Saturday, August 6, 2011, is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the whole truth of which has been heavily censored and mythologized ever since the news of the event was broadcast to the millions of war-weary Americans who were justifiably happy that the awful war was finally over. Of course those millions – and
“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists against all cultural Marxists/Multiculturalists”. Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto “. . . two more cells exist in my organization”. . . Ander Behring Breivik in police custody (Reuters 7/25/11) Introduction
“A bitter, white, right-wing, fundamentalist Christian gun-nut who hates liberals and babbles about Islam and Marxists. Good thing we don’t have anybody like that in our country.” In the last StarTribune Sunday paper there was a little five-line news item buried on page 8 that mentioned that there had been 80 “susp
On June 23, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its World Drug Report 2010. Replete with data, the voluminous report (307 pages) gives the impression that drug production and consumption have stabilized. However, this could not be further from the truth. In fact, what is happening today, due to the globalization and hot-m
|
by
Hari Om
|
on
03 Aug 2011
|
21 Comments
|
On July 19, American national of Kashmir origin Ghulam Nabi Fai was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) from his house in Fairfax in Virginia, an affluent suburb of Washington DC (United States), on charges of receiving hundreds and thousands of dollars from the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence (IS
America’s startling political decision to arrest US citizen cum ISI lobbyist Ghulam Nabi Fai last month, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in India, follows a string of continuing face-offs between the two countries and suggests that Washington may have decided to dismount the Pakistani tiger. Tensions peaked with Islamabad closing
After the tears have dried and the cries of outrage fallen silent, we may begin to recognise that the cinematic qualities of the Utoya Massacre were drawn from trashy horror flicks. It is a recurring theme within the Friday the 13th Screams at Elm Street genre that a serial killer must stalk a peaceful summer camp and murder innocent youths. Friday
The massacre in peaceful Oslo was a replay of this earlier horror in reverse – no longer the Jews as victims but as the inspiration of terror against non-Jews – as Israel extends its wars not only to Greek ports and French airports but to Norwegian children’s camps, complete with rabbinical blessings for the murderers, notes Eric