Z Nightly Commentaries
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Recent Z Nightly Commentaries
Hayden: Obama's Afghanistan Policy
Nov 26, 2009
The president’s proposed Afghanistan policy is not a product of intelligent rethinking so much as it is a predictable Obama preference for an imaginary centrism.
Healy: No Technofix for the Third World
Sep 24, 2009
Humans can make all kinds of nifty things - the axe, the wheel, the spinning jenny, the aeroplane, the pill, the Pentium III, vanilla ice cream - and can achieve all sorts of magical things with them.
Hoodbhoy: India's Nuclear Fizzle
Sep 04, 2009
As is well known, a thermonuclear (or hydrogen) bomb is far more complex than the relatively simple fission weapon first tested by India in 1974 and by Pakistan in 1998. Advanced weapons needs fine-tuning to achieve their full destructiveness - France had to test 22 times to achieve perfection.
Hoodbhoy: Taliban Victory?
Jun 21, 2009
Now that the army has turned serious, Baitullah Mehsud cannot expect to stroll down Constitution Avenue any time soon, nor hope to sit in the presidency. A few thousand mountain barbarians, even if trained by Al Qaeda's best, cannot possibly seize power from a modern, well-armed state with 600,000 soldiers. The spectre of Pakistan collapsing in six months - a fear expressed by a senior US military adviser in March - has evaporated.
Hoodbhoy: Pakistan's Education
Jan 25, 2009
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.
Hartmann: Surprises
Oct 18, 2008
It's October now and at dawn a layer of mist coats the valleys of Western Massachusetts where I live. I don't mind the autumn mist because I know it will disperse as the sun rises, revealing the charged colors of the changing leaves. The mist holds and folds within it the promise of future light.
Hoodbhoy: Taliban
Jul 02, 2008
THE recent killing of eleven Pakistani soldiers at Gora Prai by American and Nato forces across the border in Afghanistan unleashed an amazing storm.
Hoodbhoy: Ten Years Later
May 30, 2008
It’s May 1998 and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif congratulates wildly cheering citizens as the Chagai mountain trembles and goes white from multiple nuclear explosions. He declares that Pakistan is now safe and sound forever. Bomb makers become national heroes. School children are handed free badges with mushroom clouds. Bomb and missile replicas are planted in cities up and down the land. Welcome to nuclear Pakistan.
Hoodbhoy: Billions Vanish
Apr 20, 2008
General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, aided by his trusted lieutenant and chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr Atta-ur-Rahman, lays claim to a 'revolutionary programme' that has reversed the decades-old decline of Pakistan's universities.
Hartmann: Consumption
Apr 11, 2008
On the Oprah Winfrey Show two years ago, Al Gore’s upbeat message was that we’re not helpless in the fight against global warming. The camera rolls as he pushes a shopping cart down the aisles of a giant Lowe’s Home Improvement Store “to show you the five things you can buy that will help solve the climate crisis…and save you a few bucks!” The fabulous five are compact fluorescent light bulbs, outdoor solar lighting, programmable thermostats, air filters, and a blanket to insulate an electric hot water heater.
Herman: Great and Little Satan
Dec 16, 2007
In the discussions about Iran among the leaders in the "international community," their expressed dire fears about Iran and its nuclear program never cause them to raise any questions about Israel's nuclear program, even though it is well known that Israel not only has a "program" but has several hundred nuclear weapons, built in secret but with U.S., French, and British aid, and of course done outside the authority of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) designed to prevent proliferation. Israel's acquisition of this arsenal is obviously disturbing to its Arab neighbors, who are placed at a great military disadvantage by this violation of NPT principles--and equity--accepted and even facilitated by Israel's Western allies. To see those Western allies greatly agitated over the possibility that Iran might have a nuclear program that at some future date would allow it to produce such weapons, while taking Israel's arsenal as a given not even worthy of mention, reflects a gross political double standard that is both racist and illustrative of that famous "clash of civilizations," with the clash coming from Western initiatives, actions and threats.
Herman: How Market-Democracy Keeps the Public and "Populism" At Bay
Aug 13, 2007
It was interesting to see the New York Times editorialize against the growing role of money in elections, pointing to "the sheer volume of money it [the current election campaign] is generating," and the "ludicrously premature handicapping of the race ba
Herman: Beyond Munich
Apr 02, 2007
Imagine that when Hitler was threatening to invade Poland, after having swallowed Czechoslovakia-with the help of the Western European powers' appeasement of Hitler at Munich in September 1938-the League of Nations imposed an arms embargo on Poland, maki
Herman: Iraq: The Genocide Option
Jan 24, 2007
It was claimed early in 2005 that the United States was considering resort to what has been called the "Salvadoran Option" in Iraq, in which, as had been done in El Salvador in the 1980s, U.S. Special Forces would train paramilitary squads to hunt down a
Hartmann: Abortion and the Politics of Prevention
Nov 07, 2006
On November 7, voters in South Dakota will vote on a referendum whether to adopt the stateÕs draconian law banning abortion. Reproductive rights activists from all over the country are now converging on the state to help mobilize pro-choice voters in an
Herman: The Liberals Answer Tony JudtÕs ÒUseful IdiotsÓ Charge
Oct 24, 2006
Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (A-G) have replied to Tony JudtÕs "Bush's Useful Idiots...The Strange Death of Liberal America" (London Review of Books, September 21, 2006) (1), in a piece entitled "We Answer to the Name of Liberals" (American Prospect,
Herman: The Liberals Answer Tony Judt’s “Useful Idiots†Charge
Oct 24, 2006
Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (A-G) have replied to Tony Judt’s "Bush's Useful Idiots...The Strange Death of Liberal America" (London Review of Books, September 21, 2006) (1), in a piece entitled "We Answer to the Name of Liberals" (American Prospect, Web Exclusive, October 18, 2006) (2). Many liberal signatories have added their names to this reply (3).
Herman: The Liberals Answer Tony JudtÕs ÒUseful IdiotsÓ Charge
Oct 23, 2006
Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (A-G) have replied to Tony JudtÕs "Bush's Useful Idiots...The Strange Death of Liberal America" (London Review of Books, September 21, 2006) (1), in a piece entitled "We Answer to the Name of Liberals" (American Prospect,
Herman: The Liberals Answer Tony Judt’s “Useful Idiots†Charge
Oct 23, 2006
Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin (A-G) have replied to Tony Judt’s "Bush's Useful Idiots...The Strange Death of Liberal America" (London Review of Books, September 21, 2006) (1), in a piece entitled "We Answer to the Name of Liberals" (American Prospect, Web Exclusive, October 18, 2006) (2). Many liberal signatories have added their names to this reply (3).
Dec 15, 2009
Inseparable by geography, Pakistan and India are Siamese twins that have emerged together from the womb of history. For better or for worse, their futures will always remain inextricably tied together.