Month: July 2014

Published in Asia Times Online, 28 Jul 2014:  http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-280714.html

Israel’s use of “made-in-the-USA” death machines over the skies and on the ground of Gaza are raining hellfire on its civilian population, especially its women, children, and elders. No Arab State has had the guts to denounce that brutality. 

Only the newly elected Pharaoh of Egypt, Fattah al-Sisi, has spoken out on the issue, but only to manifest his utter contempt for the Islamic Brotherhood of Egypt by condemning Hamas for its brutal firing of rockets on Israel and to beseech it to arrange a ceasefire. However, Hamas was not interested in a ceasefire that did not also end the Israeli embargo. Egypt could have negotiated that concession from the Israelis, but it did not. It only wanted to play a symbolic role to appease its US paymaster’s crony, Israel. Continue reading “Why no Arab state cries for Gaza”

Published in Asia Times Online – 28 July 2014:  http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/SOU-03-280714.html

Pakistan’s Proclivity for War

For the past 15-plus years, Pakistan has been the unenviable focus of a variety of unflattering depictions of its state of affairs in scholarly and journalistic narratives. It appears as if various authors are in competition to select increasingly ominous phrases to describe that country and its cataclysmic state of affairs.

Some called it “the most dangerous place”, “a country that is descending into chaos”, a county that possesses a “Kalashnikov” culture, a “garrison state”, or a “hard country”.

As if following the same tradition, T V Paul’s book, The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World, adds one more phrase, “warrior state”, to portray it as a country where the security state has outgrown all other institutions and activities and where radical Islamization and its attendant obscurantism have been the consequences of state policy.

Continue reading “Book Review – The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World – by T.V. Paul”