Category: Uncategorized

by B. R. GOWANI

Troublemakers

Many leaders <1> are averse to running their countries in a peaceful and progressive manner. Instead of concentrating on the problems the majority of their people face, they create trouble by introducing or undoing things, in order to gain political mileage and divert the public’s attention from important issues requiring government focus. The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one such leader.

In the Indian Lok Sabha, on August 5, 2019, Modi’s Home Minister Amit Shah announced revocation of Article 370 which had granted limited autonomy to the Indian occupied Kashmir.

Constitutional expert and eminent scholar A. G. Noorani told Akshay Deshmane what that revocation meant:

It is utterly and palpably unconstitutional. An unconstitutional deed has been accomplished by deceitful means. For a fortnight, the Governor and other people told a whole load of lies. And I am sorry that the Army Core Commander (Chief) was also enlisted to spread this false thing of inputs from Pakistan. It was all a falsehood. They have undermined the Army’s non-political character. This is patently unconstitutional. Thing is that I had always predicted that they are out to fulfill their Saffron agenda: Uniform Civil Code, Ayodhya and Abrogation of Article 370. It remains to be seen how they accomplish the Ayodhya agenda.

The Revocation of Article 370 was in complete violation of the 2018 Indian Supreme Court ruling which stated that Article 370 was a permanent part of the Indian Constitution and the only way it could be revoked was through the legislative body that had drafted the Article originally- only they could rescind it. That body, however, stopped functioning in 1957.

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru said in the Lok Sabha on June 26 and August 7, 1952.

“I say with all respect to our Constitution that it just does not matter what your Constitution says; if the people of Kashmir do not want it, it will not go there. Because what is the alternative? The alternative is compulsion and coercion…” “We have fought the good fight about Kashmir on the field of battle… (and) …in many a chancellery of the world and in the United Nations, but, above all, we have fought this fight in the hearts and minds of men and women of that State of Jammu and Kashmir. Because, ultimately – I say this with all deference to this Parliament – the decision will be made in the hearts and minds of the men and women of Kashmir; neither in this Parliament, nor in the United Nations nor by anybody else,”

Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 18, p. 418 and vol. 19 pp. 295-6, respectively in A. G. Noorani, “Article 370: Law and politics,” Frontline, September 6, 2000.

That has never happened. The Kashmiri people have never been given a choice to decide their own destiny. Immediately after revoking Article 370, political leaders and thousands of Kashmiri civilians, including those who want Kashmir to be a part of India, were arrested. Kashmir and Jammu was locked down and all communication was blocked for eighteen months. Kashmir was cut off from the rest of the world.

Pahalgam

In September 2024, Kashmir Times’ editor Anuradha Bhasin told Al Jazeera:

“For the last five years, all Kashmiris have seen is an arrogant bureaucracy and the important missing layers of a local government.”

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in parliament, addressing a rally in the Jammu region said:

“Non-locals are running Jammu and Kashmir.” “Your democratic right was snatched. We have given priority to the demand for restoration of statehood.” “If [Modi’s party BJP] fails to restore statehood after the elections, we will put pressure on them to ensure it.”

Bhasin painted a gloomy picture:

“The hands of the clock have never moved back. Whatever has been taken from the people, in terms of their autonomy or democratic rights, has never been given back. I doubt that would change in the near future.”

In May 2024, Omar Abdullah, prior and the current Chief Minister since October 2024, had warned about presenting a rosy picture:

“The situation [in Kashmir] is not normal and talk less about tourism being an indicator of normalcy; when they link normalcy with tourism, they put tourists in danger.” “You are making the tourists a target.”

Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group:

“New Delhi and its security agencies started buying their own assessment of peace and stability, and they became complacent, assuming that the militants will never attack tourists.” “But if pushed to the wall, all it takes is two men with guns to prove that Kashmir is not normal.”

While Modi was in Saudi Arabia, on April 22, 2025, terrorists associated with The Resistance Front killed 26 tourists in Pahalgam, a beautiful hill station and a favorite destination for visitors. The victims were asked about their religion and were killed on communal basis.

Modi cut short his Saudi Arabia visit and flew back to India’s capital city, Delhi where he didn’t mention Pahalgam at all.

However, Modi’s divisive inflammatory rhetoric and strategy is well known to the Bihar-based Rashtriya Janata Dal who predicted Modi’s politics:

“The pyres of the victims of the Pahalgam terrorist attack have not yet been lit, but the country’s Prime Minister will come to Bihar tomorrow to campaign and deliver speeches because Bihar is holding elections this year.”

Modi, as if on an election campaign in Bihar, the second most populous state (with a large Dalit and Muslim population), gave a fiery speech:

“Today from the soil of Bihar I say to the whole world. India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the earth.”

Veteran journalist Jawed Naqvi points out that in foreign countries Modi typically gives his speeches in Hindi but he gave this address using English to Bihar’s Hindi speakers (perhaps, to fully capitalize from the foreign press present.)

The accusing finger immediately implied Pakistan, rather than question the security lapse of the Indian security forces or trying to determine the perpetrators. Pakistan has been involved in the past but, this time no proof exists of its involvement. The rhetoric reached fever pitch and culminated in India’s attack on its neighbor, and when Pakistan asked for evidence of the accusation, India didn’t provide it.

Pakistan also offered to join a “neutral and transparent” investigation but India refused the offer.

India blamed Pakistan’s military chief Asim Munir’s speech of April 15, 2025 for the Pahalgam tragedy.

It’s a well known fact that Kashmir is the world’s most militarized zone with very numerous Indian check points all over the state. The question: where was Indian security? was not addressed by the government. Two months later, on June 22, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested two persons who provided shelter to three persons involved in the act, according to NIA allegations.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri announced 5 major decisions taken by the Indian Government in April, 2025:

1. Suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (1960) with Pakistan.

2. Immediate closure of the Atari Integrated Checkpost.

3. Cancellation of all SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme visas for Pakistani nationals.

4. Expulsion of defense, naval, and air advisors from the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi.

5. Reduction of staff in both High Commissions from 55 to 30.

The CCS reaffirmed India’s resolve to bring perpetrators to justice and hold their sponsors accountable.

These are extreme measures that, if implemented, especially the water treaty suspension, will undoubtedly create more trouble and could result in a bigger war in the future.

On July 28, Indian government said its security forces killed three persons responsible for the April 22 killing.

Asim Munir

On April 15, while addressing the Overseas Pakistanis (OPs), Munir came out as Indian Hindu Modi‘s <2> Pakistani version: full of hate, divisiveness, and communalism.

“Our forefathers thought that we are different from the Hindus in every possible aspect of life. Our religion is different. Our customs are different. Our traditions are different. Our thoughts are different. Our ambitions are different.”

“… we are two nations, we are not one nation.”

The army, not popular in Pakistan for its constant interference in politics and disappearing critics and people as Balochis, seemingly, feels driven to frequently do something to make itself relevant. Munir’s speech to OPs was one such attempt.

India blaming Munir for Pahalgam attack does not seem very credible. The oppressed people, Kashmiris in India or Balochis in Pakistan, don’t need any inciting speech to fight back; they’re just waiting for the right time because they don’t have the luxury of attacking at will, like the governments do, in the name of “national security.” The oppressed can’t reach the state so they attack innocent people to communicate their plight.

In Pakistan, Baloch separatists have stopped buses and killed Punjabis after checking their IDs, perhaps in revenge as Punjab is Pakistan’s most populous and dominant province, and has a strong hold over the central government.

The attacks are cruel, but these kind of ugly incidents may continually occur if governments involved refuse to negotiate and reach amicable solutions.

War

On 29 April, Indian government sources quoted Modi:

“They [the Indian army] have complete operational freedom to decide on the mode, targets, and timing of our response,”

On May 7, India struck some sites in Pakistan, that then counter-struck.

India’s Israeli Ambassador Reuven Azar posted on X:

“Israel supports India’s right for self-defense. Terrorists should know there’s no place to hide from their heinous crimes against the innocent.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Modi:

“Israel stands with India in its fight against terrorism.”

There can be no better person than Netanyahu, the great terrorist and genocider, to advice another terrorist.

Trump’s ceasefire

The four-day-war ended when US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire on his Truth Social media site:

“I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE.”

Propaganda

In 2014, when Modi was to become Prime Minister for the first time, Amit Shah had bragged about BJP having 3.2 million WhatsApp groups who could instantly turn anything into believable stuff. In May 2024, BJP had at least 5 million WhatsApp groups and its infrastructure is so strong that any message relayed from Delhi could circulate all over India within 12 minutes.

Kiran Garimella of Rutgers University who researches WhatsApp in India, warned that WhatsApp is not an open social media like X or Facebook which is worrying and a cause for concern for many people.

“It is concerning that such a huge ‘hidden’ infrastructure plays a huge role in how the public consumes information.” “Only the creators of these groups know the extent to which the tentacles of this WhatsApp infrastructure are spread.”

What is the result?

War is like a game to the war inciters, war lovers, war media, and common people under the spell of the media frenzy and are most interested in the one question, who won and who lost?

The winners

There were two clear winners: Indian news media and the Pakistan army and its Chief of Army Staff: Asim Munir.

False news stories and AI generated images came from both sides but India was way ahead in fake news:

• Indian Navy destroyed sea port Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and financial center, with “over ten blasts.”
• The city of Peshawar was turned to “dust.”
• Pakistani soldiers were “deserting” and generals were “fleeing” the country,
• Some channels announced destruction of 5 cities where as another settled for 26 cities
• India’s fake news-master Arnab Goswami also declared a huge blast was heard outside Pakistan PM’s house and he was taken away to a place “20.5” kilometers (12.74 miles) away. Goswami also said it’s not clear whether it was for a safety reason or was it a coup.
• Zee News declared a coup happened resulting in the arrest of General Asim Munir.
• and so on…

For a very long time now, most Indian media has turned into “Godi Media,” a term used by Ravish Kumar, the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award winner. (Kumar was NDTV India’s Managing Editor but left when it was bought by billionaire Gautam Adani, a Modi supporter and fellow Gujarati.)

Kumar queried as to who should get an award for riveting fake news?

• News Nation who gave news of Sharif on the run or,
• Zee News who located Sharif, who was never missing?

Sumitra Badrinathan, an assistant professor at the American University, observed in an interview with The New York Times that in India “previously credible journalists and major media news outlets ran straight-up fabricated stories [on the 4 day war].”

The losers

The victims of the bombings, dead or wounded, are always the first ones to endure the horrors of war. They are the losers.

Pakistan said 40 civilians and 13 military personnel were killed. India’s figure was 21 civilians and 8 military and paramilitary personnel died. Hundreds of people on both sides got injured.

The politicians and generals on both sides claimed victory. The war was of a very short duration, thus politicians and generals didn’t feel populace hostility or face dire consequences like resignations.

Winner and loser honor

That honor goes to Modi. He was a winner and also a loser.

• Modi the winner. To his followers, Modi’s heroism enhanced when the Indian news media falsely started giving way too inflated stories of India beating Pakistan.

• Modi also succeeded in cutting off whatever little cooperation existed between Indians and Pakistanis through arts and sports. The Indian government ordered all Pakistani songs removed from Spotify. All media streaming services, digital intermediaries, and OTT platforms were ordered to discontinue Pakistani films, web series, songs, etc. Pakistani TV channels and dramas, very popular in India, were banned and still are. Pakistani artists and sportspersons social media accounts were blocked and still are.
• The extent of Modi’s hatred can be gauged from the following film posters: before and after.

The original film poster had Mawra Hocane but in the revised one, Hocane disappeared in an Orwellian manner. Shah Rukh Khan‘s movie posters of Raees with Pakistani actress Mahira Khan have faced the same fate.

• Indian singer, actor, producer Diljit Dosanjh film Sardaar Ji 3 <3> with the Pakistani actress Hania Aamir got banned in India. The Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and Minister of Information & Broadcasting Ashwini Vaishnaw to revoke passports of Daljit Dosanjh, Gunbir Singh Sidhu, Manmord Sidhu and Director Amar Hundal. Just for working with a Pakistani artist, thus displaying the toxic mixture of hate, idiocy, and faulty logic.
• FWICE’s letter contained many lies about Hania Aamir who had lamented the loss of life: “I don’t have fancy words right now. I just have anger, pain, and a heavy heart. A child is gone. Families are shattered. And for what? This is not how you protect anyone. This is cruelty – plain and simple.

Mind you, Modi personally may not be giving orders, but, people get emboldened to inflict damage as they know they won’t be stopped.

Many fields of life, from economics to education and from culture to cricket, have suffered due to rigidity, egotism, and ideology of politicians on both sides. Pakistani military’s control over politicians has never let both countries cooperate and utilize fully the trade, talents, and technology. Hardly a 100 or so Pakistani artists and playback singers have ever worked in Indian films.

Official trade between both countries has dropped and is routed through Singapore, Colombo (Sri Lanka), and Dubai (UAE), costing more money. Even in peace times, these routes are used for trade due to some or other reason. It’s foolish, but than you can’t make people with power to understand, because the powerful don’t allow discussions or arguments.

Modi the loser. On May 10, 2025, at 6:55 A.M. Eastern Time (that is 4:55 P.M. Pakistan time and 5:25 P.M. Indian time) on his Truth Social site, Trump announced:

“After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE. Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

It was sobering news for Modi. Modi has created an image of himself as Indian superman with broad 56-inch chest who is globally famous giving hugs to presidents, prime ministers, billionaires, whether they want it or not. He has made 91 foreign trips till July 2025. He has made India a superpower not in reality but by creating such perception. Modi who likes to control the narrative and who desperately wanted to announce victory had to get a ceasefire order from Trump. Trump is such a character that you can’t argue with him because then you face more humiliation — not because Trump is more vitriolic than Modi but because US is economically much more stronger than India, who is economically heavily interconnected with the US.

Imbecile

Then there is Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He got so carried away by Pakistan army’s downing of less than half a dozen Indian fighter planes that he equated it as a victory compensating for the loss of half the country (55% of its population in 1971) when East Pakistan seceded with Indian help to become independent Bangladesh.

That is clearly just a fictional ego boosting comparison.

Unpredictable Outcome

Who could have predicted that Modi’s war would give Pakistan army and Munir a new lease on popularity?

Avoid war

Poet Sahir Ludhianvi‘s poem O Decent People has a quatrain:

whether the blood spilled is ours or theirs

it is the blood of Adam’s progeny, after all

whether the war is in the east or west

it is the murder of world peace, after all

War should be avoided at all cost. All wars between Pakistan and India inflict tremendous cost in lives and finances, and, affect the entire South Asian region.

Both possess nuclear weapons which if, by mistake or bravado, get deployed in the war, would end in great disaster for the entire world. According to climatologist Alan Robock, 1,000,000,000 to 2 billion people would face starvation worldwide, in such case, there would be immediate climate changes, leading to much colder weather than the Little Ice Age and many other disasters, including destruction of ozone layer.

Dinner date

Trump advised the Indian and Pakistani leaders to go for a dinner date.

“Maybe we can even get them together a little bit, Marco [Rubio, the US Secretary of State], where they go out and have a nice dinner together. Wouldn’t that be nice? “

Improve relations

The population of South Asia, including Afghanistan, comprises 25% of global population. With China’s 17% added, the percentage shoots up to 42%.

The World Inequality Lab study observed that income and wealth contrast in Modi’s India is worse, more than it was during the British colonial rule. Other countries in the region are not any better.

Suggestions:

• If 42% of people increase trade in way that exchange of dollars is minimized, either through barter trade or using own currencies, this would save them hustle for dollars and foreign exchange.
• Increased trade also brings people closer and aids in creating more understanding and tolerance.
• In the best interest of both countries and the entire South Asian region, it would be better if SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation) is revived.
• Visas should be issued to enjoy tourism and appreciate each other’s natural beauty of land, flora and fauna and cultures
• Exchange student programs should be initiated
• Joint cultural, artistic, sports, entertainment, and other such events should be organized and promoted.
• India and Pakistan should avoid competing to get in the good books of US administration and try to sort out their problems themselves.
• Pakistan feels insecure when Trump is close to Modi and vice versa.
• India is the most populous country and Pakistan is the fifth most populated nation, both are made of many nations held together with very weak ties. They should concentrate on making that connection stronger by addressing the problems of various ethnic, caste, gender, and religious groups and by improving relations between the countries of SAARC.

Gur Mehar Kaur, whose father died during one of the Indo-Pak wars when she was 2 year old, wishes peace:

“… Only mutual cooperation can drive South Asia ahead. A peaceful subcontinent is the greatest gift we can give our families, our soldiers and ourselves.”

“Hate is the most anti-national force that we face. The worst thing the BJP under Modi did was nurture a mob that can only be satisfied with blood, killings and hate. For 10 years, this mob has been empowered.”

Notes

<1> In the Shanghai Communique, 1972, the US declared:

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.

For almost five decades, peace prevailed between China and the United States on the issue of Taiwan. The above policy was maintained without any serious incident. It could have gone on for decades but for
some US generals and others who visited Taiwan in March 2022. Author Eve Ottenberg surmised, “to beat the war drums and provoke China.” Same year in August, Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan too, to incite China.

The “world’s greatest democracy” seems devoid of a peace gene; it follows it’s own motto: “I war, therefore I am.“

<2> In 1924, 1,165 in-person hate speech events took place in India; 259 were openly calling for violence. Many important BJP leaders, including Modi, his Home Minister Amit Shah, and Yogi Adityanath, the rogue governor of largest state Uttar Pradesh, were involved in these events.

<3> The 2016, the Indian film Sanam Teri Kasam had a Pakistani actress Mawra Hocane as the female protagonist. The film was re-released in February and became highest-grossing re-released Indian film. They are making a sequel but now without Hocane because of the war.

Dosanjh made a great move. He didn’t implore authorities for the film to be released in India but instead had it released worldwide, including Pakistan, where it became the second highest-grossing film in Pakistan’s history. It is also the highest-grossing Punjabi language film internationally. The film has made almost double the money it cost to make the movie.

Dosanjh’s actions will encourage those Indian and Pakistani artists who wants to collaborate to release their work worldwide to cover the cost and make profit internationally, rather than be at the mercy of local politicians’ whims. Indian film Abir Gulaal with Indian actress Vaani Kapoor and Pakistani actor Fawad Khan was to release on May 9 but was postponed indefinitely. The makers should think of forgoing the Indian market and releasing it worldwide if possible and if it won’t hurt them financially.

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

by ANN FOSTER

Sent by Louis XIV, the filles du roi were sent to North America to birth new generations of colonists and help conquer the land.

On September 22, 1663, thirty-six young women arrived in a French colony on the shores of the St. Lawrence River in a region that we now call eastern Canada. While the men of the colony greeted them eagerly, the women were whisked away by an order of nuns already living in the area. These sisters would protect and train the women for their calling as wives and mothers, soon to be matriarchs of all New France, as it was then known. Over the next decade, hundreds more women would make this transatlantic journey, and nearly all remained to marry and bear children. They turned the fur trading colonies into self-sustaining settlements that formed the basis for present-day Quebec.

Today, two-thirds of all Canadians of French descent can trace their lineage to one of these women, widely known as the filles du roi or the King’s Daughters. The name was coined by Marguerite Bourgeoys, founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal, and referred to the dowries that a small percentage of them were provided from Louis XIV, as the king might have given his own daughters. These women and girls, some as young as fourteen, had been recruited for their purported fertility, hardiness, and moral character. They were to become the mothers of a new generation of colonists whose presence in that region of North America would cement France’s dominion over it. If the act of conquering land was men’s domain, the king needed women to create emotional and physical connections to the land itself, ensuring these regions remained under French control.

The challenge facing the king was that the French men already sent to settle parts of New France had mostly become itinerant fur traders. Without a reason to return to one place, such as running a farm or visiting a family, settlements were failing to thrive and were at risk of being lost to the nearby Iroquois or British. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister and advisor, took measures to ensure that wouldn’t happen. In 1670, he issued an edict threatening to rescind hunting licenses and other privileges of unmarried French settlers. Colbert was also aware that a century earlier, the British had successfully implemented a program similar to what became the filles du roi in the Virginia colony. He designed filles du roi in partnership with Jean Talon, the great Intendant of Quebec. Colbert oversaw financing and recruitment for the program while Talon supervised the women upon arrival and saw to it that each was successfully married off.

The newly arrived women had to be able to endure relative isolation, survive winters harsher than they were used to in France, and possess the constitution to bear numerous children. It seems an unlikely option to appeal to many, but the opportunities becoming one of the filles could provide were alluring, particularly among the residents of the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, which served more as an asylum or prison at the time. Some scholars suggest that many of the filles were sex workers, likely due to the Salpêtrière’s later reputation for housing women arrested as such. As Aimie Kathleen Runyan writes, during the time of the filles du roi program, the Salpêtrière provided housing to women and girls suffering from health conditions as well as to orphans, the homeless, and female criminals. The sisters who ran the hospital required a strong work ethic of its residents. Those healthy enough were put through a daily regimen of religious education and physical schooling intended to train them to be pious and obedient. The sisters were familiar with each resident and recommended only those they felt could succeed in Quebec.

JSTOR Daily for more

by SUNIL PANT

The language, symbols and identities of Pride are exported globally – and trapped in limited Western ideals. For true liberation, we must look to Indigenous and Asian cultures, argues Sunil Pant

Every June, rainbow flags bloom like seasonal flowers. ‘Pride Month’ marks the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City but now arrives with sponsored parades, social media campaigns, and institutional performances of allyship around the globe. An important moment of US community resistance has been elevated into the defining myth of global LGBTQIA+ liberation. It is not a good fit. 

In Nepal – as in India, Mexico, Samoa, or Indonesia – our expressions of queerness and liberation did not begin in 1969. Centuries ago, laws imposed by colonial forces criminalised our same-sex relationships, multiple gender identities and varied family structures. After the British boots came American evangelism. Now, INGO, UN, foundation and corporate donor funding are locked into a Western script that continues to erase and restrict diverse identities and forms of resistance.

US and European organisations tell us what liberation should look like, what flags to carry, when to celebrate (even when June brings heatwaves and monsoons), and how to define ourselves – while ignoring local queer traditions, rituals, and festivals. This is not global solidarity. It is soft colonialism.

That tragedy is not only ours to bear. By flattening global queer expression into one Western script, queer people in the global north close their minds to older, more fluid and more inclusive ways of thinking about gender and sexuality. 

Where do hijra, kothi, fa’afafine, muxe, bissu, or ashtime fit into ‘LGBTQIA+’? These are not sub-identities or exotic footnotes captured under English terms with a ‘+’ or a ‘*’. They are sovereign gender categories with spiritual and social depth. For those able to think beyond borders and binaries, they can be a pathway to more liberated futures.

Understanding gender

In many Indigenous and Asian cultures – including ancient Nepalese, South Asian, Native American, Polynesian, and Buddhist traditions – gender is not a fixed, exclusive identity. It is a journey: a natural unfolding or relational reality rooted in body, mind, spirit, and community.

In matriarchal times, before European-Christian impositions, Nepalese cultures recognised (at least) six or seven genders, including singaru, meti, maruni, vipurushika, nastri, kinnar, and kinnari. Buddhist texts mention five. Dhami and Jhankris spiritual healers were traditionally gender-diverse – neither man nor woman; neither ‘cis’ nor ‘trans’. 

Gender variance is embedded in our sacred art and temple carvings. During Ropain Jatra, the rice-planting festival, men dress as women; at Rateuli, a women-only celebration of marriage, some women dress as men. At the Gaijatra festival, celebrated for centuries, gender and sexual minorities still use satire to speak truth to power. 

Red Pepper for more

Dr. Eqbal Ahmad gave this speech on November 4, 1975 at the University of Michigan during the closing session of the three-day “Bicentennial Dilemma: Who’s in Control?” teach-in.

Youtube for more

Youtube for more

LE MONDE

Jean-Pierre Filiu, a French historian who has traveled to the Gaza Strip many times over the years, spent a month in the Palestinian territory from December to January. He answered questions from Le Monde’s readers about what he saw there.

Between December 19, 2024, and January 21, 2025, French historian Jean-Pierre Filiu, who writes a weekly column on the Middle East in Le Monde, was able to go to the Gaza Strip. The professor at Sciences Po university is publishing his eyewitness account in a book, Un historien à Gaza (“A Historian in Gaza”), set to be released this week in French.

On Monday, May 26, Filiu answered questions from Le Monde‘s readers. Here is a translation of the Q&A originally published in a liveblog in French.

Menton: What event shocked you the most during your time in Gaza?

I was in Gaza from December 19, 2024, to February 21, 2025 – a full month of open hostilities, plus two days of truce. The paradox is that the most violent days were those preceding the truce coming into effect, on January 19. The Israelis intensified the bombings, sometimes very close to where I was staying, while the outside world had been celebrating the announcement of a ceasefire since January 15. The most shocking thing I experienced is the gap between the ordeals experienced in Gaza and the outside world’s perception.

Empathie: How are orphans being cared for in Gaza at the moment? Is there any estimate of their numbers?

The tragedy of Gaza’s orphans is one of the worst disasters unfolding within the broader tragedy of the besieged enclave. The number of orphans is the subject of much debate due to the collapse of the health system and the disappearance of entire families, sometimes with only one surviving child. The society, which I once knew to be so protective within its family structures, has itself collapsed under the weight of widespread slaughter and repeated displacements. Wounded orphans are left abandoned in hospitals with no relatives, not even distant ones, coming to claim them. Bands of street children haunt public dumps, scavenging nylon and wood to resell as fuel.

Le Monde for more

by PETER SCHWARZ

On the sidelines of the G7 summit in Canada, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz endorsed Israel’s attack on Iran in an interview with public broadcaster ZDF. He said, “This is the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us. I can only say that I have the utmost respect for the Israeli army and the Israeli leadership for having had the courage to do this.”

In another interview with the ARD public broadcaster, Merz advocated violent regime change in Tehran. “It would be good if this regime came to an end,” he said. If the Iranian regime is not prepared to enter into talks, then “Israel will go all the way.” 

Merz is saying more than he intended. His statement that Israel is doing “the dirty work for all of us” exposes the official propaganda of the government and the media justifying the genocide in Gaza and the attack on Iran as shameless lies. This is not about protecting Jewish life or Israel’s “right to exist,” but about subjugating the entire Middle East to imperialist control.

Trump, Merz, Starmer, Macron, and other imperialist leaders behave like mafia bosses, threatening Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian leaders with murder, the use of bunker-busting weapons, and even nuclear bombs. Israel, meanwhile, is responsible for the “dirty work” reserved for the lowest level of the mafia hierarchy, the picciotti: the underhanded assassination of high-ranking military personnel and scientists, the bombing of residential areas and infrastructure, and the terrorisation of the population.

World Socialist Web Site for more

by AMY GOODMAN, JUAN GONZALES & JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER

What is MAGA imperialism? Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster says that, despite its feints toward anti-imperialist isolationism, President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has coalesced into a “hyper-nationalist” form of populism that rejects the U.S.’s post-WWII adherence to liberal internationalism and promotes dominance over other countries via military power rather than through economic globalization. Foster explains that this “Trump doctrine is opposed to multi-ethnic empires and multi-ethnic nations,” operating under a “racial definition of foreign policy, with the notion that the United States is a white country and other ethnicities don’t belong.” And while some analyses of the Trump coalition locate its base in the “white working class,” in reality this ideology is rooted in the lower middle class, which owns more property and is less opposed to the wealthy capitalist class. “If you go back to the 1930s, to Italy and Germany, it’s the same constituency that drove the fascist movement, but it’s a result of an alliance between big capital… and the lower middle class.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

Amy Goodman: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

President Trump announced on social media Monday a new round of threatened tariffs, ranging from 25 to 40% on imports from 14 countries, including Bangladesh, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, set to take effect August 1st, barring new deals. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened to impose an additional 10% tariff on countries that align themselves with the BRICS group of nations, led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Trump cited the group’s, quote, “anti-American policies.” The threat came as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva kicked off a two-day BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro.

PRESIDENT LUIZ INÁCIO LULA DA SILVA: [translated] So, we don’t want an emperor. Our countries are sovereign. If Trump issues tariffs, other countries have the right to do the same. There is the reciprocity law. I think it’s not responsible for a president from a country like the United States to threaten the world with tariffs on social media. Honestly, there are other forums for the president of a country the size of the United States to talk to other countries.

AG: : This comes as Vice President JD Vance has been promoting Trump’s new foreign policy approach. Vance addressed the Ohio Republican Party last month.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: What I call the Trump doctrine is quite simple. Number one, you articulate a clear American interest. And that’s, in this case, that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. Number two, you try to aggressively, diplomatically solve that problem. And number three, when you can’t solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it, and then you get the hell out of there, before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.

AG: For more, we’re joined by John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at University of Oregon, editor of the Monthly Review, where his new article is headlined “The Trump Doctrine and the New MAGA Imperialism.”

Well, why don’t you lay out your thesis for us, professor John Bellamy Foster? And welcome to Democracy Now!

JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER: Well, thank you.

The Trump doctrine was articulated in the first Trump administration. Normally, the presidential doctrines are determined by the press, who see the administrations operating in a certain way, according to a certain principle, and they designate that as a doctrine. The Trump administration has been different. There was a lot of confusion about Trump foreign policy. Was it–was it isolationist? Was it anti-imperialist?

In the first Trump administration, Michael Anton, who is one of the main MAGAideologues and came from the Claremont Institute, which is one of the primary MAGA institutions, was in the National Security Council, and they basically had him leave the National Security Council in order to formally articulate a Trump doctrine that the media would take seriously and foreign policy experts would take seriously. So, he gave a lecture. He was appointed at Hillsdale College, which is a MAGAinstitution, and he gave a lecture at Princeton University, where he articulated the Trump doctrine, and then that was published in Foreign Policy, the leading foreign policy journal in the United States. And the Trump doctrine is said–and now Michael Anton is the deputy–well, he’s the director of policy planning for the State Department, so he’s the main idea man, essentially assistant secretary of state. He’s the main idea man in the State Department. And he articulated, on behalf of Trump, a doctrine, a Trump doctrine, with four pillars.

The first one was national populism, which is the way in which the MAGA movement designates itself, sort of a neofascist designation, as it resonates with the National Socialism of the Nazi movement. But national populism is the first pillar.

The second pillar is that all nations should be primarily nationalistic in their orientation.

The third one is the opposition to liberal internationalism and to the liberal hegemony of the United States over the world order that was established after the Second World War and has continued to this day. Instead, what is defined is a hyper-nationalist “America first” imperium, where the United States essentially rules the world on its own.

But the fourth pillar is the most important. And Anton went back to Aristotle, who said there were two–three forms of political organization: the tribe or ethnicity, the city-state or the state, and the empire. And empires are defined as multi-ethnic. And the Trump doctrine is opposed to multi-ethnic empires and multi-ethnic nations, and argues that we should–we should determine our foreign policy by ethnicity and, essentially, the tribe. In fact, it’s a racial definition of foreign policy, with the notion that the United States is a white country, and other ethnicities don’t belong, and we’re going to organize our foreign policy, as well as our domestic policy, on that basis.

So, the Trump doctrine was very important. Remember, Anton is now the number one policymaker within the State Department, so this is not a secondary matter.

Monthly Review Online for more

by RIYAD A. SHAHJAHAN & MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

Harvard University is under siege by the Trump administration – and the world is watching. But this case isn’t just an American issue.

It’s part of a global trend: universities cast as enemies and institutions in need of reform. Populist, right-wing governments are blaming universities for tearing at the fabric of nations.

These attacks are part of a broader strategy known as affective nationalism. It occurs when leaders use emotions, not just ideas, to build national identity. Feelings such as fear, pride, nostalgia and resentment are deployed to create a story about who belongs, who doesn’t and who’s to blame.

As scholars who study nationalism, emotion and higher education, we explore the emotional politics behind these attacks.

Global backlash

Much of President Donald Trump’s vision and rhetoric is inspired by Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has waged a culture war on higher education for over a decade, banning gender studies and reshaping university governance. Orbán’s attacks on Central European University expose his hostility to academic freedom, critical thinking and diversity. All are viewed as threats to his nationalist “illiberal democracy.”

Trump followed Orbán’s playbook. On May 22, 2025, his administration declared that Harvard could no longer enroll foreign students. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security statement claimed that university leaders “created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators.” The statement suggested that many of the so-called agitators were foreign students.

Similarly, in India, students at Jawaharlal Nehru University were labeled “anti-national” for protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act, which provides fast-track citizenship to non-Muslim refugees. The students argued that it marginalizes Muslims. Since 2016, the Modi government has increasingly used “anti-national” and sedition charges to silence student and academic dissent.

These labels – “elite,” “foreign” or “anti-national” – are not neutral. They fuel fear, resentment and powerful narratives that frame universities as threats. Harvard, Central European University and Jawaharlal Nehru University have become symbols of broader national anxieties around identity and belonging.

British-Australian feminist scholar Sara Ahmed’s work on the sticky nature of emotions helps reveal the two emotions that often appear in attacks on universities: nostalgia and resentment.

The Conversation for more

by ALEXANDRA WITZE

Nuclear deterrence is no longer a two-player game, and emerging technologies further threaten the status quo. The result is a risky new nuclear age.

The Doomsday Clock — a symbolic arbiter of how close humanity is to annihilating itself — now sits at 89 seconds to midnight, nearer than it has ever been to signalling our species’ point of no return.

Many threats, including climate change and biological weapons, prompted global-security specialists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in Chicago, Illinois, to move the clock’s hands in January. But chief among those hazards is the growing — and often overlooked — risk of nuclear war.

“The message we keep hearing is that the nuclear risk is over, that that’s an old risk from the cold war,” says Daniel Holz, a physicist at the University of Chicago, who advised on the Doomsday Clock decision. “But when you talk to experts, you get the opposite message — that actually the nuclear risk is very high, and it’s increasing.”

From Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine and the simmering tensions between India and Pakistan that flared in May, to the US and Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities in June, the world is not short of conflicts involving one or more nuclear-armed nations.

But it’s not just the number of clashes that have the potential to escalate that are causing consternation. The previous great build-up of nuclear weapons, the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, essentially involved two, reasonably matched superpowers. Now, China is emerging as a third nuclear-armed superpower, North Korea is growing its nuclear arsenal and Iran has enriched uranium beyond what is needed for civilian use. India and Pakistan are also thought to be expanding their nuclear arsenals. Add to this the potential for online misinformation and disinformation to influence leaders or voters in nuclear-armed nations, and for artificial intelligence (AI) to bring uncertainty to military decision-making, and it’s clear that the rulebook has been ripped up.

“Eighty years into the nuclear age, we find ourselves at a reckoning point,” says Alexandra Bell, president and chief executive of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Amid this fraught landscape, scientists are working to prevent the world from annihilation. At a three-day conference in Chicago that started on 14 July — almost exactly 80 years after researchers and the US military tested the first atomic weapon — dozens of scientists, including Nobel laureates from a wide array of disciplines, met to discuss actions to prevent nuclear war. They released a fresh warning about its risks, as well as recommendations for what society can do to reduce them, including calling on all nations to speak transparently to each other about the scientific and military implications of AI.

Dawn of a nuclear age

The emerging multipolar world disrupts a tenet of nuclear security that helped to avoid nuclear war in the past. The principles of nuclear deterrence rest on the assumption that no nation wants to start a war that is bound to have devastating consequences for everyone. This meant having distributed nuclear arsenals that couldn’t be taken out with one strike, diminishing any incentive to strike first, in the knowledge the enemy would strike back and the consequence would be ‘mutually assured destruction’. It also meant clarity among nuclear-armed nations about who had what strike capability, and therefore what the possible consequences of any attack might be. A fragile stability prevailed, thanks to backchannel communications between hostile nations and diplomatic signals designed to avoid misunderstandings that could lead to the accidental pressing of the nuclear button.

Nature for more