Habib Siddiqui

Last Friday the latest high-level talks on breaking a five-month diplomatic impasse between Pakistan and the USA collapsed over American refusal to Pakistani demands for an unconditional apology from the Obama administration for an airstrike, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the Afghanistan border last November. Without the apology, Pakistani government may not reopen NATO supply routes into Afghanistan that have been closed since November. The Americans, in turn, are withholding nearly a billion dollar of promised military aid. In three weeks the Obama administration is hosting a NATO meeting in Chicago. The event is cast as a regional security summit to discuss matters relating to the entire region including Pakistan and Afghanistan. The bilateral relationship between Pakistan and the USA has been quite tense since the release of a CIA operative who was involved in shooting in January of last year. Then came the assassination of Osama bin Laden inside a compound in Abbot...

Yuval Diskin, t he former head of Israel's Shin Bet security agency has accused the country's political leaders of exaggerating the effectiveness of a possible military strike against Iran, in a striking indication of Israel's turmoil over how to deal with the Iranian nuclear program. He said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak – who have been saber-rattling for months – have their judgment clouded by "messianic feelings" and should not be trusted to lead policy on Iran. Diskin is not alone inside Israel challenging claims made by warmongers inside Israel (and the USA, UK and France).  A few days ago Israel's current top military commander, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, also seemed to disagree with the country's leadership on the likelihood that Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon. Last summer    Israel's recently retired spy chief Meir Dagan called a military strike against Iran's nuclear program "stupid."  Dan Halut...

Crime and corruption always go hand in hand. Bangladesh , like many of the developing countries, has her share of such vices that never seem to go away. But her people have always expected better and thus with uninhibited enthusiasm participated in all the elections since 1970, a year before the country emerged as a new state in the world atlas. That year in the parliamentary election, the Awami League - under the able leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, popularly known as the Bangabandhu (or the Friend of Bengal or Bangladesh) – won 160 of the 300 seats contested for the National Assembly of Pakistan, winning all but two seats from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The interim military government of Pakistan was caught by surprise at people’s verdict. In its wildest dream the latter had not imagined that the people would choose its adversary that had been demanding regional autonomy since 1954. It had foolishly fancied that a coalition of centrist parties would emerge victor...

Last week India successfully tested a powerful new missile that can carry nuclear weapons far enough to hit places like Beijing. And yet, there was no condemnation for such acts from the USA and her western allies. Mind that India is not a signatory of the NPT. But when it comes to Iran, just see all the nasty commotion from the same countries. What a hypocrisy. For an excellent analysis, read John Glaser's article here .

In her newly released book – Drift - Rachel Maddow of the MSNBC argues that the American nation has drifted away from its founding ideals and has become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we have arrived at such a dangerous place, she discusses from the Vietnam War to today’s war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. Back in 1792, Thomas Jefferson (then the Secretary of State) wrote, “One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier.” As Maddow showed neither Jefferson nor the other founding fath¬ers could ever have envisioned the modern national security state, with its tens of thousands of “privateers”; its bloated Department of H...

In spite of all the evidences that point out that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, the war party is busy. It is preparing for a war against Iran. And thus, just as with Iraq earlier, the USA government is trying to choke Iran by every means possible. At the heart of such accusations against Iran is the dubious role played by IAEA's new chief Yukiya Amano. Here is an excellent article from Professor Sahimi of the prestigious University of Southern California, Los Angeles, which discusses Amano's criminal ploy at the service of the Empire. While Prof. Sahimi generously calls Amano "a political dwarf in the service of the United States," my views are that he is no less criminal than anyone within the Obama Administration and Netanyahu's government in Israel that want to repeat the crimes of Iraqi aggression against Iran for the latter's refusal to bow down to the altar of criminal Likudnik nexus. Amano is a disgrace to the IAEA, serving the interest...