by B. R. GOWANI

sometimes it happens that intense hate turns into love
this happened with our Dear Beloved Leader, Nobel Dove
he was not religious, but was never far from religious stuff
his talk, mind, morality spoke a lot, since he was a Jesus buff

then one day it happened, our Dear Leader thought
by end of this century, Islam is going to take #1 slot
what’s the use of remaining a Christian and become #two
He converted to Islam and offered prayer as Muslim anew

His racist Islamophobic advisor leaked the Leader’s praying pic
our Dear Leader felt like he was beaten with a back stick
advisor right away ordered ICE to arrest our Leader Dear
Dear Leader was put on a plane headed to an Islamic sphere

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

by YVES ENGLER

Mark Carney is a ‘lying Liberal’, not a defender of international law, let alone an anti-imperialist. The prime minister’s speech in Davos reflects a long Liberal tradition of seeking to convince people to ‘judge what I say, not what I do’.

At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland yesterday Carney gave a speech challenging Donald Trump and defending sovereignty. He was widely lauded for explicitly criticizing the so-called international rules-based order.

Liberal Canadian politicians are adept at rhetorical flourishes and too often liberal, even left-minded people buy their snake oil. But Carney has an actual record and except for a small positive shift towards China — driven by corporate Canada — that record is highly imperialistic.

Days ago, Carney said he would join the Trump-chaired, international law violating, so-called ‘Gaza Board of Peace’. The PM has repeatedly said Canada would only accept a “Zionist Palestinian state” and his foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand, described Canada’s “unwavering support for Israel’s security.” In practice, this means refusing to uphold Canadian law — on arms sales, registered charities, foreign enlistment and war criminals in Canada — vis a vis a genocidal apartheid state.

Two weeks ago, Carney “welcomed” the US kidnapping Venezuela’s president in a crass violation of international law that killed about 100 people. Canadian soldiers working through NORAD and Operation Caribbe, as well as integrated in US units, likely assisted US violence on Venezuela.

Last week Carney echoed US/Israeli statements on Iran. Israel was hoping to reignite its summer war on that country, which Carney backed. In June Canada’s PM immediately labelled Israel’s destruction of multiple buildings in Tehran and the assassination of numerous scientists and military officials as “defending itself”. A month ago, foreign minister Anand publicly rejected restarting diplomatic relations with Tehran. (Canada has sanctions on Iran, labels the country a state-sponsor of terror and lists part of its military a terrorist organization.)

Carney’s Canada remains part of the Haiti Core Group, which has been dictating that country’s affairs since the US/France/Canada overthrew its elected government in 2004. Canada remains part of the imperialistic Five Eyes, NATO and NORAD. Last year Carney hosted the G7.

Under pressure from Trump, Carney has radically increased Canadian military spending. This country’s armed forces are structured to assist US global power projection. Despite Trump’s annexation threats, it’s unclear if a single one of the hundreds of treaty-level agreements, memoranda of understanding and bilateral forums on defence Canada has with the US military has been paused or canceled. The Canadian military has maintained a slew of aggressive international deployments alongside the US. Joint naval patrols in far flung oceans, US arms testing in Canada and officer exchanges all seem to be continuing as usual. In “Canadian soldiers have been carrying out Donald Trump’s orders”, a January 20 Economist article notes, “there may be hundreds of Canadian soldiers serving in the United States. Publicly available information suggests that several are deployed within units that have been carrying out some of Mr. Trump’s most controversial orders” in Venezuela, El Salvador and elsewhere.

In my 2020 book The House of Mirrors: Justin Trudeau’s foreign policy I have a section titled “Judge What I Say, Not What I Do”. It’s relevant to understanding Carney’s speech to the World Economic Forum. It notes:

“Early in the Liberals reign Stéphane Dion presented ‘a guiding principle for Canada in the world’. During a major policy speech, the foreign minister claimed ‘responsible conviction’ was the principle motivating the government’s international policy. The ‘responsible conviction’ label was a way to distinguish the Liberal brand from the Conservatives. It supposedly also offered a moral-philosophical basis for signing off on the controversial light armoured vehicle sale to Saudi Arabia.

Yves Engler for more

by INDLIEB FARAZI SABER

In Umm Kulthum: The Star of the East, Syrian American author and journalist Rhonda Roumani illuminates the life of a girl from the Nile Delta who rose to become one of the most celebrated voices in the Arab world.

In Umm Kulthum: The Star of the East, Syrian American author and journalist Rhonda Roumani illuminates the life of a girl from the Nile Delta who rose to become one of the most celebrated voices in the Arab world.

Published 50 years after Umm Kulthum’s death in 1975, Roumani’s work traces the journey of the woman born Fatima Ibrahim as-Sayed el-Beltagi, from a childhood spent beside her father in the village courtyard to the moment her voice became a vessel for Egyptians on Cairo’s grand stages.

Roumani presents more than just a biography. Umm Kulthum: The Star of the East meditates on perseverance, identity and the courage to stay true to one’s voice. Drawing from her own experience growing up Arab American, Roumani reclaims the story of a woman who turned authenticity into art-and art into legacy, earning the title “Star of the East.”

We sat down with Roumani, who reflects on what drew her to Umm Kulthum, what her enduring voice continues to teach us and how writing for children became her way of passing that light forward.

You first encountered Umm Kulthum’s music as a child in your family’s home in California. What do you remember about that, and what drew you back to her story later as a writer?

As an Arab American, I grew up listening to Arabic music by Fairouz, Sabah Fakhri and contemporary pop. But I never really listened to Umm Kulthum until I was older, when my father became close to an Egyptian friend, Ahmed Zewail-we’d call him Amo Ahmed-who’d later win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

My father would teach him about classical music, and Amo Ahmed would introduce him to Umm Kulthum. It became part of their friendship, a sort of musical exchange. It was almost as if they were giving each other what they loved the most.

AramcoWorld for more

by MICHAEL F. BROWN

Israel and the Israel lobby group AIPAC are desperate to rebrand the Gaza genocide as an unremarkable war. A return to business as usual in the United States is sought, where arms to Israel go uncontested and the apartheid state’s standing among Democratic and Republican politicians as well as grassroots voters is restored.

With opposition to Israel’s policies rising among Republican voters and sharply up among grassroots Democrats, Israel’s next military aid package from the US looms large for the Israel lobby.

A new memorandum of understanding for US military aid to Israel may be secured before the 2026 mid-term elections, though the current 10-year, $38 billion Obama administration’s baby-bombing bonanza doesn’t expire until 2028.

President Donald Trump and a Republican Congress are expected to be easier for Israel to negotiate with in a climate in which American registered voters do not back “providing additional economic and military support to Israel.” American voters’ elected representatives – Republicans and Democrats alike – are expected to be far more accommodating of the Israeli military and its propensity to commit serial war crimes than the voters themselves.

On 10 December, AIPAC celebrated “the US House of Representatives for including critical pro-Israel provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026.”

AIPAC highlighted the provision expressing “the sense of Congress that the Department of Defense must refrain from participating in any international defense exhibitions until the secretary of defense confirms that Israeli companies can fully and fairly take part. It also directs the Department to avoid any exhibitions that restrict or threaten to restrict Israel’s participation.”

Trump repeatedly trumpeted “America First” in his campaign for the presidency in 2024. Yet this behemoth bipartisan bill with its $900 billion in military spending manages with its nod to “Israel’s participation” to put that country’s genocidal military before even the US military, which also abetted the Gaza genocide and is currently carrying out war crimes or murder in the Caribbean Sea.

Electronic Intifada for more

by ANIS SHIVANI

In 1925, Mussolini consolidated his dictatorship with a major speech before parliament, while Hitler published the first volume of Mein Kampf and also established the SS. In India, both the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and CPI (Communist Party of India) were founded, as the handicrafts movement took off and the first local electric train was inaugurated. Globally, the first true television images were transmitted, and the 150mph speed barrier was broken for automobiles. Heisenberg published his paper on quantum mechanics, and the modern airline industry kicked off.

The first major surrealist art exhibition took place in Paris, and Louis Armstrong’s records fueled the Jazz Age. Woolf, Cather, Gide, Dreiser, Dos Passos, Proust and Kafka published landmark novels, while Auden and Isherwood reconnected as adults and Eliot became a director at Faber. Major operas by Berg, Ravel and Busoni premiered, and the Bauhaus moved to Dessau.

All this, in a random year of the early 20th century. Modernism, the cultural peak of industrial capitalism and liberal democracy, furiously fed both art and politics, and was disseminated globally through a technological firestorm whose fumes we still breathe. Growing communal riots, a dwindling Khilafat movement, and an already spent moderate nationalism marked 1925 in India, as if yesterday were today.

By comparison, what do we have in 2025? Or really, the entire first quarter of the 21st century? What is the last fundamental breakthrough of any kind you can remember?

As neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy collapse, there will be openings for humane creators.

Nothing, I would argue. Nothing of note in philosophy, literature, music, art, architecture, science and technology, film, social sciences and economic policy except whatever remains of the aftereffects of the major discoveries of the 20th century. There has never been a less creative period globally since the beginning of the capitalist-imperialist onslaught against the world’s major civilisations half a millennium ago. Individual accomplishments in various fields certainly persist but are not part of any larger trends.

The two greatest movies of the 21st century, In the Mood for Love and Mulholland Drive, were both released a quarter century ago, and summed up 20th-century aesthetics rather than looking forward. Brilliant films come out of Iran, South Korea, Thailand and elsewhere, but there is little cinematographic advancement, compared to the 1960s and 1970s when every week witnessed an astounding new film. Popular music died long ago in the West, compared to the era of innovative bands, and the last rites were pronounced over jazz decades ago. Art and architecture have long descended into superficial parodies empty of ideological content, while the social sciences and humanities have totally succumbed to a postmodernism without a belief system. Hardly any novels of note have appeared in the West in this period, except by a few émigré writers. Big Science, in the form of Big Physics and Big Biology, is singularly uninterested in addressing the practical problems currently degrading individual and collective health and well-being. The present system is not creative enough to address environmental collapse.

Dawn for more

by SOPHIA TESFAYE

From media mergers to foreign policy, Trump’s son-in-law is consolidating power — and making millions

The speed and scale of Jared Kushner’s re-emergence can’t be overstated. In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his son-in-law is casually consolidating economic and political power with staggering speed. Kushner has positioned himself at the center of the biggest media merger in years and at the fulcrum of White House foreign policy, all while taking in multi-billion-dollar investments from autocratic governments. 

On Monday, Paramount Skydance — run by David Ellison, a billionaire Trump has openly urged to reshape the news industry in his favor — launched an unprecedented bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery by initiating a hostile takeover after losing an earlier bidding contest to Netflix. Paramount’s offer draws heavily from Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. These Middle Eastern autocracies are principal investors in an acquisition that would give them — and Kushner — influence over some of America’s most powerful news and cultural engines: CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures and the vast library of Warner content that shapes the national (and international) imagination. The partnership is unprecedented. Not even Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage. 

After leaving the first Trump administration, Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners, including $2 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The Saudis’ own advisers reportedly warned Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Kushner’s record did not justify such an investment, but the crown prince overruled them. The UAE and Qatar soon followed, adding another $1.5 billion to the pot. As of late 2024, Kushner had still not produced meaningful returns for these foreign governments, yet he had paid himself at least $157 million in fees. Forbes now calls him a billionaire.

The breathtaking scale of the Paramount–Warner bid makes the stakes even clearer. The sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar are collectively offering around $24 billion to help the takeover, more than the entire current market value of Paramount itself. 

These are autocracies investing in the infrastructure of American political communication, and they are doing so through the president’s son-in-law. You could not design a more direct conflict of interest. Paramount is even trying to structure the deal to avoid federal review by arguing that foreign investors would have no “voting rights,” a fiction so flimsy it should insult the intelligence of any serious regulator.

After the Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison had promised to deliver political obedience, telling Trump he would make “sweeping changes” to CNN once the deal closed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sneered that CNN “would benefit from new ownership.” Both she and Trump also publicly berated CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins this week. 

Salon for more

by SAIMA AFZAL

Hibatullah Akhundzada wields undisputed authority, ruling disastrously through religious decrees rather than formal institutions

On December 8, the United Nations Security Council’s Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team released its 16th report, offering the most authoritative international assessment of governance under the Taliban administration in Afghanistan.

The report highlights that political order is defined by extreme centralization of authority, strict ideological control, severely limited institutional capacity and unresolved internal contradictions. Together, these factors cast serious doubts on the regime’s long-term effectiveness and its ability to deliver sustainable security and governance.

At the apex of this system stands Hibatullah Akhundzada, who, as Amir al-Mu’minin, wields undisputed authority. According to the report, Akhundzada is not a symbolic figurehead but the ultimate decision-maker, ruling primarily through religious decrees rather than formal institutions.

He remains physically isolated in Kandahar, which functions as the regime’s true political center, and does not engage in policy debate or consultation in any conventional sense.

Taliban decision-making is tightly centralized. Akhundzada has placed loyal supporters throughout the administration and Councils of Ulama have been established in each province, answering directly to Kandahar.

These councils function as tools for ideological control rather than independent governing authority. Leadership debate is actively discouraged and opposition is met with termination, imprisonment, coercion or exile.

Beneath this surface of coherence, the report reveals deep divisions within the Taliban’s ruling structure. The most significant tensions exist between Kandahar-based hardliners and Kabul-based pragmatists, particularly between Akhundzada’s inner clerical circle and the Haqqani Network led by Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani

Asia Times for more

What prompted US to abort Iran strikes?

By ANWAR IQBAL

• US, Israel, Gulf allies all were underprepared for retaliation
• Regime remained resilient as security forces stay loyal
• Backchannel pledged to ‘stop the killing’ offered exit ramp

WASHINGTON: The crisis in Iran, driven by economic collapse, soaring inflation and deep public anger, has underscored both the limits of external military intervention and the resilience of Tehran’s clerical regime, analysts and former officials said.

US President Donald Trump publicly encouraged Iranian protesters, warning Tehran that it would face consequences if it “violently kills peaceful protesters”.

But behind the scenes, Washington came close to — and then stepped back from — military action, exposing the operational, political and strategic constraints shaping US policy.

According to a detailed Axios investigation, senior military, political and diplomatic officials across Washington and the Middle East believed US strikes on Iran were imminent.

Preparations were real, officials stressed. US troops began evacuating from Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar and from the Navy’s Fifth Fleet base in Bahrain, while Iran closed its airspace.

“It wasn’t fake or a ruse,” one US official told Axios. Yet by that afternoon, the moment passed. “It was really close,” another official said. “The military was in a position to do something really fast,but the order didn’t come.”

A central factor for the stand-down was force posture. Axios reported that since the last clash with Iran in June, many US military assets had been redeployed to the Caribbean and East Asia.

“The theatre was not ready,” one source said bluntly. Another added: “We sort of missed the window.”

Limits of military leverage

The lack of readiness shaped not only strike options but also contingency planning for Iranian retaliation, which US officials warned could endanger American forces and allies across the region.

Regional leaders reinforced those concerns. In a call with Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel was not prepared to defend itself against Iran’s likely missile and drone retaliation.

He also believed the US plan “was not strong enough and wouldn’t be effective”, according to one of his advisers. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman similarly expressed deep concern about regional destabilisation.

A diplomatic backchannel also provided an exit ramp. Axios reported that Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi sent messages to Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, committing to halt planned executions of detained protesters and “stop the killing”.

Trump later acknowledged the messages had an impact, though a White House official insisted they were “not the only reason”.

For now, US officials say military action remains “on the table.” However, the near-miss suggests Washington’s restraint reflected not just caution or diplomacy, but the hard limits of military leverage over Iran’s internal struggle and the high costs of getting it wrong.

Even if strikes had been launched, analysts say they would have done little to protect protesters on the ground.

Andrew P. Miller said foreign military intervention is unlikely to create a stable democracy, especially one that benefits the intervening power.

Any action would probably have been restricted to “a single or brief set of strikes”, avoiding ground troops yet risking Iranian retaliation and escalation, Miller added.

Sanam Vakil, of Chatham House, said Trump’s approach relied more on coercive signalling than intervention. The deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, she said, was designed to pressure Iran’s leadership rather than shield civilians.

“His references to wanting an agreement and to ‘making Iran great again’ are transactional signals aimed at the leadership rather than Iranian society,” Vakil said. “The strategy is less about engineering internal change in Iran than about forcing its leadership to confront the limits of resistance.”

Regime resilience

Vali Nasr, a prominent Iranian-American scholar in Washington, emphasised the durability of Iran’s security apparatus. For protests to seriously threaten the regime, he said, parts of the state — especially the security forces — would need to defect.

“There is no sign of any defections … or that it has in any way fractured,” Nasr said. “I am not certain the balance of forces necessarily lies with the protesters.”

Dawn for more

Trump balked but war is inevitable: Will Iran attack first?

by SHIVAN MAHENDRARAJAH

Tel Aviv and Washington are sharpening their knives – but military doctrine favors the first mover, and Tehran may be running out of time.

“When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”— former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt

Rumors swirl around US President Donald Trump’s abrupt cancellation of new air strikes on Iran. What is undeniable is that the US military has few assets in the Persian Gulf. Trump has since ordered reinforcements. 

Israel’s attempt to destabilize Iran from within has failed, but new pretexts for war are emerging. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff recently communicated with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi during which he is said to have issued outrageous demands – terminate enrichment, handover enriched uranium, and reduce missile ranges and stockpiles – effectively, a demand for capitulation, which Washington knows Tehran will reject. The US will claim “Iran refuses to negotiate in good faith” as casus belli. 

Pre-empt, or be punished

Iran’s military doctrine is fundamentally defensive; Israel’s is not. But that posture may be changing. In August 2025, retired Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) General Yahya Safavi, senior advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared: “We must adopt an offensive strategy.” In a January statement, Iran’s Defense Council said, “within the framework of legitimate defense, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not limit itself to reacting after action and considers objective signs of threat as part of the security equation.”

“Pre-emptive War” is to strike first to seize the initiative when confronting an imminent threat. The textbook study is Israel’s Six-Day War (1967), following the blockade of the Tiran Straits, the mobilization of Arab armies, and the hostile rhetoric. 

“Preventive War,” however, is to counter a hazy threat: former US president George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq War and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2025 Iran War are cases in point. 

British strategist B.H. Liddell Hart said: “Strategy has not to overcome resistance [opponent’s tactics], except from nature. Its purpose is to diminish the possibility of resistance, and it seeks to fulfill this purpose by exploiting the elements of movement and surprise.”

In 1967, Tel Aviv did just that – obliterating air defenses before they launched and claiming vast swaths of land.

War has already begun

Iran faces an imminent threat. The 12-Day War in June made clear that the US and Israel are acting in tandem. Trump’s own admission confirmed that the Oman “negotiations” were a ruse to sedate Tehran.

The riots were not spontaneous. Israeli and western handlers coordinated operations across provinces, funneling cash, weapons, explosives, and Starlink terminals to operatives. Global media and online platforms amplified fabricated death tolls – 12,000 to 20,000 – to manufacture consent for foreign intervention. 

The 12-Day War never ended, as Safavi shrewdly noted. The “riot phase” of the campaign is over, but a new phase is underway. The dilemma for Tehran is binary: should Iran absorb the first blow or strike the first blow?

A bid for survival

The threat is existential. The US and Israel do not seek only regime change, but the dismemberment of Iran along ethno-linguistic lines. Riots were intended to ignite civil war – like Syria and Libya – with Kurdish and Baluch separatists offered autonomous regions. If the Islamic Republic falls, the US will plunder the Iranian people’s oil and gas heritage, like with Venezuela.

For 47 years, Iran has endured sanctions, threats, saboteurs, agitators, and the western-backed Iran–Iraq War. In the past seven months, Iranians experienced war and riots instigated by the west. The anti-Iran media campaign grossly misrepresented the horrific crimes perpetrated against innocent Iranians, while portraying savage mobs as “peaceful protestors.” 

The Islamic Republic is called “repressive,” “brutal theocracy,” “illegitimate,” “dictatorship,” and “rogue state.” It has never been treated the way despotic Persian Gulf monarchies, Egypt, and Jordan are treated. 

The Iranian nation has never been allowed to function and develop like other nations. Negotiations are pointless. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was sabotaged by Tel Aviv – with help from former US president Barack Obama, who enticed Iran to sign the nuclear deal. “This nearly five-decades-long ‘horror film’ ends in one of two ways: Iran collapses, or the US-led bloc is defeated.” 

Tehran’s turn to move

Israel never negotiates. It demands. It steals. It kills. Iran has negotiated endlessly – and received nothing. Perhaps it is time to act as Tel Aviv would.

Tehran may want to consider what Liddell Hart termed a “strategy of limited aim.” Here, the objective is not the defeat of the enemy – “unconditional surrender” – or capture of territory (Israel in 1967); but a war that coerces the enemy to sit at the negotiating table with Iran and treat the ancient Iranian nation as an equal. 

Iran is disrespected by the US and its allies, just as Russia is disdained as a “gas station masquerading as a country.” Russia, despite its formidable military and nuclear arsenal, was never treated as a peer despite President Vladimir Putin’s good faith efforts to integrate with the US and EU economies. 

Iran is experiencing the same contempt. Moreover, while Putin was negotiating on Ukraine and acceding to the Minsk Accords, NATO built Ukraine’s war machine. When Putin was asked if he had regrets about the Ukraine War, he replied, “[t]he only thing we can regret is that we did not take intense action earlier.”

After Russia’s Oreshnik retaliation, the same EU/NATO bloc that demanded Moscow’s defeat came crawling for negotiations. Power won them respect. Iran must do the same – humiliate its enemies, force negotiations, and dictate terms.

The Cradle for more

AFRIQUE XXI EDITORIAL

At 56, Tchang, as he is affectionately known in Niger, arrested at his home a year ago, has been involved in every struggle. His friends remember the activist he was even in high school and later as a philosophy student in the early 1990s, caught up in the wave of the student movement that would overthrow, not without the loss of life, the heirs of General Seyni Kountché and his regime of exception. A revolutionary, a Marxist, deeply attached to the Kanuri community in the far east of Niger, where he was born, Moussa Tchangari participated in the National Conference that shattered the one-party system, giving birth to multiparty politics and democracy. Students were present in large numbers. But very quickly, Tchangari devoted himself to human rights, founding in 1991, with others, the Nigerien Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ANDDH) which played a decisive role in the fight for public freedoms until the end of the 2000s.

After a career as a journalist marked by a brilliant and erudite writing style, he created his own organization in 1994, a hybrid of popular education and activist training: Alternative Espace Citoyens. Several figures in the media, civil society, and even politics emerged from this melting pot, where community radio stations, films, newspapers, and tireless civic education programs flourished.

This persistent and uncompromising work earned Tchangari several arrests and prison sentences under various regimes and throughout his various activism: against the high cost of living in 2005, against arbitrary arrests in villages in the east of the country plagued by Boko Haram in 2015, against the 2018 budget law, and, after the coup that overthrew Mohamed Bazoum on July 26, 2023, against the new military leaders and the threat they posed to the country. This episode marked a break with some of his former comrades-in-arms who, for their part, applauded the fall of the socialist regime that had been in power since 2011.

Alternative International for more