Where are the US primaries headed to

One may say that November is still far away, and so there is no need to hurry over the nominations. However, this is the first time in recent memory that so late into the primaries, and yet no clear front runner is in sight. For the Republicans it appears that John McCain will, falling short of a major catastrophe, be the Republican nominee. The Democrats are doing, as always, what they do best, destroy each other with a vehemence that even the Republicans cannot match. The exit of John Edwards, not unsurprising, takes place at a time when the electorate was beiginning to see that he was indeed a candidate with a message and a new direction. I think he will endorse Barack Obama and will be assured of a major role in a Obama administration. He was above the petty bickering that marked the Clinton campaign and at least I felt that he emerged as a credible voice after the Mrytle Beach debates. I still feel that since the Florida primary did not really matter, John Edwards could have gone on to Super Tuesday. But it is the end of the road and he did fight fair and square and unlike Clinton did not mount a negative campaign.The exit of Rudy was long overdue. He really did not jell with the Republicans and though he was a front runner at the start of the campaign. see how fortunes change in politics. The Mitt Rooney- John McCain exchanges were very rough and Mccain did throw a few low blows at Mitt. But at the end of the day, John Maccain will be annointed the Republican candidate and if the democrats make the mistake of nominating Hillary Clinton, then I am certain that Mccain will win the Presidency.Unfortunately, John Maccain is trying in bring in National Security as an issue in the elections while everyone knowns that it is the economy stu....The cutting of the Fed rate and the Bush tax plans will stimulate the US economy on the short run but the recession will take at least 6 months to abate. The credit crunch and the foreclosures that threaten the American dream of homeownership has not really been addressed by any candidate and Hillary Clinton's solution of a 90 day morotorium will not help at all. Obama does have a point when he says that the Federal Government will have to step in to prevent foreclosures but how is he to accomlish that.In November it will a tight to the wire finish

Barkha Dutt wins the Padma Shri from the UPA Regime

And so the prima dona of NDTV, Ms Barkha Dutt, has been"honored" with the padma award. In an interview soon after the announcement, Ms Dutt grandly remarked: One feels great to be honored bu the Indian State. Young lady it in not an honor form the Indian State but from the minority UPA regime whose ideological interests are being served by NDTV and the like. And let me explain. In all major issues, the channel NDTV has taken the UPA side of the controversy, whether it be the nuclear deal with the USA or the Gujarat Elections or for that matter any other major problem that the country debated. Further, just last week NDTV annouced a series of awards and all of them went to Cngress or Congress friendly individuals. Who has forgotten the fact that last year the Indian of the Year award went to the resident non Indian, Soniaji and now it is pay back time and UPA gives the award to the likes of Barkha Dutt. If Burkha Dutt can be so honored, let me give my nominees for the highest awards of the UPA regime, the Jungle Ratna, sorry the Bharat Ratna, hereafter shortened to BR.


BRfor promoting Dynastic fascism: Soniaji and Karunanidhiji
Br for animal welfare: Lalloo Prasad Yadavji
BR for exemplary serice to the Indian Police Service: Shri R K Sharma, BR for Youth Leadership; Manu Sharmaji, Rahul Gandhi ji and Vikas Yadavji

BRfor the Best Parliamentarian; Hon'ble D P Yadavji, Md Ansariji and Raju Bhaiyya

BR for Children Welfare: Shri Mohinder Singh Pandher

BR for Public Service of the Highest Order: Sundry Secular Terrorists like Afzal Guru

BR for Preservation of Indian Heritage Hon'ble T R Baalu

This list can be expanded. But I think my nominees are all as worthy of the Padma Awards of the UPA as Burkha Dutt. I have nothing against INFOSYS Narayana Murthy, but giving the Padma Vibuhahn to a man who refused to sign the National Anthem because that would embarass his white guests is an insult to the nation, and that is precisely the point I am making: anyone who damns India day in and day out will be honored by the UPA because it is pro US and Pro White in its basic attitude.I think the time has come for introspection on the issue of public honors. Organisations with an incestuous relationship with the regime in power are being honored and those like Atal Behari Vajpayee with decades of dedicated service to the Indian State ignored.

The Sepoy Mutiny and Modern Memory

In 1857, exactly 150 years ago, soldiers of the then Bengal Army rose in rebellion against the English rukers of India. Historians have been debating the outbreak of 1857 ever since. However on the occasion of the 150 anniversary of the Mutiny several tourists from England, particularly the great great grand son of General Havelock and other members of the familires of the descendents of the Engish officers who faught against the Indian troops, wanted to pay homage to their ancesors at their graves strewn all over the Northern part of the country, especilly near Lucknow, Azamhgar, Kanpur and Delhi. We can expect that after 150 years the embers from the past would not create a blinding flame of resentmernt.However the British tourists have been prevented from paying homage at the Mutiny graves on the ground that any floral tibute to the fallen British soldiers will be an insult to the Sepoys who faught and died in the Movement. I find this line of reasoning extremely disconcerting. The descendents of the fallen English soldiers have the right to connect with their past. And by honoring the memory of those who died in the 1857 War in not an insult to the Sepoys wh were killed.The reason why this divergence in perception is because India has not ever bothered to memoralise the Sepoys who were killed in 1857. What was done on the ocassion of the Centenary celebration in 1957 was merely the appropriation of memorials already constructed by the English by the placement of a plaque stating that Indians were also killed inm the event. By denying an appropriate "site of memory" for the Indians who faught and died in the Uprising of 1857,the country has not got a closure of the terrible events of 1857.For example, the march of General James Neill from Allahabad to Lucknow in June of 1857 was accompanied by the deliberate large scale killing of civillian on a scale that is still remembered with horror till this day. Contemporary observers stated that the British soldiers like Neill amd Havelock were early pioneers in the dubious art of "shock and awe". Entire villages were wiped out with grape shot and lunch mobs of English Indigo planteers ans Irish soldiers relentlessly killed innocent civillians in the name of counter insurgency. Such horrors need to be remembered and because India has neglected to memoralise such terrible deeds there is resort to the crude device of blocking access to the Mutiny era graves.One hopes that on the ocassion of the 150 anniversary the victims of 1857 will also be remembered.

The Illegality of Saddam Hussein's Execution

Few images are likely to be more compelling than the picture of a shackled, manacled Saddam Hussein dressed in a dark overcoat calmly walking to the gallows. He was always the defiant one as his name translates in Arabic and he lived up to his name. Not a sign of weakness, not even a nervous twitch as the hangman's noose was fixed round his neck. His lips moving in silent prayer and the dignified manner in which Saddam Hussein faced his death will live in the minds of the Iraqi people. Even his many many enemies have said privately that the grainy images of Saddam's last moments will be his most enduring legacy.Sadfdam Hussein was captured by the US miltary near Tikrit and was held as a "prisoner of war" by the Americans and as a POW was entitled to all the protection of the Geneva convention and also the recent Hamdan Judgement of the US Supreme Court though restricted in scope to the G"Bay detainees, clearly maintained that enemy combatants were entitled to the protection of both US domestic and International law. Just hours before his excecution Saddam was handed over by the Americans to the al Maliki regime. This act demonstrates the complicity of the US in the judicial murder of Saddam Hussein though for the purpose of public record the US maintains the the "independent" judiciary of the "sovereign" governemnt of Iraq carried out the sentence. It does not behove of an occupying power to send its prisoner to his death when the whole world knows that by any standard of jurisprudence Saddam did not get a free anfd fair trial. Had he been tried by an objective International Tribunal, Saddam Hussein may still have faced a death sentence but the stench of a victor's justice will not vitiate the whole process.The death sentence was carried out in haste moments before the dawn of ID. Moslems both Shiaa and Sunni find it haighly insulting that the holy month of Id was chosen to carry out the death sentence. Why were both the USA and the Quisling regime in the Green Zone so eager to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Afterall even the Supreme Court did not mandate the excecution till the 27th of January 2007. The two other co accused and awaiting excecution along with Saddam, the Chief Juctice Bander and Hussein's half brother have not been excecuted. Why then the indecent haste to push Saddam Hussein into his grave.The Prime Minister, al Maliki had declared weeks earlier that Saddam Hussein would be killed before the end of the year. By making such a declaration did not al Maliki usurp the functions and powers of the so called independent judiciary that operated in Iraq. In fact the PM did something terrible:He signed the death warrant of Saddam Hussein before the glare of the international media. In fact when the people of Iraq regain thir dignity they will not forget the act of al-Maliki.The violence in Iraq will now escalate beyond all sustainable levels. The Baathists so far have remained preipheral to the strife presently unfolding in Iraq. With their cross sectarian links, political training and military skills the regime of the US backed al Maliki will have more than a handful. What is appaling is that al Maliki wants the Baathists to join hands with him and his Dawaa Gang which planned the assasination of Saddam at Dujail in 1982 for which Saddam has now been killed.In a way George Bush is right: Iraq has crossed a "milestone". From mnow on the struggle will get more vicious and more bloody. The final statement of Saddam Hussein will not bring about an immediate reconciliation but the bais of a national reconciliation are there in that short statement."
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Saddam's Impending Excecution

The Death of Dr Papiya Ghosh

December 3, 2006 was aday like any other. When I switched on NDTV to catch the evening news I heard the shocking news that Papiys Ghosh and her maid were brutally killed in Patna. I knew Dr Papiya Ghosh very well when we studied our MA in history at the University of Delhi. I went on to do a Ph D in medieval history and she specialised in modern Indian history. Every weekend I used to walk up to PG Womens' Hostel on the Campus and meet Papiya and discuss things of mutual interest. She was an extremely generous and charming person and a great scholar who believed in meticulous research. I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone should so brutally assault and snuff her so promising life out in such a cruel manner. I heard the NDTV interview with Dr Tuk-Tuk Kumar and learnt of the horrendous nature of the injuries inflicted on her.

I remember seeing Papiya for the first time in the red faced building of the Arts Faculty of the University of Delhi. She was waiting for the MA admission list to be put up. I walked up to her and asked her whether she was the same Papiya of the Junior Statesman fame. She smiled and said "yes". From that beginning we remained friends throughout our stay in Dehi University. She decided to return home to Bihar, I suspect, because she had to take care of her mother. How different things would have turned out had she continued in Delhi.

In 1975 September there were serious floods in Patna. I saw Papiya sitting all by herself in the classroom and I went up and asked her why she looked so worried. She told me that flood waters had entered their house in Patliputra colony and she was extremely worried after her mother. She had a deep sense of duty and the way she encouraged her younger sister to take the plunge toward the IAS is testimony to he fact that she was really a devoted sister. Her younger sister Tuk-Tuk Ghosh too took her Ph D in history and has written a standard work on the hisory of Rice in ancient India.

This morning I received my copy of the Book Review. As tragic irony would have it, a book on the partition of India authored by Papiya Ghosh was advertised in the front inside cover.

Papiya Ghosh was a remarkable human being and personally speaking my life was enriched through my association with her. I deeply mourn her slaying and pray that her soul rests in peace.

Orhan Pamuk and his evocative novels

Turkey is located geographically right in the middle of two great continents, Europe that lies west of the Straits of Bosphorus and the vast Asian lands to the east. Such a location is not without its obvious difficulties, a cultural confusion noted right from the days of Herodotus is only one obvious problem. Turkey aspires to join the European Union and as such has to meet certain exacting standards of human rights, judicial due process, political and intellectual freedom etc. This bill of political freedoms in an Islamic country itself is an anomaly. And yet Turkey in spite of rising time of Islamic fundamentalism and even al Qaeda inspired terrorism has proved to be a stable and vibrant society. The Nobel Prize for literature has gone to a Turkisn novelist Orhan Pamuk who seems to represent both the grand historical past of the Ottomans and the contemporary angst in his writings. Most critics would argue that Orhan Pamuk is a post modernist in that he experiments with different structures of time and narrative in his novels. We can even speculate about Pamuk's questining of the Turkish identity of present day Turkey. He has won my admiration for the courage he dispalyed in pubically cslling upon the Turkish state to acknowledge the Armenian Massacre that took palce in the first decade of the 20th century.

Pamuk unlike western liberals who blame Islam for all the ills of present day society. He denounces quite vehemently all those woh preach islamophobia in the name of spreading democracy. I will quote a passage from his writings to illustrate the point;
It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and
ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected
Third World countries. And for this the west has to be held responsible because it has failed to comprehend
the shame and the humiliation that has fallen on the poorer nations. Hot-headed military operations and wars
will only take us away from the order of peace.
This sentence sums up all that is wrong with the policy of trhe powerful nations against Islamic countries. Pamuk has spoken strongly in favor of intellectual and cultural freedom in Turkey and was even procecuted for the crime of insulting "Turkish Identity". He regards the writers primary objective as being the unpacking of all that a culture refuses to talk about. A clinical examination of the sites of silence in any given society. Politics of civil liberty and unrelenting questiong of the staus quo are the credo of Pamuk's writing.His writing is aimed at the so called public sphere constituting civil society and he does believe strongly in the tranformative nature of good writing.

The book that I enjoyed the most was one of Pamuk's earliest novels, My Name is Red.It is set in the dark days of the Ottoman Empire when Istambul was the cultural capital of ASIA.The novel attempts an exploration of the subjective world through the experiences of a range of characters,Stork, Butterfly, Olive and Esther.The miniaturist and his world are etched out in a manner that suggetrs that Pamuk is quite familiar with the mentalites approach of the French Annalistes.

Orhan Pamuk and his evocative novels

Turkey is located geographically right in the middle of two great continents, Europe that lies west of the Straits of Bosphorus and the vast Asian lands to the east. Such a location is not without its obvious difficulties, a cultural confusion noted right from the days of Herodotus is only one obvious problem. Turkey aspires to join the European Union and as such has to meet certain exacting standards of human rights, judicial due process, political and intellectual freedom etc. This bill of political freedoms in an Islamic country itself is an anomaly. And yet Turkey in spite of rising time of Islamic fundamentalism and even al Qaeda inspired terrorism has proved to be a stable and vibrant society. The Nobel Prize for literature has gone to a Turkisn novelist Orhan Pamuk who seems to represent both the grand historical past of the Ottomans and the contemporary angst in his writings. Most critics would argue that Orhan Pamuk is a post modernist in that he experiments with different structures of time and narrative in his novels. We can even speculate about Pamuk's questining of the Turkish identity of present day Turkey. He has won my admiration for the courage he dispalyed in pubically cslling upon the Turkish state to acknowledge the Armenian Massacre that took palce in the first decade of the 20th century.

Pamuk unlike western liberals who blame Islam for all the ills of present day society. He denounces quite vehemently all those woh preach islamophobia in the name of spreading democracy. I will quote a passage from his writings to illustrate the point;
It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and
ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected
Third World countries. And for this the west has to be held responsible because it has failed to comprehend
the shame and the humiliation that has fallen on the poorer nations. Hot-headed military operations and wars
will only take us away from the order of peace.
This sentence sums up all that is wrong with the policy of trhe powerful nations against Islamic countries. Pamuk has spoken strongly in favor of intellectual and cultural freedom in Turkey and was even procecuted for the crime of insulting "Turkish Identity". He regards the writers primary objective as being the unpacking of all that a culture refuses to talk about. A clinical examination of the sites of silence in any given society. Politics of civil liberty and unrelenting questiong of the staus quo are the credo of Pamuk's writing.His writing is aimed at the so called public sphere constituting civil society and he does believe strongly in the tranformative nature of good writing.

The book that I enjoyed the most was one of Pamuk's earliest novels, My Name is Red.It is set in the dark days of the Ottoman Empire when Istambul was the cultural capital of ASIA.The novel attempts an exploration of the subjective world through the experiences of a range of characters,Stork, Butterfly, Olive and Esther.The miniaturist and his world are etched out in a manner that suggetrs that Pamuk is quite familiar with the mentalites approach of the French Annalistes.

Israel's WarCrime at Qana

Early this morning around 12:30 Israeli F-16 jets dropped bombs on the southern Lebonese city of Qana. In this attack a building housing refugees who had fled from earlier Israeli bombardment were targetted and the men, women and children sleeping in the basement of the building were killed when the Israeli bombs demolished the building. The dispropotionate use of firepower by the Israelis is causing universal concern and while the world waits for the US to rein in the Israelis the pace of relentless killing continues without respite. Throughout the past 18 days Israeli jets have pounded hospitals,schools, appartment buildings, shopping centres, churches and civil infrastructure. They have replicated the pattern of destruction initiated in the GazaStrip--kill, attack civilians, destroy civic infrastructure and hospitals. In Lebanon the Israelis have gone one step beyond what they were doing in Gaza: they are follwing refugee convoys and killing them as they attempt to flee. This pattern of repraisals shows that the claim that Hizbollah is using civilians as cover for their rockets is false. Surely it is impossible to fire Katusha Rockets from refugee convoys.

The destruction rained upon Beirut city is so severe that parts of the city have been reduced to a moonscape with just rocks, glass and the stench of rotting flesh hanging like a hat overhead. The Isralis are not even allowing the Lebonese time to bury their dead. The pace of bombing is continuous and systematic. Using GPS and digital imaging the Israeli Air Force has been targetting the civilian areas killing in Southern Lebanon, Beirut ,Tyre and Qana over 600 civilians, the majority of whom are children and women. Helpless victims of a war state that has gone out of control. I wonder why the political leadership of Israel does not understand that for each of such crimes they commit, the chances of a lasting peace recedes. It is likely that Israel is not interested in peace and along with their big power supporter is taking the world for a ride when publically they endorse a two state solution and take every opportunity to kill, maim, and bomb innocent civilians who are not their enemy. The Internationall Commmunity has already began to feel that the UN ,like the League of Nations which could do little to control the Germans in the years before World War II,has become an embarrasment. Standing by watching helplessly as children and women are incenerated in the shelling and bombing unleashed by the State of Israel.

The International Community is aware that cluster munitions are being used by Israel against civilians. Howtizer fired cluster munitions are the most horrible and infernal engines of death from the death factories that supply such weapons. The USA has rushed an urgent supplyn of such weapons to Israel and they are being deployed against civilians. In Beirut Hospital the emergency services are running on generators and there is no supply of oxygen or medicines. Diabetic patients have run out of insulin and several have died in the last few weeks. The civic infrastructure has been completely and thoroughly destroyed.

The Israeli claim that they target civilian areas because they protect the Hizbollah and are launching ground for Katusha Rockets is to say the least an alibi. This is only a justification for large scale boming and causing civilian deaths as reparisals. Israel has not produced a shred of evidence to back this claim. The "embedded" American journalists who are keen to toe the line of their governemnt have visited the sites bombed by the Israelis and have clearly shown that they were only residential areas. No weapon, let alone rocket launchers have been found in the ruins of the bombed out buildings. It is an Orwellian tactic first pioneered by Dr Goebels: Repeat a lie a hundred times and people will start believing it. The cityscape of Souther Beirut, is packed with narrow lanes and by lanes with many high rise building, buit after the 74 civil war. It is impossible to fire rockets from such packed residential areas and Israel is using this to cover the warcimes it is commiting in Lebanon.

The capture of the 2 Israli soldiers by Hizbollah is generally trotted out as the cause for the outbreak of this round of hostilities. Even here the Israelis are being highly economical with truth. On July 29,1989 Israli commandos invaded the Lebonese toen of Jibchit and took Shiekh Abdul Karim captive in order to use him as a bargaining chip for excahning with some prisoners held by Hizbollah. UN Resolution 638 was of course ignored. In May 1994 Mustafe al-Dirani was kidnapped and brought to Israel, an act of what the Bushmen will call "Extraordinary rendition". He was held as an hostage inorder to be exchanged for the Israeli aviator Ron Arad who was shot down over Sidon in 1986. I can give more ibnstances but will stop at two just to prove that Israelis have gone in for prisoner exchanges in the past and while Hizbollah's actions were wrong, they were hardly the ones who begann this practice of taking prisoners for hostage and holding them on cAMPM 1391.

Even if we admit that Hizbollah did a morally reprehensible and politically irresponsible act, the reparisals launched by Israel have far far outweighed the intial act. Killing civilains on an industrial scale usinmg air power shows that Israel is now a state waging war against humanity and the International Community must act in adecicive manner to protect the lives of innocent men, women and children of Lebanon. Lebanon des not even have anti aircraft guns and to that extent the country has been demilitarise. In fact by its brutal, barbaric and savage actions against civilians Israel has forfeited whatever respect and synpathy it had.

What can the UN do. The UN was ineffective in Iraq and USA went ahead with its illegal war against Iraq and the world is seeing the consequences. UN resolutions 242, 338 and 638 have been ignored with US complicity while UN resolution 1559 is given the status of a biblical prophet. Moreover the negotiations within Lebanon for the implementatioinof this resolution had reached a criticasl stage when Istrael launched it barbaric campaign. The incantation form Israeli ministers that the Katusha Rockets are the cause of this action of reparisal. The fact is that more than 2000 Katusha Rockets have been fired and all of them have been firs from sites located away from the civilian areas. Israel is only using this to justify its callous disregard for the lives of Arab men women and children. It may not be out of place to note that the undercurrent of racism has always poisoned Arab-Israeli relations and by turning Lebanon into a 21st century killing field Israel has ceratinly lost whatever little respect it enjoyed in that part of theworld

Israel's WarCrime at Qana

Early this morning around 12:30 Israeli F-16 jets dropped bombs on the southern Lebonese city of Qana. In this attack a building housing refugees who had fled from earlier Israeli bombardment were targetted and the men, women and children sleeping in the basement of the building were killed when the Israeli bombs demolished the building. The dispropotionate use of firepower by the Israelis is causing universal concern and while the world waits for the US to rein in the Israelis the pace of relentless killing continues without respite. Throughout the past 18 days Israeli jets have pounded hospitals,schools, appartment buildings, shopping centres, churches and civil infrastructure. They have replicated the pattern of destruction initiated in the GazaStrip--kill, attack civilians, destroy civic infrastructure and hospitals. In Lebanon the Israelis have gone one step beyond what they were doing in Gaza: they are follwing refugee convoys and killing them as they attempt to flee. This pattern of repraisals shows that the claim that Hizbollah is using civilians as cover for their rockets is false. Surely it is impossible to fire Katusha Rockets from refugee convoys.

The destruction rained upon Beirut city is so severe that parts of the city have been reduced to a moonscape with just rocks, glass and the stench of rotting flesh hanging like a hat overhead. The Isralis are not even allowing the Lebonese time to bury their dead. The pace of bombing is continuous and systematic. Using GPS and digital imaging the Israeli Air Force has been targetting the civilian areas killing in Southern Lebanon, Beirut ,Tyre and Qana over 600 civilians, the majority of whom are children and women. Helpless victims of a war state that has gone out of control. I wonder why the political leadership of Israel does not understand that for each of such crimes they commit, the chances of a lasting peace recedes. It is likely that Israel is not interested in peace and along with their big power supporter is taking the world for a ride when publically they endorse a two state solution and take every opportunity to kill, maim, and bomb innocent civilians who are not their enemy. The Internationall Commmunity has already began to feel that the UN ,like the League of Nations which could do little to control the Germans in the years before World War II,has become an embarrasment. Standing by watching helplessly as children and women are incenerated in the shelling and bombing unleashed by the State of Israel.

The International Community is aware that cluster munitions are being used by Israel against civilians. Howtizer fired cluster munitions are the most horrible and infernal engines of death from the death factories that supply such weapons. The USA has rushed an urgent supplyn of such weapons to Israel and they are being deployed against civilians. In Beirut Hospital the emergency services are running on generators and there is no supply of oxygen or medicines. Diabetic patients have run out of insulin and several have died in the last few weeks. The civic infrastructure has been completely and thoroughly destroyed.

The Israeli claim that they target civilian areas because they protect the Hizbollah and are launching ground for Katusha Rockets is to say the least an alibi. This is only a justification for large scale boming and causing civilian deaths as reparisals. Israel has not produced a shred of evidence to back this claim. The "embedded" American journalists who are keen to toe the line of their governemnt have visited the sites bombed by the Israelis and have clearly shown that they were only residential areas. No weapon, let alone rocket launchers have been found in the ruins of the bombed out buildings. It is an Orwellian tactic first pioneered by Dr Goebels: Repeat a lie a hundred times and people will start believing it. The cityscape of Souther Beirut, is packed with narrow lanes and by lanes with many high rise building, buit after the 74 civil war. It is impossible to fire rockets from such packed residential areas and Israel is using this to cover the warcimes it is commiting in Lebanon.

The capture of the 2 Israli soldiers by Hizbollah is generally trotted out as the cause for the outbreak of this round of hostilities. Even here the Israelis are being highly economical with truth. On July 29,1989 Israli commandos invaded the Lebonese toen of Jibchit and took Shiekh Abdul Karim captive in order to use him as a bargaining chip for excahning with some prisoners held by Hizbollah. UN Resolution 638 was of course ignored. In May 1994 Mustafe al-Dirani was kidnapped and brought to Israel, an act of what the Bushmen will call "Extraordinary rendition". He was held as an hostage inorder to be exchanged for the Israeli aviator Ron Arad who was shot down over Sidon in 1986. I can give more ibnstances but will stop at two just to prove that Israelis have gone in for prisoner exchanges in the past and while Hizbollah's actions were wrong, they were hardly the ones who begann this practice of taking prisoners for hostage and holding them on cAMPM 1391.

Even if we admit that Hizbollah did a morally reprehensible and politically irresponsible act, the reparisals launched by Israel have far far outweighed the intial act. Killing civilains on an industrial scale usinmg air power shows that Israel is now a state waging war against humanity and the International Community must act in adecicive manner to protect the lives of innocent men, women and children of Lebanon. Lebanon des not even have anti aircraft guns and to that extent the country has been demilitarise. In fact by its brutal, barbaric and savage actions against civilians Israel has forfeited whatever respect and synpathy it had.

What can the UN do. The UN was ineffective in Iraq and USA went ahead with its illegal war against Iraq and the world is seeing the consequences. UN resolutions 242, 338 and 638 have been ignored with US complicity while UN resolution 1559 is given the status of a biblical prophet. Moreover the negotiations within Lebanon for the implementatioinof this resolution had reached a criticasl stage when Istrael launched it barbaric campaign. The incantation form Israeli ministers that the Katusha Rockets are the cause of this action of reparisal. The fact is that more than 2000 Katusha Rockets have been fired and all of them have been firs from sites located away from the civilian areas. Israel is only using this to justify its callous disregard for the lives of Arab men women and children. It may not be out of place to note that the undercurrent of racism has always poisoned Arab-Israeli relations and by turning Lebanon into a 21st century killing field Israel has ceratinly lost whatever little respect it enjoyed in that part of theworld

Why ceasefire in the interest of Israel

Isaac Deutcher, the Jewish historian whose entire family perished in the Holocaust made the following observation after the end of the 1967 six day war with the Arab states: "To justify or condone Israel's wars against the Arabs is to render Israel a very bad service and harm its own long term interests". This statement is relevant today as Israel in a blaze of military tiumphalim is close to achieving abbolute mastery over Lebanon. The unrestrained use of firepower, and the highly self righteous rhetoric from Israeli leaders and the undercurrent of racist antagonism against the Arab population and the callous disregatrd for Arab lives--women and children-- not excluded.. all suggest that Israel is using the opportunity provided by the war on terror and the disturbed conditions prevaileing in the region to redraw the boundries to its advantage.

The offensive againt Hamas in Palestine has already cost hundreds of lives and now the war against Lebanon. Hamas, a Sunni outfit and Hizbollah a Shiaa outfit have now joined hands.. It is possible that Israeli military offensive could completely jeopardise the stability of the present regime and the large scale violence and bloodshed unleashed by Israel makes the Lebones population yearn for the days of Syrian occupation. The Maronite Christian and the Druze population were at the forefront of the struggle against Syria aznd having rid Lebanon of Syria, the people find themselves under seige by land, air and sea from a far more ruthless adversary. The Western powers used the pretext provided by the killing of Rafik Hariri to exple the Syrians from Lebanon and the Bekaab Valley. Now the world can see for itself the real gameplan behind the killing of Rafik Hiriri and the expulsion of the Syrians.

The military operations against the Hizbollah will only serve to intensify the problem in the middle east. A parallel with Iraq is obvious. Just as US occupation of Iraq fuelled an isurgency that has now gone out of control, the Israeli presence in SDouthern Lebanon will only intensify the resistance. Isral has gone in for prisoner swaps earlier, why not now. Obviously it wants to use this opportunity to consolodate itself in souther Lebanon and create what it calls a "buffer zone" there. USA has shown lack of political understanding when on the one hand it admits that Israel has used dispropotionate force against the civilian population and on the other uses the threat of veto on the question of a UN sponsored ceasefire

Is rthere any evidence that Iran has instigated the Hizbollah in order to divert attention from the nuclear tangle? In fact the dispropotionate use of air power against the civilian population by Israel itself will be a major talking point that Israel and the USA understand only the language of military might making the solution of the issue more difficult. So far Israel has provided no information about a possible Iranian link except the inuendo that since Hizbollah is a Shiaa organisation it must be a surrogate of the Iran. The logic of such statements is similar to Joseph Macarthy's famous aphorism" It walks like a duck, squacks like a duck so it must be a duck. Unfortunately the Iranian angle to this crisis has not been established. Syria is belamed for everything that happens in Lebanon. In fact it was Syria that brought peace to the war torn country and inspite of the UN intervention it has not been establishe that Syria was involved in the Rafik Hiriri assasination. The Katuysha rockets are of Soviet vintage and there are no signs of direct military support to Hizbollah by Syria. It is obvious that Israel is making thse accusations in order to widen the amit of conflict and draw the US directly into armed confrontation with Iran.

The response of the Arab nations to this unfolding catastrophe has been timid, tepid and spineless. Of course there is no love lost between the Arab powers and the Hizbollah but when Arabs are being killed in such numbers it is a shameless act of perfidy on the part of Arab Governments to remain silent spectators. However on the ground there is overwhelming suppot for the victims of Israeli aggression and that is a dangerous factor in the violent social and political undercurrents of the Middle East.

USA must suppot a ceasefire as desired by the government of Lebanon in the interes of peace and to stem a spiralling humanitarian cris in the region."

The Supreme Court Judgement on Hamdan vs Rumsfeldt is a victory for civil liberty

It is one of the surprising features of the US constitutional history that the power of "judicial review" is not explicity granted to the Supreme Court. In fact it is through a long process of delicate and careful interpretation of the statutes and laws of the US that a doctrine of judicial review came to fashioned.One looks in vain in the writings of Washington, Jefferson and Madison for any suggestion of the principle of judicial review. In fact it was Alexander Hamilton in Fereralist # 78 spoke of the "judiciary having neither force nor will only judgement". arecognition of the idea that legislative intent not action can be adjudicated upon by the US Supreme Court. This notion was further expanded by Justice John Marshall who in his enthusiasm propounded a theory of judicial supremacy, i.e. the Supreme Court is the guardian of the Constitution. We must say that in the Dred Scott Judgement the US Supreme Court came close to embracing this expanded view of the powers and functions of the Courts, a road that is now seldom taken.

There are a few principles laid down by the US Suprecourt that govern the process of judicial review. In the pre civil war days and well into the last century the Supreme Court deferred to "excecutive interpretation", a principle that was invoked even in the famous Chevron vs EPA judgement. By the principle of negative exclusion those provisions that were not explicitly provided by statute could be derived unless Congress has precluded them. The traditional tools of statutory interpretation has been (a) legislative history and (b) policy consequences. Second, there is the famous latin adage:Ratio est legis anima;mutata legis ratione mutatur legis.The reason for the law is the soul; when the reason for the law changes the law changes as well. Since the Dred Scott ruling the Supreme court hasn ususally preferred modest and narrow ruling and the present judgement is a good example of such a ruling.

Thre were three basic issues before the Supreme Court as far as the Hamdan vs Rumsfeltd case is concerned. First, can the President of the USA acting as C in C invoke the Councilman verdict in order to detain and try Hamdan as an enemy combattant through the Uniform Code of Military Justice.Here the court held that the Councilman judement is not applicable for the simple reason that Hamdan is not a US serviceman. The grounds for denying the 4 articles of tge Geneva convention were set aside by the SC on the ground that since Cingress authorised the War against the Taliban all provisions of the articles opf the Convention must apply.

The second issue concerned the procedures adopted by the Commissions to try the detainees at the Git Bay. The Court held that the appelate procedures laid down by US law must prevail and hence the defendants have a right to have the charges brought before them to be examined and evidence presented in their presence. Here there is an ambiguity in the judgement: Had Congree enacted a special Act establishing the hybrid Commissions then tyhis major part of the Bush policy may not have been struck down.

Third, therwe cannot be any curtailment of the right of due process even in times of war. The fact is that this judgement will make it easier for civil libertarians to challenge the illegal and I dare say treasonable actions of the government. It is only a matter of time when Bush and the Bush men will be tried for the "extraordinary rendition". This judement has a direct bearing on that case as well.

All in all this is a splendid judgement and will be a landmark in the judicial history of the USA.

ZARQAWI AND IRAQI POLITICS

Today the US notched up a major success in its "war against terror". The Jordanian terrorist Al Zarqawi was killed in an air strike near Bagdad. With the exit of Al Zarqawi, it now is certain that a major threat to the existing Iraqi regime has been removed. It appears from initial reports that the entire leadership of the Al Qaeda in Iraqi has been removed in one fell blow. What are the implications of this development.

First, in the short run at least the Iraqi regime and its American backers can breathe easy. Zarqawi was the strategist behingd the Sunni Insurgency and with his death a major hurdle has certainly been claered.

Second, the fact that the Coalition had precise information about the meeting in which Zarqawim was to participate shows that the present Iraqi regime has penetrated the thick veil of secrecy and probably there are spies of th e regime olready in place. This development will certainly leadd to a lot of shake up in the ranks of the Insurgents and hence their capacity to strike will in the short run be reduced.

Third, there is every possibility that Zarqawi will be repalced by another equallly charismatic leader, but it is unlikely that he would be able to strike with such ease as the now dead Zarqawi.

The Insurgecy will be crippled by this event and there is no doubt that at long last the coalition has killed aknown terrorist and not inocent civilians as it did in Haditha

SIMON SCHAMA'S ROUGH CROSSINGS A REVIEW

Historians like to tell stories, true stories that spring from the materials that have survives from the past. Putting the events together in a seamless web of narrative involves great intellectual and physical effort. And when you read a really good historical work based on exhaustive archival research you get the feeling of drifting into another world altogether. That is why someone said:The past is a foreign country. The twentieth century has seen a number of great historians: Fernand Braudel,Lawrence Stone, Bernard Bailyn, Theodore Mommsen and Simon Schama. Of these Theodore Mommsen won the Nobel Prize and still remains the only historian so honored. He was a historian of the Roman Empire who shiofted thefovcus of research from the Empire to the Provinces. He wrote in a polished and sophisticated style that probably was considered literary by the Literature Committee of the Alfred Nobel Foundation. Thomas Mann was also a good writer and his son Golo Mann has certainly inherited his father's gift for words. The stories that historians tell about the past are regarded as true stories because the characters spring from a whole skein of written and unwritten evidence, not testimony. Unfortunately is a moment of self destruction probably evven of self delusion, historians began neglecting the basic features of thie craft in favor of abstractions like "models" "causation" "hypotheses" personification of historical epochs as "feudal" "capitalist" etc.The result was a general impoverishment of the art of history writing. Then came Hayden White who even said that history is only a "construct" like any other discourse.

The sad state of affairs did not last long. Historians soon realised that a discipline that has been around for nearly 3000 years cannot be swept aside from the intellectual herotage of mankind. The craft of writing history not only involves a commitment to truth, no matter how elusive it may be but also the ability to write in a style free from the vacuous jargon that clutters the pages of several journals. One historian who has stood apart is Simon Schama.

Trained in the University of Cambridge Simon Schama teaches at tColumbia University. He is the author of Landscape and Memory and Embarassment of Riches.He has just published another excellent book, Rough Crossings.

The American War of Independence is usually seen as a gigantic struggle against oppression and an epic saga of liberty and freedom. This patriotic interpretation cannot be cynically set aside for the simple reason that all the participants in that struggle, Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Franklin were all influenced by the dominant intellectual ideas of the time that we now collectively call the Enlightenemnt. Yet the principle of human equality was not present in the minds of those patriots and leads to an obvious paradox: The Americns faught for their freedom and the Slaves in the US at that time faught on the side of the British. This point is ably brought out by Simon Schama in this book. After the defeat of the English and after the surrender of Cornwallis many of the slaves who faught on the side of the British escaped to Nova Scotia in Canada.

In fact conservative English judges who were called upon to deliver judgement on the status of slaves who escaped in British ports ususally set them free while liberal ideologues were less fortright in accepting the theory of monogenisis. Simon Schama has documented in great detail the lives of several slaves who faught and died in the American War of Independence.

It is a tragic fact of historyu that the triumph of the rebels meants postponing the freedom of the African American population. This book is worth readin.

IRAQI WOMEN AND CHILDERN SUFFER THE MOST

The embedded journalists from the USA and UK are doing a great disservice to their own people by consciously hiding the untold suffering of the people of Iraq in the face of American occupation. The impact of the war and the insurgency have been devastating on women and children. It is really sickening to see fat well fed Iraqi men, Quislings all of them, appear on Western TV and mouth innanities about the great job that is being done by the coalition. The pictures from Basra put paid to such extravagance. The Western media used to foment identity politics in Iraq between Sunnis and Shiaas, were quite unpreparted to see Shiaas out on the streets dancing over the burnt out sheell of the RAF chopper. The British troops retaliated with excessive force and killed 15 children and women. The Western media admits only 5 killed in the ensuing carnage.

The truth from Iraq is bitter and it is the truth of Auchwitz, Dachau and Triblinka. A holocaust is unfolding in Iraq and it is the women and children who face the brunt of it. Every night after sundown the US and their Iraqi collaborators invade the homes of people, especially Sunni homes, and in the pretext of searching for arms ransack and humiliate the people living there. Any Sunni male between 15 to 50 is carted away and several times their dead bidies turn up in the fieds around Bagdad. An unwriteen policy of ethnic cleansing in underway and the US administration is complicit in several acts of gfroos human rights violations. The US Media engaged in innanities over Rumsfeldt and the CIA has neither the time nor inclination to highlight the real situation in Iraq. The safety of the Green Zone does not permit the luxury of seeking out the truth.

The void is noaw filled by film makers who with home video, cell phones, handy cams,webcams and the like are documenting the atrocities that the USA and UK are inflicting on innocent Iraqis. Most of these film makers hide their identity as they fear both the Americans and the Insurgents who are alternatively support the US coalition or operate on their own. Children from the age of 6 suffer the psychological trauma of seeing their parents killed in front of their eyes. Symptoms of body tremors are becoming common among choldren. It is of course well known that involuntary body tremor is a sure sign of nervous breakdown. Women who have lost their husbands are being forced into prostitution in order to feed their children left fatherl;ess in a cruel and violent Iraq.

Travel from one city to another is becoming difficult because the Americans have put up road blocks everywhere. The only escape route is the desert and even their when groups are found crossing the desert they are strafed by US military helicopters. The people of Iraq have been turned into targets fror US and UK moilitary machine. One of the film makers has done a short and chilling story of a 8 year onld girl who was picked up by the American marines in the desetrs outside Baghdad. Her father was killed by the marines and the little girl herself was held for nearly 6 months by the marines until her Grandfather was able to track her down and rescue her. All the while the child was forced to view photographs of corpses and identify them. Such abuse of choldren is becoming rampant in Iraq today and are war crimes like any other.

The fact is undr Saddam Hussein women dad made great progress towars economic and social equality. The US occupation of Iraq is forcing women back into the hijab and the fact is the Americans are in alliance with Shiaa clerics who are forcing such reggressive measures.Link

KAAVYAA NEEDS ANOTHER CHANCE

What can you say of a girl of nineteen who took a single false step. That she is young. That she is ambitious. That she took a short cut to fame. Yes, you can say all this about a young Harvard sophomore called Kavyaaa Viswanathan, She is the only child a doctor parents who trained her from childhood to enter the portals of a great institution of higher learning--Harvard. She is by all accounts a bright, well groomed sophomore. Unfortunately for her her book, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got aLife which was published recently by Little Brown and Co has strirred by a hornet's nest of intellectual property right issues. Simply put issues referred to as plagarism.

A few weeks back the Harvard Crimson published a story saying that Kaavyaa had lifted certain passages from another young adult writer Megan McCaffert's novels Sloppy First and Second Helping. A perusal of the two books does suggest similarities in language but there is no passage that is a straioght lift from either book. Kaavyaa has stated that she had read the two books by McCaffert and had "internalised her language". She issued a public apology and her publisher Little Brown and Co withdrew all copies of the book. I managed to get a copy as I live in a different country and even here the distributors are withdrawing all copies of her book. Kaavyaa received an advance of 500,000 US $ and she was forced to return that amont. Personally speaking I feel that this young girl has been punished enough. Her name and reputation in tatters, Kavyaa should now be left to purue her studies.

The alarming part of this entire sequence of events is that Harvard University is seriously considering action against her. We do not know what the Deans and Professors of Harvard have in their minds. But this I know that 19 is too tender an age for ones's life to be irrevocably damaged. I appeal to all those concerned to have mercy on that girl. Punisher her if you will. But dont for God's sake damage her forever

USA,IRAN AND NUCLEAR ISSUE

More tham 45 years ago Dr Henry Kissenger wrote a book which is more relevant today than it was in 1958 when Harvatrd University published it. Entitled [I]Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy[/I]this book argued the provocative thesis that the Westphalia System of having the State with its monopoly on the coercive power represented by the army and the like will not be the sole determinant of foreign policy in the nuclear age. Any state attempting to change the international status quo will perforce take the route to nulearisation. Unfortunately these insights seem to be forgotten by the very neocons whose short sighted and blindly aggressive foreign policy has led the USA to the quagmire of Iraq. Francis Fukuyama has come out strongly against the neocon agenda in his latest book. How then are we (thinking individuals) to proceed.

First, is Iran in violation of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Honest opinion is rather divided on this question. Most agree that Iran did hide part of its research program from the UN watch dog agency. However, nuclear enrichment is not prohibited by the NPT. Therefore Iran is on solid ground on this issue.

USA agues that nuclear enrichment is a threat to the region. One look at the map will explain why Iran is furiously in favor of nuclear enrichment: Iran is ringed with a whole aray of nuclear powers"India, Pakistan, China and of course, Israel. Further the USA has forwars bases equipped with short and long rane nuclear tipped missiles at Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbegistaan and certainly Afghanistan. In such a geo political situation it is highly unrealistic on the part of the USA to expect Iran to give up its programme. This is precisely what Dr Henry Kissenger had pointed out in that brilliant book with which I began this blog. The is an undercurrent of racism in the nuclear debate that politie opinion does not quite address. The fact is that Anglo Saxon countries have enjoyed the near monopoly of the use and deployment of nuclear weapons and have shown the willingness to use shock and awe against non white peoples of the world (Iraq being the most recent victim). In such a scenario no amount of sabre rattling by Bush abd the Bushmen is going to help. Unfortunately, the USA keeps harping on the Al Qaeda factor and as far as the acqusition of the bomb is concerned even Muslim states will not permit non state actors like Alqaeda to acquire the nuclear weapons. This fundamental point is not understood by the present US Administration.

Does the USA hope, realistically speaking, to attak Iran and get away unscathed. The country has not forgotten the horrors of CIA sponsored coups and countercoups during the long years of the Shah's reign. THe unkindest cut of all: yes let me remind all of you: THE USA ARMED AND ENCOURAGED SADDAM HUSSEIN DURING THE TEN YEAR WAR WITH IRAN IN WHICH US SUPPLIED CHEMICAL WEAPONS TO SADDAM HUSSEIN. With such a background and history is Iran ever going to consider the USA a dis interested party. Rigtly or wrongly Iranians feel that the USA is creating a climate for a war using the same sort of bogey created around Iraq during the run up to the War three years back. The world has not forgotten the fact that the USA shot down a civillian passenger plane belonging to Iran killing more than 200 passengers on board. Iranians are familiar with the vacuous noises from Washington DC and it is extremelu unlikely that they will take US threats seriously. The world knowns that USA will not attak a nucleatr power and hence the Iranians aspire for nuclear capacity just short of weaponisation. See how Bush and the Bushmen are silent over NOrth Korea.

There is another factor. There is another undeclared nuclear power in the region and no one can be insensitive to Iranian fears that that power which has with impunity violated UN resolutions is capable of doing the bidding on behalf of the US establishment.

The fact is that the Iranians cooperated with the American in their war against Afghanistan and also gave tactical support during the offensive against Saddam Hussein. Iran was in an economic crisis a few years back but thanks to the soaring oil prices the Iranians are well on the way to economic recovery."

On Reading Simon Schama

When I was in graduate school several years back the most impressive historiographical works we were expected to read wad Orientalism by Edwars Said and of course, Metahistory by Hayden White. Those were diffent days. History was still regarded as a way of apprehending the real world in all its complexity. Narrative was only a menomic tool to ensure that the chronological ordering of events is in the framework of what was called causation. Intellectual history meant situating ideas in their historical contexts an understanding that is today regarded as passe. These are post modernist time and the simple language of historians trying to understand the real world has been replaced by a hugely comple and bewildering range of jargon terms which do not make any sense: they foreground instead of gioving importance, they privlege instead of telling a straight story.

Therefore it was simply wonderful to read Simon Schama who has writtten Landscape and Memory. This book is written so well that I was able to read it from cover to cover in one weekend. Schama speaks of the varied ways in which humans have coded their landscape both in paintinngs and literature. The fact is that our relationship with our landscape is being constasntly redefined and in that process we become more aware of the strong ties that bind us to our land.

America at the Crossroads: Fukuyama again

A powerful neoconservative voice has risen against the prophet of neoconservatism--George Bush. Francis Fukuyama, known all over the world for his provocative and yes, celebratory thesis about the end of history, has written a withering attack on Bush and the betrayal of the neoconservative agenda. The carapace of ideas such as preventive war,benevolent hegemony, war against terror are analysed and critiqued in great detail in thois booik. When the Iraq Qar was attacked on humanitarian and strategic grounds the neoconmen retaliated with sarcasm and felt that humilisating the messenger was enough to discredit the powerful arguments against the direction USA was tsaking as a consequence of neocon ideas of unilateralism and shock and awe.We may recall that Francis Fukuyama was an ardent supporter of the Iraq war and when he starts lamenting the horrendous cost of the wat even neocons must take note.

Traditionally conservatives trace their intellectual legacy to Edmund Burke and have always opposed overseas expansion and entangling commitments, a phrase we even find in the speech of George Washinton. Preemtive war and war to build democracy argues Francis Fukuyama render American foreign policy hostage to extra political interests. History cannot be accelerated through American agency, he writes. Like the Communists of old, the neoconmen too believed that they were on the right side of history and the chosen instruments of American destiny in the poist USSR world.

The major contribution of Francis Fukuyama lies in his treatment of the decision to wage war in Iraq without the approval of the UN. The main justification for the war the weapons of mass destruction allegedly possessed by Saddam has turned out to be a mere will-o-the whisp. Indeed the standing o9f the only superpower has taken a huge blow due to the false case made out by the neoconmen to justify the war. The foreign policy establisment seems to have been side lined and neocon thik tanks and ideologues like Paul Wolfowitz created the blue print for the war without a broadbased national debate over crucial issues. As Fukuyama maintains the US armay was woefully ill prepared for the war and did not expect the resistance. Those of us who have been following the war from a different perspective knew that the real challenge lay after the fall of Bagdad,

This book must be read by everone interested in Iraq.

Why is the Moslem World Angry

A few weeks back a Danish newspaper published a picture of Prophet Momammad, peace be on his name. The cartoon showed the Prophet wearing a bomb in his turban. The Moslem world was just aghast at this irreverential portrayal of the Prophet. Since then the fires have been raging in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Western embedded media says that it is a clash between Freedom of Expression and an increasingly intolerant Islam. This view is wrong because there are laws in all Western countries against Blasphemy and Racism. No one can claim the right to publish a cartton dishonoring Jesus Christ and claim that freedom of rxpression protects him/her. Therefore the principle of Freedom of the Press or ERxpression is not involved. The Wesrern Media is claiming unto itself the Right to dishonor Islam in the name of Democratic Freedoms. As Oliverm Wendell Holmes once said. you cannot shout fire in a crowded theatre and then claim that the act and its consequenes are covered by the First Ammendment. The present case is similar.There is a strong feeling in the Islamic world that the West is trying to undermine Islam as a religion and civilization by constantly depicing it as a fundamenmtalist, aggressive, lawless force. The anger that is spilling on to the streets is a spontaneous expression of the frustrations that people feel when their sacred symbols are cynically violated.

THE LESSONS FROM HISTORY: IRAQ AND THE WAR IN PHILLIPINES

has become fashionable to call the USA an empire. Whatever the term may mean to radicals and conservatives the fact remains the both groups do not see the present international overreach of the USA as imperial. I have some trouble accepting such generalities because they obcure certain hard ground realities. A better mway of phrasing the question would be: Does the USA have the stamina to be an imperial hegemon of the 21st century. With the war in IRAQ going nowhere and no exit strategy in sight, the daily body count increasing to catatrophic levels and the public acceptance level of Bush and his Bushmen decling by the day, a look at the history of the USA is in order. Consider the following points made by Niall [pronounced Niel] Ferguson in his Colossus:The Rise and Fall of the American Empire:Impressive military successA flawed assessment of local sentimentstrategy of limited war and gradual escalation of forcesdomestic turmoil over the unpopular and nasty warpremature political settlementdeclare victory and withdawSounds familiar. No we are not speaking of the Vietnam War. Afterall that war has still searing scars left to heal. We are referring to a much older war, one that is barely remembered.In 1898 American forces won a striking victory over Spain.The pretext for the war, like the WMD in the case of Iraq, was the accidental explosion in the battleship Maine. How could Spain be responsible for the explosion, is any body's guess. Mckinley, the then President spoke in words that would credit Bush and the Bushmen:I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight....I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance..and light came..(1) We could not give them back to Spain(2) That we could notturn them over to France or Germany our commercial rivals in the orient (3) They are unfit to govern themselves(%) There is nothing left to sdo but educate, civilise and Christianize the Fillipinos...Thus the evangelical rhetoric of Bush II has precedents in US history.The fact that the USA completely underestimated the Resistance led by Emilio Aguinaldo. The War to "pacify" Phillipines was a costlt war and American tactics in the Phillipines bears recall of what is happening in Iraq; Read what the General officer Commanding of the US Forces in the Phillipines, General Jacob Smith ordered his men:"I wish you kill and burn the more you kill and the more you burn the better you will please me... I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms. Max Boot The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, New York 2002. pp.120.The point is that the rhetoric of freedom, civilization and democracy is only a smokescreen for what was an aggressive war based on perceived self interest. The Iraq war is no different."

Will the USA Repeat the same mistake in IRAN

George Bush II famously described Iran as part of the "axis of evil". Since then the situation with regard to Iran is perilously close to war. Had the ground reality on Iraq been different, there is no doubt that Bush and the Bushmen would have exported their version of "freedom and democracy" to Iran. Now that the USA is bogged down in an ever widening spiral of violence and destruction and the average mortality rate has increased to 7.5 soldiers per day and the average death toll amongst the civilians is 35 per day. This figure only means that any move on the part of the Bush administration to invade Iran will not have domestic political support. In any case US unilateralism only means that "international law" and "public opinion" account for so much nuisance value. There is no doubt that Iran is aggressively pursuing an uranium enrichment program whose only riason d'etre is the nuclear bomb. In fact by waging a brutal war of aggression on Iraq on the pretext that Iraq is on the verge of possessing the ABS weapons claim since disproved, the USA has provided legitimacy to every lawless regime to insure itself against the mindless American assault by brandishing nuclear weapons. In fact the non proliferation regime has now virtually collapsed due to US intervention.Now it is really a sobering thought that only 5 million Sunnis are inflicting unacceptable levels of damage to US troops. Just imagine the hostility of 70 million in Iran. Further, the Shia population of Iraq will not support an American invasion of Iran.The run up to the planned war on Iran is as stale as yesterday's news. First plant storied in the free-embedded media that Iran is developing the Atomic bomb and then selectively leak alleged links with Al Qaeda and then go to town with planted stories about oriental rulers who have no sense of responsibility. The pattern is distressingly familiar: Serbia and Iraq now Iran.The Bushmen have learnt one lesson from Iraq. They have learnt that in ground combat the US faces heavy odds. Hence the new game will be to use the shock and awe of areal bombardment.The show goes on.

Did Tookie Williams deserve to die

On December 13, 2005 a few minutes past mid night a well built, healthy man walked the last few hundred feet between his cell on Death Row at San Quentin and the excecution chamber. That Tookie Williams was a ruthless killer no one denies. That he had a violent youth in which a dissipated life careened out of control uder the influence of poverty and drugs too no one denies. He along with Raymond set up a violent street gang, Cripps, this too is a fact. And he killed four people in typical gang land style. Having said all this can we say that he deserved a chance to straighten out his lfe.I do not buy the theory of procecutorial misconduct during the course of the trial. That he was responsible for killing four young men is certain.After his trial, Tookie Williams had embarked upon the worthy course of warning Black youth of the dangers of gang warfare and drugs by writing a series of books. He also wrote his autobiography which explains the social context in which he grew up. A fatherless childhood and two children from two different women by the time he was 18, and an irresponsible attitude towards his children, made him seek the refuge in a gang. The gang is probably the one social group that provided a degree of self worth and then the drift into crime.It is not quite right to disscount the race factor in the debade on the Death Penalty. Tookie Williams was probed fro nearly 1 hour with hypodermic syringes before the vein to let the lethal mixture was found. This is ceratainly a cruel and unusual way of killing an individual, Further it took Mr Tookie Williams nearly 10 minutes to die. Some agony.The federal jusdes had reccomended clemency for Tookie Williams on the ground that he had behaved in an exemplary manner in the last half of his life. He died at the age of 52 for a crime committed at the age of 24. Obviously he was a completely different man to the callow youth who had done the horrible deeds.Can this factor not be the ground for mercy?

Did Tookie Williams deserve to die

On December 13, 2005 a few minutes past mid night a well built, healthy man walked the last few hundred feet between his cell on Death Row at San Quentin and the excecution chamber. That Tookie Williams was a ruthless killer no one denies. That he had a violent youth in which a dissipated life careened out of control uder the influence of poverty and drugs too no one denies. He along with Raymond set up a violent street gang, Cripps, this too is a fact. And he killed four people in typical gang land style. Having said all this can we say that he deserved a chance to straighten out his lfe.I do not buy the theory of procecutorial misconduct during the course of the trial. That he was responsible for killing four young men is certain.After his trial, Tookie Williams had embarked upon the worthy course of warning Black youth of the dangers of gang warfare and drugs by writing a series of books. He also wrote his autobiography which explains the social context in which he grew up. A fatherless childhood and two children from two different women by the time he was 18, and an irresponsible attitude towards his children, made him seek the refuge in a gang. The gang is probably the one social group that provided a degree of self worth and then the drift into crime.It is not quite right to disscount the race factor in the debade on the Death Penalty. Tookie Williams was probed fro nearly 1 hour with hypodermic syringes before the vein to let the lethal mixture was found. This is ceratainly a cruel and unusual way of killing an individual, Further it took Mr Tookie Williams nearly 10 minutes to die. Some agony.The federal jusdes had reccomended clemency for Tookie Williams on the ground that he had behaved in an exemplary manner in the last half of his life. He died at the age of 52 for a crime committed at the age of 24. Obviously he was a completely different man to the callow youth who had done the horrible deeds.Can this factor not be the ground for mercy?

USA IS LAWLESS ONCE AGAIN IS IT TIME FOR WAR CRIMES TRIAL

Under George II, the regime now in place in Washington DC has become a law unto itself. Even rougue states like Libya and North Korea did not ever attempt the blatant violations of International Law that has become the norm under the Bushmen. USA is not a party to the Internation Criminal Court of Justice. This perhahs explains the studied impunity with which the Bush regime has trampled upon the very core values of the international order. The illegal war in Iraq and themwanton use of banned chemical by US troops together with the Abu Gharais Prison scandal have exposed the utter lackmof idealism in the conduct of US fopreign policy. Not that the world was taken in by the faniful rhetoric of human rights, and freedom bandied about by Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. However a new depth has been plumbed in the present regime.The CIA has been caught running illegal,flights between Europe and the USA. THese flights were used to ferry suspected "terrorists" from Europe to the legal limbo of prisons located in US dependencies. It is well known that prisoners or for that matter any human being casnnot be transported across international borders without the explicit sanction of the host countries through which the men are being transported. In the exalted Blairdom of Tony and the goons of the Labour Party more than 200 such flights have landed and taken off. Now the little poodle has suddenly become wise and has started barking against his master: Tony Blair's "foreigh minister" has written to the Secretary of State Dr Condaleeza Rice asking for details about the "torture flights". My Lord we are shocked that our airports were being used for such nefarious purposes says Tony Blair feigning ignorance. It is quite another matter that by ignoring the American violation of British airspace, Blairdom has also violated the EU constitution. The USA uses euphemisms to gloss such terrible acts:"extraordinary renditions" describes the illegal transfer of prisoners to third countries wherein US torture experts can question illegally detained and captured prisoners. Even in the dark days of Nazi Germany such vicious acts were unknown. Germany's new Chancellor Angela Markel is likely to take up this matter with Rice when the Secretary of State visits Germany next month.Tony Blair claims that his regime was totally in the dark about what the US was up to. Even this poodle has begun to distance himself from the misdeeds of Bush and his Bushmen.Back to Iraq. Everyday the toll is rising and the much vaunted Iraqi security force is being dessimated in the barracks itself. Now it has been confirmed beyond a shadow od doubt that the US used White Phosphorous in Fallujah against unarmed non combatants. Pictures of burnt children have been published by a former US marine Jeff Englehart. The "embedded free press" does not cover war crimes in Iraq. In March 2005, the American army in house magazine Field Arillery gave specific details of the use of WP in Falujah. It goes without saying that the USA has violated the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons which bans the use of incendiary weapons like White Phosphorous. In the Rules of Engagemnet, an account of the Iraq war, the British general Tim Collins admits that he trained troops in the use of WP. Now Saddam may have used chemical weapons against the Kurds, however in the Falklands War, the Anglo Saxon troops used WP against the Argentinians.It has also come to light that in the shock and awe attack on Bagdad in Narch 2003, the US used 'napalm'. With the tide of revulsion rising against the atrocities of trhe Bushmen it is time to CALL THE TROOPS HOME.

CLINTON SPEECH ON IRAQ HE TOO IS RESPONSIBILE

a speech in Dubai, Bill Clinton declared that the Iraq War was a "big mistake". The speech was made in the context of rising civillian and US casualities in Iraq. Clinton by referring to the Iraq War as a mistake is obviously playing to the domestic Democratic lobby in order to gather support for the next Pesidential candidate from the Democratic party, who could even be Hiliary Clinton. Of course, a consumate politician like Clinton can paly politics and thetre is nothing wrong in that per se. However,he implies that he had no real responsibility for the happenings in Iraq. Hence I would like to set the record straight.First of all, Clinton gave unqualified support to the invasion of Iraq ibn 2003. As former president he cannot claim that he was misled by the false propaganda emanatinf from the White House. If the truth be told George Bush was only follwing in the path alid out by Bill Clinton during his twi terms in the White House.Second, Bill Clinton was primarily responsible for imposing the UN sanction regime on Iraq qhich resulted in creating a huge humanitarian crisis in Iraq. In fact half a million Iraqi children perished as a direct consequence of the ruthlessly inhuman sanction's regime of the UN. Clinton cannot escape the responsibility for that.Third, Bill Clinton along with the British Government subjected Bagdad to weeks of ariel bombardment in 1993. Further in 1998, he signed the Iraq Liberation Act which made regime change the ofricial policy of the US Governemt. On the pretext of allowing the UN Weapons insectors the protection for carrying out their task, Clinton ordered the bombing of Bagdad for 4 days. Need we forget the bombing of Kossovo which resulted in thousands of fatalities.Given the record of his Administration, Bill Clinton cannot really distance himself from the killing fields of Iraq. In fact it was his administration that laid the ground for US involvement and George Bush II blundered into the mess aided and abetted by the faulty intelligence.

USA USES BANNED CHEMICALS IN IRAQ

It is a delicious bit of irony that the ostensible reason for American invasion of Iraq remains the ABC weapons allegedly developed by Saddam Hussein. It has now become abundantly clear that not only was the intelligence with respect of the WMD program of the erstwhile President of Iraq flawed but there appears to have been what one senator delicately called "cherry picking ." So a savage brutal war was waged against a nation which was down on its heels due to the UN sanctions. The people of Iraq have been crushed under two oppressive regimes:One the warlord regime of Saddam Hussein and the "shoot and scoot"wild west regime of the Anglo-Saxon coalition troops. We have during the course of the last one year catalogued the awful story of the travails the ordinary Iraqi living outside of the Grren Zone is expriencing.USA is a signatory of the Geneva Convention which bans the use of chemical weapons. In fact one of the charges that the regime in Bagdad has levelled against Saddam Hussein pertains to the use of a chemical against the Shiaa population in the South of the country at the end of the I st Gulf War. According to the Reprt prepared by William R Brankowitz of the US Army Chemical Materials Agency, a classified document printed for private circulation with security clearance,the USA dumped 7,346 canisters of a banned chemical White Phosphorous in the Atlantic Ocean in order to comply with the Geneva Convention against the use of Chemical Weapons.. Along with WP 421,157 pounds of radiological waste and 20 drums of cyanide were sunk in the Atlantic Ocean btween 1962 to 1989.What is disturbing is the growing evidence that in thwe assault on Fallujah last year( extensively covered on our blog) the US troops used White Phosphorous against civillian population. Clincs in and around Fallujah treated hundreds of people including children with severe burns and lesions of the skin caused by exposure to the chemical. The patriotic "embedded journalists" who reproduce uncritically the lies dished out by the Bush and the Bushmen did not once report the use of the banned chemical in the American media. The world got wind of the use of the blatant violation of the Geneva Convention from the Italian Press.The Italian TV aired a documentary feature produced by Sigfrido Ramicci and Maurizio Torrealta where shocking visuals of the horrendous damage done by the indiscriminate use of WP are given.A web site called globalsecurity.org WP results in "painful chemkical burn injuries".This chemical burns the skin right up to the demal level and leaves the clothes intact. This is because the chemical is used as a highly lipis solution.The response of the US state department to this war crime has been as expected flat denial followed by the most fraudlent of excuses. The use of the WP for illumination of the battle field is permitted and so the State Department spokeperson claimed the WP was used only as a battle field illuminator. Even the US battle manual ST100-3 permits the use of WP only as a smokescreen. Yet in complete violation of its own Internation obligations, and with total inhumanity to the Arab population, the Coalition used banned chemicals in an illegal outlaw manner in an illegal war of occupation.Thinking Americans must write to their Senators and Congressmen asking for a bipartisan Inquiry into the conduct of the Fallujah assault.Link: globalsecurity.org

Terrorism In Jordan: The American Occupation of Iraq and its consequences

The exposion in the Hyatt Grand Hotel at Amman killed nearly 60 people and injured 300 more. The responsibility for the blast has been taken by Al_Qaeda in Iraq led by the illusive Abu Musab Zarqawi.The attack in Jordon itself is proof, if proof is needed, that the Al Qaeda is capable of pulling of spectacular terror attacks in the region. Jordon has been a key ally of the US in its war of occupation in Iraq. Infact the utility of Jordon is more direct as far as US war efforts are concerned:"security personel" from US and other parts of the world brought into Iraq on conttract transit through Jordon. Further, Jordon is the only country in the region, apart from Egypt, to sign a peace treaty with Israel. There is also a demographic reason for the growing unrest in Jordon:more then half the population otf the country is Palestenian and was born in refugee camps where the living conditions are appaling.American occupation of Iraq has converted Iraq into a strong base for the Al -Qaeda. The violence has now begun to spill into Saudi Arabia, Jordon andmbelieve it or not even Iran. The American bombing of Fallujah (reported extensively on this blog) provided just the opportunity for Al Qaeda to reorganise itself and there is a steady influx of militants from the porous borders with Syria. A few years ago educated Islamic people may have scoffed at then very idea of the revival of the Caliphate. Now this concept has moved out of the sermons of mullahs in the mosques and is freely discussed in the cafes of Bagdad and Cairo which only goes to show athat the common man no longer regards the nation state as the center of his political loyalties.Another factor that is contributing to the groqing instability in the region is the American induced and encouraged Sunni-Shia divide. Iraqi society was essentially an interweave of Sunni, Christian, Kurdish and Shiaa communtities. This bond was reinforced during the decade Iran Iraq war, in which the USA provided every kind of weapon to Saddam Husseain. This age old tradition of amity between the different ethnic and racial groups has been undermined by American occupation. Identity politics encouraged by the occupying forces has made Iraqis extremely sensitive to primordial loyalties of sect and clan to the exclsion of other attributed of modern citizenship. The newly"ratified" Iraqi constitution virtually legeslates the exclusion of Sunnis from the political arena abd the Al Qaeda has found yet another grievance to espouse.The western media, the aptly named"embedded journalists" has not highlighted the fact that several Shiaa groups are being armed by the occupying forces as a prelude to eventual American withdrawal. The Freedom Guard is the most notorious of such groups. This group has been deployed against the Sunnis in Anbar province. American occupation has given the fuel to Islamic Terrorism

Civillian Casualities in Iraq

The highly respected medicak journal The Lancet that has been at the fore front of medical research for more that 150 yearshas in a recent issue highlighted the consequences of the American areal bimbing on Iraq using a sophisticated statistical technique called cluster analysis. The margin of error is less that 3% in most cases.The team looked carefully at the mortality figure reported in select households in the week immediately preceeding the Ameican bombing campaign in March 2003. This figure was compared to the mortality reported after the campaign to "liberate" Bagdad from the forces loyal to Saddam. The team from John Hopkins University found that by correlating the figure thus obtained over 33 neighbourhoods estimated that more than 100,000 civillians, of whom the large propotion happen to be non combatant women and children,had died as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN ACTION.The unacceptable civillian casualities has made the World wonder whether the US Under George Bush has no qualms about inflicting death on unarmed civillians in the name of Freedom and Democracy.. George Bush spoke of winning political capital which he intends on the benefit of Americans. I would like to state the he has got this capital by wanton and callous bloodshed on a minumental scale.The report made public needs to be placed on the table of the Security Council and the opinion of the World raised againstsuch actions. It is of coursr not my case that the American political establishment be hauled before a war crimes tribunal.This will not happen and in 1945 the War Crimes Tribunal was set up only because Germany lost the war. More recentlyMilodovan Milosovisch was arraigned in the Hague only because he was militarily and politically defeated.However this does not negate the fact that atrocities and gross violations of the rules of combat are taking place in that insane and unneccessay war in Iraq and the world must protest.

GIRL BLOG FROM BAGDAD

I am an ardent blogger and have quite a few blogs posted in different web sites. I do not know why, but I do find the world of blogging extremely challenging. One goes to parts of the world one has only heard of, Bagdad for one. I read a particular blog form bagdad posted by a woman who calls herself riverbend, possibly she lives near the bend in the river Tigrios that flows through Bagdad. I have also been a keen advocate of peace in iraq and have done a lot of writing in my blogs on the atrocities of the US troops. However, I do not live in Iraq and my knowledge about what is happening in entirely from embedded journalists, whose reports are unvasrlnished American propaganda.

This brings me to riverbend. Her blogs are full of humour, not the dark black humour, but the humour that makes enduring the horrible nighmare of life in Bagdad bearable. She wries well, and I would even say that she is a stylish writer. There is no frenzied Yankee Get Out kind of reaction. She is much too educated for that. She records the sufferings of ordinary Iraqis who are outside the Green Zone who are trying to get by without losing their dignity and the compassion. I name RIVER BEND as the personality of the year who has brought the life in Bagdad within reach of people around the world.

I have read almost all her posts and have been touched by the simple and deliberrately understated manner in which she repotrs from the city of Bagdad.

is LORDS OF ALL THE WORLD A REVIEW

Historians have always had problems while dealing with large territorial empires and their raison d' etre for their very existence. The Roman Empire for instance claimed to have brought peace to a warring Europe, and formulated the concept of pax romana to justify is conquests. Edward Gibbon rightly said that the pretence of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence, an acknowledgement that the ideological formulations of Vergil, Livy and Tacitus wre exactly self serving. More recently, Napoleon justified his ruhless war of expansion by claiming to be the inheritor of the French Revolution. And of course, we have the "white mans' burden" theory of the English Empire. Now the Americans have their own take on the imperial ideologies of the past by claiming that they advocate democracy and human rights the world over. As ideological formulation such statements are not subject to refutations and it does not matter that the USA ends up supporting the worst kinds of criminal regimes in the world.

Antony Pagden is a Professor ofn History at Johns Hopkins University and is one of the leading American historians of the Spanish Empire in the New World. His book Lords of All the World
is a classic study of imperial ideologies as fashuioned by the Christian Empires of the Eary modern period. How did the educated churchmen of the sixteenth century justify the expropriation of land and human rights of the Amer Indian population? How did Christian theology justify the acts of Cortes and his conquistidores?How was slavery justified using the theology of Saint Augustine? An answer to all these questions is found in the book.

Paul Volcker and His Report

After the end of the first Gulf War the United Nations at the instigation of the USA and other Western Powers imposed a most horrendous regime of sanctions on Iraq. Iraq was forbidden even to sell oil and as a consequence the quality of life and the civil infrastructure of Iraq virtually collapsed. It is well known that nearly 800,000 children dies prematurely because of the nobn availability of paracteamol, a drug that all take for granted. In these circumstances the UN decided to allow Iraq to export its Oil and import food, the program that came to be called Food for OUIl Program. The moneies gained by the export of Iraq oil was to be deposited in an escrow account maintained by the UN. So far so good. Then the likes of KOjo Annan, the son of the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, got on to the act and subverted a viable humanitarian program into a get rich fast scam in which the minnions of Saddam Hussain were accomplises. Shell companies were created and the Iraqi Oil Ministry at Bagdad assigned the right to lift and sell oil in the international market at a lower cost and the differnece in price to the tune of 50cents a barrel was deposited against the accounts of individuals in the Jordon National Bank.This was a scam waiting to happen and Paul Volcker has done a comendabel job in following the money trail and has perused 20 million documents in order to arrive at the truth. The fact is that some of the leading Third world politicians like Natear Singh, India's Foereign Ministeer seem to have made millions at the cost of starving and dying Iraqis. Ofcourse, no thief ever says even if he is caught with his finger in the till. even acknowledges that he is a thief. And the same with the like of Natwr Singh and his son Jagat Singh. There is now an outrage agaIst these clowns and they have been thoroughly exposed by Paul Volcker and his team.There is howeve a small problem. Paul Volcker in his interveiw with LA tIMES STATED THAT HE CHANGED THE LANGUAGE OF THE REPORT vis a vis Kofi Annan. I think that a splendid job was compromised by allowing this needless concession to Kofi Annan. The father claims that Cotecna, for which his son Kojo works obtained contracts without his knowledge. Given the way the UN system works this is impossible and Paul Volcker muist have nailed the lie of Kofi Annan,as the credibility of a truthful and accurate Report stands compromises as a consequence.

A New Threat to Blogging

Cyberspace is perhaps the last frontier of freedom. A new threat now confronts the blogging community. People are being procecuted for views and opinions expressed in their blogs. With the advance in technology, employers are in a position to monitor even the most private activities of their employees ans charge them with violation of company policy for opinions expressed in their personal blogs. Justice Wendell Holmes has defined the limits of the freedom of expression and as long as ablogger conforms to the Holmesian principle, it is illegsl to take action for opinion. Expression of a thought or opinion can never be a punishable offence in any democracy. Afterall, we are not living in an Orwellian world of "Thought Police".

The air hostess who was dismissed from her job because of what she posted on her blog deservesd public sympathy as she is a symbol of the right of free expression.

Zheng -He and His Voyages

Recently a retired English naval officer published a book entitled 1421: The Year China Discovered the World innwhich this former sailor argues that Zheng _He the eunach of the Ming Emperor, Yong-Le was responsible for the discovery of North and South America, Australia and hold your breath, even Antartica. The run away success of this book means that many people who have had little, if any expoture to History, will learn about these remarkable events only from Menzies. That would be a real pity. I am not complaining that the book is wrong and muddle headed and thererfore needs to be corrected.If this interesting book makes people curious about the past in the same way that Dan Brown's book made people curious about the early history of Christianity, I would have no trouble with this work. However, given the hype and publicity surrounding this book it is likely that most readers will not make any attempt to go beyond this volume and hence my blog today.

Conspiracy theories make bad history. In fact historians are loathe to use conspiracy theories because it is so easy to writ history bacjkwards and make every bit of information fit on the procrustan bed of appriori notions and fancies. This is the same case with Menzies. He obviously has enjoyed writing this book, Who would not given the fantastic royalty he commends. In fact thie figure itself is encouraging that people are willing to spend tonnes of money on History. Now coming back to my blog: Whenever there is need for hard evidence the author falls back on the familiar ruse that the evidence once exixted but has now been destroyed a la Dan Brown.

The fact is that Zheng-he was accompanied by a Historian Ma Huan who wrote the history of at least 3 of the seven voyages of Zhenh-He. The book by Ma Huan is not only free from fanciful theorisis of the sort that afflicts Menzies, but also been corroborated bynfurther archaeological evidence.

The most striking case of such corroboration is the Tri lingual inscription left by Zhebh-He in Sri Lanka. This inscription was found in 1914 and is now preserved in the Museum at Colombo.At Mogadishu too Zheng He is known to have erected a steale but that has not been found. Nearly 100 years back a Dutch scholar , Dyvendak studied the inscritions and solved many tricky questions about the voyages. Menzies has made Zheng_he a Christopher Columbus, Captain Cook and Robert Falcon Scott all rolled into one.

Biography and History

Ever since human beings developed an interest in their own past, they have tried different way through which to explain and understand the events of their lives. Seemingly unrelated events seemed to form patterns and those patterns were related conceptually to the movement of the earth around the sun in its own orbit and from that point onwards there emerged the view that our lives were governed by the stars. This was a very comforting notion because those with power and privilege could always rationalise it and those without felt comforted that their travails in life were due to influences beyond human control. One may say that an astrological ordering of life is essentially the ideology of a conservative staus conscious society.

It is to yhe credit of the Greeks that they refused to accept this idea. Events in their human exixtence had to be explained in terms of everyday occurences. In the Homeric myths we have the idea that heroes are especially blessed by the Gods on Mount Olympus. By the time we get to Hesiod and Herodotus a new insight is strirring in the Greek mind. While the play of Fortuna is not entirely rejected, we now have the notion that events that happen in the lives of people is due to certain underlying factors that are visible at least in terms of the consequences. Thus when Herodotus spoke of the invasion of Darius I and the Greek response to it he had necessarily to place this cataclysmic event in the context of the interaction between the Greeks and Others. This is the point that Francois Hartog makes in his fabulous book, The Mirror of Herodotus. The awareness that their are cultural differences and therefore the kind of lives worth recording is the first step in the establishmment of a principle of historiography.