europeus

Another month, another deadline, and in the end nobody will remember when the first deadline was. Every month the same story, gradually they will have to add a new meaning for the word 'déjà vu' in the dictionaries; the UN nuclear watchdog warning Teheran and the puppet president of the mullahs screams innocence. It is déjà vu that I'm here writing about it as well, since I have done it continually over the last ten months, at least, and I will continue doing it as long as it lasts. I'm just reminding that nuclear power is dangerous and it's against any idea of protecting our earth, but this power in the hands of an aggressive dictatorship with plans to destroy, or using the puppet president's words, demolish, is more than dangerous; it is as though hell has landed here and has a name and religious identity.

(By TONY BLANKET / Source: Townhall.com) Last week, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that those who don't take the radical Islamist terrorist threat as seriously as the Bush administration does suffer from a "moral and intellectual confusion." He compared them to the British appeasers of Hitler before WWII. I did a left-wing radio call-in show after the speech in which the callers accused Rumsfeld of calling them pro-Nazi for opposing President Bush on the war. Of course Rumsfeld was suggesting no such thing. But it is worth reviewing the history and meaning of appeasement -- both for those who hurl the charge and for those who are charged.

(By JIM LOBE / Source: Asian Time) The aggressive new campaign by the administration of President George W Bush to depict US foes in the Middle East as "fascists" and its domestic critics as "appeasers" owes a great deal to steadily intensifying efforts by the right-wing press over the past several months to draw the same comparison. The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Network and the Weekly Standard, as well as the Washington Times, which is controlled by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, and the neo-conservative New York Sun, have consistently and with increasing frequency framed the challenges faced by Washington in the region in the context of the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, according to a search of the Nexis database.

(By HELLE DALE / Source: Heritage Foundation – US) In recent years, Europe has been looking for ways to take a leading role in world affairs. Lebanon may be furnishing the long-awaited opportunity for Europeans. But then again, if you look at Europe's record in the post-Cold War era, it may not. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for the immediate deployment of a 15,000-strong peace-keeping force in the southern Lebanese stronghold of Hezbollah. However, the European Union, which endorses the idea, has been slow to respond, with the notable exception of Italy, which immediately pledged up to 3,000 troops. French President Jacques Chirac managed to come up with an initial offering of all of 200 troops. Now, that's leadership for you from the man who once talked about "balancing" the United States on the world scene.

The Sri Lankan conflict remained one of the few so called internal wars which erupted during the mid 80’s at the verge of the end of cold war and died out soon after. The geo political axis on conflict has taken a new turn, as new frontiers are drawn and illusive non comprehendible conflicts emerging beyond the rubric of internal conflicts. It took post 9/11 war on terror to internationally weaken the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). They were fighting for a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka to enter peace talks with the Sri Lankan government. For a state which was tipped by the former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yoo as the model state for development, these talks were a welcome breather. Now thriving Singapore economy is a giant compared to Sri Lanka with its economy eternally hooked up to a life support in the form of international aid. Lee Kuan Yoo saw the potential of this great state but internal ethnic strife shattered all hopes. The conflict raged for more than two decades. More than 60,00 people have lost their lives. Peace was sought in many forms, negotiations, limited devolution of power, Indian intervention. None did have an impact till mid nineties. The mid nineties efforts were good but the international pressure was insufficient to keep the rebels at bay. Only 2002 saw the sufficient pressure and national effort to forge a peace deal.

People feel that they are curtailed in their possible developments in a variety of directions and they create an imaginary of transcending these limitations and that is what the place of hope could have been. Now I think there is in some sense an end of hope if by hope we understand something which is transcending all possible human conditions in terms of the fulfillment of a perfect state of liberation, emancipation etc. But, on the other hand, there is a proliferation of new hopes, new demands, and these demands can be put together to create some kind of more cessable social imaginary. This is not to say that our expectations are any less than in the past, but that at any moment in time we have to construct partial social imaginaries of transformation that can push emancipatory politics in many directions. But we no longer have these eschatological notions of hope yet hope is something which is very much populating our dreams, present in our struggles and so on.”

Ernesto Laclau


Independence day, many question what one can put to his/her pen on our ritualistic celebration of the independence day. Symbolically celebrated with all the political vanity at Galle Face and formally celebrated in few governmental agencies. What does the common man feel about it? Oh great its just a holiday where we can take some rest, or if the day falls on a Friday or Monday it will be the coolest retreat one can get. This was a rapidly deployed probe to scan the un-conscience of the Sri Lankan mind. Irrespective of whether it’s a serious study on the attitudes of Sri Lankans to February 4th the above will be the general response. The trouble is that as a nation we have lost control predominantly the ideological attachment to the most significant day of our time. The painfully silent, as some critiques say lame national movement in Sri Lanka has never given any meaning to the independence day that we celebrate today.. Few Sri Lankans passionately celebrate the Independence Day Vis a Vis there neighbors India. India fought a significant liberation struggle against the colonial rule and the essence of the Independence day is a spiritual presence. The writer is not concerned about focusing on the historical significance of this event. But for a country which is desperately struggling to forge an alliance of diverse cultures and simultaneously arrest the state from withering away from fault lines appearing among all ethnicities and religious groups, 4th of February is a date to be repositioned as a day of national integration and the day we struggle against all our internal foes.

This was last October. Next door to Hotel Djene, Bamako. 7 pm. The woman who was waiting for me is that kind of person you just cannot forget, partly proud, partly desperate. A kind of militant fighting against absurdity. Proud of her africanity. Desperate because of the poorness of Africa and the consequences it has on its populations. It was the time of Melilla and Ceuta. Of those people trying to climb by force walls separating the South from the North. Northern Africa from Europe. Some people here were shocked to see this human wave running after a dream of prosperity, or simply a way to survive. Aminata met some of them. What they told her was scaring, simply because it says much about the world we are living in: “Say what you want but we prefer to die here rather than going back home and show our parents, friends and neighbours we did not succeed in reaching Europe!, they said. Shame would be on us and we would lost honour.” This story looks far from what the French ambassador in Bamako told me the day before: “There are of course economical reasons that explain why people leave, but there are culturals’ as well. Most of the people trying to reach Europe come from the region of Kai and are members of the ethnos group of the Soninke. Those people made from the travel a tradition. A kind of initiatory rite…”