The era of US unilateralism has ended. Apart from its European allies — and there too, only some of them — the rest of the world has dismissed Washington’s demands to impose oil and trade embargo on Iran.
It requires no great imagination to figure out that in order to get out of a hole, one must first stop digging. This should be obvious even to the most simple-minded people but American policy-makers, it seems, refuse to learn.
It was the beginning of the seventh year of the Hijrah. Only a few weeks earlier, the noble Messenger (pbuh) had concluded the Treaty of Hudaybiyah with the chiefs of Makkah.
1Haniyeh was planning to visit Cairo on February 26 (after Crescent goes to press) to request Egypt to supply diesel directly to Gaza instead of sending it through the Israeli pumping station. Israel routinely shuts down supplies to punish the Palestinians. The Zionists have also threatened to cut off water to Gaza. That would be catastrophic.
This month marks the 33rd anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The US- and Zionist-backed puppet Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Iran) was driven from power by a tidal wave of mass uprising led by the charismatic and muttaqi leader, Imam Khomeini (may Allah (swt) comfort him) in February 1979.
State of the Union addresses by US presidents are occasions for chest thumping and blowing the American trumpet. Barack Obama tried to do just that on January 24 but he did it against the backdrop of a crippled economy and his own approval ratings hovering at 45.9%. That the approval rating of the Republican controlled Congress is even lower — at 13.3% — will offer him little consolation.
How long this standoff will continue is debatable but what we need to consider is how this situation has deteriorated to a point that the US feels it can attack and kill Pakistanis at will.
American hubris is predicated primarily on its claim to technological superiority. This is best reflected in the radar-evading stealth technology used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) called drones. To be sure, these are deadly weapons.
In contemporary global politics, two ingredients are considered essential to project power: wealth and military might. The two are inter-related. Obviously, without wealth, military hardware cannot be acquired and without military might, wealth can neither be protected nor additional amounts accumulated. There is also a third factor: the power of iman (faith-commitment).
There are a host of organizations — the United Nations (UN) with its Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — that are touted as world bodies whose function is to maintain peace, security and stability — financial and nuclear — in the world. The UN and IMF were created around the time of World War II.
News of Shaikh Hassan’s deteriorating health came from a government appointed prison physician who said his cancer had returned.
Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that heads the government in Ghazzah, has scored a stunning victory over the Zionist State of Israel. It is not merely the numbers: 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one Israeli soldier.
Troy Davis was executed on the night of September 21, 2011 as hundreds of people maintained vigil outside the Jackson, Georgia prison hoping the Supreme Court would grant a stay of execution. It was all very civilized; he was killed by a large dose of lethal injection administered at 7pm.
The uprisings in the Muslim East (Middle East) took virtually everyone by surprise including those in the forefront of these movements. They could hardly believe, especially in Tunisia and the sleepy backwaters of North Africa.
How free is the US and what does it mean to have freedom of speech? Some people now call the US a police state but freedom of speech appears limited only to those that abuse Islam, Muslims, and their revered personalities. Heaven help if you want to criticize Israel or its representatives.
“All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims” is an oft-repeated mantra in the West. This is even repeated by carpetbagger Muslims that should more accurately be described as Muslim-Zionists. What is the truth behind the assertion about all terrorists being Muslim?
As for the US economy, despite optimistic statements by President Barack Obama that it is on the mend — what else can he say? — statistics paint a very different picture.
Most people with even limited understanding of how media outlets spin news can see through the lies dished out by the likes of Fox News and CNN. But how does one explain the lies habitually repeated by such supposedly venerable institutions as the BBC, the New York Times or the Washington Post? All of them in their own right are considered paragons of wisdom and their word is considered sacrosanct.
Power is not given up voluntarily, at least not by those who have usurped it by force in the first place. The Muslim East (Middle East) is witnessing unprecedented uprisings by peoples that were hitherto considered too apathetic to move. There was a sense of resignation until, that is, the uprising in Tunisia sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, the street vendor who could not take the public insults of a female police officer any longer, changed everything.
