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December, 2003
The
Reconstruction's Bottom-Line
By Herbert Docena
The US-led reconstruction business in Iraq is faltering
because it is less about reconstruction than about business
Samarra: Plenty
Of Troops,still No Infrastructure
By Dahr Jamail
If repairing/rebuilding something in Iraq isn't
necessary to serve US and British interests, it is left as it is
Pride Without Prejudice
By A.J. Philip
There were events that Indians could feel proud
about during 2003. But when famines,religious massacres, ignorance and
illiteracy stalk the land can we sit back relax?
2003 Israel attacks
the Press
By Arjan El Fassed
Year 2003 was a period when Israeli army particularly
targeted working journalists in the occupied territories. Two journalists,
a Palestinian cameraman and a British documentary filmmaker were killed
by the Israeli army
30 December, 2003
Behind
The India-Pak Ceasefire
By Keith Jones
The Bush administration, which has embraced Pakistans
military regime as a key ally in its war on terrorism and
has identified India as a potential strategic partner of the US, is
a moving force behind the India -Pak ceasefire
Afghanistan's
Women After 'Liberation'
By Meena Nanji
After the fall of the Taliban the Jehadi leaders,
including Buhruddin Rabbani, Abdul Sayyaf, and members of the Northern
Alliance, have re-emerged, with disastrous consequences for Afghans,
especially women
Israel's Conscientious
Objectors
By Uri Avnery
When five 19-year old youngsters choose to go to
prison rather than enjoy the freedom of the occupiers, Kant himself
would have saluted them. The protest against an immoral regime is a
categorical imperative
When God Goes
To War
By Karen Armstrong
Religions usually espouse peace and goodwill, so
why have they sparked so many conflicts?
Liberating
Womanhood
By Kunda. Pramilani
Manusmriti Dahan Day celebrated as Indian womens
Liberation Day on 25th December 2003 at Chaitya Bhoomi , Mumbai- A Report
28 December, 2003
America's
War For Global Domination
By Michel Chossudovsky
The antiwar and anti-globalisation movements must
be integrated into a single worldwide movement. People must be united
across sectors, "single issue" groups must join hands in a
common and collective understanding on how the New World Order destroys
and impoverishes
From Joy To Despair:
Iraqis Pay For Saddam's Capture
By Robert Fisk
"Saddam brought us to this tragedy and the
Americans used it," he said. "You want to know who is to blame?
I say this: Fuck Saddam and fuck the USA."
The Politics Of
Land And The Besieged Lot
By Goldy M. George
land reforms is an unfinished task and land struggle
is an ongoing phenomena. A lot of serious effort needs to be put into
this
Remembering Gujarat
By Kalpana Sharma
Can we afford to bury and forget the terrifying
messages that the massacres in Gujarat carry?
27 December, 2003
Iraq
Through The American Looking Glass
By Robert Fisk
Terror is being let loose in Iraq in order to elicit
information about the guerrillas who are killing American troops
23 December, 2003
Sharon's
Speech Decoded
By Uri Avnery
Sharon's "Herzliyah speech" outlined
a whole, detailed - and extremely dangerous - plan. It is impossible
to decipher it without breaking the code. And it is impossible to break
the code without knowing Ariel Sharon very well indeed
Can It Ever Really
End?
By Sam Bahour
The world is trying to resolve only the most recent
Israeli historic wrong - the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza
Strip and East Jerusalem. However, the initial wrong that culminated
in the 1948 expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from
today's Israel is purposely being neglected
Capturing Saddam Won't
End The War
By Robert Fisk
Saddam was neither the spiritual nor the political
guide to the insurgency that is now claiming so many lives in Iraq.
However happy Messrs Bush and Blair may be at the capture of Saddam,
the war goes on
Social Engineering
To The Fore -
BJP Sweeps the Assembly Elections
By Ram Puniyani
It is not just the electoral victory for Sangh
Parivar but also is the success of its Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram
12 December, 2003
Keep
The Web Worldly And Wide
By Matthew Hindman and Kenneth Neil Cukier
Those who are trying to govern the world wide web
should remember the Web's roots: Its success is due to the fact that
it initially flew below the radar of governments and large corporations
Salvador Dali,
Fascist
By Vincente Navarro
The year 2004, the centenary of Dali's birth, has
been proclaimed "the year of Dali" in many countries. But
this movement has been silent on his active and belligerent support
for Spain's fascist regime
The Judeo-Jogi
test
By Manoj Mitta
Political corruption is ubiquitous in India. But
the mechanisms to check and punish the guilty is hardly efficient
11 December, 2003
The
New Tragedy In Afghanistan
By Conor Foley and Mark Lattimer
One of the big lessons from Afghanistan is that
good governance, respect for human rights and the rule of law are not
optional when it comes to rebuilding a country, but an intrinsic part
of reconstruction
Catching Up
By Jo Wilding
A visit with an Iraqi family provides a reflection
on the realities and frustrations that many live with under the occupation
Nobel Lecture
By Shirin Ebadi
Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech delivered by
the Iranian humanrights activist Shirin Ebadi
Defeat And Its
Consequences
By Mani Shankar Aiyar
The Hindutva brigade have installed three of the
ugliest faces of communalism in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, and virtually
handed over Chhattisgarh to the tender ministrations of Dilip Singh
Judeo. The secular parties must rise from their slumber and form a rainbow
coalition
Ayodhya Celebrating
Intercommunity Relations
By Ram Puniyani
On 20th November hundreds of Muslims came to the
biggest and most popular temple in Ayodhya, Hanuman garhi. They offered
Namaz and broke the fast in the sacred precincts of this temple
10 December, 2003
US,
Israel Prepare Mass Killings In Iraq
By Bill Vann
The Bush administration is about to launch a campaign
of wholesale killings in Iraq with the assistance of the Israeli military,
according to both US and Israeli sources quoted in several recent news
reports
The Privatisation
Of War
By Ian Traynor
The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat,
occupation and peacekeeping duties in Iraq that the US military would
struggle to wage war without it
Slapped
Into Submission
By Sunita Narain
How corporations threaten institutions raising
issues of public interest
Satyendra Dubey-Death
Of A Whistleblower
By Sucheta Dalal
The anger against the murder of IIT engineer Satyendra
Dubey is growing. But the Prime Ministers Office (PMO), which
is guilty of leaking Dubeys name to the very crooked contractors
that he had complained against seems unaware about the groundswell of
public anger
08 December, 2003
Three
Metros Will Sink By 2020
Here is a disaster prediction. Coastal cities such
as
Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai could go under sea by 2020 at the present
levels of global warming and the concomitant rise in sea level
How To Fix
The World Bank
By Mark Scaramella
The estimated total yearly value of worldwide currency
transactions is over $1.2 trillion a day. Or almost $500 trillion per
year. Imposing just 1 % tax on these transactions would wipe out poverty
from this world
Muslim Women &
Modern Society
By Asghar Ali Engineer
Neither rejection of religion nor submission to
what exists is a solution. Muslim women have to carve out their own
way
07 December, 2003
Beginning
Of The End Of The Monsoon?
By Geoffrey Lean
Global warming can lead to the cessation of the
Indian monsoon and the ending of the Gulf Stream threatening the survival
of life in Asia and Europe
Political Impasse
Deepens In Sri Lanka
By K. Ratnayake
Attempts to patch up a compromise between Sri Lankan
President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
have run into trouble after Kumaratunga released her own proposals for
working relations with the government last Friday, directly cutting
across negotiations with Wickremesinghe
06 December, 2003
The
True Story Of The Battle Of Samarra
By Phil Reeves
A bloody victory or dangerous fantasy? The Samarra
story could have been a fabrication which was intended to generate positive
headlines for the US, after a disastrous weekend in which guerrilla
attacks killed 14 foreigners
Samarra: An Entire
City Up In Arms
By May Ying
All of Samarra is with the resistance. The
guerrillas can shoot at the Americans on a sidewalk in the middle of
town at noon knowing no one will report them. When they do this, the
people clap - men, women and children.
Iraq:
The Next Afghanistan
By Philip Adams
Look at Afganistan - the warlords are back in business,
the opium poppies are blooming, heroin sales are booming and the country
is returning to the same level of corruption and dysfunction that brought
about the rise of the Taliban in the first place. This could be the
path Iraq is heading
The BBC And
Iraq: Myth And Reality
By John Pilger
The BBC gave just 2 per cent of its Iraq war coverage
to opposition views
Divide And
Destroy
By Alex Klaushofer
Over the past few months, the barrier that Israel
is building to cut itself off from the occupied Palestinian territories
of the West Bank has come to symbolise the divide between the two peoples
at the heart of the Middle East crisis
What Went Wrong?
By Gail Omvedt
All of secular India has to make soul searchings
about the BJP victory in the recently concluded assembly elections in
the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh. People like
Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy might have had some influence in these
states,but they have been silent, silent silent
05 December, 2003
InsideThe
Iraqi Resistance
By P. Mitchell Prothero
"If the Americans leave and Saddam comes back,
we will fight him too. Maybe if he were elected we'd allow it. But no
one in Iraq wants Saddam back. He turned into a thief and a murderer
who made too many mistakes. We don't want Saddam, but American cannot
occupy us any longer."
Exporting The
Islamic RevolutionTo Iraq
By Michael Jansen
George W. Bush may be on the way to transforming
Iraq into an Islamic state modelled on the Iranian system of valayet-e-faqih,
rule of the jurisprudence
Trishul To darkness
By Rahul Bose
India seems destined to pass through a dark tunnel
before it sees light again
A Comedy Of Errors
By Krishnakumar
An English- Malayalam dictionary published by the
DC Books, Kottayam written by Ramalingam pillai is full of shameful
errors. Inspite of the errors the dictionary has been sold over a million
copies. The authors efforts to publish an article on it has been refused
by the leading dailies and magazines of Kerala making it one of the
worst ever cover up in Kerala's publishing history
04 December, 2003
The
False Hope Of The Geneva Accord
By Ali Abunimah
The Geneva accord looks superficially promising,
but close-up it fails to resolve any of the key issues that have torpedoed
every earlier peace plan
Human Rights
Testimonies From Iraq
By Le Anne Clausen and David Milne
Testimony of an Iraqi Minor Detained and Mistreated
by US Forces. The family has asked that the 16 year old youth who gave
the testimony not be identified because his relatives are still detained
Perhaps Saddam
Read Tolstoy
And Bushs People Didnt
By Ben Bagdikian
There is an eerie similarity between Leo Tolstoy's
novel, War and Piece, which describes with considerable accuracy Napoleon's
1812 invasion of Russia and George Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq
Reviving Gandhi
To Cover Up Gujarat's Shame
By Ruchir Joshi
In an effort to project a more humane face for
Gujarat after the post Godhra pogrom against the Muslims, the Gujarat
government is reviving Gandhi
03 December, 2003
What
Happened At Samarra
By Muhammad Abu Nasr
Eye Witness Report of the "Battle" at
Samarra: "After inflicting casualties on the Americans the Resistance
fighters withdrew. The American troops, however, continued to shell
and rocket residential quarters of Samarra' for hours as if to punish
residents and drive a wedge between them and the Iraqi Resistance"
The Battle
That Left No Bodies
By Jack Fairweather
Americans say 54 attackers died in the fiercest
engagement since the war ended while Iraqis insist that eight civilians
were killed by reckless US fire.It was impossible to reconcile the two
versions of the battle
India = Cow + Kamasutra
By Satya Sagar
India= Cow + Kamasutra. That in general is the
equation that defines this vast, ancient and populous South Asian country
even today for many people in the West. Why does this happen?
02 November, 2003
The
World Is Running Out Of Oil
By George Monbiot
The world is running out of oil - so why do politicians
refuse to talk about it?
Samrra Killings
An Inside Story
By A Combat Leader
A combat leader gives the inside story of the samrra
killings
Buying Up Iraq
By Amal Sedky Winter
The United States cannot tolerate Arab democracy
at the national level because of its unilateral support of Israel's
occupation of Palestine and no freely elected Arab government will support
Israel against the Palestinians. If real democracy means letting people
have a real voice in governing themselves then there is little hope
of this happening in any Arab state, including Iraq
The Killing Fields
Of Rafah
By Gideon Levy
Life in the killing fields of Rafah is as cheap
as the hundreds of houses that have been demolished there for various,
strange reasons
01 December, 2003
Living
In The Shadow Of AIDS
By Florence Namukwaya
In Uganda, 1.7 million children have been orphaned
by Aids - a tenth of the world's total. Florence Namukwaya was one of
them - now she looks after 13 others. To mark World Aids Day, she tells
her story
Shifting Truths
By Robert Fisk
How genocides become "alleged genocides"
Hitler, Hindutava
And Its Allies
By Balram
The violent dance of death is being played all
around the world. It's clothed in saffron these days in India. This
Hindutva terrorism in saffron robes which Gujarat has suffered and which
is being sought to be spread in rest of India, is borne out of the same
psycho-space where Jihadi terrorism takes roots