Category: War

‘Going Deeper’ Not ‘Muslim’: Islamophobia and its Discontents

Photo by Ridwan Adhami

by Huma Dar

I deeply missed June Jordan today. Back in Fall 1995 (or was it 96?) the acclaimed poet read not her own poems, but those of her Arab students, at the first ever Berkeley “Poetry at Lunch” event. I adored her, and adored her even more when she courageously asserted that Arabs/Muslims were one of last groups it was explicitly kosher (read: not un-PC) to be racist or prejudiced towards in any given circle. Way before 9/11…

Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School and a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, recently wrote a piece “Going Muslim: America after Fort Hood.”(1) He coins the phrase “Going Muslim” to “describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American—a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood—discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.”(2)

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Pakistan and the Global War on Terror: An Interview with Tariq Ali

by Mara Ahmed, with Judy Bello

Tariq Ali and Mara Ahmad at Hamilton College, NY.

Mara Ahmed and I were given the opportunity to interview Tariq Ali when he spoke at Hamilton College in Upstate New York on November 11, 2009, during his recent speaking tour of the United States. Tariq, a native of Pakistan who lives in England, is a well known writer, intellectual and activist. He has traveled all over Southwest Asia and the Middle East while researching his books. Mara, who is working on a film highlighting the opinions of the Pakistani people regarding the current situation in Pakistan and the Western initiated ‘Global War on Terror’, had a lot of questions for Tariq about the internal state of Pakistan. I wanted to ask Tariq for his opinion about the effects of American foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and what alternatives he thought might be available.

Mara: What is the role of Islamophobia in the Global War on Terror? Many American war veterans have described the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as imperialistic, racist and genocidal. Your comments?

Tariq: Well, I think Islamophobia plays an important part in things, because it creates an atmosphere in which people feel, “Oh, we’re just killing Muslims, so that’s alright.” And this situation is becoming quite serious in the United States and in large parts of Europe, where people feel that the fact that a million Iraqis have died is fine because they’re not like us, they’re Muslims. So, Islamophobia is becoming a very poisonous and dangerous ideological construct which has to be fought against.

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Reinterpreting War

Chris Hedges discusses war and writing on NPR’s On the Media.

Chris Hedges

Vasily Grossman covered the Eastern Front of WWII for the Soviet Union and fictionalized his reporting as the novel “Life and Fate.” Curzio Malaparte covered the Eastern Front for the Axis Powers and fictionalized his reporting as the novel “Kaputt.” Veteran correspondent Chris Hedges talks about the two books and why he thinks fiction is the better way to capture the full scope of war.

Preachers & ‘Terrorists’

Aisha Ghani on Overlooking ‘Overlooking’

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announcing on Friday that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be prosecuted in federal court in New York.

 

Saturday, Nov 14th – Today I learn that conversations in delis are political. All I ordered that morning was a cup of coffee. The guy at the register, perhaps dedicated to the idea of service, gives me that and something I’m still having trouble digesting. He had been talking to customers about Eric Holder’s 9/11 trials announcement.

Addressing me although talking to the customer in front of me, he announces with palpable disdain, “Terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial.” Unable to respond, I hand him cash and receive, once again, surplus. Seventy-five cents and a question directed at me, but not to me,  “What do you guys think?” Sensing that my response would not be the ‘right’ answer, I leave, saying nothing or perhaps everything.

“Terrorists don’t deserve a fair trial.” Six words, delivered with the kind of alacrity that indicates honesty, compel this question: when we are confronted by such a statement, what kinds of things must we negate or ‘overlook,’ in order to enable their coherence? And, importantly, how and why does this overlooking take place?

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Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan

Jeremy Scahill

From The Nation’s press release (You can watch Democracy Now’s interview with Jeremy Scahill here):

In a stunning investigation just posted at TheNation.com, Jeremy Scahill reveals a covert military operation being run almost entirely by Blackwater, USA, a military contractor embroiled in controversy for their actions in Iraq and the Middle East. Key points from the piece:

  • An elite division of Blackwater, USA is running a covert, US Military operation that includes planning targeted assassinations, “snatch and grabs” and other sensitive actions inside and outside Pakistan. This is a program that not even some Senior Level Obama Administration and Pentagon officials are aware of.
  • Blackwater operatives are assisting in gathering intelligence to help run a secret, second and heretofore unreported, US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes.
  • Sources for The Nation report that some non-military Blackwater employees, outside of the US Military chain of command, have obtained rolling security clearances above their approved clearances, and higher than even members of the US Congress.

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The Lost Art of Reportage

Robert Fisk and Martin Bell in conversation with Ann Leslie at The Independent Woodstock literary festival.

Event description:

Was there a golden age for international correspondents? Are current affairs now largely brought to us in dumbed down soundbites? Who now sets the framework for coverage of world events?

In this podcast recorded at The Independent Woodstock literary festival Dame Ann Leslie, recognised as one of the 40 most influential journalists of our time (‘Killing my own Snakes’), talks with The Independent’s award-winning correspondent Robert Fisk (‘The Age of the Warrior’) and BBC’s renowned foreign reporter Martin Bell (‘The Truth that sticks – New Labour’s Breach of Trust’). They discuss whether reportage is indeed a ‘lost art’.

Strikes Back at Empire

Afghan insurgents deploy Fourth Generation Warfare tactics, of which propaganda is a key component. (via ABC News) Also see Thomas Ricks’s post on the army investigation into the rout.

Obama’s war in Afghanistan

Fault Lines brings together a panel of guests and a studio audience to discuss Obama’s war in Afghanistan. Hosted by Avi Lewis. Excellent interventions from Jeremy Scahill and Matthew Hoh.

Part two …

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Don’t repeat Vietnam in Afghanistan

A superb presentation by the great Daniel Ellsberg who suggests that the counter-insurgency plan in Afganistan is similar to Vietnam.

Part One (of Two)

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Warlord as Nobel Laureate

from Mother Jones magazine

by William Blum

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” — Voltaire

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He’s holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Somalian civil society and court system are so devastated from decades of war that one wouldn’t expect its citizens to have the means to raise serious legal challenges to Washington’s apparent belief that it can drop bombs on that sad land whenever it appears to serve the empire’s needs. But a group of Pakistanis, calling themselves “Lawyers Front for Defense of the Constitution”, and remembering just enough of their country’s more civilized past, has filed suit before the nation’s High Court to make the federal government stop American drone attacks on countless innocent civilians. The group declared that a Pakistan Army spokesman claimed to have the capability to shoot down the drones, but the government had made a policy decision not to. (1)

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