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By Uri Avnery
Of all the beautiful phrases in Barack Obama’s inauguration speech, these are the words that stuck in my mind: “You are on the wrong side of history.”
He was talking about the tyrannical regimes of the world. But we, too, should ponder these words
In the last few days I have heard a lot of declarations from Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. And every time, these eight words came back to haunt me: “You are on the wrong side of history!”
Obama was speaking as a man of the 21st century. Our leaders speak the language of the 19th century. They resemble the dinosaurs which once terrorized their neighborhood and were quite unaware of the fact that their time had already passed.
During the rousing celebrations, again and again the multicolored patchwork of the new president’s family was mentioned.
All the preceding 43 presidents were white Protestants, except John Kennedy, who was a white Catholic. 38 of them were the descendants of immigrants from the British isles. Of the other five, three were of Dutch ancestry (Theodor and Franklin D. Roosevelt , as well as Martin van Buren) and two of German descent (Herbert Hoover and Dwight Eisenhower.)
The face of Obama’s family is quite different. The extended family includes whites and the descendents of black slaves, Africans from Kenya, Indonesians, Chinese from Canada, Christians, Muslims and even one Jew (a converted African-American). The two first names of the president himself, Barack Hussein, are Arabic.
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by Siddharth Varadarajan

India needs to guide Richard Holbrooke in his work as envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and tell him the core issue is no longer Kashmir but the nature of the Pakistani establishment.
If Richard Holbrooke is to deliver on the promise of addressing the “deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the veteran American diplomat who has just been named U.S. President Barack H. Obama’s special representative for the two countries will have to resist the temptation of mission creep.
It is an open secret that Mr. Holbrooke’s original brief included India, mainly because Mr. Obama let it be known that he believes the Kashmir issue forms an integral part of the military-strategic puzzle the U.S. is dealing with in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But that was before New Delhi unleashed a silent but strenuous campaign to ensure that the ‘I word’ did not figure in any official announcement of the special envoy’s mandate. India told the outgoing Bush administration through Richard Boucher and David Mulford and sent strong signals to the Obama people directly as well as through key business interest and lobbying groups that any appointment which smacked of linkage with Kashmir would be seen as an unfriendly act.
In the event, the Indian government has had its way on this point. An envoy with the words ‘Kashmir’ in his designation would probably not even get a visa to enter the country and would end up poisoning the bilateral relationship in every sphere. India hands in the Beltway know this only too well. No administration would like to sabotage a strategic partnership that has been so assiduously built over a decade-and-a-half, especially when the long-awaited military payoffs are believed to be just round the corner.
At the same time, New Delhi would do well to remember that Mr. Obama’s special representative revels in the image of being a troubleshooter. For his efforts in the Balkans, Mr. Holbrooke has been nominated seven times for the Nobel Peace Prize. The temptation of getting an eighth nomination by trying to “solve Kashmir” would be too great for a man of his ambition. Indeed, his remarks at the State Department last Thursday, just after being named to the job by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, make it clear that Mr. Holbrooke does not see his work as confined to the Durand Line. “In Pakistan,” he said, “the situation is infinitely complex and I don’t think I would advance our goals if I tried to discuss it today … But I will say that in putting Afghanistan and Pakistan together under one envoy, we should underscore that we fully respect the fact that Pakistan has its own history, its own traditions, and it is far more than the turbulent, dangerous tribal areas on its western border. And we will respect that as we seek to follow suggestions that have been made by all three of the men and women standing behind me [President Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and Ms Clinton] in the last few years on having a more comprehensive policy.”
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By Aijaz Ahmad

Identity politics in the widest sense is now quite the norm, and it comes to us in many guises, in the actual conduct of politics as well as in political theories and analyses, from the right, the left, the liberal center. Culturalism, or the view that culture is the primary and determining instance of social existence, is a by-product of this identitarianism, and wherever politics and religion come to inflame each other, religion itself becomes synonymous with culture, and culture with religion, so that, for example, a constitutive difference between Islam and Christianity, as regards the scope for egalitarian politics in their respective zones, can be posited from the left, while the most hard-nosed geopolitical prescriptions can come to us from the right, in the guise of a discourse on religion, culture and civilization.
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“Excerpt from the play: THE LAST OF THE RED HOT MAMMAS, OR, THE LIBERATION OF WOMEN AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE WORLD (1969) This play was performed at the founding convention of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union. A play performed by an entire audience, and by Marylee A., Ellen A., Amy C., Pat M. Sherry Jenkins, Amy Kesselman, Naomi Weisstein (1969)”

I am all women, I am every woman.
Wherever women are suffering,
I am there.
Wherever woman are struggling,
I am there.
Wherever woman are fighting for their liberation,
I am there.

I am at the bedside of the woman giving birth,
screaming in labor;
I am with the women selling their bodies
in third world countries so
that her children may eat;
I am with the woman selling her
body in the streets of american cities
to feed the habit she acquired
from her boyfriend.

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by Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge,

Women have increasingly been incorporated into armed forces worldwide, both in conventional and guerilla armies. For many years however, the roles of women in war and other types of violent conflict remained almost invisible throughout the world. Accounts of war tended to cast men as protectors and doers while women were portrayed as the passive, innocent victims. As women’s experiences have become more broadly known, it has become clear that there are many different ways in which women live through and participate in wars: as fighters, community leaders, social organizers, workers, farmers, traders, welfare workers, among other roles. Nonetheless, many conflict narratives highlight a common theme of women seeking to minimize the effects of violence through their different social roles. The bravery of those women who go against the general tide of opinion, and sometimes literally place themselves in the line of fire, has come to be much celebrated.

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Read the lyrics here

Watch Columbian artist Shakira and Haitian/US artist Wyclef Jean perform their 2006 hit song “Hips Don’t Lie”

by Pervez Hoodbhoy

Rumor has it that the World Bank is on its way back to Pakistan with a bagful of loans, together with plans for how we must spend the money. A major focus of the Bank’s efforts will be higher education reform. No one doubts the desperate need for reform of Pakistan’s education sector, or the need for assistance, especially since we have shown little capacity to fund or plan our education ourselves. But recent experience suggests the Bank’s help may be a poisoned chalice. If it is to be otherwise, the Bank will have to avoid local snake charmers and be more skeptical of what bureaucrats and ministers claim.

Said to be the world’s biggest research institution working on developmental issues, the Bank employs thousands of technical people at its Washington headquarters and abroad. Typically, a highly paid World Bank team of experts, trained in the use of sophisticated mathematical and statistical tools and report writing, is parachuted into a Third World country. They could be charged with fixing broken down systems of education, healthcare, agriculture, or electricity. But although its researchers and team leaders are often accomplished individuals, experience suggests they are not adequately equipped to understand the complexity of local issues. As important, the Bank depends on government agencies and cannot easily bite the hand that invites it in and provides access.

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By Savitri Hensman

Ethnic nationalism has a quasi-religious appeal, and in times of conflict the state may be treated as a god
Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.
So wrote Lasantha Wickramatunga, in a chillingly powerful editorial published after his death. The editor of the Sunday Leader, a vigorous critic of the Sri Lankan government, was gunned down in broad daylight in the capital, Colombo, on 8 January.
At times of war, journalists can come under enormous pressure not to report inconvenient truths. This comes in part from governments intent on appearing in a favourable light. For example, the Sri Lankan authorities have been keen to publicise the successes of their military campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who have been battling for a separate state. They have been less willing for the cost of the conflict, and the plight of ordinary Tamils, to be exposed. Neither side has given priority to the safety and welfare of civilians, or seriously sought a political solution based on strengthening equality and regional democracy.
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Noam Chomsky On Gaza – 2009.01.13 – MIT (5 of 11)