Articles

The Saudi regime has adopted a three-pronged strategy to deal with the storm that has erupted since the Islamic Awakening swept the Muslim East more than a year ago. Soon after two dictators — General Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and General Hosni Mubarak of Egypt — were driven from power in quick succession, Saudi King Abdullah announced billions of dollars in handouts to buy people’s loyalty.

The truth about what is happening in “liberated” Libya is finally seeping through. Both Amnesty International and Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) have confirmed that prisoners suspected of being Qaddafi sympathizers have been systematically tortured and killed.

Howard Shore, a counsellor at the Town of Markham (home base of the Crescent magazine as well as one of its editorial staff members) has been accused of involvement in a spate of thefts.

As mass popular movements sweep the Muslim East (aka Middle East) predatory Western powers and their local satraps are involved in desperate attempts to hijack them. They are offering the same failed systems in a new garb. Since the overwhelming majority in the region is Muslim, it is natural that they would want a social order connected to Islamic principles that represent and ennoble their unique identity.

In contemporary global politics, two ingredients are considered essential to project power: wealth and military might. The two are inter-related. Obviously, without wealth, military hardware cannot be acquired and without military might, wealth can neither be protected nor additional amounts accumulated. There is also a third factor: the power of iman (faith-commitment).

There are a host of organizations — the United Nations (UN) with its Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — that are touted as world bodies whose function is to maintain peace, security and stability — financial and nuclear — in the world. The UN and IMF were created around the time of World War II.

Every four years the world watches the political soap opera of the US presidential elections with a combination of amusement, bemusement and incredulity as the world’s most powerful nation, and the supposed flag-bearer of democracy, lays open its true nature. Although the polls are not due for over a year, the formal process began months ago, with Barrack Obama having announced the start of his re-election campaign in April.

Is the US endgame in Afghanistan real? If so, it appears to have entered a crucial phase under the cover of a series of international conferences to facilitate US troop withdrawal from the war-torn country. Some observers, however, believe America is playing a double game trying to give the impression of preparing to leave while working behind the scenes to establish permanent military bases in the country.

Weeks before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report was released on November 8, Western media outlets had already worked themselves into frenzy, drum-beating about how Iran would be found in “violation” of its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations by secretly diverting material to make the bomb.