Geography Archives: Pakistan

  • Kashmir — Hell of Internal Colonialism

    When it comes to Kashmir, official mendacity in India seems to cross all bounds.  So even a prominent member of the Indian Establishment felt that the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s recent (May 22) open advocacy of “kaante-se-kaanta-nikaalte-hein” (a-thorn-to-remove-a-thorn) counterinsurgency tactics was “terrible” and that he should withdraw his out-of-line statement forthwith.  “You have to neutralise […]

  • Challenging American Exceptionalism

    President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages — including one American — during a drone strike in Pakistan.  Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our […]

  • Blockupy the ECB, Blockupy the NATO

    I defied my advanced age to board a special train, with a thousand mostly young people, and join in the big “Blockupy” demonstration in Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s big banking city.  The trip, though not the usual four and a half but seven hours, retained till well into the night a spirit of happy anticipation. […]

  • Samir Amin on the Charlie Hebdo Murders: Imperialism and International Terrorism

      The Western errors and neo-liberal damages: Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi knew how to contain the Islamist drift, but they were slaughtered.  In Libya, Paris and Washington have it all wrong. We reached Samir Amin — philosopher, economist, and director of the Third World Forum based in Dakar — in Paris by phone, to […]

  • Je Suis Charlie — But I Have Other Names as Well!

    Monday evening I had planned to write about the PEGIDA movement in Germany.  Although in Dresden, their city of origin, the number of bitter marchers protesting the “Islamization” of the West had increased stubbornly to 18,000, I began to report happily that everywhere else in Germany they had been greatly outnumbered.  In Berlin, only 300 […]

  • The “Responsible Nuclear State”: The United States and the Bomb

      In light of the revelations that the United States was prepared to use nuclear weapons in the event of war between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea, it may be worth revisiting the idea that America represents a “responsible” nuclear power, in opposition to countries like Iran and […]

  • “A Guernica of Political Prose”: Ashok Mitra’s Calcutta Diary

    Ashok Mitra.  Calcutta Diary.  Kolkata: Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, 2014 (first published in 1977 by Frank Cass, London).  pp xxvii + 300.  Rs 395. They do not trumpet their inspiration from the rooftops: “their identification with the cause is nevertheless total”.  Amal Sen, the homeopath, was one such sympathiser.  A dreamer of socialist dreams, he medicated, […]

  • Bhagat Singh: Eighty-Three Years On

    Chaman Lal.  Understanding Bhagat Singh.  Delhi: Aakar, 2013.  pp. 245. Left Traditions in South Asia Bhagat Singh is to South Asia what Che Guevara is to Latin America — a popular iconic figure who continues to inspire generations of youth in the subcontinent in their struggles against imperialism and the trajectory of national politics after […]

  • Gujarat 2002, India 2014: ‘Numbers Sanctify’

    “Numbers sanctify”.  The context is very different, but I couldn’t keep my mind off that quote from Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux.  After all, the alleged mastermind of the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat will soon be sworn in as India’s prime minister, at the head of a government in which his party, the BJP, will […]

  • Tarek Mehanna: His Tragic Immoderation

    I have become a card-carrying, tax-paying moderate, thanks to a study I found in Politico.com.  In this study, psychologists Kaitlin Toner and Mark Leary discovered that the more extreme politicians’ views are, the more they think they’re right.  In fact, politicians’ “belief superiority” — the certainty that their own viewpoints are correct — was linked […]

  • Do What You Must (Tum Apni Karni Kar Guzro)

    Laal is a revolutionary band from Pakistan.  Lyrics by Faiz Ahmad Faiz (13 February 1911-20 November 1984).  Directed by Taimur Rahman. | Print

  • Voices From the Drone Summit

    Last weekend, I participated in a panel on the illegality of drones and targeted killing off the battlefield at the conference “Drones Around the Globe: Proliferation and Resistance” in Washington DC.  Nearly 400 people from many countries came together to gather information, protest, and develop strategies to end targeted killing by combat drones.  I found […]

  • A New Pakistan?

    “These people who are commonly known as leaders view politics and religion as that crippled, lame and injured man, displaying whom our beggars normally beg for money.  These so-called leaders go about carrying the carcasses of politics and religion on their shoulders, and to simple-minded people who are in the habit of accepting every word […]

  • Gal Sun Chapna, Raj Lay Aa Apna

    Laal is a revolutionary band from Pakistan.  Lyrics by Habib Jalib.  Directed by Taimur Rahman. | Print

  • Drones, Sanctions, and the Prison Industrial Complex

    In the final weeks of a six-month prison sentence for protesting remote-control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here.  In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists […]

  • On the Shahbagh Movement Against War Criminals of 1971

      This article was featured in the March 2013 issue of Analytical Monthly Review, a sister edition of Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India. — Ed. Some young people gathered on the crossroads of Shahbagh in Dhaka on February 5, 2013, to protest against the judgment of the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) which […]

  • Where Have All the Muslims Gone? The 2018 Hashmi Award

    New York, N.Y., 2018 — Every year about this time, since way back in 2013, the City of New York has bestowed its prestigious Hashmi Award upon a worthy New York resident who lives openly as an observant Muslim.  The Hashmi recipient — preferably of Asian, Middle Eastern, or African descent — must have paid […]

  • “Whose Streets? Our Streets!”: Reflections on the World’s Largest Demonstration, Ten Years Later

      February 15, 2003 Sarah, New York: The wind that whips down the avenues is bitterly cold, but that doesn’t stop us from protesting the drive to war in Iraq.  People from all over the city and the Northeast — young and old, hardened activists and first-time protestors — have converged on Manhattan, where the […]

  • Zero Dark Thirty: The Woman’s Guide to Success Thru Torture

    I. The Globe See the Globe.  More than half the 7 billion people on the Globe are women.  Women are different from men.  Why are women different from men?  Because, according to international humanitarian agencies, women have special percentages that stick out.  See women’s percentages: Women make up 70% of the world’s poor. Women do […]

  • Zero Dark Thirty: Torturing the Facts

    On January 11, eleven years to the day after George W. Bush sent the first detainees to Guantanamo, the Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty is making its national debut.  Zero Dark Thirty is disturbing for two reasons.  First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find bin […]