Archive for the ‘tariq ali’ Category

JEREMY CORBYN: THE MOST LEFT-WING LEADER LABOUR HAS EVER HAD

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

On September 12, 2015, dark horse candidate Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the British Labour Party with 59.5 per cent of the votes in a stunning first-round victory. Tariq Ali looks at what's in store for the Labour Party and for British politics. The ironies of history never fail to ...

MAXIMUM HORROR

Wednesday, January 14th, 2015

Wear a veil, get kicked out of a French opera hall. Slaughter animals the halal way, get condemned by animal rights activists for cruelty. Say the fajr (morning prayer), get ready to be accused of noise pollution. If you're a Muslim, you'd think the rest of the world had something ...

THE ORIGINS OF THE EBOLA CRISIS

Wednesday, October 15th, 2014

It used to be common sense that public services, from transport to health and public works, was the duty of government. That thinking has changed. For-profit private companies are stepping up to take the responsibilities and gleefully earn the profits. But what to do when an epidemic takes place? Who's ...

ON BUDDHIST FUNDAMENTALISM

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

All that hate and violence, land grab and coveting your neighbour's possessions have got Buddhists up in arms from Burma, Thailand to Sri Lanka. The notion of sharing and "not to do unto others what you wouldn't like done to you" has changed to grab first, think of the consequences ...

HUGO CHAVEZ AND ME

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

Hugo Chavez is dead. His friend Tariq Ali writes a eulogy. Once I asked whether he preferred enemies who hated him because they knew what he was doing or those who frothed and foamed out of ignorance. He laughed. The former was preferable, he explained, because they made him feel that ...

WHAT THE BEATLES MISSED ABOUT RAVI SHANKAR

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Ravi Shankar died on December 11, 2012 at a hospital near his home in Encinitas, California, aged 92. Tariq Ali remembers the Indian sitar maestro. Ravi Shankar was a virtuoso sitar player long before he became a cult for a drug-fuelled hippy generation that found the exquisite music he plucked from ...

FOR ALEXANDER

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

Political journalist, writer and CounterPunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn passed away on July 21, 2012 in Germany. He was 71 and had been suffering from cancer for two years. By Tariq Ali, London. I wrote this poem for a birthday surprise last year that never happened. Surprised myself at not hearing back ...

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

Friday, November 4th, 2011

If we don't want the market to be the new God, consumers must become citizens to fight for their rights. Tariq Ali offers a history lesson. "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at," wrote Oscar Wilde, "for it leaves out the one country at ...

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

Thursday, July 21st, 2011

By Tariq Ali Ever since the US occupation of Afghanistan almost 10 years ago, two illusory fictions, common in many nuclear families, have dominated the discussion on America-Pakistan (AmPak) relations. The first is that neither side is fully aware of what the other is doing; the second that a total breakdown ...

EGYPT’S JOY

Saturday, February 12th, 2011

People power won the day in Egypt. As political commentator and writer Tariq Ali notes, the age of political reason is returning to the Arab world. The people are fed up of being colonised and bullied. Meanwhile, the political temperature is rising in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen. A joyous night in ...