New Website Up and Running!

I'm pleased to announce that my new website is finally up and running! All the articles you love here and more have now been carted over to: www.thewarjournal.co.uk

Thank you all for your support. I will still post articles here, but the main site is as above. Please circulate if you enjoyed this site! Thanks!

New Website in Development!

Although this blog has been running for a short time, I have received some very positive feedback and so have therefore decided to commission the development of a webpage at a dedicated domain name. Soon, my new page will be up and running on www.thewarjournal.co.uk and will feature more of the political, economic and cultural writings as well as contributions by other writers on technology and the arts.

Thanks for your continued support, please circulate, and watch this space!

Obama, Osama, and the US economy

By: Tallha Abdulrazaq
 

Apart from the very beginning of his presidency and the events unfolding now in May post-mortem Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama was certainly not inspiring too much confidence domestically or internationally. Apart from a few domestic political victories, such as the passing of a new healthcare bill that has benefitted many Americans, Obama has presided over a time of US political and economic decline. International events also shape the level of confidence that his people have in him, and whilst Obama convinced many that this was a “chance for change” with such addresses as his speech in Cairo in 2009, his failure to navigate the defunct Palestinian-Israeli peace process, to decrease perceived and real tensions in the Middle East at US military presence, as well as his lack of movement on closing Guantanamo Bay amongst other promises have seriously drawn down his approval rating among Americans.

The Death of Bin Laden: Suspicions and Questions

By: Tallha Abdulrazaq

It can be of no doubt that many around the world are relieved, some even ecstatic, by the death of Osama bin Laden. Reports from all over the world following US President Obama’s announcement that US military personnel had killed bin Laden show scenes of jubilation in America, Europe, and even expressions of relief from many Muslim organisations around the world. However, there are many unanswered questions and even details that can be drawn out and analysed following the killing of bin Laden.

Bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been the US governments scapegoats and raison d’être for a number of wars and even technically illegal drone attacks in areas like North Western Pakistan for a very long time now. Whenever something violent happens in the news, one can be certain that buzzwords and terms such as “terrorists”, “Islamists”, “Jihadists”, and “al-Qaeda” will be bandied about and sensationalised in the mainstream media before any significant evidence has even been provided, and without a real intellectual understanding of what these terms really define and mean. It has become very convenient for governments around the world to declare many threats posed to them as representative of elements of al-Qaeda. Witness the crazed despot, Muammar al-Gaddafi, who insisted that the recent uprisings in Libya are a result of al-Qaeda dosing impressionable young men with hallucinogens. Clearly, that is one extreme example, but it is not hard to find others all over the world.

The most pertinent question is this; has the US known about bin Laden’s whereabouts for a long time and done nothing because it served their interests to have an international bogeyman? If the above is true, then it is clear that bin Laden had outlived his usefulness.