The trusted adviser of Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev on oil-matters, economic planning, education, investments, health-care, pensions and communications is an American deal-fixer who shuttles between his offices in Almaty (the Kazakh commercial capital) and the New York headquarters of his company, Mercator.
Rudolph Giuliani, dubbed Adolf by critics, had hoped to shoot his way into the US senate. The New York mayor nearly succeeded until Amadou Diallo’s murder by the police on February 4...
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world today, and the number of its adherents is increasing everywhere, including North America. Much attention has been paid to the issues facing immigrant and African-American Muslims in North America, both by Muslims and by others.
Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organisation, has just discovered that there are widespread human rights abuses in the United States.
After nearly four of decades of cold war conflict, accompanied by apathy and acceptance of the general population, the ‘no-nukes’ movement finally arose in the early 1980s to protest the ongoing threat of nuclear conflagration.
The Taliban in Afghanistan reflect the danger of Muslims playing pawns in the hands of others, especially anti-Muslim forces. The product of British and American intrigue, the Taliban have now assumed a life of their own but are still susceptible to manipulation by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two regimes beholden to the US.
Steven Barboza’s book, American Jihad, is an inversion of the message of Emerson’s ‘Jihad in America’. Barboza uses the idea of jihad and the life of Malcolm X - a combination guaranteed to get most Americans’ attention - as starting-points for a discussion of the different ways American Muslims practise jihad.
Moore’s recent book, Downsize This!, takes its title from the corporate euphemism for firing workers. Originally published in 1996, and updated for the paperback edition a year later, Moore’s latest assault on corporate America is a biting satire of all that is wrong with an America under ever increasing control of business interests, ranging from the national corporate media to multinational and transnational corporations.
When Alex Haley asserted in his 1976 novel, Roots: The Saga of an American Family, that its main character Kunte Kinte was a Muslim, he was dismissed by many American historians.
A key document for understanding Malcolm X is his Autobiography, published posthumously by Alex Haley. The Autobiography highlights the changes Malcolm went through during his life while also maintaining several consistent concerns. However, despite its usefulness, this document needs to be viewed in the context in which it was produced.
Globalization means not merely uniformity but also conformity to the dominant, primarily American culture. This applies as much to food as it does to music and clothes.
The US has stepped up efforts to increase its influence in Africa, dubbed the ‘last frontier.’ Jesse Jackson, perhaps the best-known African-American today, embarked on a mission to two countries in Africa on December 1 to drum up support for political and trade links.
The trilateral ruling elite of America, Europe and Japan is in a quandary. Their industrial-based civilization has created tons of extremely toxic wastes. Many are by-products of cold war military industries. America and Russia currently lead the pack in nuclear waste.
America’s voracious appetite for energy resources and an itch born of its self-appointed role as the world’s policeman has led it into adopting strange postures.
America is a deeply divided society. Nothing symbolises this better than the perception of blacks and whites towards O J Simpson, the celebrated football player whose trial has gripped America for more than two years.
