Articles

The British police service can no longer be described as “institutionally racist”, according to Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). Phillips made his comments in a speech marking 10 years since the Stephen Lawrence murder report, which originally coined the phrase.

From the early days of human existence on earth, there have always been different ideas, opinions and ways of understanding between individuals. Doubtless, such is the demand of his nature as created by Allah, the Creator of everything, the Almighty. His nature also demands differences of attributes and character, such as bravery, justice and generosity, or jealousy and bigotry.

There is no shortage of personal testimonies relating the experiences of western diplomats, military personnel, political appointees, and even latter-day mercenaries working in security companies who have served in Iraq since the US-led invasion of the country in 2003. Countless other books have been written with an eye to recount the tormenting sorrows and anguished pains that have befallen the Land of the Two Rivers since the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s despotic regime.

Calls to try Israeli leaders for war crimes for their conduct in the war against the civilian population in Ghazzah are getting louder. The first serious criticisms came from two officials at the United Nations: Migual D’Escoto, President of the General Assembly, and Professor Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Barack Obama’s election on November 4th and his inauguration as the 44th president of the United States on January 20th have led to misplaced optimism even among those who should know better. Obama’s claims to America’s “greatness” because it afforded him — son of a cattle-herder from Africa — the opportunity to rise to the highest office in the land should not mislead anyone.

When Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president of the United States of America in January 1981, Iran and its recent Islamic Revolution was an obsession for the US and all in it. Almost 30 years later, little has changed in that regard.

Israel’s three-week long offensive on the tiny desert patch called Ghazzah has once again revealed the barbaric nature of the zionist state. Showing complete disregard for civilian lives, many of them children, whom they deliberately and repeatedly targeted, the zionists stand exposed as war criminals.

The Israeli Amalek just do not get it. Their military failure in the summer of 2006 against Hizbullah in Lebanon did not register. Their American supplied weapons have gone to their head. And now they are not relearning the lesson they failed to learn inLebanon; and that lesson is: you cannot defeat the up-and-coming Islamic forces of self-determination — Hizbullah in Lebanon,Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine.

By-elections in Malaysia are fought with the same vigor, if not more, as the general election. Why this is so remains a mystery, especially when the ruling party still has a comfortable majority in parliament despite the drubbing it got in the general elections last March.

Political commentators have advanced numerous reasons for Israel’s onslaught on Ghazzah. From the official Israeli line to stop Hamas rocket attacks to Israeli politicians’ need to act tough before next month’s elections to presenting a fait accompli to the incoming US president have all been trotted out.