Fear of the Unknown

All the moats and fortifications that a rich man builds and all the terrorising of populations cannot take away from such a person the fear of an invisible enemy.

One of the ideological undercurrents here for the Republicans is the shock of having a black man as President. Some of them would rather lose the country then face four more years of this humiliation. The world view of white supremacy, which reigned supreme in the south for decades is hard to adjust to despite the civil war. In fact the Civil war never ended. The red necks are joined in this by the Jewish lobby who is still reeling from the fact that Obama can concede to Palestinians having some rights.

No President has faced these issues combined with perhaps leading America down the mountain instead of up the mountain. There seems to be no other way to explain all the raw emotion on the hill.

When the main option being looked at by an overleveraged country is to borrow more then they are running out of options. The brinkmanship in Congress is so intense that the nation is mesmerised by waiting for, who blinks first.


The system is broken, The checks and balances do not work, there is a big disconnect between ruler and ruled, it has become all about how the interests of a minority can be best served, money is the only value that is recognised, all other values have become secondary. This may sound more like a third world country than the USA but tragically it is true.

Lately there has been a formal recognition of this by S&P downgrading the US to AA. Barring the noise against S&P, there is a creeping recognition that the government is not working and unlikely to work going forward. This defers the solution to 2012, when Obama may or may not get thrown out. Billion will be spent between now and 2012 trying to sell the public a pack of meaningless propoganda. No where is Democracy made a bigger mockery of than in the US. Decisions are being made in the interest of the party and not the Country. In the next one year enough bad decisions will have been made to make it meaningless as to who gets elected.
There is no one on the scene who can save the country except a lone black man who is more professor than leader. Perhaps he can see that once you get elected you no longer represent the party but that you represent the country. Perhaps he needs another four years to come of his shell. This will be the issue before the electorate in 2012. So far there is no one else on the scene with the slightest ounce of decency or integrity. In fact decency and integrity have not been in demand, if they were then Ralph Nader would be every ones candidate for the Presidency.

It is now becoming clearer that the huge increase in the Budget Deficit during the Bush years was direcly as a result of actions Bush took after 9/11. It is not being recognised how Osama bin Laden has helped not only to Bankrupt the US but also to set in motion its decline. That is one other reason that the media does not talk about these costs.

An idea whose time has come

"What America needs to understand is something unusual for us: From Morocco to Pakistan, we are no longer seen by the majority as the good guys." Pat Buchanan

Whether the Muslims have as yet propogated a system that desrves to be looked on as an alternative remains to be seen but it is pretty clear that in its dying throes the American Empire is disgracing and humiliating itself by its lies and double standards. In the ensuing vacum two forces will compete for a universal message, those that take their inspiration from God and those that do not.
The Muslims can certainly take the credit for stopping the American Empire in its tracks by holding them to a stalemate in Iraq and Afghanistan but for bleeding to death from these wounds the Americans alone will have to take the blame. To their shame and discredit, the Muslim countries have failed to unite inspite of extreme provocation both from the US and Israel. This only encourages these two parties to treat them with the contempt that they deserve and the beatings can only continue. This can only promote the extreme elements within Islam and make them heros for having the guts to stand up for their land and honour.
The Muslims have now the uphill task of rejecting the West and rejecting their own extremists by following a message which is very much relevant and needed now more than ever, if only we could see it and have faith in it. At the core of this system is an uncompromising belief in morality which the West now only pays lip service to and have more or less taken out of their lives. The religious fundamentalists of all religions are simply peddling their texts for the worldly power and recognition that it affords them. The masses follow one side or the other because that is what they will always do.
I doubt if people will be mobilised by morality which, for most is too philosophical a subject but they will be mobilised by injustice. The idea whose time has come is Justice.
Khusro

Is the world headed for the mother of all disasters?

"The Invisible Hand of Power
Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.
Elite contempt for democracy was revealed dramatically in the reaction to the WikiLeaks exposures. Those that received most attention, with euphoric commentary, were cables reporting that Arabs support the U.S. stand on Iran. The reference was to the ruling dictators. The attitudes of the public were unmentioned. The guiding principle was articulated clearly by Carnegie Endowment Middle East specialist Marwan Muasher, formerly a high official of the Jordanian government: "There is nothing wrong, everything is under control." In short, if the dictators support us, what else could matter?" Naom Chomsky 2011

A long article, typical of Chomsky but as usual penetrating and matter of fact about the ways of the powerful. The elite of the world have become a problem specially for the environment. It is no longer East verses West, world wide power is being excercised by the few over the many. The concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands is as anti democratic as the system can become. The powerful are unbelievably greedy. unbelievably selfish and ruthlessly committed to staying in power. The really powerful are not the Presidents, Secretary Generals and other high officials but the people who put them there and the people who put them there were not the general populace. This is a system screaming to be changed anf if it cannot be changed then the world is headed for its biggest disaster ever.
Khusro

The Libya Dilemma of Obama

“if we try to overthrow Qaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. We would likely have to put U.S. troops on the ground, or risk killing many civilians from the air. The dangers to our men and women in uniform would be far greater. So would the costs and our share of the responsibility for what comes next.”

Here was the dilemma faced by Obama. He clearly wants regime change but is mindful of the regime change disaster in Iraq. He went to UN for permission but ended up giving responsibility to NATO. His speech lauded by the US media was one of the most confused speeches made by him.
This is not surprising considering what is happening in the Middle East. He never wanted regime change in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia but he does want regime change in Libya, Syria, Iran. In trying to explain why he has different standards he wants to put a humanitarian face to his actions.
Trying to explain to the US public that the USA has a God given right to interfere in world
affairs while still stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan and wanting to invade Iran has to be a class juggling act which even Obama is not capable. of. The US public is not even aware how the CIA was kicked out of Pakistan after the Raymond Davis fiasco.
When Germany ( together with China and Russia) abstained from the UN resolution on Libya, the world took one more step in looking the other way in accepting US leadership in International affairs.
Much as I would love to see Ghaddafi kicked out as well as the Bahraini Shaikh and all other leaders in any country who have ruled for more than 10 years, Obama seems to have a very difficult time making that a golden rule for governance. For a country that preaches dissent and debate, the US seems to have no tolerance for Governments which may have a different point of view even if they want to come to power through a Democratic process.
Khusro

Ten years of decline

"Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen, one of the first things he did after 9/11 was make arrangements to come to Washington, and he met with President Bush, with the CIA Director George Tenet, with Dick Cheney, with the head of the FBI. And he basically said to the Bush administration, “We’re going to give you full access to Yemen’s territories to conduct counterterrorist operations.” And, you know, they essentially hatched a plot where Yemen would extract funding for its own military out of the Bush administration in return for the Bush administration being able to conduct counterterrorist operations inside of Yemen, including the killing of Yemeni citizens." Jeremy Scahill


The rationale for the US support of Israel has been to create a terrorisit organisation in the Middle East in order to keep the Arab countries
and subsequently the oil in check. The other startegy has been to create local monsters like Mubarak, Ali Saleh, The Shah of Iran etc who can remain in power for 50 years and repress their people for personal gain and untold power. That era is now visibly coming to an end, with the US clinging to prolong it a little bit longer. There is very little difference in this policy between Bush and Obama. Bush hastened the demise of this era through sheer arrogance and ham handedness. The US media has done an incredible job of insulating it's readers from recognising the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as the absolute rape and desecration of two sovereign nations.

The Al Qaeda bogey has been hugely succesful in pouring billions into the coffers of dictators who were willing partners in crime but has proved to be a huge Foreign Policy debacle by creating an invisible enemy of no fixed address who cannot be defeated. This has created an image of a very vulnerable US who can now be defied. Wikileaks has resoundingly exposed US double speak and US Foreign policy now appears to be in tatters. The BRIC countries watch with glee, the Arabs with concern and the French with open disdain. Nato is no longer beholden to the US forcing them to go to the UN which under Ban Ki Moon has become an obsolete organisation.

The shift in power which came about in the first 10 years of 2010, is continuing. By 2020, a New World will have formly taken root.

Khusro

A nation in decline

The truth is that the world looked upon the US, particularly Obama with a lot of hope and admiration. Two years of Obama have brought about a reality check. Do the neocons represent the views of most Americans? No. Were the neocons, the American Right and AIPAC able to wreak havoc on Ameircan politics including Foreign policy? Yes.
Is there an awareness that these minority groups have access to untold money and power and will continue to have outsize influence on all American policies including ones that lead them into wars? No.
Several areas of major weakness are appearing for the US.
1. An irresponsible media, far too intent on making money to worry about their duty to inform the public rather than to entertain them. This is more true of TV than print.
2. Two political parties far too intent on winning elections than doing the right thing. There is an absence of any long term thinking and short term sound bites rule the day.
3. The role of money in politics has meant every thing is purchaseable, the checks and balances of Democracy have been trampled by every one particularly the Corporate Sector and more particularly Wall Street.
4. A leadership gap is emerging showing that after Obama, the new leaders will be even weaker than him and some of them will make Bush look like an angel. The Democrats and Obama are betting heavily that History will repeat itself, the Republicans will shoot themselves in the foot and Obama will shift far enough to the right and bounce back for another term. Weak as he is Obama still represents some sanity before the lunatic fringe takes over.

All this sounds very pessimistic, but it is not uncommon for a nation in decline. Time will tell whether the actions that they take will slow their decline or accelerate it but key to this will be the leadership that they chose. For the next two years the die is cast
Khusro

Capitalism and Democracy

"Four years on, however, WikiLeaks' release of contemporary troop logs raises serious questions about who, exactly, was doing the lying.
One of the few absolute revelations from the Wikileaks documents is the extent to which Rumsfeld, then-U.S. commander Gen. George Casey, and others had access to ample information from unimpeachable sources -- their own troops on the ground in Iraq -- regarding how badly events had turned in Iraq by 2006, but nonetheless denied a surge in killing to reporters and the U.S. public. "

To this day, the only justification for removing Saddam that is given is that he was an evil man and removing him was worth destroying Iraq for. The fact is that the result of removing Saddam has been, apart from destroying Iraq's infrastructure and making its people refugees, handing Iraq over to Iran sympathetic Shias. I am not saying that this is good or bad, just that this was the last thing on the minds of Rumsfeld, Cheyne, Wolfowitz and the Saudis. In fact if they could think of the worst possible outcome of the Iraq war, this would have been it.
Wikileaks proves something we already know that these people were cheats and liars and together with the the collusion of an inept media misled the American Public for years and years. In fact so geat was the deception that Bush won a second term as President. We also know something else that no one talks about, that the American public or its leaders or the media have learnt nothing from this fiasco. Everyone is locked into a makebelieve world of American superiority and invulnerabilty. As we prepare for mid term elections, no one is focussed on the lying, cheating thugs that we have been electing as our representatives, In fact all indications are that the new breed will be much worse than the previous one. This is not so much a failure of Democracy as the failure of the lethal combination of a Capitalist dominated Democracy.
For better or worse, the Chinese have chosen Capitalism over Democracy while the Indians are following the US model. The Europeans have long shied away from selling their souls to Capitalism. At no time has the world needed more ideas than now as to what is the better form of governance and what is the better form of economic management.
Khusro

The 9/11 overkill

I attended Yom Kippur at a Jewish temple and pretty much told them what Nicholas Christoff is saying, in the NY Times, "Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians."
The one thing that I meant to say and ran out of time was that I find this whole business of "how come I don't hear Muslims condemning 9/11", to be pretty offensive. There are many,many Muslims and Muslim organisations who have condemned 9/11, but there seems to be this insatiable thirst to hear each and every Muslim not only condemn but also to apologise for 9/11.
This is what is offensive, Muslim as a whole have been judged to be guilty and the onus has been placed on them to prove themselves innocent, individual by individual until all 1.5 billion have taken an oath and even then they will be accused of being secret sympathisers. I do condemn the 9/11 attack and still do if the opportunity is there but nine years later the world has moved on and a lot worse has happenned in the world than 9/11. So many things that need to be condemned and protested and fought against but Americans are not used to terrorism at home. Their tragedy is felt more deeply than any other tragedy even if the other tragedy was a million times worse, even if the Americans were responsible for causing the other tragedy.
It is like the rich man who can afford to mourn the loss of his child in the grandest possible way, year after year and totally inconsolably, when the poor man who has lost ten children, has to just grin and bear it and move on with his life and deal with the issues of those that some how survived.
Khusro

Is the present economic crisis being underestimated?

The question is not that the facts are unknown or are being underestimated by the Government; the question is whether the Government knows what the solution is and whether they have the courage to administer the bitter pill or pills that are needed to redress the problem.

Part of the solutions can be,

• Cut entitlements ( Social Security etc)
• Raise Taxes
• Withdraw troops from foreign adventures and cut the Defense budget
• Cut the size of the Government
• Raise Productivity and live with high unemployment for some time.
• Encourage increased savings instead of encouraging spending.
• Stop printing money, that is not backed by productivity
• Stop the waste within the Economy specially relating to energy.
• Increase the Exports of the country and reduce reliance on imports

Out of these, the Government is doing the following,

• Phasing out troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and avoiding attacking Iran.
• Considering increasing taxes on the rich by allowing Bush tax cuts to expire on the segment.
• Savings is going up.
• Encouraging China to revalue the Yuan.

One of the areas where costs will go up is the Health Care reform which is still a captive of the Insurance Industry and Premiums will go up.
The biggest failures of America are, not owning up to its mistakes. This is typical of declining powers and in fact this is why they decline, because it is not until you own up to your mistakes that you can correct them.

The two biggest mistakes to recognize are,

1. US Foreign policy relating to oil hegemony has been deeply flawed. The Middle East policy relating to Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and now Afghanistan/Pakistan has cost trillions and has backfired miserably.

2. The excesses of Capitalism are at the core of the most recent Economic collapse and not only are the guilty going unpunished but they are being given a second chance to try again.

Colonizers and Empires work on the reverse Robin Hood Principle and that is to rob the poor and the weak in order to make the rich, richer. The US has been both an Empire and a colonizer and the absence of revenues or privileges from withdrawing from this role, will add to the Economic burden of trying to make an honest living.
The political gridlock between those who believe that if dishonesty succeeded in the past there is no reason to change course now and those who can see that world dynamics have changed for good will prevent any meaningful solution to come forward. America has no stomach for a national government, even if there is an emergency.
Khusro

Why is Islam receiving so much importance?

Why are people (non Muslims) giving so much importance to Islam? Why are they going out of their way to malign and demonise it? My answer is that this aspect has very little to do with Islam. The Muslims by themselves are backwords, powerless, divided, easily colonised or occupied and pose no significant threat to any one particularly the West. Yet we find, discussions about Islam dominate the media and Islam has overtaken the Soviet Union as the biggest threat to world peace and wellbeing. Pakistan has become the most dangerous country in the world. Surely, this concern with Islam or making it "the enemy" cannot be because a man sitting in a cave in one of the poorest countries in the world, issued some fatwas against the West or committed a daring act of terrorism in New York City.

If Islam has no role in deserving this importance then why have people become so crazy about it? I believe the answer lies in the oil that is almost the exclusive property of Muslims. Given below is a table of Oil reserves ( top 10 countries)from Wikepedia.

( Numbers show Millions of barrels per day)
Saudi Arabia 267
Canada 179
Iran 138
Iraq 115
Kuwait 104
Venezuela 99
UAE 98
Russia 60
Libya 41
Nigeria 36



This shows that amongst the top ten countries, Muslim countries have 70% of the world’s oil reserves. The non Muslim countries with oil are Canada, Russia and Venezuela. This might also partly answer your earlier question about the first Iraq war. If Saddam had occupied Kuwait , the oil reserves under his control would have been almost as big as Saudi Arabia.
Unwittingly, Muslim countries have gained an importance way beyond their position as movers and shakers of the world. There was a time not so long ago that Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were all under the control of the West. However recently Iran and Iraq have both spun out of the control of the West,causing great alarm. Not only have they spun out of control but under Saddam and the Ayatollahs they were under the control of governments considered hostile to the West.

I am not telling you anything that you do not know, nor do I wish to belabour that point but we tend to forget in these discussions that Religion alone is not driving the current "crisis".

There is a very clear strategy that the US has to protest its “interests" in the world, but this strategy under Bush was so idiotic that it has backfired and now alarm is giving in to panic. In fact the rise of the BRIC countries and the simultaneous military and economic decline of the US is unpalatable to the American right wing and they have a need to create one or more scape goats. This is where the interests of the Christian right wing and the Zionists are coinciding. The Zionists are also panicking because there is a greater urgency under Obama to resolve the Israel/ Palestine issue. This issue cannot be resolved by Obama but the Zionists are not used to so much pressure being put on them.

Again, I apologise if I am emphasising the obvious, but the US media is particularly bad in not telling the whole story. I am very tempted to also expound upon where this is all going but that is the subject of this blog, A New World.

Khusro

Islam is not responsible for 9/11

There is a time to show magnanimity and there is a time to stand your ground. In my view this is the time to stand your ground. There are false accusations being hurled at all Muslims and if Muslims as a minority are inclined to be pushed around and appease the screaming mobs then they will never be respected.
America respects those who stand up and refuse to be intimidated. Nine Eleven had nothing to do with Islam and that has to be made clear. Americas problems are with Alqaida and not Islam although vested interests keep dragging Islam into this issue. For this very reason the entire Muslim world thinks that America is fighting a war against Islam. The act of every Muslim is blamed on all of Islam. Islam is being maligned by a calculated strategy of certain lobbies and the more Muslims cow down to these lobbies, the more they will be humiliated. The Koch brothers are bankrolling the entire Tea Party drive in this matter. This matter is more complicated than appears on the surface. The Muslims never had a better case than the Cordoba project. Their project is approved, they are not building just a mosque and it is being done by a man who is widely respected and considered to be balanced. If we cannot support something this solid, then what will we support?

Still Imam Feisal has a difficult decision on his hands. I disagree with those who think that all the publicity has done more harm than good. A discussion on Islam is badly needed in this country. There is too much misinformation around both about Islam and about who is responsible for 9/11. A lot of healthy debate has come about presenting various thoughts on both subjects.
I do agree that this matter has the potential for getting out of hand. My concern is not that some Islamic fundamentlalist will create a situation ( although that can happen) but that other lobbies can also "create" situations which will show up Islam in a bad light.
There are parallel political agendas going on, such as embarrasing Obama and gaining votes by appealing to the insecurtity of Americans. Once we are past November, one can breath easy but until then, the situation is full of risks.
Khusro

Church and State

I am not advocating Theocracy. In fact the worst form of a Religious State today is not Iran but Saudi Arabia followed by Israel, both of which are not run by the clergy. I am simply stating that I am not a fan of Secularism based on where I see it headed. In my mind secularism is not the holy grail of good governance. Perhaps the US is a bad example of an ideal secularist state in which case I have less reason to be concerned. I also understand that here I am in a minority amongst my group, who have for good reason grown tired of Religious people.

For the moment Secularism seems to be the better of two evils but there is a third alternate. Take Turkey, it is a Muslim country which believes that freedom of Religion should be allowed or Ireland which is a Catholic Country that believes in freedom of Religion. Clearly freedom of religion is not a secularist monopoly and that is my point.

There is a lot that we can learn from secularism and it stands as a bulwark, so far, against religious extremism but in many cases it is morphing into a religion in itself and France is a good example of treating Secularism as its official religion.

My last and most important point is that mankind's biggest challenge is, has always been and will always be to tread a moral path in the conduct of his life. The morality of secularism based on double standards, might is right, racial inequality and other shortcomings of self interest is not a good goal to pursue. We will and must fall back on the morality of God, which is the morality of self accountability based on faith. Unfortunately neither system has proven to be sustainable in the long run. The tussle between man made morality and God's morality is built into the system to be an eternal struggle.

Khusro

Does it matter which party wins the elction in the US?

The fact is that in Obama, America has a leader, better than any alternate but a man who is obsessed with wining ( the elections) more than doing what America needs. The foreign policy and economic tsunami of the Bush era needed a man capable of reversing almost all his policies and asking for at least 8 years to revive America from its near fatal illness. Instead he has taken an almost apologetic route to reluctantly doing away with Bushes mistakes. First he decided to continue with the Afghan war after being paralyzed for six months, and now he is in a daze about raising taxes from the rich, while the States are going bankrupt. Even his great medical reforms were compromised so badly that they will go down in history as a non event.
Obama is criticized for being white from inside, a black man, intimidated by all the whites around him but I now wonder if he is not yellow inside. His hopeful admirers who for 8 years watched in horror as Bush delivered punishing body blows to the might and prestige of America , are now having to watch another four years of insipid leadrship before the Republicans return to finish the job which George started.
Perhaps only one thing can be said in defense of Obama, There is only a cosmetic difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Over these superficialities they are willing to slaughter one another. Does it really matter who is in charge?

Literalism and Islam

One has to separate Islam from the way Muslims practice it. Within Islam are many many things which were intended to be evolutionary and thus not frozen in time or to be taken literally. These have to do with worldly matters ( Huquq Ul Muamelat). The spirit of Islam ( Huquq ul Ibadat) is non negotiable and all worldly matters must be guided by this spirit.
There is and there needs to be greater flexiblity within Fiqh if it is ever to be taken seriously by other than literalists.
In matters of relations with non Muslims, Muslim majorities have a duty to protect their minorities and allow them the freedom to practice their own faith. Muslim Minorities have to be faithful to the law of the land in which they reside. India and Pakistan are very poor examples of the way they deal with their minorities. While the Ottomans were very fair to their minorities, these same minorities turned against them when the Ottoman empire crumpled. The Europeans are quite concerned about their Muslim minorities becoming the majority in time. Saudi Arabia and Israel are downright abusive towards their minorities.
The Muslims do not practice their religion well when it comes to dealing with non Muslims and are in need of reform but they are part of a bigger and more global issue. The US is a good example of how it deals with its minorities inside its borders but a terrible example of how it deals with Muslims world wide.
Khusro

The quality of your life

The quality of your life would be judged not by the status that you were able to achieve or the praises that you gathered during your life but by how long was the affect of your deeds after your were no more.

Reading the Quran

Muslims have to come to grips with the thought that a total literal reading of the Quran is neither possible nor desirable.

The white backlash on Obama's Presidency

Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.” Glen Beck right wing TV compere.



Beck represents the paranoia of the whites. A take over of America by non whites who will then seek revenge of abuses inflicted on them by the whites. The scenario that he has painted is exactly what the whites have been doing to the blacks. Their worst nightmare is what if the tables were turned.

Many Americans have not been able to get over the election of a black man as President of America. They are futher horrified by the fact that this black man has Hussain as his middle name. The call is out there to take back " America", to stop the immigrants, to put Muslims in their place. What will they think of next a black President, a Mexican Vice President and a Muslim Secretary of State ( Fareed Zakaria) and all these people will be waited on by white cheauffers, secretaries and doormen. Remember the days when blacks did not even have the right to vote and further back when they were mercillessly whipped for even looking at you in the eye.

Now Blacks and Muslims are claiming America as their own, they are going out there and getting killed for the homeland and they are asking for equal opportunity. It was bad enough accepting Jews and Catholics as humans but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Even if there was a need to import a wolf killing woman from Alsaka ( Sara Palin) to lead the charge, it has to be done. This November is the time when the rabbles must show their colour ( white).

Invited to this party are all non blacks who through years have developed an inferiority complex and assume that the reason that they are trodden upon is because God made the whites superior and created non whites to be trodden upon. After all look at the state of the blacks and the Muslims today. This must be the reason that they are weak and helpless. Bring back Religion, says Beck. Let us mobilise God to redress what nature intended, apartheid.

Khusro

Objectivity in History takes a long time.

In the Swat valley, now part of Pakistan, Churcill experienced, fleetingly, an instant of doubt. He realized that the local population was fighting back because of “the presence of British troops in lands the local people considered their own,” just as Britain would if she were invaded. But Churchill soon suppressed this thought, deciding instead that they were merely deranged jihadists whose violence was explained by a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill.”

Hitler might have been recorded as a great man, had he succeeded in conquering Europe and his historians were incharge. Over time History is able to see what people living in the moment are unable to see. Dearly held principles and universal values are trampled with ease when peoples emotions are roused.
In todays world the American propoganda machine has blinded most people including Americans , to a gross violation of their own principles and blatant double standards based on racism. The British Empire and the American Empire will leave their own contributions towards the good of humanity without meaning to but these contributions will not include a respect for other peoples freedom, human rights or a belief in Democracy for that matter.

Khusro

If Pakistan is detroyed, who loses?

The Pakistan story has become very complicated recently. It is one of the largest masses of population in the world, that has been on the verge of collapsing for some time. The US has played a major role both in the instability that Pakistan is facing as well as holding it all together.
If hell breaks loose in Pakistan, as it will, India has the most to be concerned about. It has 200 million Muslims who are the "blacks" of India. It also has a large number of desperately poor and fair number of disenfranchised and militant dissidents. The fact that Pakistan is lurching from one crisis to another should be a cause of great concern for the whole world. The question is no longer, who is to blame. The Pakistan Army, the US, India, Saudi Arabia all share in the blame. The question is can Pakistan be stabilised or will it become another Iran. Slowly but surely Pakistan is inching towards a revolution which will be very bloody.

Islam and America

The nine eleven incident created an unprecedented interest in Islam both amongst Muslims and non Muslims. It appears to be a fruit that keeps giving. Now nine years after the incident, it has given rise to another debate on Islam, that about building a mosque, two blocks away from ground zero. It was also the trigger that created the Iraq and Afghan wars, which have had their own long term implications.

The unintended results of Osama's actions may come as a surprise to him, if he is alive. History will remember the date as some sort of a turning point, certainly for Islam.

One aspect of this discussion is how Muslims have gained a toehold in America and are beginning to thrive in an environment that is more Islamic than what they have been able to create in their own homelands.

The 1900 mosques that have mushroomed in the US are just the tip of an emerging iceberg, if one sees what is happening in the UK. Those Americans who watch this with a lot of concern are rightly alarmed given the distorted view of Islam in the media. One thing unique to America is the interest amongst blacks in Islam. What started as a separate religion ( black Muslims) is now merging itself into mainstream Islam. The Muslim congressmen are currently black but perhaps better versed in Islam than people from Muslim countries. In fact many of the more influential Muslims in America are converts and are likely to be other Muslims born and brought up in America.

The unrecognised story so far is how America and Islam are a perfect fit.

Khusro