Habib Siddiqui

In Eric Hoffer’s classic 1951 tract, The True Believer , he sketches the dynamics of a genuine mass movement. Hoffer’s core insight was to locate the source of all truly mass movements in a collective sense of acute frustration. Not despair, or revolt, or resignation — but frustration simmering with rage. Mass movements, he notes (as did Tocqueville centuries before him), rarely arise when oppression or misery is at its worst (say, 2009); they tend to appear when the worst is behind us but the future seems not so much better (say, 2016). M ass movements , Hoffer argues, are distinguished by a “facility for make-believe … credulity, a readiness to attempt the impossible.” What, one wonders, could be more impossible than suddenly vetting every single visitor to the U.S. for traces of Islamic belief? What could be more make-believe than a big, beautiful wall stretching across the entire Mexican border, paid for by the Mexican government? What could be more credulous than arguing that...

Here below is a letter from Tom Andrews. Please, support the cause to end genocide of the Rohingya people. =================================== Thanks to you, it’s not going to be business as usual in Burma. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce was pressing hard for President Obama to lift all remaining economic sanctions on Burma. That would have allowed U.S. firms to do business with Burma’s military – a military that continues persecution and threats of genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority. Thousands of activists like you joined with us and our friends at Fortify Rights, calling on President Obama to maintain the Administration's sanctions authority. And he did! The Administration lifted some sanctions against certain banks and companies but because of our voices, they maintained the “blacklist” preventing human rights abusers from doing business with the United States. We knew we were u...

Here is the link to an article on Moshe Yaalon's resignation and current events within the Likud government of Israel.

After reading Sumit Ganguly’s article - Bangladesh’s Accommodation of Extremism Spells Danger for Region (YaleGlobal Online) - I could not believe that I was reading an analysis from someone who holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington, and is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia. I feel sorry to state that it is a terrible piece. It’s a disingenuous attempt by Ganguly to analyze Bangladesh . As an Indian - American of Bengali heritage his piece is full of dada babu (condescending, big brotherly) attitude, which many Bangladeshis would find very offensive. He describes Bangladesh as the "mostly poverty-stricken nation", while hiding the fact that in his native India there are more beggars than found in Bangladesh . Hundreds of millions of Indians don’t have the necessary sanitary and health care facilities. On some of the Human Development Indices, India ’s record...

General Ya’ir Golan, the deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, delivered a speech on Holocaust Memorial Day.  He said, "If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016." This speech by General Golan speaks volumes. He has compared today’s Israeli state with Hitler’s Germany . Ninety years ago in 1926 Germany was witnessing one of the last years of the Weimar Republic, which with its collapse brought the Nazis into power in 1933 (almost 80 years ago) who carried out the ‘final solution’ for the Jewish minority there. With an emboldened fascism and unfathomed power, Hitler took his nation into the Second World War (1939-1945) and ultimately committed suicide nearly 70 years ago in 1945, thus ending the Nazi Reich. By any measure, pre-Hitler Germa...

Growing up as a Rohingya inside Myanmar is not an easy thing. It is actually quite dangerous. Wai Wai Nu is a courageous Rohingya young woman who has written a very good article on this subject. Her article can be read by clicking here .

Uri Avnery's latest article can be viewed by clicking here .

Since the illegal birth of the State of Israel, nearly seven decades ago, the apartheid state has been in the business of grabbing Palestinian-owned land. As I have noted elsewhere the entire litany of episodes that led to the implantation of European Jewry in the Holy Land - from the Balfour Declaration, nearly a century ago, to the highly controversial plan by the United Nations to partition Palestine in the aftermath of World War Two to today's land-grabbing activities - have all been illegal. Before the apartheid state was born the Jewish community in Palestine owned only 2.5 % of the total land, and yet it was given 56% of the total land in one of the most outrageous crimes of the last century. The Palestinians and neighboring Arabs were not consulted by the UN in this criminal land distribution. The rest is history. Israel was born 68 years ago. In its so-called War of Independence, the Jewish state with its Zionist terrorists went not only onto grabbing 77% of the total land...

US General Sean Swindell bears responsibility for deadly Kunduz hospital attack. To read more click here .

"Back in the summer of 2014, almost anything was possible for the BJP government. The once-in-a-generation mandate had endowed the government with enormous political capital that could be used to implement any reform, including some long-pending and difficult reforms. Alas, two years after May 2014, the government has become a punchline for jokes." - writes P. Chidambaram He writes, on Pseudo-nationalism: "Starting with the bogus sedition case against a bunch of JNU students based on a doctored video, the government launched a nationwide campaign to create the perception of an “enemy within”. The only thing this strategy seems to have achieved is to turn college campuses from Hyderabad to Pune to Aligarh to Jadavpur into war zones. Add to that the stoking of divisive fires like ‘ban beef’, ‘say Bharat Mata ki Jai’, ‘kill rationalists’ etc, and the stage is set for deeper polarisation and the ghettoisation of towns and cities. Equating nationalism with Hindutva and a...

Despite having lived in Israel for 22 years with no criminal record of any kind, Omar Barghouti was this week denied the right to travel outside the country.  As one of the pioneers of the increasingly powerful movement to impose boycotts, sanctions and divestment measures (BDS) on Israel, Barghouti, an articulate, English-speaking activist, has frequently traveled around the world advocating his position. The Israeli government’s refusal to allow him to travel is obviously intended to suppress his speech and activism. Just as if to mock free speech, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the world leaders who traveled last year to Paris to participate in that city’s “free speech rally.” Barghouti was interviewed recently, which you can read by clicking here .

A U.N. panel against torture on Friday expressed concerns about allegations of "excessive use of force," including deadly force, by Israeli security forces in the Palestinian Territories, and warned about authorities barring access to detained suspects, including minors. The Committee Against Torture, which works under the office of the UN human rights chief, released its "concluding observations" about Israel and five other countries — France, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Philippines — as part of regular reviews by the panel. The panel, which generally conducts reviews of assenting countries every four or five years, does not have investigative or fact-finding powers of its own and relies mostly on information from the media, advocacy groups, the UN, and other sources in drawing up its findings. In a 12-page segment on Israel, the committee pointed to "allegations of excessive use of force, including lethal force, by security forces" at ...

May 15 is observed annually as “Al Nakba Day” by millions of Palestinians and groups all around the globe hold actions and events to commemorate the fateful months of 1947-48. This was the day that the state of Israel was born in what can be called the disaster for the indigenous Palestinian people forcing some 770,000 of its people forced out of their ancestral land. Dozens of villages were destroyed, erased of the map, to allow for Israel to become a “Jewish homeland” in historic Palestine.   Here is an article by Nada Elia, a Palestinian, on the significance of this day. Nada writes, "Sixty-eight years into our catastrophe, Palestinians in the West Bank are still losing towns, homes, land, olive groves, to the Zionist settlers."

Human rights groups  say the Rohingya people are one of the most persecuted ethnic groups in the world. My own research work on endangered people has also shown that they are the most persecuted people in our time. More than a million people  in Myanmar from the Muslim minority are currently stateless, and genocidal violence in the country's west has put nearly 140,000 of them in internment camps. Although Myanmar has gone through a political change with an elected government running the state, it still doesn't want to recognize its Rohingya people whose ties to the soil of Arakan (Rakhine) state are older than others. This is a sad matter for all the human rights groups around the globe who expected better from a government that is now led by Suu Kyi. With her inexcusable silences to condemn the crimes of her Buddhist people against unarmed Rohingya and other minority Muslims living inside Myanmar she has been a disappointing icon since the latest genocidal pogroms...

The number of internally displaced people rose to a record 40.8 million people in 2015, according to a joint report released Wednesday by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). "This is the highest figure ever recorded, and twice the number of refugees worldwide," said Jan Egeland, the NRC's secretary-general. There were 8.6 million people newly displaced within borders last year, nearly half from conflict zones in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, the report said. "As the world's attention focused on the flow of refugees out of the region, millions were displaced internally in the Middle East, more than in the rest of the world combined," said Carsten Hansen, NRC's regional director in the Middle East. The number of internally displaced in Syria and Iraq increased by 1.3 and 1.1 million, respectively, adding to the millions already forced from their homes in those long-running conflicts . Y...

After working as an interrogator for a U.S. military contractor in Iraq, Eric Fair took a job as an analyst for the National Security Agency. When he went to the NSA, Fair was reckoning with the  torture of Iraqi prisoners, torture he had witnessed and in which he had participated. Fair would go on to write a memoir detailing his experiences in Iraq; the book, Consequence , was published last month. In Consequence , he recounts the daily work of manipulating and mistreating prisoners even as he became disillusioned with the idea that such interrogations produced any intelligence of value. He writes about shoving detainees into walls and throwing chairs, seeing men naked in freezing temperatures and subjecting them to sleep deprivation. He sees detainees being struck by other interrogators. He describes a technique known as the “Palestinian chair,” rumored to have been taught to U.S. forces by Israeli interrogators. Fair describes the torture of one Ira...

Sadiq Khan, son of a Muslim  immigrant to the UK, has recently been elected Mayor of London. He defeated Zac Goldsmith who gratuitously exploited anti-Muslim prejudice in order to win  London mayoral election, but failed miserably. Lifelong Conservative Peter Oborne has described Goldsmith’s campaign as “the most repulsive I have ever seen as a political reporter”. Former Conservative candidate Shazia Awan has denounced the campaign as “racist” . “This is not the Zac Goldsmith I know,” says Tory Baroness Warsi . Here is Mr. Khan's story.  You can read also another good piece on him, by clicking here .

Bigotry runs very deep in the veins of Hindu Sena, the Hindu fascists of India. To these low lives, the simple formula - enemy of my enemy is my friend - is the mantra to live by. With his bigoted and hateful remarks, Donald Trump has now become their idol, the avatar. To pledge their “support” for the billionaire businessman, over a dozen Hindu Sena members gathered at Jantar Mantar with a pandit in tow and posters of Trump, either beaming or waving, in their hands. The havan began at 12.30 pm and continued for an hour, during which Hindu Sena members urged god to shower his blessings on Trump.ho will save them. Gupta also has plans to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and request him to make an appeal to the international community to garner support for the Republican frontrunner.

Five policemen stand guard outside the house at the far end of the Dalit colony in the village. From inside the dark single-room house emerges a young woman. “I am C Kausalya, Sankar’s wife,” she says. Just two months ago, Sankar was hacked to death in Udumalpet town for marrying Kausalya, 19, who belongs to the Thevar caste, a powerful OBC group in Tamil Nadu. Sankar died on the way to hospital. Kausalya survived, after 36 stitches to her head. The assailants were alleged to have been hired by Kausalya’a family. Eleven people, including her parents and her mother’s brother, and eight others are in Kovai prison. To read the full story, click here .

It requires courage to say what is right, esp. in the face of much opposition. The term 'Rohingya' has become an unacceptable word for the hateful Myanmar and its Buddhist majority who are in the denial of this people of the soil of Arakan. They like to portray the persecuted Rohingya people as infiltrators from the nearby Bangladesh and calls them Bengalis. Everyone hoped that with the coming into power of Suu Kyi, such genocidal mindset would be replaced by one of integration and understanding. But our expectations with Suu Kyi continue to be premature. Her newly formed government advised foreign leaders, including the US Ambassador to Myanmar not to utter the word Rohingya when describing the persecuted Muslim minority. To my great delight, the new ambassador of the United States to Myanmar said on Tuesday he will keep using the term Rohingya for the persecuted Muslim minority, even after the government controlled by Nobel prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi asked him to refrai...

Israel has refused to issue a travel permit to Omar Barghouti, one of the founders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel, saying that his residency rights in Israel are currently being reconsidered. You can read the news by clicking here .

Excerpts from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books) can be seen by   clicking here  ( Part 1) and here (part 2).

The Obama administration seeks to demonize Iran — along with Russia and China — while also demanding their help in areas of U.S. interest, an approach that is both disingenuous and dangerous, as former British diplomat Alastair Crooke explains. To read his article, click here .

On April 15, 2016, the Ethiopian Federal High Court acquitted two men, Yoantan Wolde and Bahiru Degu, who spent more than 600 days incarcerated on terrorism charges that critics allege were politically motivated.  Zelalem Workagenehu , a third man, was not so lucky. He was convicted and will be sentenced on May 10. (On April 26, the public prosecutor submitted a sentence aggravation statement to the court, and Zelalem was asked to file a sentence mitigation letter on his part.) Zelalem is a human rights advocate and a scholar who regularly contributed to the diaspora-run website  DeBirhan . All three were accused under Ethiopia's  Anti-Terror Proclamation , which was adopted in July 2009. State officials defend the law, saying it is modeled on existing legislation in countries such as the United Kingdom. Yonatan Wolde and Bahiru Degu were released after spending 647 days—almost two years—in prison, demonstratin...

Rohingyas  are the indigenous people of Arakan who live in the western part of the Buddhist majority country of Myanmar. They are the worst persecuted people in our time as a result of their religion and race. The fascist Buddhists are denying the rights of the Rohingya to self-identify themselves, which is a clear sign of what others have called the 'slow genocide'. They are opposed to the use of the 'R' word by anyone, including the US government.  Hundreds of people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon, Burma, on Thursday with a simple demand: The United States must stop using the word "Rohingya."  Here is a good article analyzing the issue. 

In recent years, democratic reforms have swept through Myanmar, a country that for decades was ruled by a military junta. As the reforms took hold, however, things were growing progressively worse for the Rohingya, the most persecuted ethnic Muslim minority in the world who are concentrated in the country's western state of Rakhine. The 2012 alleged gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman by three Muslim men ignited violent riots in which hundreds were killed as Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya attacked each other. In the following months, tens of thousands of Rohingya were rounded up and forced to live in squalid camps; Human Rights Watch  deemed the attacks  crimes against humanity that amounted to ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. Thousands of Rohingya have since attempted to leave the country, fueling the region's intricate and brutal human trafficking network. VICE News traveled to Myanmar to investigate the violence and discrimination faced by the country's Muslim...