The Andean salt flats are known to hold the clues to the origins of life on our planet. They also contain an increasingly coveted, silver coloured alkaline metal: lithium.
Indigenous communities have built a life around salt in Argentina’s Jujuy province for at least 40,000 years. They’ve been steadfast in their resistance against the advances of mining interests that threaten all that surrounds them.
Salinas Grandes is a high-altitude basin spanning the Argentine provinces of Jujuy and Salta. Renowned for its beauty, it is one of the largest salt fields in Latin America
It belongs to what corporations and governments call “the lithium triangle,” which spans Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile and holds over half of the world’s lithium reserves.
“Salt is valuable, it’s a natural resource and we conserve and protect it,” said Julia Cañari, the head of the Pozo Colorado Aboriginal Community, one of the communities near Salinas Grandes, while she makes soup in her kitchen. “It’s our community’s source of work.”
While companies present lithium extraction as a technical process, communities experience it as a tangible loss and, in Salinas Grandes, an existential threat.
Salinas Grandes is an endorheic basin where salt fields and freshwater reserves are interconnected, as the water doesn’t drain to the sea. Lithium mining threatens the freshwater deposits, which are crucial to survival in the otherwise arid climate.
“We don’t talk about lithium, we talk about water,” Cañari said.
Germany has supported Israel during the conflict in Gaza
and has cracked down on the Palestine solidarity movement more actively
than many other countries. These days, it is difficult to have a
pro-Palestine protest in Berlin or anywhere else in Germany without
being attacked by the police, threatened by the government, and accused
of being anti-Semitic by the media. In April, hundreds of police
officers shocked the Palestine Assembly, a popular pro-Palestine event
in Berlin.
British Palestinian Glasgow University rector Ghassan Abu Sitta was
deported back to the United Kingdom after being denied entry into
Germany to attend the conference.
Subsequently,
he was even banned from moving anywhere in the Schengen area. Abu
Sitta, a surgeon who has been volunteering in various Gazan hospitals
since last year, intended to give a lecture about the terrible state of
the Strip’s healthcare system as a result of Israeli attacks. A German
court later revoked the ban. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance
minister, was also barred from entering Germany and was not allowed to
attend the congress over a video link.
History of Germany with Israel
Germany
began making reparations to the state of Israel in 1953, not to
specific Holocaust survivors, but in the form of industrial items,
notably weapons. At the time, the Western bloc, including Germany, was
focused on countering the influence of the Soviet Union. As Germany joined NATO
in 1955 and was incorporated into Western military alliances,
de-Nazification was quietly forgotten. Instead of the original goal of
eradicating the genocidal mentality that led to the Holocaust, an
unqualified support of Israel was adopted. Germany views Israel as its
“raison d’état.”
This rejection of de-Nazification turned the
Nazi Holocaust from a result of the Weimar Republic’s social and
economic crises in Germany into an unexplainable, ahistorical anomaly
that had no origins in the national consciousness of the German people.
It prioritized Hitler and the Nazis’ ascent over politics and class.
Germany
has committed genocide before the Holocaust. General Lothar von
Trotha’s German army massacred 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama
peoples in Southwest Africa between 1904 and 1907. Most of the thousands
who were herded into concentration camps perished there.
Hermann
Goring, Hitler’s deputy, was the son of Heinrich Goring, the colony’s
imperial administrator. After performing horrific experiments on the
prisoners and sending their severed heads back to Germany, Eugen
Fischer, a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics,
trained the Nazi SS physicians, notably Josef Mengele, the leading SS
physician at Auschwitz.
Why does Germany support Israel?
Germany
is fighting anti-Semitism and defending Jewish rights by not stifling
pro-Palestinian opinions. This is evident not only in the speech’s
content but also in Germany’s treatment of anti-Zionist Jews who
advocate for Palestinian rights. For instance, Iris Hefets, a
German-Israeli psychologist in Berlin, was detained on anti-Semitic
allegations in October. Walking by herself while holding a poster that
said, “As an Israeli and as a Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza,” was her
only “crime.”
In the same month, over a hundred German-Jewish
writers, artists, academics, journalists, and cultural workers released
an open letter denouncing Germany’s suppression of pro-Palestinian
speech and charges of anti-Semitism against anyone who criticizes
Israel’s actions, including Jews like them. The dominant climate of
racism and xenophobia in Germany, coupled with a restrictive and
paternalistic philo-Semitism, is what worries us. It specifically
opposes the association of criticism of the state of Israel with
anti-Semitism.
International and legal perspectives on Germany’s support
After
World War II, a de-Nazification process was required before the German
state could be reintegrated into the international community. But this
procedure was quickly dropped. The Cold War took its place. By giving
the newly established “Jewish state,” the Western military outpost in
Palestine, unrestricted and unconditional support, Germany atoned for
its sins against Jews, but not against the Roma. It would have been
incompatible with the necessity to combat the Soviet Union to eradicate
the political institutions that gave rise to the Nazis, namely
imperialism and the German military-industrial complex.
This morning Frontline hosted a webinar on Nepal’s “GenZ Uprising”. While preparing and researching for it, this image given above stopped me in my tracks.
Shot
in Kathmandu on September 9, it shows a street thick with smoke and
energy. At the centre: a man in a bright blue uniform shirt, face hidden
by a red Spider-Man mask, fingers cocked in the superhero’s
web-shooting pose. His shirt bears an insignia hinting at a security or
traffic role. Beside him, a grinning youth in a sailor-style cap draped
in Nepal’s flag. Motorcyclists crowd the lower frame, helmets glinting
as they weave through the protesters; one bike is dressed up with
garlands and stickers. Behind them, a throng of young men raise phones
and planks, their faces alive with fury or delight.
Above it all,
the Federal Parliament looms, half-veiled by black smoke from nearby
fires. The photo catches a collision of carnival and crisis—comic masks
and nationalist symbols clashing with real rage and the scent of state
collapse.
On TV and the web, the videos were louder. Young voices echoed through Kathmandu: “KP Chor, Desh Chhod”
(KP thief, leave the country), they chanted as smoke billowed from the
parliament building and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s residence burned.
If
you’ve followed the news, you know the story. What began as peaceful
protests against a social media ban turned into an uprising after 19
young people were shot dead by security forces. With youth unemployment
at 20.8 per cent and politicians’ children flaunting designer lives on
the very platforms their parents banned, Nepal’s Gen Z took matters into
their own hands. The protests snowballed into a larger political crisis
that might have repercussions for entire South Asia.
The images
scream of democracy’s eternal tension: the gap between promise and
delivery, between those who govern and those who must suffer
“governance”. Some dismiss these as “woke” tantrums; some call it
Nepal’s Jasmine Revolution. Whether one agrees or not, this is democracy
in action—in all its messy, uncertain, chaotic, yet oddly beautiful
form.
When the webinar—hosted by Nirupama Subramanian, who spoke
with the senior journalist R.K. Radhakrishnan and the Kathmandu-based
policy expert Akhilesh Upadhya—ended, I stepped out for tea. At the
stall, I ran into two strangers arguing about a dilapidated bridge
nearby, meant to have been rebuilt years ago. One man sighed: “If this
were in the Gulf, it’d be done in a week. Roads come up overnight
there.” The older man, perhaps in his 60s, set down his samosa. “My
friend,” he said with measured patience, “I know that system. I lived
it. Things get done overnight, yes. But have you thought of the price?
That price is freedom. That region will take decades to reach what we
achieved in 1947.”
His companion, in crisp Malayalam, countered like a WhatsApp forward: “But our systems are corrupt, chaotic, tilted toward wealth and power.” The elder man breathed deep and said. “That’s democracy’s beauty, don’t you think? You see the flaws, debate in the streets, curse leaders, burn effigies, vote them out. Just like in Nepal [he was watching the news on his mobile; he gestured towards the device]. Try that in the Gulf, you’ll see!” He caught my eye with a knowing smile. His friend fell silent, tea cooling in his hand.
Nepal’s
protesters, like that elder man, grasp democracy’s essential truth:
inequalities and anomalies can only be challenged in free societies.
Yes, democracy moves slowly. It frustrates. It disappoints. But nothing
replaces it. Not monarchy, not anarchy. Across the world, the lesson
bears repeating, especially now in India, where the seduction of
authoritarian “efficiency” is growing.
Democracy is young. Universal suffrage—the very heart of it—is barely a century old. Switzerland gave women the vote only in 1971. Saudi Arabia (still not a democracy) in 2015 [actually 2025]. Today, just over 20 per cent of the world’s population lives in fully free societies. The Yale historian Timothy Snyder reminds us in On Tyranny that Europe’s young democracies actually collapsed into fascism within two decades of birth. The American republic lasted longer, but even it needed a civil war to reckon with slavery. India, against predictions, has been one of democracy’s brightest experiments.
A month before Charlie Kirk’s killing, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill Ackman arranged an intervention in the Hamptons during which sources say he and others “hammered” Kirk for the conservative leader’s growing criticism of Israeli influence in Washington. Kirk came away fretting about Israeli “blackmail,” sources say, as he began attending Catholic mass.
Update:After The Grayzone exposed the covert
Hamptons influencer summit, and podcaster Candace Owens provided
additional details about the event, Bill Ackman released a lengthy statement
declaring, “at no time have I ever threatened Charlie Kirk, Turning
Point or anyone associated with him. I have never blackmailed anyone,
let alone Charlie Kirk. I have never offered Charlie or Turning Point
any money in an attempt to influence Charlie’s opinion on anything.”
One of the influencers who participated in the Hamptons
gathering, and was junketed to Israel an all-expenses-paid propaganda
tour soon after, Xaviaer DuRousseau, released his own statement recalling how Charlie Kirk complained about “moral blackmail” during an argument over Israel at the closed-door event.
On September 11, one day after the
assassination of Charlie Kirk, billionaire pro-Israel moneyman Bill
Ackman took to Twitter/X to trumpet his relationship
with the late conservative operative. “I feel incredibly privileged to
have spent a day and shared a meal with @charliekirk11 this summer. He
was a giant of a man.”
The Grayzone has spoken to five
people with intimate knowledge of Kirk’s meeting with Ackman, which was
held in early August. According to one source, Kirk was left upset after
the gathering turned into an “intervention”
where he was “hammered” for his increasingly skeptical views on the US
special relationship with Israel, and for platforming prominent
conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events.
Since publishing this report, The Grayzone has learned from one
attendee of the Hamptons event that Ackman convened the influencers
under the auspices of a discussion about Zohran Mamdani and the supposed
threat he posed to the West if elected mayor of New York. But the
meeting went off the rails when Ackman personally confronted Kirk about
his views on Israel. The public face of UK Lawyers for Israel, Natasha
Hausdorff, joined in the argument, and began “screaming” at Kirk,
according to the attendee.
When his hosts presented him with a
detailed list of every offense he supposedly committed against Israel,
Kirk was “horrified,” said one person. Ackman also allegedly demanded
Kirk rescind his invitation for Tucker Carlson to speak at his upcoming America Fest 2025 in December.
“The whole thing was a disaster,” said an attendee.
The Grayzone reported on September 12, citing a longtime associate of Kirk, that Netanyahu had offered to organize a
massive infusion of pro-Israel money into TPUSA, and that Kirk refused.
Another longtime friend of Kirk has told The Grayzone that the
conservative activist also rejected an offer Netanyahu delivered two weeks before his death to meet with him in Jerusalem.
Kirk, according to one person with inside knowledge of the meeting with Ackman, said he left feeling as though he’d been subjected to “blackmail.”
In a series of text messages with The Grayzone, Ackman described
these account of his meeting with Kirk as “totally false.” He pledged to
release a public statement providing his own account of the event, but
refused The Grayzone’s request for clarification or further details. He
would not accept phone calls from this reporter.
“I think I can easily put this to bed,” Ackman promised, “I have
receipts as they say.” He did not abide when asked to provide the
so-called “receipts.”
In an apparent bid to reinforce the
pro-Israel tone at the Hamptons meeting, Ackman hosted a coterie of
pro-Israel operatives and conservative influencers at the off-the-record
engagement. One was Instagram influencer Xaviaer DuRousseau of Prager U.
Reached by phone by The Grayzone,
DuRousseau sounded flustered when asked about his presence at the
meeting. He repeatedly demanded to know how this reporter obtained his
number, and eventually hung up, refusing to answer questions about the
event.
Several Instagram posts by DuRousseau
show him and his friend, conservative influencer Emily Wilson, in the
Hamptons on August 8 outside Topping Rose House, a posh hotel and restaurant in Bridgehampton, New York.
“When setting up my appointment, I asked about the out-of-pocket cost, and the staff looked at me like I had grown two heads. There was no cost, of course.”
1. “Credit scores. An arbitrary number that you have no control over can bar you from living in a decent area, landing a job, getting fair rates for insurance and loans, and even costing you opportunities to improve your life. Full disclosure: I left the US nearly 15 years ago. I now live in Poland and own my own business with full civil rights and privileges.”
2. “I lived in Northern England for a time on a student work abroad visa. I was in need of birth control, so I went to the doctor. I was offered an implant that wasn’t available in the US until years later. When setting up my appointment, I asked about the out-of-pocket cost, and the staff looked at me like I had grown two heads. There was no cost, of course. When my British roommate later became pregnant with her children years later, her doctor did house calls. She also received a year of maternity leave with a guarantee she could return to her job. Living abroad did a ton to break the spell of ‘American exceptionalism’ and showed me how a ‘we’re #1’ philosophy could blind us to subpar conditions. When I was young, I wanted to move from the US for positive reasons, like adventure. It saddens me that my desire for it is now due to a seemingly worsening quality of life and a tenuous political situation here at home.” —Anonymous
3. “I went to Panama on vacation and accidentally went without my asthma inhaler. I had to do was walk into a pharmacy — with no prescription required — and Albuterol was $11. In the US, with a required prescription, it’s about $150.”
Punishment by tar and feather of Thomas Ditson, who purchased a gun from a British soldier in Boston in March 1775. IMAGE/Interim Archives/Getty Images
Others similarly weighed in. Whoopi Goldberg on “The View” declared that Americans solve political disagreements peacefully: “This is not the way we do it.”
Yet other awful episodes come immediately to mind: President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on Nov. 22, 1963. More recently, on June 14, 2025, Melissa Hortman, speaker emerita of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was shot and killed at her home, along with her husband and their golden retriever.
American politics has long personalized its violence. Time and again,
history’s advance has been imagined to depend on silencing or
destroying a single figure – the rival who becomes the ultimate,
despicable foe.
Hence, to claim that such shootings betray “who we are” is to forget
that the U.S. was founded upon – and has long been sustained by – this
very form of political violence.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy leans
over to assist her husband, John F. Kennedy, just after he is shot in
Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963.
Bettman/Getty Images
Revolutionary violence as political theater
The years of the American Revolution were incubated in violence. One
abominable practice used on political adversaries was tarring and
feathering. It was a punishment imported from Europe and popularized by
the Sons of Liberty in the late 1760s, Colonial activists who resisted British rule.
In seaport towns such as Boston and New York, mobs stripped political
enemies, usually suspected loyalists – supporters of British rule – or
officials representing the king, smeared them with hot tar, rolled them
in feathers, and paraded them through the streets.
The effects on bodies were devastating.
As the tar was peeled away, flesh came off in strips. People would
survive the punishment, but they would carry the scars for the rest of
their life.
By the late 1770s, the Revolution in what is known as the Middle Colonies
had become a brutal civil war. In New York and New Jersey, patriot
militias, loyalist partisans and British regulars raided across county
lines, targeting farms and neighbors. When patriot forces captured
loyalist irregulars – often called “Tories” or “refugees” – they
frequently treated them not as prisoners of war but as traitors,
executing them swiftly, usually by hanging.
In September 1779, six loyalists were caught near Hackensack, New
Jersey. They were hanged without trial by patriot militia. Similarly, in
October 1779, two suspected Tory spies captured in the Hudson Highlands
were shot on the spot, their execution justified as punishment for treason.
To patriots, these killings were deterrence; to loyalists, they were
murder. Either way, they were unmistakably political, eliminating
enemies whose “crime” was allegiance to the wrong side.
Ibtissame Lachgar has reportedly been arrested for the t-shirt with the slogan: “Allah is a lesbian” IMAGE/@IbtissameBetty/Pink NewsThe largest human rights organisation in Morocco, the AMDH, condemned her detention as “a violation of freedom of expression.” IMAGE/Getty
In London, a protest was held at the Moroccan Embassy on the same day, calling for the immediate release of activist Lachgar amid her struggle with cancer.
A Moroccan court has denied the release of feminist activist Ibtissame Lachgar, keeping her behind bars despite serious health concerns, as her trial for “offending Islam” sparks national and international outrage.
On Wednesday, her defence team asked
Rabat’s first instance court to free the 50-year-old on medical grounds,
citing reports that she is undergoing cancer treatment and could face
an arm amputation if urgent surgery is not carried out.
The court denied the request and scheduled the next hearing for 3 September.
At the hearing, Lachgar appeared with her
left arm in a sling, briefly smiling at supporters in the room. She has
been held in solitary confinement at El Arjat prison near Rabat since
her arrest on 12 August.
The co-founder of the Alternative Movement
for Individual Freedoms (MALI) was detained after posting a photo on
social media wearing a T-shirt that read “Allah is lesbian.”
In the caption, she described Islam, “like all religions,” as “fascist, patriarchal, and misogynist.”
If convicted under Article 267-5 of
Morocco’s penal code, which criminalises publicly or online offending of
Islam, Lachgar faces up to five years in prison.
Her sister, Siam Lachgar, who was in
France at the time of the arrest, said she had been worried after seeing
a social media post in which Betty reported cyber harassment, death
threats, and threats of sexual violence.
“Put the T-shirt in the context of Betty’s
whole fight. Knowing her activism in Morocco… She fights for individual
freedoms and women’s rights,” she told French media.
Until now, Lachgar had never been
imprisoned, despite engaging in provocative actions such as distributing
abortion pills banned in Morocco through her collective, which she
co-founded in 2009.
She is a polarising figure in the North
African country, known for high-profile activism in support of women’s
and LGBTQ+ rights.
Her campaigns have included organising a
“kiss-in” outside parliament, advocating for abortion rights, and
challenging conservative religious norms.
Inspired by radical feminist movements
such as Femen, the trained psychologist turned activist has staged other
controversial actions, including supporting a Dutch boat offering
abortions and reclaiming public spaces through civil disobedience.
In 2020, she told Moroccan weekly TelQuel,
“Rights and freedoms have to be taken… It is not by acting cautiously,
politely, or politically correctly that progress will be made.”
Her first prominent action was a 2009 picnic during Ramadan, which led to her first detention.
Tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel is thinking a lot about the Antichrist. IMAGE/X Screengrab
Billionaire tech lord’s sermons warn of the Antichrist while building the surveillance systems that resemble it
Peter Thiel has always thrived on contradiction. The billionaire who built the tools of the modern surveillance state now wants to deliver a series of lectures on the Antichrist.
Four private sessions, sold out in San Francisco, devoted to a figure
long associated with deception and domination. The irony is only
possible to miss if you’ve had your common sense surgically removed.
For decades, Thiel has poured money into technologies that give
governments new powers to watch, measure, and predict the lives of
citizens.
His creations have been less about serving people and more about
sorting them. Databases replace dialogue. Algorithms replace trust. What
once felt like a town square begins to feel like a control grid.
Through Founders Fund,
his venture capital arm, the translucent technocrat bankrolls companies
that reach deep into daily life. From finance to biotech to defense,
the pattern is clear: invest in systems that categorize, codify, and
control.
These are not neutral tools. They shape how people shop, travel, speak, even think. They decide which risks are flagged, which behaviors are rewarded, and which choices are quietly closed off.
Now, Thiel wants to explain the Antichrist to his audience. He warns
that such a figure would not march with horns and firearms but slip in
quietly, using fear of catastrophe—nuclear war, artificial intelligence,
climate collapse—to justify tighter control. He suggests that endless
talk of apocalypse would pave the way for global domination.
But listen closely, and the warning sounds like a self-portrait. Thiel often speaks of catastrophe. He has mused publicly about the inevitability of destruction.
Yet, at the same time, he funds the very machinery that turns dread
into dominion. The contradiction is anything but subtle. It is the
essence of his empire.
For Christians, the idea of the Antichrist carries particular significance. The gospel speaks of freedom, not fear. “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”
Those words from the apostle Paul stand in direct opposition to the
philosophy that governs Thiel’s thinking. Where Scripture emphasizes
love, Thiel emphasizes leverage. Where Christ promised mercy, Thiel
promises might.
Even for readers who don’t share the faith, the tension is impossible
to miss. America was built on suspicion of concentrated power, on the
belief that no man or institution should hold too much sway.
The system of checks and balances, the separation of powers, the
enshrined rights that no government can take away: all were designed to
keep tyranny at bay.
Thiel’s vision runs in the opposite direction. He does not dilute
power; he distills it. He backs systems that promise leaders the godlike
ability to see everything at once. What the founders feared, he builds,
then sells as progress.
Thiel frequently cites
the Ten Commandments, claiming that the first and last—worship God, do
not covet—are the most important. Yet in doing so, he skips past the
commands that bind people to one another: to love your neighbor, to
honor your parents, to reject lies, greed, and violence.
The omissions reveal a pattern. His creed looks upward and inward but
rarely outward. It prizes purity and possession, while neglecting the
call to kindness and kinship.
