Habib Siddiqui

As the Trump administration recedes into memory and Joe Biden takes the reins of the warfare state, it’s important to reflect on the changing nature of American militarism over the last decade. Trump received a lot of attention for his proclamation that “we are ending the era of endless wars.” But this was more rhetoric than reality, and never received much support from his base, which appeared perfectly fine with militarism and war. As I documented during Trump’s term using national survey data, support (in hindsight) for the war in Iraq, continued support for war with Syria, and agreement that Trump should escalate the U.S. conflict with Iran, were all significantly associated with increased support for Trump. A comprehensive examination of the Trump administration’s policies demonstrates that across many issues, his presidency was significantly worse than its predecessor, despite both being defined by hyper-militarist policies. At day’s end, both presidents will be remembered for k...

After World War II, the Nazis who helped Hitler rise to power and murder millions of people, including at least 6 million Jews, were put on trial to send a warning to the world. Not all of them faced a judicial process, but enough were not protected by their high status, official offices, or claims of “innocence” and “patriotism.” Power through violence was the only language they spoke—not justice, not freedom—and they were held accountable. These criminals faced a tribunal at Nürnberg (Nuremberg) so momentous that the disgraced word “Nazi” is forever attached to those who participated in and enabled their horrific crimes. After the war, Germany banned Nazi flags and neo-Nazis. In fact, the only way that Nazi paraphernalia got into Germany was through smuggling from other countries such as the United States, like from Nazi propagandist Gerhard Lauck in Nebraska, the man called the “Farm Belt Führer” who served four years in a German prison for distributing banned pro-Nazi materials th...

2/6/2000: the Senate acquits Trump of the House impeachment charges; Trump at 42% approval; election prospects look good 3/3 (Super Tuesday): Joe Biden sweeps Democratic primaries, reversing Bernie Sanders’ gains; Biden backed by Wall Street and the Democratic National Committee blocks Sanders; the electoral choice will be between center-right Democrat Biden and Clinton-Obama normalcy, or four more years of Trump 3/13: as COVID19 becomes an issue, and awareness of Trump’s criminal irresponsibility spreads, Trump belatedly announces a national health emergency and first measures against it April: many states modify their absentee/mail-in voting procedures in response to the Coronovirus 5/25: police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; revival of Black Lives Matter on unprecedented scale, more diverse than ever (even in virus conditions); mass media increasingly inclined to discuss “systemic racism” as a real thing and disparage the Trump forces for denying the obvious; renewed em...

In my college years, as a member of the Iranian Students Association, one of my political tasks was to dispatch progressive American attorneys to Iran to investigate human rights abuses by the Shah, including torture and murder of political prisoners. These trips and the subsequent reports submitted by the attorneys were often successful in reducing the pain and suffering of prisoners of conscience, since the Shah was cognizant of his image abroad. Afterall, he was a creature of the West and dependent on it. He owed his throne to the 1953 American-British backed coup and was nurtured by the Western imperial powers throughout his reign. But his dependence was also his Achilles’ heel. In a country with a long history of popular sentiment against tyrannical rule, being an appendage of foreign powers could be fatal. And hence we had the late 1970s popular uprising in Iran. The 1979 Iranian revolution ended the reign of the Shah and his human rights abuses. But the Islamic Republic that em...

“Leftists” I know have had their undies tied up in a nasty knot bunch over other leftists’ use of the F-word – fascism – to describe Trump and his backers. Fascism, seriously? Yes, absolutely, provided we have a reasonable definition. In his incisive 2009 book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, David Neiwert rightly observed that “Fascism is not a single, readily identifiable principle but rather a political pathology best understood (as in psychology) as a constellation of traits. Taken individually,” Neiwert wrote, “many of these traits seem innocuous enough, even readily familiar, a part of the traditional American hurry-burly. A few of them …are present throughout the political spectrum. Only when taken together does the constellation become clear, and then it is fated to take on a life of its own.” What comprises this collection of characteristics? Here are my top 29 traits of fascism, cobbled together with no claim to originality in concept or ph...

GHAZIABAD, India (Reuters) - Hundreds of Indian farmers protesting against agricultural reforms and refusing to disperse were locked in a stand-off with riot police on Thursday on the outskirts of the capital, New Delhi. Angry at what they see as laws that benefit large private buyers at the expense of growers, tens of thousands of farmers have been camped peacefully at sites on the outskirts of Delhi for more than two months. But a procession of tractors on Tuesday turned violent when some protesters deviated from pre-agreed routes, tearing down barricades and clashing with police who responded with tear gas. Some reached as far as Delhi’s historic Red Fort, where they scaled the ramparts and hoisted flags. The violence left one dead and hundreds injured. Several hundred police arrived at the Ghazipur protest site to the east of the capital, where hundreds of protesters remain. More than two dozen people also gathered nearby, chanting slogans against the farmers, according to a R...

Israeli forces Wednesday demolished a mosque in the Bedouin community of Azwadeen, east of Yatta city, south of Hebron, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA. Coordinator of the Protection and Steadfastness Committees, Fuad al-‘Amour, told WAFA that Israeli forces escorted bulldozers into Khirbet Umm Qassa in the Bedouin community of Azwadeen, in what is called the Eastern Slope, where the heavy machinery tore down the mosque, reducing it to rubble. The demolition was carried out less than two weeks after soldiers posted demolition notices against the mosque and a local school, which serves 50 students from three marginalized communities, purportedly for being built without licenses. Meanwhile, soldiers seized a tin-sheet health unit in Khirbet al-Rakiz hamlet in Masafer Yatta. Masafer Yatta is a collection of almost 19 hamlets that rely heavily on animal husbandry as the main source of livelihood. Located in Area C of the West Bank, under full Israeli administrative and mil...

The KGB ‘played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality’, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian David Smith in Washington Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian. Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war. Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. “This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was h...

Donald Trump’s seditious incitement to insurrection on January 6 was the political equivalent of date rape. Just as a sexual abuser attempts to see how far he can force things, Trump tested the limits of how much violence he could get away with. (And how much threatened violence – who can doubt that the mob would have killed Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi if they got their hands on them?) So Congress gave Trump the answer: it impeached him, a second time, on January 13. Now, with the benefit of post-inaugural perspective – over 20,000 National Guard troops and a massive lockdown in Washington, D.C. to prevent another violent assault – Trump’s last days look even more garishly atrocious, while congress’ response promises to be inadequate. The fascist-in-chief may be gone, but the job of controlling the violent bands of rightists he unleashed looks like it will be botched. Four days after the pandemonium at the capitol, Rep. James Clyburn told reporters that the House would wait until 100 d...

In classical dramas, tragic figures are driven to their doom by some inexorable flaw in their character. For Donald Trump, that tragic flaw has been unbounded narcissism. For four years as president, Trump could focus on only one thing: himself. He preferred to be in front of cheering crowds than behind the desk in the Oval Office actually doing work. He cared only about his appearance, his reputation, his legacy. Trump pursued various foreign policy initiatives – such as meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un or pushing for a peace deal in the Middle East – only to get a Nobel Prize not because he genuinely cared about the lives of the people in other countries. If Trump had shown even minimal compassion for all the Americans whose lives were disrupted by COVID-19, he might have won re-election in November. If he had campaigned for the two Republican senators in the Georgia run-off election in January – instead of focusing on his own conspiracy theories about his “stolen vict...

Amnesty International decried Egyptian prison conditions on Monday, 10 years after the Arab Spring revolution began in the country. Thousands continue to be held for months or years under often inhumane conditions in overcrowded prisons, according to a report published by the human rights watchdog. Prisoners are kept in dark, poorly ventilated cells with little or no fresh air and unsanitary conditions with little access to water and toilets and receive unhealthy food, it said. Inadequate healthcare makes prisoners suffer unnecessarily and in some cases may have resulted in death, Amnesty alleged. Contact with relatives is greatly reduced or completely denied, and there is no uniform strategy in the fight against the coronavirus in prisons, the report noted. “Prison officials show utter disregard for the lives and wellbeing of prisoners crammed into the country’s overcrowded prisons and largely ignore their health needs,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa ...

In the intensive care unit of the European Gaza Hospital lie 50 critically ill Covid-19 patients. Their doctors are not confident that the available medical supplies will be sufficient to keep them alive in the next few weeks. With the hospital's capacities dwindling due to the rising numbers of coronavirus cases, and the already fragile healthcare system, the chances of survival for Covid-19 patients with chronic diseases in the Gaza Strip remain slim. As of Monday 25 January, the total number of Covid-19 cases in the blockaded enclave stands at 49,834, of whom 508 died. While the number of cases remains relatively moderate compared to other areas around the world, it is still considered “overwhelming” in Gaza, with the lack of medical supplies in hospitals and the absence of vaccines that have already been rolled out in most countries. 'While we are supposed to be given priority, given the harsh humanitarian conditions and the collapsing healthcare system, we are not even...