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Shamil Idriss
On opening night of a recent major gathering of American and Islamic leaders in Doha, Qatar, one former Senior American diplomat made it clear that “the US will never turn its back on Israel”. At the same opening night, a Senior Islamic religious scholar said categorically, “we will not dialogue with the Jews”. These remarks, indicate both the need for more such encounters, and the significant obstacles that stand in the path of their success. What such comments should do, is compel Muslim Americans to take a greater lead in reconciling the two communities of which we are a part.
Mike Ferner
If a “rogue nation” or swarthy men with foreign accents did it, we know what we?d call it. What the world?s most powerful military did to the village of Abou Siffa must be called the same thing: terrorism. A small citrus grove was the last stop on our tour of this farming hamlet on the Tigris River, 30 miles north of Baghdad and Mohammed Al Taai wanted to give us a gift of fruit. I put the two oranges he gave me in my right coat pocket. In the left clinked two spent shell casings I?d just found on the ground that came from a 25mm gun mounted on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. We listened to the story of how the U.S. military came to Abou Siffa three times in one month, leaving a terrorized community in its wake.
Peter Preston
The interesting question is not why Abdul Qadeer Khan became a villain. That’s easy. Money, money, money. Nuclear physicists toiling away on ?15,000 tend to run short of it. No, the real question - the one with the legs and authentic WMD mushroom cloud - is why, to this day, he remains a hero to his own people. What, after all, is so heroic about flogging your country’s nuclear secrets and surplus kit to the likes of North Korea, Libya and Iran? Why should the average Pakistani peasant revere this clever, arrogant, corrupt creature of the army, an exporter of mass destruction? And yet, clearly, he does.
Uri Avnery
Do you want to make the deal of a lifetime? Go to Gaza! The government has kindly laid on armored vehicles for this purpose. Once there, you can obtain the villa you have dreamt about all your life, with two floors and a green lawn, for next to nothing. The state is rich. You can put up greenhouses and produce flowers or vegetables. Once upon a time you could engage Palestinian workers, who would work for a pittance. They had no alternative, because their land was taken away from them. Now this is too dangerous, so you will engage workers from Thailand, who get even less.
Ahmad Y. Majdoubeh
It is not easy for an Arab today to be a peace advocate. The present Israeli government, as well as that of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have, through a series of systematic provocative and subversive acts, made a mockery of peace. Peace advocates find it both embarrassing and ludicrous to even talk about peace ? let alone assert their belief in it or call for action. Netanyahu, a few years ago, and Sharon now, came not only with the intention to halt the momentum of talks, procrastinate and then subvert peace, but also to complicate matters, escalate the conflict and either delay peace for decades to come or, worse, kill it. This is no light matter.
Jonathan Cook
Israel’s furious diplomatic activity to sabotage a decision taken by the United Nations General Assembly last December to seek the opinion of its highest judicial body, the International Court of Justice, on the legality of Israel building its separation wall across large swaths of occupied Palestinian territory began to pay dividends at the weekend. By the Friday deadline for submitting affidavits, 31 states had joined Israel in rejecting the court’s authority to rule in the matter: 15 member states of the European Union, 10 further members-in-waiting, as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, South Africa and Cameroon. Britain, Germany and France presented their own, separately written affidavits.
David Wiggins
Perhaps the greatest military philosopher of all time, Charles Darwin first described the Law of Natural Selection in his scientific treatise, “The Origin of the Species.” Commonly known as “the survival of the fittest,” the Law of Natural Selection states that those creatures best adapted to survival in their particular environment will be the ones most likely to pass their traits on to others. The result is that over time, any species that survives must constantly improve its ability to resist threats to its existence. Hence, as it pertains to the battle for survival, the Law of Natural Selection can be restated as follows: The resistance always increases.
Scott Ritter
I had come face to face with a phenomenon I have come to describe as the ‘theocracy of evil.’ Going beyond mere political ideology, the theocracy of evil encompasses a faith-based value system that embraces a simplistic ‘good versus evil’ opposition. If Saddam is evil, such thinking holds, then evil must be confronted, and such niceties as fact and fact-based logic no longer apply. As such, WMD became simply an enabling issue ? something designed to focus the attention of the public while those in charge pursued the broader agenda of confronting evil.
Jawad Ali
Hitler? is a registered trademark and valuable commercial property. It is owned by a small and predictably murky group of powerful individuals and institutions. There are strict rules about the right and wrong ways of using the Brand Name. It is immoral to use the Brand Name in ways that do not enrich its Guardians. Certain predictable things happen each time the Sacred Brand is correctly invoked. Cruise missiles and cluster bombs land on peasant villages and densely populated urban areas. Checkposts and settlements are set up. Land mines and depleted uranium cause slow motion holocausts. The Guardians of the Sacred Brand rake in billions.
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