Politics

The “Bin Laden Files”

By Bilal Ahmed
Posted on
Posted in Asia, Blog, Politics

The SEALS raid on Abbotabad, while widely celebrated in the United States, has been widely agreed in Pakistan to be our greatest humiliation since the events surrounding the 1971 war of Bangladeshi independence. This should not be surprising, as the scope and brashness of the mission appeared to only be rivaled by the Pakistani military’s inability to (1) know that the raid happened until news channels reported it, and (2) know that Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Abbotobad in the first place. (More…)

Israel’s New Frenemies

By Mitchell Plitnick
Posted on
Posted in Blog, Near & Middle East, Politics

Chemi Shalev is one of Ha’aretz‘ best reporters, and his commentary Strange Bedfellows makes for valuable reading. It describes how the diminished role the US is playing in the Middle East is being interpreted, not without merit, as US weakness, and that is causing so-called “moderate Arab states” (which is a euphemism for those states which are willing, however clandestinely, to work with Israel) to increase their cooperation with Israel. (More…)

White Indians

By Bilal Ahmed
Posted on
Posted in Politics, United States

It was September 2008. As George W. Bush prepared to leave office, something astonishing happened. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated, “the people of India deeply love you, President Bush.” Though he had been treating US officials with uncharacteristic generosity since coming to office, for embattled Republicans, this gesture provided a brief victory for a president whose foreign policy was disastrous. (More…)

Putin and the Jews

By Mitchell Plitnick
Posted on
Posted in Europe, Politics

It was early May in the Russian city of Volgograd. Vladislav Tornovoi, a 23-year-old man, was drinking with a couple of other guys when he made a fatal mistake. He told his drinking buddies that he was gay. By the end of that night, Tornovoi had been brutally beaten, sexually tortured and, finally, killed. (More…)

Slap Hillary

By Leshu Torchin
Posted on
Posted in Cyberspace, Politics

On Monday, August 5th, The Hillary Project, tweeted reporters far and wide to ask them, ‘Have you slapped Hillary today?’ Because, it seems, this Republican Super PAC has made this possible, at least virtually, by resurrecting the 13-year-old game, Slap Hillary on their website. (More…)

Sex and the Salafists

By Bilal Ahmed
Posted on
Posted in Asia, Politics

It was a cathartic moment. Actress and model Veena Malik was subjected to an exhausting interview by an aggressive journalist, as well as hardline mufti Abdul Qawi, on Express News TV. The two men were fiercely critical of Malik’s behavior during season four of the Indian reality program Bigg Boss, during which she was boldly sexual with Indian co-star Ashmit Patel. (More…)

Racism As a Virtue

By Mitchell Plitnick
Posted on
Posted in Near & Middle East, Politics

“If you think I’m a racist, then Israel is a racist state.” These were the words of the embattled mayor of the Israeli, predominantly Jewish, town of Upper Nazareth, or Natzrat Ilit, in Hebrew. The mayor, Shimon Gafsou (wrongly translated as Gapso) is running for re-election on an anti-Arab platform, and his words bear a very close examination. (More…)

Data and Democracy

By Robert Schrem
Posted on
Posted in Cyberspace, Politics

The 9/11 attacks confirmed what many of America’s critics suspected. They were a sign of decline. With the economy contracting, and no clear adversary in sight following the fall of the USSR, Washington was at a loss to define itself as the impregnable power everyone once feared. Indeed, there was something unprecedented about it all. (More…)

Dear Ex-Nazis

By Dan Glass
Posted on
Posted in Europe, Politics

You may have seen these posters plastered all over Germany. ‘Operation Last Chance’ is a witch hunt calling for all those who were Nazis and have yet gone unpunished. To be imprisoned and to rot. The organisation behind it says they have never met a Nazi who showed any remorse. This begs many questions. Is this true?  (More…)

Dead Cities

By Magadh
Posted on
Posted in Politics, United States

Given the eminent place of Detroit in the history of the United States, the announcement that it had filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection last week did not make the splash that some expected. With debts estimated to be in excess of $18 billion (no one knows the real number for certain,) the city that had once been the heart of American industrial power had been a dead man walking for years. (More…)

Masala Socialists

By Bilal Ahmed
Posted on
Posted in Asia, Politics

The numbers add up. Pakistan needs a new operating system.  49% of the population lives in poverty.  Of 146 countries surveyed for gender inequality, Pakistan scores 115. Lights go out for at least ten hours daily in cities, and up to twenty-two in rural areas. The leaked Abbottabad Commission report merely adds to these indicators by illuminating wider dysfunctions. The status quo can’t hold. The question is what’s going to replace it. (More…)

The Great Train Robbery

By Mitchell Plitnick
Posted on
Posted in Near & Middle East, Politics

Making a mockery of John Kerry’s peace efforts is an obsession of the Israeli right. This week, it was the Likud Transportation Minister, Yisrael Katz, who got into the act, announcing a plan for massive railroad construction in both Israel and the West Bank. This, however, could also present opportunities for proponents of both one-state and two-state resolutions of this conflict, if they can find ways to take advantage of it. (More…)