Sep 25, 2002
The Journalist, October 2002 POPULAR SUPPORT for wars in foreign lands is not a natural phenomenon. It has to be carefully constructed, sometimes over decades, sometimes in a matter of weeks, but always with the assistance of the media. And when powerful forces committed to making war get to work, journalists come under pressure. From… Read more
Jul 2, 2002
Socialist Review, July 2002 We are being told that we can breathe a sigh of relief. India and Pakistan, it seems, have stepped back from the brink of the worst human catastrophe since the Second World War. As so often in the past, people around the planet are being assured that they can ‘learn to… Read more
Feb 28, 2002
Tribune, 28 February 2002 On 19 February, the Pentagon Central Command confirmed that it has launched missile strikes in Afghanistan on “enemy forces” who are neither Al Qaeda nor Taliban, but are apparently hostile to the interim regime of Hamid Karzai. Asked by reporters in Delhi about the progress of the war in Afghanistan, General… Read more
Feb 4, 2002
America’s attempt to use Muhammad Ali to sell its policies to Muslim countries will not work The Guardian, 4 February 2002 When Hollywood bosses were asked by the Bush administration to do their bit in the “war on terrorism”, they readily signed up for the new crusade. In particular, they promised to “stress efforts to… Read more
Jan 1, 2002
From Beyond September 11: An Anthology of Dissent (Pluto Press). I was visiting New York when the news of the massacre of 15 Christians in Bahawalpur flashed up on CNN. It was a brief item, included in an update on the war, and all that the casual viewer would know was that ‘Islamic fundamentalists’ had… Read more
Dec 21, 2001
The Guardian, December 21, 2001 If any of the England cricketers currently struggling with the spin bowlers in Bangalore have had a chance to see Lagaan, the Bollywood crossover hit about a Raj-era grudge match between heroic Gujerati villagers and dastardly Anglo-imperialists, they’ll know that they are merely bit players in a long-running national psychodrama…. Read more
Nov 24, 2001
Guardian, 24 November 2001 Thomas Friedman’s New York Times article (Guardian 23 November) on Muslims in India exemplifies the kind of disinformation that has kept people in the US in the dark about global realities. Among the recent events that Friedman omits to report are: the desecration of the Taj Mahal by activists of the… Read more
Nov 20, 2001
Red Pepper, December 2001 It’s been widely observed that the US-led global alliance ‘against terrorism’ is a motley assemblage, bound together by expedience rather than principle. Some would say the same about the global anti-war alliance now being constructed to oppose it. Diversity is certainly the hallmark of this emergent movement, but it is both… Read more
Oct 4, 2001
There is nothing anti-American about opposing the drive to war The Guardian, 4 October, 2001 Reading the fulminations against the alleged anti-Americanism of those opposed to the current drive to war, I feel I’ve come full circle. As an American teenager protesting against the butchery in Vietnam, I became accustomed to being attacked by some… Read more
Sep 28, 2001
Media Workers Against the War, 28 September 2001 I’m thinking today of a remarkable man I met not long ago in Quetta, a city in western Pakistan, a few hours drive from the border with Afghanistan. He was a devout and observant Sunni Muslim. He was also a community activist, who had helped establish women’s… Read more
