Habib Siddiqui

Ryan McMaken The threat of “nuclear proliferation” remains one of the great catch-all reasons—the other being “humanitarian” intervention—given for why the US regime and its allies ought to be given unlimited power to invade foreign states and impose sanctions at any given time. We saw this at work during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was said that nuclear weapons were among the “weapons of mass destruction” being developed or harbored by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Thus, it was “necessary” that the United States invade Iraq and enact regime change. It is now very clear, of course, that the Bush-Cheney administration was lying and there was no credible evidence that Iraq’s long-defunct nuclear program had been revived. But let’s say for the sake of argument that Iraq was well on its way to developing a nuclear weapon in early 2003. Would it have become “necessary” for the US to invade Iraq and install a de facto puppet regime that would agree to not develop nuclear weapon...

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the US administration has revealed in the summary of a long-awaited report detailing the American intelligence community's findings on the murder. The report will likely alter US policymakers' ties with Saudi Arabia and the crown prince, known as MBS, particularly. "We assess that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi," the report, a summary of which was released on Friday, said. President Joe Biden has already suggested that he would forgo the young prince - the de facto ruler of the kingdom - and deal directly with the ageing King Salman. The report said US intelligence officials concluded that MBS ordered the assassination, based on his control of major decisions in the kingdom. 'Aides were unlikely to question Mohammad bin Salman's orders or undertake sens...

Dave DeCamp Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press reveal a large construction project taking place at a secretive Israeli nuclear facility near the city of Dimona. The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center is home to laboratories that are used to obtain weapons-grade plutonium for Israel’s undeclared nuclear bombs. The pictures show what AP describes as a “dig about the size of a soccer field” near where the facility’s reactor is located. Israel did not respond to requests for a comment on the images. The images first surfaced last week, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif pointed out the hypocrisy in Western leaders who ignore Israel’s secretive nuclear weapons program while obsessively focusing on Iran’s civilian nuclear program that is subject to stringent inspections. Zarif described the Dimona facility as the region’s only “nuclear bomb factory.” Israeli officials are also constantly accusing Iran of having a secret nuclear weapons program when it is Israe...

Dave DeCamp Posted The US bombed targets in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border on Thursday. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 22 members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were killed in the strikes, although the number is unconfirmed. An Iraqi militia source told Reuters that at least one person was killed in the bombing. The PMF is a group of mostly Shia Iraqi state-sponsored militias that formed in 2014 to fight ISIS. The US framed the bombing as “defensive,” blaming the groups they targeted for recent rocket attacks on US bases in Iraq, but no evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim. Earlier this month, rockets hit a US base in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, killing one contractor. “We’re confident that the target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said of Thursday’s bombing. The Pentagon described the targets as “infrastructure utilized by Irani...

Speaking recently on CNews, France’s equivalent of Fox News, the higher education minister launched an unprecedented attack on the whole French academic community. Frédérique Vidal argued that French academia is “gangrened by Islamo-gauchisme” or “Islamo-leftism”. The “Islamo-leftism” tag is today used uncritically by members of the government, large sections of the media and conservative academics. It is reminiscent of the anti-semitic “Judeo-Bolshevism” slur of the 1930s which blamed the spread of communism on Jews. In reality, “Islamo-leftism” is an elusive pseudo-concept which voluntarily confuses Islam – and Muslims – with Islamic extremism and points the finger at “left-wing academics” who allegedly collude with these nebulous Islamic entities. The notion, which is dismissed by the scientific community as unsound, was coined by the academic Pierre-André Taguieff in the early 2000s. The neologism was originally forged to point to the alleged political convergence between leftis...

Flying the Israeli Flag During the January 6 insurrection, hardly any of the U.S. media took note of the following fact: amongst the signs and banners of rightwing organizations—the “South will rise again” Confederate states enthusiasts, the fascist-like Rambo militias, and the disparate run-amok MAGA maniacs—stood a very large Israeli flag. If you are looking for comment and contextualization of this appearance, the best place to go is the Israeli progressive web-based magazine, 972. There you will find a very good piece, dated 22 January 2021, by Ben Lorder. Lorder explains that the presence of the Israeli flag in this milieu is not a rarity. “It is hardly the first time,” he tells us. It has also shown up at “Straight Pride parades and pro-Trump car caravans.” Indeed, according to Lorder, “for the ascendant forces of right-wing populism in the United States and around the world … support for Israel takes on a special intensity.” Now, why would that be so? Not exactly for progres...

President Joe Biden’s avowed intention to close the Guantánamo prison offers hope to end an embarrassing episode in the most recent history of the United States. The abuses committed at Guantánamo have been criticized by many countries around the globe and condemned by all leading human rights organizations. The Constitution Project, a Washington-based non-partisan research and advocacy group, stated that “U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation.” Equally appalling has been the involvement of medical personnel who supervised the interrogation of detainees, as denounced by Open Society and the Institute of Medicine as a Profession (IMAP) to the point that ...

For Palestinians, exile is not simply the physical act of being removed from their homes and their inability to return. It is not a casual topic pertaining to politics and international law, either. Nor is it an ethereal notion, a sentiment, a poetic verse. It is all of this, combined. The death in Amman of Palestinian poet, Mourid Barghouti, an intellectual whose work has intrinsically been linked to exile, brought back to the surface many existential questions: are Palestinians destined to be exiled? Can there be a remedy for this perpetual torment? Is justice a tangible, achievable goal? Barghouti was born in 1944 in Deir Ghassana, near Ramallah. His journey in exile began in 1967, and ended, however temporarily, 30 years later. His memoir “I Saw Ramallah” – published in 1997 – was an exiled man’s attempt to make sense of his identity, one that has been formulated within many different physical spaces, conflicts and airports. While, in some way, the Palestinian in Barghouti remain...

Rush Limbaugh’s death represents a moment for reflection on the state of American politics. Limbaugh amassed a fortune of more than $600 million over 32 years in the talk radio business, in the process building up more than 15 million regular listeners. It was no exaggeration when CNN referred to him as a “pioneer of AM talk-radio.” He made possible the rise of propagandistic partisan media, demonstrating that this format could be incredibly profitable for news channels looking for low-budget programming filled by pundits who tell audiences what they want to hear, while strengthening their prior beliefs and values. Reflecting on Limbaugh’s legacy, The New York Times described the “rightwing” “megastar” by his “slashing, divisive style of mockery and grievance,” which “reshaped American conservatism.” CNN remembered him as a “conservative media icon who for decades used his perch as the king of talk-radio to shape the politics of both the Republican Party and nation.” MSNBC reported th...

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — A young woman who was shot in the head by police last week during a protest against the military coup in Myanmar died Friday, her family said. It was the first confirmed death among thousands of protesters who have faced off against security forces since the junta took power on Feb. 1, detained the country’s elected leaders and prevented Parliament from convening. Mya Thwet Thwet Khine was shot during a demonstration in the capital, Naypyitaw, on Feb. 9, two days before her 20th birthday. Video showed her sheltering from water cannons and suddenly dropping to the ground after a bullet penetrated the motorcycle helmet she was wearing. She had been on life support in a hospital with what doctors said was no chance of recovery. Her sister, speaking from the hospital’s mortuary, urged people not to give up their struggle to restore democracy. “Please participate and continue fighting until we achieve our goal,” said Mya Thatoe Nwe. She said the funeral will be hel...

Ram Puniyani India began as a plural democracy; respect for diversity was the core value. The provisions of safeguards for minorities were in built. These safeguards were formulated by the Constituent Assembly’s committee on Minorities headed by Sardar Patel. Seven decades down the lines where do we stand in matters of security and economic welfare of the religious minorities. Most of the inquiry commission reports related to communal violence, the scholarly works on communal violence by the likes of Paul Brass, Asghar Ali Engineer and recently from Yale University give a very painful picture of the communal violence, showing that the Muslims minorities in particular and lately Christian Minorities have suffered adversely. Sachar Committee Report (2006) showed the economic marginalization of Muslim minorities. The events of last few decades and more so of last six years show the rising intimidation, marginalization and increasing fear among this community. The lynchings in the name o...

Ram Puniyani India currently is in the grip of ‘constructed Hate’. This in turn has led to violence against vulnerable sections of society, particularly religious minorities and dalits. As such one understands that love is a natural phenomenon and Hatred is generally a phenomenon constructed around misconceptions about the targeted sections of society. These targeted sections of society have to bear the brunt of the violence. The major source of misconceptions is the interpretation of history, which nationalism in the name of religion interprets in a way to suit is political agenda. Currently all three major periods of Indian History, ancient, medieval and modern are presented in a distorted fashion in the discourse which is dominating the social scene. On the top of that the historians who have tried to interpret history in rational, scientific way are looked down and defamed by the dominant political narrative. As pointed out by Eric Hobswam ‘History is to nationalism: what poppy i...

1. Victories that are only partial are not fictional. When a ruler, like Biden, finally announces the end of a war, like the war on Yemen, it is as important to recognize what it does mean as what it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean the U.S. military and U.S.-made weapons will vanish from the region or be replaced by actual aid or reparations (as opposed to “lethal aid” — a product that’s usually high on people’s Christmas lists only for other people). It does not mean we’ll see U.S. support for the rule of law and the prosecution of the worst crimes on earth, or encouragement for nonviolent movements for democracy. It apparently does not mean an end to providing information to the Saudi military on whom to kill where. It apparently does not mean the immediate lifting of the blockade on Yemen. But it does mean that, if we keep up and increase the pressure from the U.S. public, from activists around the globe, from people putting their bodies in front of weapons shipments, from labor unions a...

Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American President, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process’, Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups. Indeed, a political shift is taking place on both fronts: the US away from the region and Russia back to it. If this trend continues, it could only be a matter of time before a major paradigm shift occurs. The Israelis are rightly worried at the potential loss of the unconditional support of their American benefactors. “There are 195 countries in the world, and … Biden has not contacted 188 of them,” Herb Keinon wrote in The Jerusalem Post on February 2, adding, “but only in Israel, pe...