by B. R. GOWANI

in 1991, Papa Bush (George H. W. Bush) went to war against Iraq

Dick Cheney was part of that devastating war

Iraq witnessed death and destruction on a great scale

US didn’t suffer any demolition because Iraq had no ICBMs

nor did Bush faced any trial as a war criminal

who was gonna try?

the US is the biggest rogue the world has ever seen

in 2000, the US Supreme Court helped George W. Bush to become president

that is, Baby Bush became President by cheating

Cheney accepted to be Bush’s Vice President

just before that he was CEO of Halliburton

in 2003, Baby Bush (George W. Bush) initiated a war against Iraq

the “war criminal trinity:” George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney

Cheney is considered the architect of the second US war against Iraq

in August 2002, Cheney declared to Veterans of Foreign Wars

“Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”

General Anthony Zinni was on the same stage too

(Zinni was United Sates Special Envoy for Middle East Peace)

years later, Zinni responded to Cheney’s lie in a documentary

“It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.”

why did Zinni talked years later to Cheney’s lie and not on the same stage?

this is the problem with people in power — never on time to save lives

war proved immensely beneficial to Halliburton and thus Cheney

what was the reason for creating chaos in Iraq and destroying it?

Bush government claimed Iraq had WMD or weapons of mass destruction

in the United Nations, Colin Powell showed a vial as a proof

it was a total lie and Powell came out as a fool but the lie worked

a former US diplomat Joe Wilson said Iraq didn’t purchase uranium

Cheney went on a smear campaign and exposed Valerie Plame identity

Plame, Joe Wilson’s wife, was a overt CIA agent

the war lasted almost nine years and later gave birth to ISIS

Iraq and its allies with US fought ISIS or Islamic State for 4 years

Cheney was unrepentant for killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis

“What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the right — same course of action.”

over 4 years back, one of the war criminal Rumsfeld died

on Nov. 3, 2025, Dick Cheney, another of the war criminal trinity, died

one would want to feel happy and celebrate disgusting Dick’s death

because this Dick was one monstrous dick

but one just cannot

because one dick after another dick has continued ruling the US

besides, the world has also so many dicks in power

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by RANDA GHAZY

Italy’s pro-Palestinian wave—from dock strikes to viral outrage—shows conscience is alive. But where was this action over the past 2 years? writes Randa Ghazy.

“Define children.” These chilling words, said by the president of the Friends of Israel Federation, Eyal Mizrahi, during an exchange that was broadcast on Italy’s È sempre Cartabianca, recently went viral.

This followed comedian Enzo Iacchetti asking, “were the 50,000 Palestinians killed Hamas terrorists? And the children? Did they have Kalashnikovs?” after Mizrahi claimed that 20,000 to 22,000 of Palestinians killed during the genocide, were Hamas fighters.

“Define children” became a rallying cry across social media platforms in Italy, with posts often paired with images of Palestinian children killed in Gaza. It revealed the extent to which Palestinians have been dehumanised to justify their oppression.

Until recently, few would have expected Iacchetti—best known for hosting a satirical show—to become a symbol of pro-Palestinian activism. But with many political leaders in Italy failing to reflect public outrage or uphold constitutional values, artists and comedians have stepped up.

Mass action

Alongside this moment, several catalysts ignited the wave of activism in solidarity with Palestine that has taken place across Italy. At the end of September, dockworkers in the Italian port of Genoa called to block shipments of goods to Israel in case of an attack against the global Sumud Flotilla.

The mission, carrying over 40 Italians, faced derision from the Italian government and was abandoned by Italian and Spanish naval escorts as it neared the ‘risk zone’. This is where the Israeli navy had previously intercepted humanitarian missions, even killing 10 Turkish activists on a similar mission in 2010.

As expected, the Sumud flotilla was intercepted, hundreds were detained, and Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, mocked the activists publicly, labelling them “terrorists.”

In response, thousands spontaneously protested in cities across Italy—Milan, Rome, Turin, Naples, alongside cities around the world. And, on 3 October, Italy witnessed one of its largest pro-Palestinian mobilisations in decades, with over 2 million people participating in general strikes.

Meanwhile, some Italian media began shifting their tone, questioning previously unchallenged Israeli narratives.

Despite official condemnations of the drone strike on the flotilla in Tunis in September, which we now know was approved by Netanyahu, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni called the mission “irresponsible” and dismissed the nationwide strike as an excuse for a long weekend.

Yet the deeper truth is that Meloni’s government—like many across Europe—has actively supported Israel: abstaining in votes against ceasefire resolutions at the UN General Assembly and voting against the suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, continuing arms sales, and even protecting Israeli soldiers vacationing in Italy.

Now, Meloni has been reported to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of complicity in genocide committed in the Gaza Strip, alongside Italy’s defence and foreign ministers.

The plight of prisoners

The flotilla may not have broken the blockade, but those who have been involved and movements that have supported them still see it as a success.

Indeed, it helped expose the brutal reality of the occupation, awakened civic conscience, and shifted activism from social media into the streets.

New Arab for more

by ANITA NAIDU

The headlines call it a ceasefire. The diplomats call it peace. But what’s being unveiled isn’t peace — it’s colonial revival.

Under the banner of reconstruction, Gaza’s future is being handed to a “Board of Peace” chaired by the very architects of perpetual war. A colonial council of overseers in new suits, governing through Palestinians kept under supervision. The vocabulary has changed; the hierarchy hasn’t.

Reconstruction as Recolonization

Empire’s genius has always been its ability to evolve its branding faster than its critics can decode it. Once, it conquered through armies. Now, it conquers through management. “Stabilization forces” replace occupation troops, and “special economic zones” stand in for open-air prisons.

The plan is textbook economic occupation dressed up as aid: rebuild what bombs destroyed, but rebuild it for control, not sovereignty. Rebuild it to be invested in, not lived in. Every brick becomes a bond. Every promise of peace becomes collateral for another round of extraction.

The Architecture of Obedience

When empire shifts from invasion to administration, it doesn’t loosen its grip — it professionalizes it. The machinery of global governance — from the UN to development banks — has perfected the art of outsourcing domination. Local faces, foreign terms. Indigenous hands, imperial blueprints.

The illusion is participation. Palestinians are “included” in decisions already made elsewhere, and their autonomy is measured by how well they comply with frameworks written by their occupiers.
It’s the same choreography every time: defer freedom indefinitely, call that restraint, and sell the delay as diplomacy.

Markets Over Justice

The applause isn’t for liberation — it’s for stability. For markets that can breathe again. For investors who can build again. The “peace process” is a portfolio strategy. War devastates; reconstruction monetizes; the cycle continues.

Empire kills, pauses, then rebrands the pause as moral progress. Each new “peace” agreement is just a maintenance plan for domination, administered by those fluent in the language of compassion.

Naming the Lie

What’s being celebrated today isn’t an end to occupation — it’s the outsourcing of it. Management replacing freedom. Oversight masquerading as care. Empire discovering that optics outperform armies.

And that is the real frontier: domination with softer branding.

Because peace without sovereignty is just management with better PR.

Counterpunch for more

by CAITLIN A. JOHNSTONE

In an interview with Swedish paper Aftonbladet, Greta Thunberg has corroborated earlier eyewitness reports that she and her fellow Global Sumud Flotilla activists were subjected to monstrous abuses by Israeli officials after being abducted from their boats carrying aid for Palestinians in Gaza.

Here are some excerpts (quotes from Thunberg are italicized, quotes from Aftonbladet are in bold):

“They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me.”

“They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me.”

“They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said. And then they had learned ‘Lilla hora’ (Little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (Whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time.”

In the corner where Greta was sitting, the police placed a flag. “The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted ‘Don’t touch the flag’ and kicked me in the side. After a while, my hands were tied with cable ties, very tightly. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me while I was sitting like that.”

“They were thrown to the ground and beaten. But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me.”

Greta was then taken into a building to be searched and undressed. “The guards have no empathy or humanity, and they keep taking selfies with me. There’s a lot I don’t remember. So much is happening at once. You’re in shock. You’re in pain, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm.”

Outside, she was forced to take off her clothes again, she says. “It was mockery, rough handling, and everything was filmed. Everything they do is extremely violent.”

“It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We begged the whole time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us.”

“When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you.’ It was standard for them to say that.”

“This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors.”

Thunberg told Aftonbladet that the Swedish government greatly downplayed the abuse she and her fellow Sumud Flotilla activists suffered, and wouldn’t even bring them water:

“We were together and told them about the treatment we received. About the lack of food, water, about the abuse. The torture. We showed them the physical injuries we had?—?bruises and scratches. We gave them all our contact details?—?I gave them my father’s number and the number of our contact in the organization. We were clear: everything we say now must be released to the media.”

“They didn’t do anything, they just said: ’Our job is to listen to you. We are here and you are entitled to consular support.’”

“We said over and over again: we need water. And they saw that the guards had water bottles. The embassy staff said: ’We’ll make a note of that.’ One of us, Vincent, said: ’Next time we meet you, you must bring water.’”

Then it took two days before the embassy staff showed up again.

“They didn’t bring any water, except for a small bottle of their own that was half empty. Vincent, who was in the worst shape, got to drink it. We kept asking the guards, ‘Can we have some water?’ but they just walked around with their water bottles and didn’t answer.”

Monthle Review Online for more

by RABIYA JAVERI AGHA

The ‘madwoman in the attic’ motif has been studied, romanticised, reimagined. Yet she has always been misunderstood. She was never mad. She was simply a woman whose existence became intolerable, not because she lost her mind, but because she refused to lose herself.

In Pakistan today, that same refusal is enough to erase adult women from their own lives. Teachers. Lawyers. Executives. Mothers. Daughters. All over the age of consent. All locked away in psychiatric and rehabilitation facilities against their will. They are not confined because they are dangerous to themselves or others. They are confined because they said no: no to marriage, no to silence, no to families who demand obedience above all else.

In many ‘rehab homes’ across Pakistan, there is no psychiatric protocol, no independent evaluation, no court order. A family member signs a form, pays a fee and the woman simply disappears. Once insi­­de, the clinic becomes a carceral space. Phones are seized. Visitors barred. Came­ras trail their every move. Psychotropic drugs are dispensed without explanation. Refusal is punished with sedation. Protest is reclassified as pathology. Anger is not recognised as resistance but proof of illness. Staff call it treatment. Families call it discipline. In truth, it is punishment dressed as psychology.

The medical files of these women rarely contain a genuine diagnosis. Instead, they are filled with ‘evidence’ of disobedience. At admission, dubious lab reports brand them as users of ice or meth, yet no drug treatment follows. The only ‘therapy’ is co­­­erced apology letters and forced compliance.

Women are taught to doubt their own memories. They are coached to smile for videos sent home, to stage obedience as evidence of ‘recovery’. There is no diagnosis, only correction.

The National Commission for Human Rights has received numerous complaints of forced detention in rehab clinics, where women were locked away for disobedience, refusal to marry, or simply for not vacating family property. Four of these women were found illegally detained in one clinic outside Islamabad from where they were rescued. The facility, registered with the Islamabad Healthcare Regula­tory Authority (IHRA), operates in open violation of its mandate. Standards and SOPs are ignored with impunity, while the regulator looks the other way. Misogyny runs through its practices. Profiteering is packaged as treatment. Abuse is routine.

Dawn for more

by S. V. DATE

The president’s chief propagandist accuses opponents of “insurrection” and attempting a “coup” — while declaring Trump has “plenary authority.”

As Donald Trump pushes to expand his presidential powers to autocrat-like levels, he has at his side a top aide who makes his own over-the-top pronouncements sound downright tame.

Stephen Miller has accused federal judges, including those appointed by Republican presidents, of taking part in a “judicial coup.” He calls the opposition Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization.” He labels protesters in U.S. cities “terrorists” — the same designation he and Trump have applied to the 21 people and counting whom Trump has summarily killed on boats in the Caribbean.

In speeches that often devolve into comical bravado, he repeatedly invokes the powers of Trump and his executive branch, even in areas that have historically been the responsibility of local and state government.

“You know the gang bangers that you deal with, they think that they’re ruthless,” he told law enforcement officials in Memphis earlier this month. “They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough. They have no idea how tough we are. They think that they’re hardcore. We are so much more hardcore than they are, and we have the entire weight of the United States government behind us. What do they have? They have nothing behind them.”

Just this past week, Miller told CNN that Trump had “plenary authority” — absolute power — even though the U.S. Constitution makes clear that he does not.

Amanda Carpenter, once a top aide to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and now a researcher with the nonprofit Protect Democracy, said Miller is doing exactly what proponents of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 planned over the past several years as Trump ran to retake his office after having attempted a coup in 2021.

“Project 2025 was, at its core, an aspiration to provide Trump plenary power to gut checks and balances, consolidate control over all aspects of the federal government and entrench power for the long term,” she said. “It was written on paper and Stephen Miller is saying it out loud.”

Miller did not respond to a list of questions from HuffPost about his various actions and statements, including his reported role in the extrajudicial killings on Trump’s orders by the U.S. military of 21 alleged smugglers in the Caribbean, and the White House scolded HuffPost for asking him directly. Later, a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity disparaged HuffPost and defended Miller.

“Stephen is rightfully calling out radical left-wing violence and those who support it,” the official said.

Huffpost for more

by HAROON RASHID SIDDIQI

Dr Frances Pritchett has become Divan-e-Ghalib’s most faithful reader and interpreter

“Hindustan ki ilhami kitabain do hain: Muqaddas Vaid aur Divan-e-Ghalib.” These famous words were penned by Dr Abdur Rahman Bijnori in his seminal dissertation Mahasin-e-Kalam-e-Ghalib, which he was writing in 1918 when the merciless Spanish flu pandemic cut short his life at the prime age of thirty-three. Though his time was brief, he left behind a luminous treasure on Ghalib — posthumously published from Bhopal in 1921 — that remains one of the finest reflections on the poet’s genius.

His remark, audacious yet profoundly reflective, declared that India possessed two revealed scriptures — the sacred Vedas and Divan-e-Ghalib. It was not mere exaggeration but a recognition of the unfathomable depth of Ghalib’s poetry: its layered meanings, its metaphysical reach, its inexhaustible capacity to illuminate the human condition.

To truly fathom that ocean, to chart its boundless expanse and reveal its secret currents, has been the life’s work of many. Yet if there is one figure —whether from East or West — who has come closest to this Herculean task in our own age, it is undoubtedly Dr Frances W. Pritchett.

A scholar of Urdu and Persian literature, and Professor Emerita at Columbia University, Dr. Pritchett has given us what can only be described as a magnum opus: A Desertful of Roses. This vast online project is not merely a translation of Ghalib’s diwan but a luminous archive of meanings, a living museum where the voices of centuries of interpreters converge. If Ghalib’s poetry is scripture, then Pritchett has built for us its cathedral — an edifice at once scholarly and aesthetic, where every couplet blooms like a rose amid the desert sands of history.

Her achievement lies not only in her philological precision but also in her interpretive generosity. She resists the temptation of imposing a singular meaning on Ghalib’s couplets. Instead, she acknowledges that his words contain multitudes. Each sher [couplet] is presented with a constellation of readings drawn from the most authoritative commentators — Shibli, Hali, Tabatabai, Bekhud Dehalvi, Bekhud Mohani, Gyan Chand, Kalidas Gupta Raza, Yusuf Salim Chishti, and many others —so that the reader may witness the dazzling plurality of interpretation. Ghalib, after all, was a poet who relished ambiguity, who thrived on the shimmering instability of language.

Pritchett does not attempt to “solve” him; rather, she opens the door for us to wander his labyrinths.

Her website, accessible to all and continually refined, has become an indispensable resource for scholars, students, and lovers of Urdu poetry across the globe. With its bilingual presentation— Romanised Urdu text alongside English translations — it democratises access to Ghalib, ensuring that the poet who once claimed he was understood by none may now be encountered by anyone with curiosity and patience.

One of the subtle triumphs of A Desertful of Roses is how it situates Ghalib within the broader tapestry of Mughal aesthetics. The Mughal world, with its architecture of arches and domes, its miniature paintings, its intricate calligraphy, is not merely a historical backdrop — it is an interpretive symbolism. Pritchett’s work allows us to see Ghalib’s poetry as an extension of this sensibility: ornamental yet profound, playful yet grave, endlessly self-renewing. Much like the pietra dura in the Taj Mahal, where semi-precious stones are inlaid into marble, Ghalib’s words glisten with embedded allusions — to Quranic imagery, to Persian tropes, to philosophical paradoxes. Pritchett has curated these details with the care of a master archivist, so that readers are not merely reading verses but entering chambers of a palace, each more wondrous than the last.

What distinguishes A Desertful of Roses is its polyphonic nature. No interpreter of Ghalib is silenced; rather, all are invited to speak. This multiplicity echoes the poet’s own awareness of language’s infinite suggestiveness.

Express Tribune for more

A billion years ago single-celled organisms ruled the Earth. Now multicellular creatures are everywhere, including animals like us. But how did our ancestors go from one cell living alone to many cells working together? In this film we meet five microscopic cousins who take different approaches to a multicellular life.

Youtube for more

by KATIE GARNER

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Amid the investment of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence (AI), there are serious concerns surrounding its use: threats to the environment and water supply, the challenge to critical thinking skills, and the theft of hard-won creativity. Yet, few focus on the fact that the information skimmed and scrubbed from the written word is cladding the ideas of future generations, via large language models (or LLMs). To write is to think. To choose to hand that thinking over is to forfeit ideas and language, allowing them to be defined by a written history largely dominated by the voices of white men.

The often multilingual residents of countries in East Africa already have a complex-at-best relationship with historically oppressive colonial languages, as articulated most powerfully by Ng?g? wa Thiong’o, who died recently. By making the change to write in Gikuyu rather than catering to an international audience, he made a statement about his creative process as well as his political ideologies. Here in Rwanda, the official language change from French to English in 2008 was a sign of the break with Belgian colonists and an embrace of the business opportunities that the English language provides. Kinyarwanda remains the language spoken by the majority of the population. Thus, an agricultural economy that seeks to further expand into tourism and international events relies on fluency in English and French for growth. Enter AI?

It is estimated that 40% of institutions on the continent of Africa are already using AI, and here in East Africa, there is a strong and enthusiastic uptake of the technology; 27% people in Kenya use Open AI platforms daily. It is widely embraced in the hope that it will enable more of the leapfrogging of traditional infrastructure that has already been successful with mobile banking and mobile phones. Large language models offer a seductive promise: to save time by doing the thinking and word retrieval for you. It gives permission to rely on the history of the written word to furnish writing and offers short summaries to relieve the burden of reading an entire article or book. This is said to allow for greater flexibility between languages, increased external engagement, and a genuine economic incentive.

It is difficult to argue against a tool that is widely accessible and supportive of increased economic prosperity, particularly for young people. However, the process of reading and writing is transformative because of the thinking that it demands. It exercises the muscle of creativity and innovation, and it allows for opportunities to challenge existing ideas. It is telling that the invention of the printing press in Germany in the 15th century was thought to be one of the most radical and transformative acts of technology in history. The resulting translations of the Bible into languages understood by ordinary people were so controversial that existing power structures sought to discredit the translations and the process.

The democratization of literacy—so that all could read, comprehend, and express through writing, in any language—has toppled governments and challenged established power structures. Rather than being soft and ineffectual tools, stories and words are among the most powerful ways that societies have challenged systems. Arguably, any use of English is a choice to clothe language in the culture and vernacular of privileged white men, but the decision to rely on LLMs to do so limits the capacity to change, shape and subvert it for future generations.

The recent MIT study on the impact of AI showed strong evidence that regular use of chatbots for information and writing has dulled the thought processes of the people using them, a term described as “cognitive debt.” Failure to use brain muscle will inevitably weaken it, a principle apparent to every gym user who took three weeks away from their workout and regretted it. There is a grave risk that enthusiastic uptake of the technology for reading and writing will not only fail to bring the liberating and efficiency benefits that it promises, but also stymie the thinking and the voices that are already sidelined by publishing and journalism industries.

This is particularly significant for women.

Africa Is a Country for more