Friday, October 19, 2012

Malala and Beyond

Malala_Yousafzai

The striking photograph of a single man facing a tank with upraised arms in Beijing’s Tian An Men Square galvanized China and the world to the reality of oppression and resistance to state power. Another memorable photograph that stunned the world showed a naked terror struck screaming girl running from a fireball behind her — more than anything else this one picture summed up the sordid horror of the VietNam war — the massacres, the use of Agent Orange, napalm and indiscriminate bombings. More recently the visuals of the prisoner abuse in Abu Gharib prison, the images of US Marines urinating on Afghan corpses, the killing of a US diplomat in Libya — and closer to home- beheaded bodies, bomb blasts, kidnappings and random killings — all make up the mosaic that is the war on terror. The teenage Malala gunned down by Taliban in the name of what they call Islam is a horror that drives home the image of intolerance, ignorance, brutality and extremism. Those who carried out this atrocity and those who ordered it stand exposed for what they are and what they stand for.

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