Designed to fail: American aggression in Afghanistan

A review of Carlotta Gall’s The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan | OMAR AHMAD

US Marines stand in formation during a transfer of authority ceremony at Shorab camp, in Helmand province, Afghanistan April 29, 2017 | Reuters/James Mackenzie

In 2003 I attended a hearing on Afghanistan at the US Senate. During the hearing, at which a serving general and a few other experts were giving their testimony, the then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden, leaned forward and said something to the effect of, “I’ve always felt that rather than sending 100,000 troops to Iraq, we should have sent 25,000 troops to Waziristan instead.”

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Anna Burns may have won the Booker, but monopoly publishers are the real victors

The Man Booker rules make submissions from small publishers very tricky because of the size of the print run required and the amount of money that involves. Because of this, a win can be a drain rather than a boost, and costs can outstrip sales if you don’t win.

This day. Jean-Paul Sartre rejects the Nobel Prize

Jean-Paul Sartre (centre) dining in Paris with filmmaker Claude Lanzmann (left) and Simone de Beauvoir in 1964 | Bettmann/Corbis

On October 10, 1964, the French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre rejected the Nobel Prize for literature.

Killing Yasser Arafat: Mossad propaganda in the New York Times

By As’ad AbuKhalil

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 75, who was declared dead in a Paris hospital November 10, 2004 in murky circumstances. Painting by Ismail Shammout

“How Arafat Eluded Israel’s Assassination Machine,” the story in the New York Times, which is part of a book which has come out, is a typical Mossad planted story in the U.S. media. Notice that there is an attempt to show that humanitarian consideration went into planning to kill Arafat.

The most fervent effort by Israel to kill Arafat was in the summer of 1982 during the savage siege of Beirut. As I lived those times, I remember how whole apartment buildings would be bombed by concussion bombs from the air ON THE SUSPICION that Arafat was in the building.

Centenary of the Halifax Explosion: Time to disturb the sleep of the unjust

Act of God, the harbour pilot, the navy?

The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy: Inquiry and Intrigue

John Griffith Armstrong
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002)
Hardcover, 256 pp, 6 x 9 inches, 16 b/w photos, maps
Index, Bibliography and Chapter end-notes
ISBN 0-7748-0890-X
$39.95
New in Paperback: July, 2003
ISBN 0774808918 $24.95

How imperial Britain promoted religion to stymie Palestinian nationalism

By SARAH IRVING*

Islam Under the Palestine Mandate: Colonialism and the Supreme Muslim Council, Nicholas E. Roberts, I.B.Tauris (2017)

In the dangerous and inaccurate popular narratives on Palestine, religion – a black-and-white tale of Islam versus Judaism – is often given priority of importance. Religious identities are taken as the simple, unquestioned driving force behind the actions of Palestinians throughout history.

A closer look, of course, reveals the flaws in this image. During the Ottoman period, the people of Palestine might have been more likely to identify themselves in terms of their family, neighbourhood, city or profession, depending on which identity the situation called for at a particular time.

How Britain brought waterboarding to Palestine

British forces who served in Ireland during its war of independence were later sent to Palestine | National Library of Ireland/Flickr