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Tag: terrorism

  • New York Bomb Plot Raises Disturbing Questions–and Memories

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    The men arrested for trying to bomb two synagogues and other sites in New York apparently acted alone. They indeed were seeking an opportunity for jihad. But it was primarily in response to the deaths in Afghanistan in Pakistan at the hands of American soldiers. Now it appears that they were deeply involved with an informant who, according to the leader of the mosque, was a government agent who came two years ago to the mosque encouraging meetings on jihad.

    So…did the government agent instigate this group of criminal men? Of course, this was a sting operation, but what are the ethics of sting operations? Is it the same infiltrating a mafia group and instigating a crime as infiltrating a house of worship and doing the same? I know the Jewish community would not be thrilled with some government agent who infiltrating Brooklyn and instigated some massive fraud scheme …

  • Resistance with Love: The Only Hope for Palestine

    Everything has failed in terms of Israeli and Palestinian relations for almost a hundred years. There will be more and more negotiations, and I have hopes that the Obama Administration will be the best yet in really moving the parties toward resolution. But in my heart I have always felt that there is one path to peace that has never been trod and fully adopted, that is the path of nonviolent noncooperation and resistance but with love, the way of Gandhi and King. I will develop this idea more in the coming months, but this is something that a number of Palestinians inside Israel and inside Palestine have tried, but it has never received the backing of the Palestinian National Movement. On the contrary it was suppressed because it only works when it is adopted completely as the only means of resistance.

    This is not about fairness or whether Palestinians …

  • Encountering Peace: Bibi or Tzipi, Bibi and Tzipi – what does it really matter?

    Gershon Baskin’s provocative title is absolutely right, it does not appear to matter anymore which coalition will rule Israel next. The fact is that Olmert had a bigger mandate than Livni or Netanyahu to pursue the peace process, freeze the settlements, and uphold all the commitments Israel made in Annapolis. And he failed at all of them, and instead unleashed a horrifying set of wars in Lebanon and Gaza that have left Palestinians utterly shell shocked. So why not add fuel to the fire with a Lieberman-inclusive government that traumatizes the rest of the Palestinian people who have resided in Israel since 1948, who never left the land, and who have been isolated by everyone ever since, despite their absolutely peaceful resistance to injustice? Despite the fact that by a vast majority of 75% the Arabs of Israel would support a democratic constitution for Israel that also kept it a …

  • Mumbai Story Continues

    A Nepalese newspaper picked up the blog on Mumbai from December 10, which was published also as an oped by Common Ground News Service.…

  • Who is the Real Domestic Terrorist? Bill Ayers Finally Speaks

    I was impressed by Bill Ayers’ recent public disclosure. His anguished re-reading of the Vietnam Era, his desperate attempt to stop a war that killed millions of Vietnamese people and 60,000 Americans, his remorse over some of the more extreme efforts he made, and his explanation of the principled violent and illegal stands that he took, all suggest a person of conscience and subtlety. I would not have done what he did in those buildings, and I would not demonize a military or country that way his group did, but only because of what I now know about the poison of demonization. In fact the radical right demonized and scapegoated Ayers in order to destroy the candidacy of Barack Obama. Demonization is a problematic domestic political form of terrorism that must resisted. I am both relieved by who is and horrified by what was done to him by this campaign.…

  • Millions of Indian Muslims Protest Terrorism, Surrender Holiday Spirit: Media Silent

    Millions of Muslims across India have decided to temper or even cancel festivities on their most cherished week of holy yearly celebrations, the Eid, in protest of crimes committed in the name of Islam by the criminals who murdered so many in Mumbai.

    They wore black ribbons, carried placards of peace, sent out emails and SMSes reiterating harmony, and put up banners saluting those who died in the 26/11 terrorist attack. From Chennai’s Thousand Lights Mosque to Delhi’s Jama Masjid, from Khwaza Banda Nawaz dargah in Gulbarga, to the mosques of Mumbai – Bakr-Eid celebrations were subdued, in a symbolic declaration of Muslim protest against terrorism.

    “At every dargah, prayers were said for the grieving families in Mumbai. In Ajmer Sharief, Kaliyar Sharief (Uttarakhand) and Barabanki’s Deva Sharief, the community came together burying their differences to focus on one thing: communal harmony. By showing our unity, we have spoilt the

    …

  • Mumbai

    I have tried to concentrate on putting the finishing touches on my book manuscript to hand into the publisher. I was looking forward to the exquisitely quiet isolation of writing days when I got a phone call from a young person at Al Jazeera English here in DC on Wednesday. “We need you to talk about the violence in India tonight.” I thought that she meant the ongoing issues between Hindu militants and Christians and so I said, “Sure.” I was just on their station about that subject a few weeks ago. I had no idea. Then I got a call two minutes later, voice agitated, “We need you sooner, like in two hours.” I said, “Sure, send me what you have in the latest updates to my email.” Another phone call, “How fast can you get here?!” I started to smell the horror of something terrible.

    I stayed at …

  • FROM ABOMINATION TO OBAMA-NATION: THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF GUANTANAMO

    It is not easy to be a nation that advocates and indeed missionizes on democracy and the rule of law. It is the missionizing that causes the conflict with those who may want democracy and the rule of law in their own country but are blind-sided by the glaring American hypocrisies of recent years. Plans are already underway by President elect Obama’s team as to how to end the illegal imprisonment of combatants at Guantanomo, and to return the United States to a nation of laws. Why was this so hard? Was revenge that important? This remains a mystery to me.…

  • TERRORISM’S NEW STRUCTURE: GLOBALIZATION IN, RELIGION OUT?

    Martin Amis has an important recent essay in the The Wall Street Journal about a new understanding of international terrorism that is emerging. In the course of the essay, however, Amis raises a series of vital issues that I will address over the course of several entries. The first is whether terrorism is really about religion even if its foot soldiers are almost all religious extremists? What are the different ramifications in terms of prevention and peacemaking? Even if terrorism is not essentially about religion we cannot abandon an engagement with religion because it motivates the foot soldiers.

    Amis writes:

    The two most stimulating international terrorism-watchers known to me are John Gray and Philip Bobbitt. Professor Gray (“Straw Dogs,” “Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern” and “Black Mass”) and Professor Bobbitt (“The Shield of Achilles” and the masterly “Terror and Consent”) are utterly unalike, except in brainpower

    …

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