While Muslims in the Islamic East and North Africa were going through great turmoil, in February, the Muslims of Turkey lost one of their greatest leaders. Professor Necmeddin Erbakan had been in hospital since early January for various problems and he finally died on February 27 of cardiac and respiratory failure at the age of 85.
More than a year after the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians are faced with a curious dilemma that is both promising as well as frustrating. It is promising because the military regime has been forced to bring forward the date of presidential elections to May.
Last December, an agreement for the pipeline from Turkmenistan to India, via Afghanistan and Pakistan was signed without fanfare or publicity despite its immense significance.
The centre of Luton, a large town 30 miles north of London, lay empty on February 5. This was unusual for a Saturday afternoon, as one would have expected the usual hustle and bustle of shoppers and families frequenting parks and markets in the town centre. Instead, it was like a ghost town. Shops were closed and people remained indoors. The only presence on the streets was that of 1,000 police officers who were waiting to steward a scheduled demonstration by the far right anti-Muslim fascist organization, the English Defence League (EDL).
The Raymond Davis Affair is just the latest in a series of incidents in the past few months (Salman Taseer assassination is another) that threatens to widen antipathy between Pakistan’s westoxicated neo-liberal ruling and business class on the one hand and the majority of unrepresented Muslim people on the other into a bona fide overthrow of the existing feudal political order.
The winds of change sweeping the Islamic East have reached the shores of the tiny island state of Bahrain as well. The ruling Khalifa family resorted to brute force to terrorize peaceful protesters in the capital Manama’s Pearl Square on February 18 that resulted in the deaths of five protesters and left hundreds injured. The city’s Salmaniya Hospital was overwhelmed as the dead and wounded were brought in. Distraught relatives rushed to the hospital turning it into a new venue for protests.
The Palestinian issue has been virtually stalemated since before Israel’s war on Gaza in 2008–2009, with Hamas, the most popular and legitimate Palestinian leadership bottled up in the besieged and densely populated Gaza, and the West Bank under the increasingly repressive rule of Mahmood Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA).
The assassination of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer on January 4 at the hands of his own bodyguard has exposed the numerous fault lines criss-crossing the social fabric of Pakistani society over the blasphemy law. It has pushed the country toward two extremes drowning out rational and knowledge-based discussion.
Last month’s events have confirmed, yet again, with striking clarity how deeply polarized the Pakistani society is. The killing of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab Province, by his own bodyguard on January 4 has scared the living daylights out of the already cowardly rulers.
It is now widely expected that Yemen’s current unrest will lead to secession and not merely to the flight of its president, as has happened in Tunisia. The background to this situation is that the Republic of Yemen was born in May 22, 1990, when the two states of North and South Yemen merged after several clashes that led eventually to negotiations and a commitment to unity.
Barring some unforeseen problems, South Sudan will hold its referendum on January 9, 2011 and almost certainly secede from the North. The largest country in Africa would have been dealt a terrible blow whose consequences will reverberate for decades.
Even as US-Zionist agents were attacking ‘Ashura ceremonies in Pakistan and Iran, in Turkey something remarkable was taking place. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s appearance at an ‘Ashura commemoration ceremony of Imam Husayn’s martyrdom sent a powerful message of Muslim unity.
The Zionist State of Israel and its financial underwriter, the US, are getting desperate. They can no longer get away with their propaganda branding Hizbullah and Hamas as terrorist organizations. People worldwide are beginning to understand the true nature of Zionism.
We hardly needed WikiLeaks disclosures to tell us that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari is a crook. Or, that opposition leader Nawaz Sharif has no spine, not to mention grey matter under his now-restored hair, thanks to thousands of pounds spent on hair transplant surgery in London.
Wikileaks has proved to be the kingmaker of all news, defying the short lifespan of most news cycles to reign for a solid week-and-a-half over world headlines. Reactions over the release of secret US State Department cables ranged from shock, titillation, amusement, or apoplectic fury.
A non-descript country like Afghanistan has become the epicenter of global change sending not one but two superpowers into the dustbin of history.
George Galloway, the former British Member of Parliament, is a sharp debater and gifted orator with a ready wit. He was in Canada on a 9-city speaking tour from November 16–27. He addressed standing room audiences in cities from coast to coast to coast including Yellowknife in Canada’s frozen north.
His majesty, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, aka Khadim al-Haramayn (Servant of the Two Holy Places but his sycophants insist on calling him “Custodian”) is not well. In fact, so unwell that he had to be taken in wheelchair to a fully equipped luxury-fitted 747 Jumbo Jet before being flown to the US on November 22.
“…We were made aware of the orphans, the slums they live in; you witness the Israeli settlements that withdrew from [Gaza]; you witness the old Israeli checkpoints. “It’s an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It’s a crime… I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on.
The October 18 confession by leader of the pro-independence forces in the North Caucasus of direct Zionist influence on their struggle might be the beginning of the movement’s self cleansing process. A video announcement by Doku Umarov, leader of the Islamic Emirate of the Caucasus (IEC), posted on October 18, criticized four senior field commanders for their withdrawal of allegiance to him in August 2010.
