Wednesday, January 27, 2010

IRAQ - CHEMICAL ALI'S HANGING

The hanging of Ali Hassan al-Majid better known as 'Chemical Ali' was uneventful. He was equally barbaric and cruel as his cousin Saddam Hussain. He put down a Kurdish uprising in Halabja, Northern Iraq by gassing thousands of innocent people to death. A method not very different from the one deployed by Nazis against the Jews.

This should be a lesson to future dictators in Iraq and elsewhere that when you occupy the seat of power, you don't own it. It is the people who own it and one day you will have to pay for your crimes and excesses.

One aspect of this whole sordid affair that should have been discussed openly and has not been by the US and Western media is, how did Iraq get hold of these chemical weapons? There are allegations that in the eighties, Donald Rumsfeld and the US Government of the time provided these to Iraq for use in the Iran/Iraq war. That was the time when on a visit to Baghdad Donald Rumsfeld parised Saddam Hussain as "a Great Leader". If it is true that Rumsfeld supplied chemical weapons to Iraq, then is he not also complicit as a co-conspirator in war crimes and should he not be tried?

Unlike the British, who are holding an open and an independent inquiry into legality of Iraq War, the US Congress does not have the courage or the willpower to hold an open and a fair enquiry to determine whether Rumsfeld is guilty of these crimes.

Would Mr. Rumsfeld like to voluntarily submit to International Court of Justice to clear his name?

Thursday, January 14, 2010

PAT ROBERTSON AND THE TALIBAN

A 'Deal with the Devil' is what the insensitive Pat Robertson has to say about Haiti's earthquake. He has said similar things in the past after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Do these 'God's agents' have no shame. People are dying in Haiti and need help from the world community and all he can think of is a deal with the devil? Who has given this man the right to malign other human beings? Another evalengical preacher claimed recently that "God hates a lot of people". I guess God came down to give that information to him personally!

If one looks closely, there many similarities between the extreme right wing preachers and the Afghan Taliban. They want to impose their will on majority, so do the Taliban. They believe they are right and everyone else is wrong, so do the Taliban. They believe they are the only ones who will go to heaven, so do the Taliban. They believe it is their moral duty to set all erring people straight, so do the Taliban. They believe God has given them a mission to root out sin from the world, so do the Taliban.

Friday, January 1, 2010

LET IRANIAN SYSTEM IMPLODE ON ITS OWN, ANY HINT OF A CIA INVOLVEMENT COULD BACKFIRE BADLY

The ongoing unrest in Iran, almost daily demonstrations and the death of Mousavi's nephew shows that Iranian clergy is losing its stranglehold over Iran's political system.

Ever since the replacement of Shah's dictatorial rule with an even worse regime imposed by the Mullahs on Iranian public, the question has not been; will it fail, but rather when will it fail?

The Iranian public has been held hostage by religious extremists who see things only their way and no other way. The lack of tolerance, the pressure on young men to grow beards and on women to dress in a certain manner has the public looking for alternatives and freedom of expression.

The recent demonstrations could possibly have been encouraged and supported by outside players. The news coming out of Iran and carried by Western media seems to have a strange similarity to it, be it on CNN, BBC, ABC, NBC or CBS, as if the story is being fed from a single source. However genuine, many in public tend to view authenticity of such stories with some suspicion.

It was always a question of time when the Mullahs would run out of gas and Iranians would want a free and a democratic system of governance with fully restored civil liberties. It is best to let the Iranian public deal with this and not meddle with their internal affairs. Any hint of a CIA involvement in the anti Government demonstrations could backfire badly, possibly resulting in the current regime clamping down even harder and delaying the inevitable.