Habib Siddiqui

Hundreds of masked men marched through Stockholm's main train station on Friday evening, beating up refugees  and anyone who didn't appear to be ethnically Swedish. Wearing all-black balaclavas and armbands, the men "gathered with the purpose of attacking refugee children," Stockholm police spokesperson Towe Hagg said. Before the attacks, the mob handed out leaflets with the slogan "It is enough now!" which threatened to give "the North African street children who are roaming around" the "punishment they deserve". After the attack, the Swedish Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group,  released a statement  claiming the attack had "cleaned up criminal immigrants from North Africa that are housed in the area around the Central Station".

Is rape acceptable? No, and it has never been. However, if you look at the statistics around the world, you would draw the conclusion that rape crimes are growing everywhere. For our purpose here, let’s focus on South Asia . Rape is becoming more like an epidemic in India . According to India 's National Crime Record Bureau, crimes against women have increased by  7.1 percent since 2010 . The number of rapes reported has also risen.  Nearly one in three rape victims in India is under the age of 18.  One in 10 is under 14. Every 20 minutes in India , a woman is raped.  That is a huge number for a country that has been socially conservative! Many of the culprits, sadly, are policemen and members of the armed forces, i.e., people in authority with guns - the very people that are supposed to come to the aid of or defend victims. Last week on Thursday, in Chhattisgarh , a 21-year-old woman, who was gang raped over a period of six months by two police cons...

" The worst worries of a child’s school day should be homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No child’s walk to school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives," Cassandra Dixon writes. She bemoans, " U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of their childhoods. The U.S. subsidizes about 25% of Israel’s military budget, at a cost to US taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year." Here is a link to her article on non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation in south Hebron.

King Mohammed VI’s Message to Conference on ‘Rights of Religious Minorities in Muslim Countries', January 25, 2016 •  Rabat – King Mohammed VI addressed a message to the participants in the conference on “The rights of religious minorities in Islamic lands”, which kicked off  Monday  morning in Marrakech. Here follows the full text of the Royal message, read by Minister of Endowments and Islamic Affairs, Ahmed Toufiq. Praise be to God May peace and blessings be upon all Prophets and Messengers Ladies and Gentlemen, It gives me great pleasure to send this message to your Conference and to welcome you to Marrakesh, the city of interaction and cultural dialogue. I wish you a pleasant stay and pray that Almighty God grant you every success in your endeavors to bring the truth to light and to dispel unfounded opinions. In normal circumstances, there would have been no need to address a theme such as the one chosen for this conference, “The rights of relig...

Here is an article on problem with inter-religious harmony in today's Myanmar.

Can a minority group have its own university? Probably, not, if it is in today's India where  a religious minority is debarred from establishing a university inasmuch as a university can only be established by a legislature. The case in point is with the status of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), which was established during the British rule for the educational advancement of Muslims of India. In this regard, one may recall the remark of  Tara Chand, an eminent historian of modern India, who once succinctly said, “it will be a falsification of the history of India if it is asserted from any quarter that the AMU was not established by the Muslims and primarily for the educational advancement of the Muslims of India”.  Prof. Aftab Alam of AMU has written an article on this subject. He writes, "It is the duty of the government to ensure that the rights guaranteed to minorities are not turned into a “teasing illusion and promise of unreality”." To find out more about the co...

John F. Kennedy once said, “Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.”  Jeb Bush is a politician. He is trailing major contenders in the Republican party for the top national spot. As a governor, he abused his authority that led not only to   dismissal  of  Prof. Sami Al-Arian  from the South Florida university where he had been teaching since 1986 but also his highly politicized  indictment . [ Because of his long activism for the Palestinian cause and defending human and civil rights, he was a political prisoner in the U.S. and spent over a decade in prison and under house arrest until the charges were dropped in 2014. He now lives in Turkey.] "Unfortunately, politicians have generally acquired a reputation for being dishonest, deceitful, hypocritical, and power hungry. Perhaps most, but not all," Dr. Al-Arian writes.  He opines that the very reason that public are dumpin...

Denmark is defying international outrage and pressing ahead with plans to force refugees to hand over valuables in return for providing sanctuary.  The measures, seen by some critics as comparable to systematic Nazi robbery from Jews, and designed to dissuade migrants from seeking asylum in Denmark, are due to be ratified by parliament in Copenhagen on Tuesday. Danish politicians have been unmoved by fierce criticism.  Minister Støjberg, widely regarded as a racist and bigot, and a hardliner on integration and migrant matters,   has been unrepentant. Trine Villemann has rightly called the measure daylight robbery . I can't agree more. Here is news report you can link.

S aadiq Long, the Muslim U.S. Air Force veteran who was  secretly placed on the no-fly list  in 2012 and then  smeared by a fabricated news report last December  claiming he was arrested in Turkey “as a member of an ISIS cell,” left Turkey last week and has now returned to the U.S. The U.S. government, which worked to secure Long’s release from a Turkish deportation center, gave him a waiver from the no-fly list to enable him to fly back home. Along with his wife and daughter, Long, as the  Washington Post   reported,  arrived Wednesday night at JFK Airport in New York. After questioning by immigration officials, the family cleared customs and immigration and was admitted into the country.  Needless to say, that Long was able to leave Turkey and freely enter the U.S. further demonstrates that the December report that he was arrested as an “ISIS fighter” was a complete fabrication. You can read the news report about Sadiq by clicki...

Ronan Lee i s a PhD Candidate at Deakin University researching the impact of Myanmar’s political and economic liberalisation on the Muslim Rohingya. Ronan’s professional background is in politics, where he was formerly a Queensland State Member of Parliament and has worked as a policy and campaigns advisor.   He  has written a good article on the above subject title, which can be accessed by clicking here .

There has been continued persecution of the Muslim community in Myanmar – particularly against the Rohingya.  Last month, human rights group  Fortify Rights  called on the Myanmar government to drop charges against Muslim men on discriminatory grounds. There has been continued persecution of the Muslim community in the country – particularly against the Rohingya, who are subject to arbitrary arrest, institutional discrimination, detention, harassment, and killings. ‘Rohingya Calendar’ The recent injustice against Muslims in Myanmar involves six men charged for publishing a calendar that described the country’s persecuted Muslim Rohingya as a recognized ethnic minority. According to Fortify Rights, on November 24, police chief Major Khin Maung Lat arrested the men and they were charged under Section 505(b) of the Myanmar Penal Code for creating material with the intent to cause “fear or alarm to the public.” The law has historically been used by the Myanmar junta as ...

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a Swiss nonprofit foundation, based in Cologny,  Geneva . As a state recognized international institution for public-private cooperation, its mission is cited as "committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas". The Forum is best known for its annual winter meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland . The meeting brings together some 2,500 top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals, and journalists to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world. The organization also convenes some six to eight regional meetings. Beside meetings, the foundation produces a series of research reports and engages its members in sector specific initiatives. The theme for this year’s WEF, held January 20-23 at...

Nicholas Kristof has w ritten several times over the years about the brutalization of the Rohingya. For some readers the Rohingya people and their sufferings seem obscure and remote. Why worry about a distant people when there are so many crises in our own backyard? Kristof shares the story of  Jano Begum, 22, and her husband, Robi Alom, 30, who are among the more than 1 million Muslims who belong to the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, subjected to an ethnic cleansing that a Yale study suggests may amount to genocide. He  wants us to put ourselves in Jano’s situation, as she sits in a hut in a concentration camp here, and think how far you would go to save your spouse. " How much should you sacrifice to save your husband’s life?," asks Kristof. " And how much hardship do you inflict on your son to rescue your husband?" Those are the questions Jano Begum faced.  You can read Kristof's article by clicking here .

Wai Wai Nu was an 18-year-old girl studying law when the Burmese authorities took her, her mom, and her sister to a private place where authorities could question them about the activities of her father Kyaw Min, who they had taken to jail two months prior. Kyaw Min was a Rohingya politician who had won 1990 election from the Rakhine (Arakan) state. T he results of those elections, successfully led by  Aung San Suu Kyi  of the National League for Democracy, however, were ignored by the military that ruled Myanmar. Shortly thereafter, Min faced harassment so fierce it forced him to move his family from their home in Western Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Yangon, the former capital and the country’s largest city. Wai Wai would spend the next s even years in the prison.  Her crime? She and her family are Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority in a country, which I have been calling the worst den of hatred and intolerance in our time - with many Buddhist leaders who wield a militar...

Pete Dolack writes the Systemic Disorder blog. He has written a must-read article on the Davos World Economic Forum. This article can be accessed by clicking here . Here below are some salient points he argues about. The world’s rulers are getting together at their biggest bash of the year, the World Economic Forum. Prime ministers and other high government officials will also be in attendance. The theme for this year’s Forum, which began on January 20 at its usual home in Davos, Switzerland, is said to be “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” It  is expected that there would be a global loss of 7.1 million jobs between 2015 and 2020. How much is a contributing factor like economic inequality for such loss of jobs? You may recall my article based on Oxfam report. Nothing illustrates the world’s incredible inequality better than the Oxfam report, “ An Economy for the 1% .” Oxfam researchers calculate that the richest 62 people have as much wealth as the ...

Andre Vltchek  is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His latest books are: “ Exposing Lies Of The Empire ” and “ Fighting Against Western Imperialism ” Discussion with Noam Chomsky: On Western Terrorism .  Point of No Return  is his critically acclaimed political novel.  Oceania  – is another book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific. He has posted an article - How the West Creates Terrorism  in the countercurrent .org, which is worth reading.

Remember Jonathan Pollard, the American spy who leaked sensitive defense and national security info to Israel? He was serving a long prison term, until, of course, lately. He has been a free man for a few months. He is well settled now inside Israel. It was done in a hush-hush way. Obama had to cave into Israeli decade-long demand to release him. With friends like that we don't need too many enemies! Yes, the pariah state knows how to blackmail us too well.  Benjamin Netanyahu was in Davos. There, the Israeli Prime Minister told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday that his country will need more US military aid because of the nuclear deal with Iran . Israel is currently negotiating a new 10-year military aid package with Washington that it says will need to grow beyond the $3.1 billion yearly currently provided by the United States. The figure excludes US spending on projects including Israel's Iron Dome missile defence system. Netany...

The news report below is shared from Jason Ditz . Though aides to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon insisted that the “purchases” were almost certainly illegal , Israeli military forces were deployed to the West Bank city of Hebron to crack down on Palestinians who protested the settler takeover of buildings near an important religious site. Several Palestinians were hospitalized . Dozens of settlers showed up in Hebron this afternoon, breaking into a pair of buildings they claimed to have purchased, and have declared “Beit Rachel” and “Beit Leah.” The apartment buildings were vacant, but there was no indication that the settlers had any permit to buy land in a Palestinian city. The proximity of the apartments of the Cave of the Patriarchs, also known as al-Ibrahimi Mosque, adds to the tension, as the site is religiously important to both Muslims and Jews. The Israeli Defense Ministry is said to be undecided yet on allowing the occupation of the buildings to continue. Ta...

Companies operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank contribute to "an inherently unlawful and abusive system" violating Palestinian rights and should halt activity there, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday. The new report from the US-based rights group describes Israeli policies in the West Bank that lead to government support of settlements, the "unlawful confiscation" of Palestinian land and denial of permits to Palestinians. For the full text of the news, click here .

A BRITISH APPEALS COURT has ruled that the United Kingdom’s broad counterterrorism laws breach fundamental rights in a case involving the seizure of encrypted documents from David Miranda, the partner of Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, at a London airport in 2013. For the full text of the news report, click here .

With villages on the front lines endlessly changing hands between ISIS and the Kurdish Peshmerga in northern Iraq, the Kurds have at times seen these villages as a liability, forcing them to spread their forces thinner to defend, and widening the front lines. A new report from Amnesty International, however, suggests the Peshmerga’s “solution” to this problem is increasingly to just burn Arab villages they capture to the ground, expelling the population, and accusing them of being “pro-ISIS.” If they weren’t pro-ISIS before, burning their villages to ground certainly is going to do the trick, and the Amnesty report suggested thousands of homes have been destroyed to make sure that the displaced have no homes to return to. Incredibly, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) doesn’t appear to be denying the report at all, insisting simply that in expelling the Arabs “we are taking back some of what was ours,” with officials openly talking about chasing enough Arabs out of the area ar...

When Suu Kyi's NLD takes control of the central government of Myanmar, it has many pressing issues to tackle. Some insincere advisers and analysts have tried to belittle the Rohingya suffering. But as Nicholas Kristof and other more conscientious analysts and reporters have suggested the Rohingya crisis should be high in her agenda. Suzanne Nossel has written an article in the FP where she echoes Kristof's views: "Having done nothing to challenge analysts who have chalked up her silence on the Rohingya question to a pre-election political calculus, Aung San Suu Kyi will be measured — particularly by the West — for her willingness to tackle it now that the polling is past. This will involve speaking frankly about the conflicts in the state of Rakhine, where most of the Rohingya live, mobilizing a range of stakeholders — including the Rakhine population and leaders from Rohingya communities — to contribute to a solution, becoming more outspoken in rejecting Buddhist extre...

Mostafa Hemdan is making a good living turning rubbish into gold, but success has not come without hurdles. The 25-year-old is founder of Egyptian company Recyclobekia, one of the first businesses in the Middle East to recycle electronic waste. You can read his story by clicking here .

New York Times has not always been truthful or unbiased. Esp. when it comes to Iran, its editorial board has been guilty of parroting Netanyahu's talking points. Matt Peppe has written an article on NY Times' double standard, which can be viewed by clicking   here .

U.S. ambassador confesses that Israel has legal double standard in West Bank. Speaking at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv, Dan Shapiro said "Too much Israeli vigilantism in the West Bank goes on unchecked," adding that "there is a lack of thorough investigations… at times it seems Israel has two standards of adherence to rule of law in the West Bank - one for Israelis and one for Palestinians." Shapiro added that the two-state solution is the only way to prevent Israel from turning into a bi-national state, and said a way must be found to preserve its viability. He noted that the American administration is "concerned and perplexed" in wake of the Israeli government's policy on the settlements, "which raise questions about Israeli intentions." Shapiro's comments are the latest in a string of critical remarks voiced by the U.S at the Israeli government. Two weeks ago, the U.S. said it was "d...

"2015 was not only a year of fear, brutality and injustice, it was a year of sustained resistance that honored not only a strong national Black radical politics of organizing, but also helped cultivate a new and thriving, nonviolent international movement for Black Liberation," says Matt Meyer with two co-authors in a recent essay, which can be accessed by clicking Here .

Saudi Arabia's bombing campaigns inside Yemen have made the necessary difference for her anti-Houthi power block. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians have died as a result of such reckless bombing campaigns.  Covering of war fronts is always a very dangerous task. Many journalists and photographers have died trying to cover such stories of human tragedy.  The latest casualty is a Yemeni journalist  Almigdad Mojalli who had  documented countless scenes of trauma and destruction, even as the conflict was largely ignored by the outside world. His articles, on homes demolished by airstrikes or hospitals deprived of medicine, were published in American and British media. On Sunday, while on assignment for Voice of America, Mr. Mojalli traveled with colleagues outside the capital, Sana, to find witnesses to airstrikes that had killed at least 15 civilians last week. But when they arrived, warplanes with the Saudi-led military coalition began circling overhead, accor...

Jewish vandals, likely religious right-wing extremists, vandalized Jerusalem's Dormition Abbey overnight Saturday. The Benedictine monastery abutting the walls of Jerusalem's Old City has been the target of repeated anti-Christian vandalism and in February 2015. The vandals wrote anti-Christian slogans on the edifice's walls and doors using red and black markers. These included: "Christians to Hell", "May his name be obliterated" (a supposed Hebrew acronym of Jesus' name in Hebrew), "Death to the heathen Christians the enemies of Israel", etc. Jerusalem's Old City, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized abroad, has been on heightened security alert during a months-long wave of Palestinian street violence, with wall-to-wall security camera coverage and paramilitary police patrols. Here is the link to the news. Here is another link.

Israel is an apartheid country with different sets of laws for her indigenous Palestinians. Since her illegitimate birth in 1948, she has always been following a colonial plan to expand her territories while dehumanizing the conquered people who now have become a minority as a result of the Zionist state's policy of Jewish influx and Palestinian forced exodus.  Just like the birds of the same feather, colonial enterprises like to flock together. It was no accident that the rogue state was a major partner of the apartheid state of South Africa, arming her to her teeth, before world sanctions and divestment forced the latter to change its apartheid course.  So, I am not surprised to find out that the Zionist state has been a major arms supplier to the murderous Myanmar regime since the 1990s. Those weapons have been responsible for much of bloodshed, mayhem and destruction in ethnic/ minority territories of Myanmar.  According to a 2000 report in the London-based publica...