Articles

Suddenly in September this year, Burma found itself centre-stage in the western media, despite the fact that reports from the country are vague and not in accordance with generally-used definitions of news authenticity. Three months after reports about a “bloodbath” and “massive protests” in the capital, it now seems that the status quo in Burma is going to survive. The demonstrations reported around the world, most of which are being coordinated by western NGOs and human-rights activists, appear to have changed nothing at all.

The long-simmering crisis over the election of a new president for Lebanon refuses to go away. As President Emile Lahoud's term came to an end without an elected successor at midnight on November 23, Lebanon stared into a power vacuum unprecedented in its history. Months of intense international mediation and backroom negotiation between rival politicians from the two main opposing factions – the Western-backed March 14 coalition, which holds a narrow parliamentary majority, and the opposition spearheaded by Hizbullah – failed to break a tense stand-off over the choice of a compromise presidential candidate.

A country that has been looking down the precipice of sectarian and ethnic strife for the past few years can certainly do without more violent intra-communal rivalry. Yet it was exactly such a dangerous scenario that seemed to be unfolding when 3,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, supported by military tanks, aircraft and hundreds of US and Polish troops, on November 17 launched Operation Lion's Leap in the Iraqi city of Diwaniyyah, the capital of the south-central province of Qadisiyyah. The assault was supposed to flush out armed militiamen loyal to Shi’a alim Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr from the city, which has been the ground of a turf-war between Sadr's faction and its Shi’a archrival, the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) led by Sayyid Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim.

The year 2007 has turned out to be one of the costliest in blood and lives since the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the US in October 2001. On November 19 a bomb-explosion killed seven people but missed Ghulam Dastagir Azad, governor of Nimroz province, the intended target in the town of Zaranj. On the same day an attack on a military bus in Kabul was thwarted when the bomber was prevented from boarding. Two days earlier a roadside bomb near Qandahar had killed two Canadian soldiers and wounded three others, bringing the Canadian death toll to 73.

Almost six years after the deaths of over 3,000 Muslims in a genocidal operation by Hindu fundamentalists in the state of Gujarat that began on 28 February, 2002, new information has emerged about the incident that began it. At the end of October two major Indian television channels, seen around the world by cable and satellite, broadcast the findings of a six-month investigation by Tehelka, a weekly news magazine: journalists secretly recorded senior members of Hindu organisations speaking about their roles in the attacks, as well as the role of the state government of the time, led by chief minister Narendra Modi.

Returning to Pakistan on October 18, Benazir Bhutto discovered how radically the country has changed in the eight years she was away “languishing” in self-imposed exile. Heading a political procession—in reality a circus of rented crowds—from the airport to the mausoleum of the country’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Benazir’s procession was attacked by two suicide-bombers who left 140 people dead and more than 500 injured.

In recent years, the long story of the Palestinian struggle has been punctuated by meetings, conferences and summits of various kinds between Israeli and Palestinian officials, usually mediated by international leaders or institutions. Yet there was a time, only a few years ago, when it was assumed that everything could be sorted out if only the two sides could be persuaded to sit together and talk. Then, the great object of all the politicking was to persuade the leaders of the two sides to come together and, it was assumed, listen to what each other had to say.

Since Israel is the new temple and zionism the new religion of the West, any mention of eliminating zionism or the zionist regime inPalestine is immediately branded as anti-Semitism and a threat to world peace. This is especially true of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, whose speech on October 26, 2005, has been so widely misquoted that promoting the lies has effectively become official policy in many Western countries. Even the United Nations Security Council was duped into issuing a statement condemning Iran for calling for Israel’s “destruction”.

On 20 March, 2003, the government of the USA sent its full range of armed forces intoIraq, obliterating its infrastructure and smashing its civil life like a lion devouring a rabbit. Since then almost one million men, women and children have been killed, and uncounted others have been wounded. No one wants to say so, but consequently the Iraqi people are teetering on the brink.

Many people reading the recent news from Darfur may be confused. On October 25, just days before peace talks on the conflict in Darfur were due to begin in Libya, anti-government rebels in Darfur were reported to have attacked oil installations in the neighbouring region of Kardofan, kidnapping two foreigners and warning other foreign oil workers that they had a week to leave the country or they would face similar attacks. The start of the talks in Sirte were then delayed because rebel groups refused to take part.