It all really goes deeper than the criticism aimed at his Enough Project, the Save Darfur campaign, or the “genocide paparazzi” satellite monitoring scheme – all of which are symptomatic of an overarching failure in US foreign policy, which promotes … Continue reading →

Victims and human rights activists cheered when, on January 26, a Guatemalan court charged Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt with genocide and crimes against humanity. The decision to bring the 85-year-old former dictator to trial is the latest stage in a … Continue reading →

While it is important and strategically wise to form coalitions and build solidarity with other marginalized groups, it should be considered only when a movement is armed with a clear understanding of its own historicity based on the experience of … Continue reading →

In dealing with Arabs, the most dominant construct is religion – they are treated as Muslims first, Arabs second. In dealing with Sub Sahara Africa, the dominant construct is race; we are all “black”. This “Africa” is also an intellectual … Continue reading →

this essay by arundhati roy is exceptionally sharp. it delineates the history of corporate philanthropy (with some focus on the ford foundation) and makes connections that might shock many. i will attempt to quote some of the paragraphs i found … Continue reading →

For Palestinian expatriate Edward Said, the return to his homeland amounted to a painful inquiry into his past. This program captures the interconnection between Said’s personal recollections and the shared memory of the Palestinian people. Far from ignoring the contemporary … Continue reading →

In most colonial wars people are arrested, tortured at random and killed. Not even a façade of legality is considered necessary. The ‘lone’ American gunman who butchered innocents in Afghanistan in the early hours of Sunday morning was far from … Continue reading →

Invisible Children has an enviable ability to draw attention to itself. It should offer courses to other NGOs in social media and video editing. But that doesn’t mean IC knows the material. Until they bother to make a case to … Continue reading →

there is this email campaign going on and someone forwarded this video to me. i had never heard of the hoshyar foundation before. they r a u.s based organization. personally i would feel more comfortable supporting non-profits like DIL (developments … Continue reading →

To a critical but scarcely exclusive sense, the Pentagon’s penchant for military toys makes an ambitious, aggressive foreign policy essential. Without enemies and conflicts, real or potential, there is no reason to spend money, and this reality often colored its … Continue reading →

it’s easy to discuss the dominance of the pakistani army in every facet of pakistan’s politico-economic life and treat this phenomenon as a “third world” issue. the american military is just as much in charge of the country’s foreign policy. … Continue reading →

The historic achievement of Aimé Césaire’s generation was that, in the course of the anti-colonial struggle, it established the agency of the developing world and the right of its peoples to make their own choices, so much so that, today, … Continue reading →

More than 250 Palestinian and Israeli women and men were attacked by military forces at a demonstration at the Qalandia checkpoint. Several injuries were reported, including one woman who was hospitalized after being shot with a rubber-coated bullet. “The 8th … Continue reading →

[The video] aims to make Kony “famous” by encouraging supporters to plaster US cities with posters, in order to make the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army an issue of “national interest” to Washington. That, the video’s makers claim, will … Continue reading →

Naomi Wolf: Burning a conquered people’s sacred texts sends an unmistakable message: you can do anything to these people. As Heinrich Heine put it, referring to the Spanish Inquisition’s burning of the Quran, “Where they burn books, so too will … Continue reading →

The truth is that governance in the US has been slipping fully into the modes and mindset of a security state for a long time. The government sees large parts of its population not as citizens or constituencies, but as … Continue reading →

i’m always wary of projects that fit in too well with the imperialist agenda. watch what obaid-chinoy says about american military withdrawal from afghanistan at 3.10. yes, acid attacks r an incomprehensible horror but this conversation should be happening inside … Continue reading →

in an interview published in guernica magazine, kashmiri writer mirza waheed asks: “what makes brutality banal? how do we come to accept violence as an everyday thing? … how do we come to a point where killing as many people … Continue reading →

It is important to pause long enough to take account of Khader Adnan’s achievement, symbolically, substantively, and with respect to future possibilities. We should note that Mr. Adnan’s hunger strike of 66 days is the exact length of Bobby Sands’ … Continue reading →

pakistan is changing. in the little time that it has had to develop democratic institutions, such as a strong judiciary, it has done amazingly well. imagine what it could have accomplished over 60 yrs of uninterrupted democracy… this is such … Continue reading →

It is really worth looking at this document for a sense of how insidious it is when the government spies on and compiles files about innocent citizens. The report contains numerous maps identifying the locations of all mosques in Newark. … Continue reading →

Last week in an ESPN column, Asian-American writer Jay Caspian Kang is quoted as saying, “If you can’t look at Jeremy Lin and see why America is the greatest country in the world, well, then you don’t understand America.” We’ll … Continue reading →

so much for working only (and only) within the framework of international law when it comes to human rights. … Israeli philosopher Kasher has been explicitly frank about his contempt of current International Humanitarian Law. He, like some others at … Continue reading →

John PILGER: ‘The suppression of Blair’s criminality and that of his administrations is described in Gareth Peirce’s Dispatches from the Dark Side: on Torture and the Death of Justice, published in paperback this month by Verso. Peirce is Britain’s most … Continue reading →

In the US, many people think that by talking about race and racism, we create racialized thinking. But what studies show is that students recognize race and are often not provided with the language or the space to talk about … Continue reading →

If a dearth of coverage of Khader Adnan’s hunger strike in the Israeli media is deplorable, albeit predictable, Palestinian activists believe the lagging coverage of the international media is unconscionable. “It is simply despicable and downright outrageous that Khader Adnan … Continue reading →

Sahlberg speaks directly to the sense of crisis about educational achievement in the United States and many other nations. US policymakers have turned to market-based solutions such as “tougher competition, more data, abolishing teacher unions, opening more charter schools, or … Continue reading →

this article resonated with me for many reasons and one of them is this attitude that i find prevalent in privileged pakistani society as well – that democracy can’t work in pakistan because people are not educated/informed enough to know … Continue reading →

The upper caste mob fearlessly attacked the fire brigade and burnt their vehicle so that the fire could not be stopped and they could burn all the houses with impunity. Since nobody had the courage to douse the fires, so … Continue reading →

Qadeer Baloch rallied other families and started an organisation called Voice of the Baloch Missing People. They camp outside the Quetta, Islamabad and Karachi press clubs sometimes for three months at a stretch. Journalists mostly ignore them. They sit behind … Continue reading →

…even if the U.S. military is dragging its old habits, weaponry, and global-basing ideas behind it, it’s still heading offshore. There will be no more land wars on the Eurasian continent. Instead, greater emphasis will be placed on the Navy, … Continue reading →

Pakistan has faced two consecutive years of intense flooding. In 2010, floods killed more than 1,000 people and displaced 21 million. Critics blame both the Pakistani government for failing to handle the situation effectively and NGOs for not delivering on … Continue reading →

Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz. Gwadar – a port built by China – is the absolute key. It … Continue reading →

This strip, the finger on the map, might account for no more than 3 percent of the total geographic area of Hebron, but it is here that you find the sites that have made it a place revered by both … Continue reading →

In the 1970s, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University named John McKnight popularized the term “redlining” to describe the failure of banks, insurers and other institutions to offer their services to inner city neighborhoods. The term came from … Continue reading →

this is unbelievable! if human rights r what it’s all about, how about a hearing on palestine and kashmir? — A Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who recently co-authored an article with Congressman Louie Gohmert expressing support for an independent Balochistan, … Continue reading →

The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It found that since … Continue reading →

Stories of sexual violence against women during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh have remained untold so far. Yasmin Saikia, Professor of History and Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at Arizona State University, collected over 50 testimonies of women, previously … Continue reading →