Posts Tagged strike

My piece which appeared in Southasia

The Chinese economy, it appears, has recovered from the recession in record time. According to the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing, annual growth was unexpectedly strong at 11.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010. By achieving such high growth rates in times of global recession, many expect China to overtake Japan this year to become the second largest economy of the world. Strengthened by these economic gains, China has used its political leverage to facilitate regional integration, by engaging in a number of bilateral swap arrangements with countries around the world.

Given that China only has 10% arable land, it becomes imperative for the country purchase commodities from other nations to satisfy the country’s growing consumption demands, and to invest in countries producing such commodities. Such a process will reinforce new corridors of increasing trade and investment flows between China and Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Similarly, its gigantic market and related demand have led China to invest in natural resource supplies of different countries, especially those in Africa and the Middle East.

Read the full article here

I hold no brief for the Taliban. They have enraged the world and brought much shame to Muslims and dare I say the great religion Islam as well. In fact, I detest their version of Islamic codes that they want to impose on the world through coercion.

However, the NATO battle against Taliban is not only barbaric in equal intesnity but it also dehumanizes them.

Mr Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law sent his piece that is eloquent, and extremely well argued. Ali Khan says that in the name of the “war of terror,” NATO forces are “committing genocide in Afghanistan by systematically hunting down and destroying” the Taliban, in violation of the terms of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide…

These sentences are chilling:

Politicians, the armed forces, the media, and even the general public associate in the West the Taliban with irrational fanatics, intolerant fundamentalists, brutal assassins, beheaders of women, bearded extremists, and terrorists. This luminescent negativity paves the way for aggression, military operations, and genocide. Promoting the predatory doctrine of collective self-defense, killing the Taliban is celebrated as a legal virtue..”

THe West should remember that this will not solve the issue of terrorism or militancy – whatever one may want to name it – in fact such wars cause more pain, create more martyrs and legends and motivate people to resist – theyhave nothing to lose in the first place. And, the history of Afghanistan spells out some clear lessons for the current imperial powers.

Read his full article below. (more…)