By Raffique Shah
War is hell, says an adage that rings truer today than when it was first coined, maybe centuries ago. And in war, truth is the first casualty-another adage that has remained unchanged from the primitive period, when giant catapults were the weapons of choice, to today’s not-so-smart bombs that seem to have an uncanny honing ability in favour of unarmed civilians over combatants. Still, for all its brutality and its inhumanity, war holds a perverse fascination for those who were schooled in military history, strategy and tactics. This personal background brings me back to the deepening conflict in the Middle-East that seems poised to plunge the world into a cataclysm last experienced in World War II, which few alive today experienced or remember.
Continue reading Ground war grinds to unexpected halt
The world gasped when Zinedine Zidane landed a devastating head butt squarely in the chest of Marco Materazzi during the final match of the 2006 World Cup game in Germany. What no one witnessed at that time was the psychological violence unleashed on Zidane, coloured athletes in every sport throughout their professional careers and peoples of colour the world over on a daily basis. Zidane’s head butt was not the source; it was the effect of racist behaviour that has been allowed to fester in professional sports and in society as a whole. It was a reaction to the cancer of racism that eats away at the moral fabric of societies, putting a strain on human relations and rendering harmonious co-existence among human beings virtually impossible.