4 May 2013 NEW YORK – Two years ago this week, US special forces shot and killed Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man. American TV is filled with chest-thumping and flag-waving about how bin Laden was hunted down and executed. For most Americans, bin Laden was the acme […]


April 20, 2013 “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” wrote Karl Marx. Exhibit A: look at Pakistan this week where former dictator Pervez Musharraf’s monkeyshines made a laughing-stock of the nation created in 1947 to be a model of good government for the world’s Muslims. The former […]


January 12, 2013 ISTANBUL –  Reports of fighting along Kashmir’s  cease-fire line don’t normally receive much attention in the western media.  Last week, for example, saw  a series of clashes on 8 and 10 January that killed both Pakistani and Indian troops. One of the Indian soldiers was decapitated, provoking […]