Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Chavuinism, Civil War, Francis Boyle, Genocide, IDPS, Internment camps, Iran Elections, Lebensraum, LTTE, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Nation-State, Nationalism, Nazi, Nazism, Racism, Self-Determination, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan Army, State Terror, Tamil Diaspora, Tamils
* * * * *
30 June 2009
Source: Open Democracy
What kind of violence has the Sri Lankan state been committing against its Tamil civilian population as the island‘s civil war ended; on what scale and with what intentions? Martin Shaw explores the difficult terrain where war, atrocity and genocide meet.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in his “victory speech”, told Sri Lanka’s parliament that “our heroic forces have sacrificed their lives to protect Tamil civilians”, and he took “personal responsibility” for protecting Tamils. Yet his government is now scandalously confining this huge population – who have already suffered not only from the LTTE but from Sri Lankan bombardments which caused probably tens of thousands of deaths and injuries – in squalid conditions. The government has officially backtracked, under international pressure, on plans to hold the displaced, while screening them for potential “terrorists”, for up to three years; it now says that 80% will be resettled by the end of (more…)
Filed under: Europe, Middle East | Tags: British Petroleum, Colonialism, Genocide, Imperialism, Iraq, Iraqi Oil, Iraqi Oil Fields, Racism, White Supremacy
* * * * *
1 July 2009
Source: Global Research
Iraq’s government today approved a BP-led consortium’s offer to develop a giant oil field in the south, moving forward with the only deal struck during a much-hyped but ultimately disappointing international oil auction.
Iraq, which is desperate for cash to fund its reconstruction efforts, had put six oil and two gas fields on offer to foreign firms yesterday in the country’s first international oil licensing round in over three decades. But the auction — opposed from the start by many of the country’s lawmakers — failed to elicit the kind of excitement or commitments Iraqi oil officials had anticipated.
BP and its Chinese consortium partner CNPC walked away from the auction with development rights for the 17.8 billion barrel Rumaila field. But their win came only after they agreed to take less money for the oil they produced.
Under the service contracts, the companies are paid a per barrel price for production over a minimum target level. BP and CNPC had bid $3.99 per barrel, but slashed their price to the $2 per barrel payment sought by the oil ministry. Their only rivals for the fields, a consortium led by US giant Exxon Mobil, refused to amend its offer of $4.80 per barrel on target production of 3.1 million barrels per day.
The Cabinet of ministers signed off on the (more…)
Filed under: Middle East, North America | Tags: Colonialism, Genocide, Imperialism, Iraq, Iraqi Oil, Oil, Oil Fields, Racism, US Imperialism
* * * * *
30 June 2009
Source: World Socialist Website
It is fitting that today’s deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq’s cities coincides with a meeting in Baghdad to auction off some of the country’s largest oil fields to companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and British Petroleum. It is a reminder of the real motives for the 2003 invasion and in whose interests over one million Iraqis and 4,634 American and other Western troops have been killed. The Iraq war was, and continues to be, an imperialist war waged by the American ruling elite for control of oil and geo-strategic advantage.
The contracts will facilitate the first large-scale exploitation of Iraq’s energy resources by US and other transnationals since the country’s oil industry was nationalised in 1972. On offer are 20-year rights over (more…)
Filed under: Global, Middle East, North America | Tags: America, Apartheid, Barack Obama, Colonialism, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Gaza City, gaza Strip, Hamas, Historic Paliestine, Imperialism, Ismail Haniyeh, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Likud, Militarism, Occupied Palestine, One State, Oslo Accords, Palestine, Palestinian, Palestinian Authority, Racism, State Terror, Two-State, US-Israel, West Bank, White Suprmeacy, Zionism, Zionist, Zionist Entity
* * * * *
25 June 2009
Soruce: Electronic Intifada
When Hamas, unexpectedly, won the 2006 parliamentary elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the message from the one-third of the Palestinian people living in those territories was clear: no more of the “peace process” facade — with its untiring “two-state solution” slogan that never materialized, and no more of the bread crumbs offered to the new inauthentic NGOized, Osloized leadership classes. (In the years since the 1993 Oslo accords, funding NGOs — nongovernmental organizations — has been a major means for foreign governments to influence, co-opt and neutralize Palestinian politics. This process of “Osloization” made some Palestinian organizations more loyal to their funders than to their principles.)
Many of those who voted Hamas into power were not, in fact, supporters of the organization, but rather disgruntled Palestinians looking for change and reform after 13 years of futile, meaningless negotiations that did huge damage to the Palestinian cause and transformed it from a liberation struggle supported by millions all over the world into a (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Colombo, Genocide, Imperialism, LTTE, Mullaitivu, Racism, Sinhala, Sinhala Majoritarianism, Sinhalese, Sri Lanka, Tamil Civilians, Tamil National Alliance, Tamil Tigers, Trincomalee
* * * * *
( Dated Piece | 26 May 2009 )
Source: The Daily Telegraph
The Sri Lankan government has been accused of launching a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” following its victory over the Tamil Tigers in the country’s 26 year civil war.
Aid officials, human rights campaigners and politicians claim Tamils have been driven out of areas in the north-east of the country by killings and kidnappings carried out by pro-government militias.
They say the government has simultaneously encouraged members of the Sinhalese majority in the south to relocate to the vacated villages.
One foreign charity worker told the Daily Telegraph the number of Tamils disappearing in and around Trincomalee, 50 miles south of the final conflict zone in Mullaitivu, had been increasing in the last three months.
He claimed to have known 15 of the disappeared, three of whom had been found dead. He said all three bodies showed signs of torture, while two were found with their hands tied behind their backs and single bullet wounds in their heads.
Another aid worker said the killings were part of a strategy to (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Colonialism, Genocide, IDP, IDPS, Imperialism, Internally Displaced Persons, Nation-State, Racism, Sinhala, Sinhala Chauvinism, Sri Lanka, State Terror, Tamil, Tamil Civilians, Tamil Diaspora, War
* * * * *
( Dated Piece |03 June 2009 )
Source: Tamil Guardian
Desperation is rife among the 280,000 Tamil civilians imprisoned in internment camps in northern Sri Lanka with countless civilians unable to locate or contact relatives missing or separated during the bloody chaos that ensued during the final weeks of the Sri Lankan military onslaught.
Many clutched a razor wire fence, desperately searching the crowds on the other side for a familiar face as they tried to discover whether their loved ones were still alive and at liberty, or in another of the camps, a British newspaper reporter describing the plight of the civilians in one of the camps wrote.
Some are still hoping to find relatives amid the rows of tents that provide a temporary home.
But others say relatives were separated out by the military, suspected of being Tamil Tigers.
One refugee said that thousands of fleeing civilians were (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent, Middle East, North America | Tags: Afghanistan, AfPak, Al-Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud, CIA, Imperialism, Israeli, Mossad, Pakistan, Qari Zainuddin, Racism, Taliban, Terrorism, US Invasion, War, Zionism
Qari Zainuddin (centre), surrounded by his armed guard in northwestern Pakistan
* * * * *
23 June 2009
Source: Press TV
A tribal leader who earlier defected from Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and revealed the militants group’s ties with the US and Israel has been shot dead.
The assassination of Qari Zainuddin comes days after he revealed that their comrade was pursuing a US-Israeli agenda across the violence-wracked country.
Zainuddin, a 26-year-old rising tribesman who had called Mehsud “an American agent” was killed by a gunman in northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday.
Zainuddin, who broke away from Mehsud, was also increasingly critical of Mehsud’s use of suicide bombings targeting civilians.
In an interview with local media the defector said that Mehsud had (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, AfPak, Air Strikes, Al Jazeera, Al-Qaeda, American Imperialism, Asif Ali Zardari, Baitullah Mehsud, Barak Obama, Bill Clinton, bin Ladern, Central Asia, CIA, Colonialism, Congress Government, Drone Attacks, Fata, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Hillary Clinton, Humeira Iqtidar, India, ISI, Malakand, Manmohan Singh, Militants, Mujahedeen, Mullah Omar, New Delhi, NWFP, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, Pakistani Government, Pakistanis, Partition, Pashtun, Pervez Musharraf, Racism, Ruling Class, South Asia, Soviet Union, Swat Valley, Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi, US interests, US military, US occupation, War on Terror, White Supremacy
* * * * *
June 2009
Source: Liberation
Even as the US military offensive intensifies in Afghanistan, a parallel offensive by the Pakistani Army, clearly under US pressure, in the country’s autonomous region of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is underway. Estimates suggest that over 10 lakh civilians are being forced to flee the Swat Valley, one of the major theatres of the war, in what is being called the biggest displacement of people since the Partition (1947). While US air strikes recently massacred 150 civilians, mostly women and children, in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s military strikes are said to have killed hundreds of (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: Afghan Taliban, AfPak, Benazir Bhutto, Buner, Chand Bibi, Colonialism, Fata, Feminism, Flogging, Honour Killing, Imperialism, Iran, ISI, Madrassa, Malakand, Maulana Fazlullah, Militarism, Mujahideen, Mullah Omar, Nizam-e-Adl, Pakistan, Pakistani Army, Paternalism, President Asif Ali Zardari, Protests, Punjab, Racism, Saba Mahmood, Sharia, Shirin Ebadi, Sindh, Sufi Mohammed, Swat, Swat Flogging, Swat Taliban, Taliban, Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi, US bombing, US Drone Attacks, US Invasion, War, Women's Rights, Yusuf Raza Gilani
* * * * *
( Dated Piece | 30 April 2009 )
Source: Open Democracy
The distorting glare of the mainstream media obscures a more complex reality in restive Pakistan
Who are the ” Taliban” in Pakistan? Islamist militants in the country have won significant international attention after wrestling control over the Swat Valley, the restive region in northern Pakistan where elements of sharia law are now in place. Yet these militants do not self-identify as “Taliban”, unlike the Afghan Taliban who chose the name for themselves, and preferred it to the then generic term “mujahideen”. The term “Taliban” means students; the original Taliban were educated in madrassas, religious schools. Groups and individuals that are being labelled the “Taliban in Pakistan” (TIP) are very different from their Afghan counterparts in important respects. It is pertinent not just to think through the implications of these differences but also to raise questions about why distinguishing details are being lost in the media frenzy of recent months.
In Swat, the group that has gained the most notoriety in recent months calls itself Tehreek Nifaz e Sharia Mohammadi (TNSM). This can be roughly translated as the “Movement for the (more…)
Filed under: Indian Subcontinent | Tags: AIADMK, Anti-Tamil Pogroms, Armed Resistance, Bandaranayaka-Chelvanaagam, Britain, British Colonialism, Buddhist Clergy, Chemical Weapons, Colombo, Colonization, Congress Party, DMK, Ethnic Cleansing, Freedom Struggle, Genocide, Imperialism, Indian Imperialism, Insurgents, Internally Displaced Persons, Jaffna LIbrary, Karunanidhi, Lasantha Wickramatunga, Liberation, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, LTTE, Mahinda Rajapaksa, Militarism, Military, Nationalism, PMK, Prabakaran, Racism, Resistance, Saddam, Self-Determination, Self-Governing Authority, Sinhala, Sinhala Chauvinism, Sinhalese Eelam, Sovereignty, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Sri Lankan Army, Sri Lankan Government, State Terror, Tamil Diaspora, Tamil Eelam, Tamil Nadu, Terrorism, United Nations, United States, War Criminal, War on Terror
* * * * *
June 2009
Source: Liberation
On May 18 2009, the Sri Lankan Government declared its ‘final victory’ over the LTTE, by displaying the body of the slain LTTE chief Prabakaran. Since then, the Sri Lankan regime and its army have indulged in an obscene orgy of humiliation. The body of Prabakaran, an international icon for the Tamil movement for self-determination, was displayed by jeering soldiers as a trophy – reminiscent of the manner that Saddam’s capture and killing was displayed by the US. Not content with months of unremitting shelling and chemical assaults on thousands of Tamil civilians, nor with the extermination of the Tamil self-determination struggle’s leadership, the Sri Lankan government is determined now to humiliate the surviving Tamils and flaunt the victory of its racist war. Prabakaran is being slandered as a psychopath and a coward, and his body is being cast into a mass, unmarked grave – to obliterate and tarnish the very memory of the Tamil struggle. And the Sri Lankan State is sponsoring (more…)
