Category: Uncategorized

by TARIQ ALI

The expansion of the war from Palestine to Iran, which began on 13 June, signals an Israeli obsession persisting for four decades. As the Trump administration was negotiating in bad faith with Iran over its nuclear programme, the Israeli regime took advantage of an interval to bomb Tehran, assassinating leading scientists, a senior general and other officials, some of them engaged in the talks. After a few unconvincing denials, Trump admitted that the US had been informed of the attack ahead of time. Now the West is backing Israel’s latest onslaught, despite what Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump-appointed Director of National Intelligence, said as recently as 25 March: ‘The Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.’  

The IAEA inspectors know full well that there are no nuclear weapons. They have simply been acting as willing spies for the US and Israel, providing pen-portraits of the senior scientists who have now been killed. Iran has belatedly realised that it was pointless letting them into the country and a parliamentary bill has been drafted to throw them out. The country’s leadership had nothing to gain from sacrificing this part of their sovereignty, yet they clung to the lame half-hope, half-belief that if they did as the Americans wanted, they might get the sanctions lifted and a US-guaranteed peace.  

Their own historical experience should have taught them otherwise. Iran’s elected government was overthrown with covert Anglo-American aid in 1953 and its secular opposition destroyed. After a quarter of a century of Western-backed dictatorship, the Pahlavi dynasty was finally overthrown. But a year after the 1979 Revolution, the West – as well as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – funded Iraq to start a war against Iran and topple the new regime. It lasted eight years and left half a million people dead, mostly on the Iranian side. Hundreds of Iraqi missiles hit Iranian cities and economic targets, especially the oil industry. In the war’s final stages, the US destroyed nearly half the Iranian navy in the Gulf and, for good measure, shot down a civilian passenger plane. Britain loyally helped in the cover-up.  

Since then, the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy has always put the regime’s survival at its centre. During the Iran–Iraq war, the clerics had no hesitation in buying arms from their avowed enemies, Israel included. Their solidarity with oppositional forces has been fragmentary and opportunist, devoid of any consistent anti-imperialist strategy, except in their lonely but crucial capacity as a defender of Palestinian rights, in a region where every single Arab government has capitulated to the hegemon. On 15 June, soon after the Israeli attack, there was a remarkable procession of over fifty donkeys in Gaza, the animals garlanded and covered with silk and satin robes; as they were led down the street, children stroked them with genuine affection. Why? ‘Because’, explained the organiser, ‘they have been more help to us than all the Arab states put together’.  

Following the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Iranians no doubt hoped that collaborating with Washington – clearing the path for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar – would win them some respite. In many respects, the ‘War on Terror’ was not a bad time for the Islamic Republic. Its standing in the region soared together with oil prices, its enemies in Baghdad and Kabul were brutally removed, and the Shia groups it had been backing since 1979 were brought to power in neighbouring Iraq. It’s difficult to imagine that neither the Bush politburo (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice) nor its unofficial US-based Arab advisors (Kanaan Makiya, Fouad Ajmi) could have foreseen this outcome, but that appears to have been the case. The first non-Western foreigner to visit the Green Zone as an honoured guest was President Ahmedinejad. 

Both Sunni and Shia nationalists came together to oppose the occupying forces, firing rockets and mortar at the US embassy. It was Iranian state intervention that split this opposition, ensuring that a united Iraqi resistance movement descended into a futile and destructive civil war. Muqtada al-Sadr, a key Shia leader in Iraq, had been shocked by the atrocities in Fallujah and led a series of popular uprisings against the US coalition. At the height of the conflict, he was invited to visit Iran and ended up staying – or being kept there? – for the next four years. The subsequent entry of ISIS onto the battlefield strengthened this tactical US–Iran alliance, with the Pentagon providing air support to aid the assaults being carried out by the 60,000 strong Shia militants on the ground.

Most of these forces were under the indirect command Qassem Soleimani, who was in regular communication with General David Petraeus. Soleimani was a gifted strategist, yet susceptible to flattery, especially from the Great Satan. He was the main thinker behind the expansionist tactics deployed by Tehran after 9/11, but his tendency to boast to his US counterparts alienated some of them, especially when he explained accurately how the Iranians had foreseen and exploited most US mistakes in the region. Spencer Ackerman’s description rings true: 

He was pragmatic enough to cooperate with Washington when it suited Iranian interests, as destroying the Caliphate did, and was prepared to clash with Washington when it suited Iranian interests, as with Soleimani’s backstopping of Syria’s Bashar el Assad or earlier with IED modifications that killed hundreds of US troops and maimed more. Soleimani’s impunity infuriated the Security State and the Right. His success stung.  

Yet even as Iran’s regional power increased, social tensions at home were rising. The revolution had excited hopes at first, but the ensuing war with Iraq was debilitating. Partly for this reason, Iran took a tougher stance on the nuclear question, asserting its sovereign right to enrich uranium. Domestically, this was seen as a means of reuniting the population. Externally, it has a perfectly logical defensive purpose: the country was in a vulnerable position, encircled by atomic states (India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Israel) as well as a string of American bases with potential or actual nuclear stockpiles in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Nuclear-armed US aircraft carriers and submarines patrolled the waters off its southern coast.  

Totally forgotten in the West is the fact that the nuclear programme was an initiative first taken by the Shah in the 1970s with US support. One of the companies involved was a fiefdom of Dick Cheney, Bush’s sleazy Vice President. Khomeini halted the project when he came to power, considering it un-Islamic. But he later relented and operations restarted. As the programme ramped up in the mid-2000s, Iran and its supreme leader found that their attempts to placate Washington had come to nothing. They were still in the West’s crosshairs. The Bush White House gave the impression that either a direct US strike against Iran, or an attack via its tried-and-tested regional relay, Israel, might soon be on the cards. The Israelis, for their part, were virulently opposed to anyone challenging their nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Iran’s leader was described by the Israeli government and its loyal media networks as a ‘psychopath’ and a ‘new Hitler’. It was a hurriedly manufactured crisis, of the sort in which the West has become a specialist. The hypocrisy was breathtaking. The US had nuclear weapons, as did the UK, France and Israel; yet Iran’s search for the technology required for the lowest grade of nuclear self-defence provoked moral panic.  

In the scramble by European powers to enhance their standing with Washington following the invasion of Iraq, France, Germany and Britain were keen to prove their mettle by forcing Tehran to accept stringent limits on its nuclear activity. The Khatami regime immediately capitulated, imagining it was really being invited in from the cold. In December 2003, they signed the ‘Additional Protocol’ demanded by the EU3, agreeing to a ‘voluntary suspension’ of the right to enrichment guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Again, it made no difference. Within months, the IAEA condemned them for having failed to ratify it and Israel was boasting of its intention to ‘destroy Natanz’. In the summer of 2004, a large bipartisan majority in the US Congress passed a resolution for ‘all appropriate measures’ to prevent an Iranian weapons programme and there was speculation about an ‘October surprise’ in the runup to that year’s election.  

At the time, I argued inthe Guardian that ‘to face up to the enemies ranged against Iran requires an intelligent and far-sighted strategy – not the current rag-bag of opportunism and manoeuvre, determined by the immediate interests of the clerics’. A number of liberal and socialist Iranian intellectuals wrote back from Tehran to express strong agreement, especially with my conclusion:

Side Car–New Left Review for more

by MAX BLUMENTHAL & WYATT REED

Top Israeli lawmakers have accused their government of laundering massive sums through a shadowy network of US humanitarian and mercenary orgs. The weaponized aid initiative is the linchpin of Israel’s plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza by forcing the starving population into concentration camp-like hubs.

Israel’s scheme to commandeer aid distribution in Gaza ended in chaos on May 27, with Israeli soldiers reportedly opening fire on stampeding crowds of hungry Palestinians after just 8000 boxes of rations were handed out by an opaque organization calling itself the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Thousands of starved Gazans stormed the dystopian Israeli-American aid complex in west Rafah after being forced to stand in endless queues under the scorching sun inside a fenced camp, subjected to biometric surveillance.

The US-Israeli backed “Gaza Humanitarian… pic.twitter.com/DaYbaOblxb

— Gaza Notifications (@gazanotice) May 27, 2025

Founded this February in Switzerland under a cloud of mystery, GHF serves as an umbrella for a network of private mercenary firms which Israel is using to supplant the role of the United Nations in feeding Palestinians after bringing them to the brink of starvation.

At the moment, the public has no idea who is funding the opaque aid boondoggle. A GHF spokesman told the Washington Post “the foundation has already secured $100 million from an undisclosed donor.” 

Right-wing Israeli opposition figure and Member of Knesset Avigdor Lieberman proclaimed that GHF’s mysterious financial angel was, in fact, the Israeli government. “The money for humanitarian aid comes from the Mossad and the Ministry of Defense,” Lieberman wrote on Twitter/X, complaining, “Hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of Israeli citizens.”

Israeli opposition figure and former Deputy PM Avigdor Lieberman says the Mossad and Israeli Defense Ministry are covertly funding the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the aid boondoggle founded in Switzerland and run by a former USAID administrator with Trump admin political cover pic.twitter.com/tOWa8E6HzM

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 27, 2025

Yair Lapid, a Member of Knesset and de facto leader of Israel’s loyal opposition, has accused the Israeli government of funding two “shell companies,” pointing to GHF and the private mercenary firm, Safe Reach Solutions, which was founded by former CIA field operative Phillip Reilly. Two former US officials told the Qatari-owned outlet Middle East Eye that Reilly “had won the trust of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several Israeli businessmen close to him.”

If true, this would mean Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus is effectively laundering massive sums of money through a weaponized aid scheme that forms the linchpin of its plan to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza. A leaked internal GHF document acknowledged that the food distribution centers and residential compounds it was constructing in Gaza could be perceived as “‘concentration camps’ with biometrics.’” 

The GHF model appears integral to Israel’s stated plan to occupy 75% of the Gaza Strip, forcing starving and homeless Palestinians into what its military has branded as “humanitarian islands” designed to “divide and rule” the decimated enclave. It is also a clear attempt at replacing UNRWA, the United Nations agency that has tended to the needs of Gaza’s refugee population since 1949, and which the Israeli Knesset designated as a terrorist organization in 2024.

GHF’s creation can be traced directly to the Israeli government’s COGAT office, which presides over the siege of Gaza, as well an Israeli entrepreneur named Liran Tancman, who was described in one report as “a reservist in the IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit, who called for using biometric identification systems outside the distribution hubs to vet Palestinian civilians.” 

The Gray Zone for more

by JINOY JOSE P.

“I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes…”

This is the opening stanza of “I, Too” by Langston Hughes, a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance. As you can see, the poem speaks powerfully about racial inequality, identity, exclusion, and, of course, resistance.

Obviously, Hughes’ kitchen is more than a room. It’s a metaphor for the spaces where societies have historically banished those deemed different, dangerous, “disgusting” or simply inconvenient. The act of sending someone to eat in the kitchen when company comes is “othering” in its most domestic, mundane form. Yet this simple gesture contains the entire infrastructure of exclusion.

The term “othering” itself is relatively recent, coined in academic circles, but the practice is as old as the first human who pointed at their neighbour and said, “That one’s not like us”. It’s the psychological and social process by which we create an “us” by defining a “them”—turning human beings into simplified categories that justify everything from mild social awkwardness to genocide.

Edward Said’s groundbreaking 1978 work Orientalism, which we read mainly as a critique of Western scholarship, also told us about how knowledge itself could become a weapon of othering. Said showed how European scholars created an entire academic discipline around the idea that the “East” was fundamentally different: exotic, mysterious, backwards, and, crucially, in need of Western guidance. The Orient became not a place but a projection, a screen onto which the West could project its own fantasies and fears.

What made Said’s analysis so devastating was how he showed that this prejudice was dressed up as objective scholarship, complete with footnotes and university chairs. The “Oriental” was constructed as eternally different, trapped in time, unable to speak for themselves. It was othering with a PhD.

The academic othering had real-world consequences. As Said noted: “Every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.” The knowledge produced in European universities justified colonial rule, military intervention, and economic exploitation. The Orient needed to be managed, civilised, and controlled. For its own good, of course.

Frantz Fanon, writing from his experience as a Black psychiatrist in colonial Algeria, understood othering from the inside out. In Black Skin, White Masks, he described the psychological violence of being constantly seen as Other. “When people like me, they like me ‘in spite of my colour’. When they dislike me; they point out that it isn’t because of my colour. Either way, I am locked into the infernal circle.”

The Black person, Fanon said, was forced to see themselves through white eyes, to internalise the very gaze that diminished them. This created what Fanon called a “sociogenic” trauma. In simple words, this is psychological damage inflicted not by individual pathology but by social structure itself.

This is why the kitchen where Hughes’ darker brother eats alone becomes a state of mind, a way of understanding oneself as fundamentally displaced from the main table of humanity.

Frontline for more

by ZOHRAN MAMDANI

New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani says New Yorkers “are ready for a new generation of leadership that puts working people first.”

There are over three thousand New Yorkers here this evening — and thousands more watching from home. New Yorkers who believe that living here shouldn’t be a daily grind of anxiety. New Yorkers who are ready to turn the page on years of corruption and incompetence. To reject the politics of distraction and fear, of big money and small vision, of cowardice and collaboration in the face of Trump’s authoritarianism. New Yorkers who are ready for a new generation of leadership that puts working people first.

My brothers and sisters, you are the beating heart of this campaign. You have climbed six floor walkups and braved the pouring rain to canvass our city, sharing our message with the very New Yorkers you’ve lived alongside for years but never had the chance to meet. And make no mistake, this campaign is reaching every corner of this city.

I see the work each of you do when New Yorkers wave excitedly from bus windows and shout “freeze the rent” from moving cars.

I see it when volunteers who have never participated in politics before dedicate their every Sunday night to spreading our message. I see it when thousands of New Yorkers post proud screenshots of their first ever ballots. And I feel it when the aunties and uncles who have long felt abandoned by a broken status quo pull me aside to tell me that finally, they’re excited to believe again.

We stand on the verge of a victory that will resonate across the country and the world. Make no mistake: this victory will be historic, not just because of who I am — a Muslim immigrant and proud democratic socialist — but for what we will do: make this city affordable for everyone.

I think of a woman I met on the BX33 in the Bronx, who said to me: “I used to love New York — but now it’s just where I live.” We’re going to make this city one that working people can love once again.

That’s who I’m thinking about tonight: the New Yorkers who make this city run. For after this rally, as many of us sleep, millions of our neighbors will step out onto moon-lit streets across our city.

Nurses working the night shift will put on their scrubs and save lives. City workers will clean subway stations and pick up our trash. Office buildings will be made new again, as the midnight shift scrubs and polishes in the dark.

Many of these New Yorkers are immigrants, who traveled to this city from faraway countries with nothing in their pockets except a dream of a better life. And even more of them will spend the entire night tirelessly working, and return home carrying the burden that it still isn’t enough. The sun rises, the bills continue to climb, and the stress never seems to fade.

If New York truly is the city that never sleeps, we deserve a mayor who fights for those of us who labor at every single hour of the day. I will be that mayor.

When we launched this campaign on a cold October evening, few thought we could win. Only a couple more could even pronounce my name. Andrew Cuomo still can’t.

The so-called experts said we’d be lucky to break 5 percent. But I always knew that we would build a campaign like this.

So when a disgraced former governor questions whether or not we can lead this city, I look at our campaign and I know the answer.

Over a million doors knocked. More than 40,000 volunteers. A movement that the pundits and politicians had written off, now on the precipice of toppling a political dynasty. And because of that, we will win a city that we can afford.

But what does winning look like?

It looks like a rent-stabilized retiree who wakes up on the first of every month, knowing the amount they’re going to pay hasn’t soared since the month before.

Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the rent.

It looks like a single mom who can drop her kids off at school and know she won’t be late to work, because her bus will arrive on time and cost nothing at all.

Jacobin for more

by NATE BEAR

Last week Microsoft admitted providing large amounts of AI and cloud storage services to Israel during its genocide of Gaza, but said an internal investigation found no evidence the IDF “used these services to target or harm Palestinians.”

This is not a serious claim and no one should take it seriously.

Just as Nazi Germany’s crimes could not have been committed without the technology IBM provided to track, round-up and murder Jews, Romani people and the disabled, Israel’s apartheid and genocide of the Palestinians would not be possible without Microsoft.

This week it was also revealed that Microsoft disabled the email account of the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan, impeding the court’s work on executing the arrest warrant for Netanyahu and other senior Israeli leaders.

This is no surprise.

The links between Microsoft and Israel are so long, deep and extensive it can be hard to see where Microsoft ends and the Israeli state begins.

Microsoft employs more than one thousand ex-IDF soldiers and intelligence officers in its offices in Israel, and dozens of ex-IDF in its global headquarters in Redmond, Seattle, and at its offices in Miami, San Francisco, Boston and New York. My investigation, drawing on an extensive list of names provided by a source, has identified well over three hundred former Israeli intelligence personnel who are currently working at Microsoft.

Current Microsoft employees in the US who had significant roles in the IDF include:

• Jonathan Bar Or, a principal security researcher for Microsoft at its Redmond HQ. He spent six and half years in the IDF, leaving in 2015.
• Eitan Shteinberg, a senior manager working on Microsoft’s cloud platform in its downtown Bellevue office. Shteinberg is a dedicated soldier for Israel, spending over a decade in the IDF across numerous stints. He also worked for Israeli arms company Elbit.
• Roy Rubinstein, based in Boston and who leads Microsoft’s data analytics platform Fabric. He spent over nine years in the IDF ‘focused on state of the art technologies for autonomous vehicles and fast paced development for special units.’
• Joseph Berenbilt based in Pennsylvania who works on the Microsoft Azure system implicated in the genocide was ‘an operator in an elite Israeli special operations combat unit.’

The extensive collaboration between Microsoft and Israel, including its employment of at least one thousand Israelis, has been confirmed previously by Israel lobby groups. The full list of ex-IDF I’ve identified working for Microsoft in the US can be found here.

The collaboration is long-standing and over the years Microsoft has been intensely focused on expanding its links to Israel. This focus has resulted in Microsoft buying seventeen Israeli tech companies since the year 2000, all of which were founded by former intelligence officers in the IDF’s spy unit. The company spent billions on these acquisitions, and made the founders, all of whom are digital architects of apartheid, extremely rich in the process. These acquisitions also deliver billions to Israel in tax revenues, keeping an economy reliant on the IDF-to-US-tech-giant pipeline, afloat.

Microsoft’s most recent acquisition of an Israeli start-up was web tracking and analytics company Oribi in 2022, whose founder, Iris Shoor, served in Israeli intelligence from 1999 to 2001.

The full list of companies which, once again, were all founded by former IDF intelligence unit personnel, is below.

• WebAppoint – 2000
• Maximal – 2001
• Peach – 2002
• Pelican – 2003
• Whale Communications – 2006
• Gteko – 2007
• 3DV Systems – 2009
• Aorato (Advanced Threat Analytics) – 2014
• Adallom (Microsoft App Cloud Security) – 2015
• Secure Island Technologies – 2015
• Equivio – 2015
• N-trig – 2015
• Hexadite – 2017
• Cloudyn – 2017
• CyberX – 2020
• Peer5 – 2021
• Oribi – 2022

Also worth an honourable mention is Amdocs, founded in the 1980s by IDF veterans. In 2023 Amdocs signed an agreement with Microsoft to build a new platform for the telecommunications industry. Despite being a multi-billion dollar company, Amdocs is secretive and its executives rarely give interviews. One reason is its shady past. In the early 2000s the company was suspected to be spying on White House and State Department communications, operating essentially as a front for the Mossad. The suspicions were strong enough for US counterintelligence to open an investigation, but they supposedly found no evidence of spying. In any case, Amdocs will be at home working with Microsoft, the collaboration bolstering the connections between Israelis and Israeli-Americans who have served in the IDF.

Given the vast number of former IDF and Israeli spies employed by Microsoft, and given the way we know Israel has used AI and big data in both Gaza and the West Bank, the claim that Microsoft’s services haven’t harmed a single Palestinian is simply not credible.

It was recently reported that the system used by the IDF to manage the population registry and movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, called ‘Rolling Stone,’ which is integral to apartheid, is maintained by Microsoft Azure. Other reporting by +972 magazine, an independent outlet based in Israel-Palestine, found that Microsoft employees work closely with units in the Israeli army to develop products and systems, often embedding themselves within the IDF for months at a time. The same outlet also reported that Israel’s top information technology officer, Racheli Dembinsky, when presenting at a conference in Tel Aviv, described AI as providing Israel “very significant operational effectiveness” in Gaza as the logo of Microsoft Azure appeared on a large screen behind her. We also know that Israel relies on big data and AI to churn out lists of names for assassination, and we know, from the daily videos of death and destruction, and from UN bodies working in Gaza, that many of those killed by Israel have been children.

Microsoft employs large numbers of people who quite literally helped build the digital infrastructure underpinning a genocidal apartheid state. Many of these people continue their work to further the goal of ethnic cleansing and Israeli domination of the region, only now as civilians for Microsoft (although in some cases as de facto IDF, embedded in the Israel army).

Far from being harmless, these people are the architects of harm.

Microsoft has helped enable some of the worst crimes against humanity we’ve ever seen. Their claim they’ve exonerated themselves via an internal investigation is laughable and smells of a company in panic mode as the consequences begin to dawn on senior management.

Do Not Panic for more

Norman Finkelstein breaks down how Israel’s “humanitarian aid” to Gaza was a smokescreen for a massacre — a prediction he made on Piers Morgan. He explores global fallout, real left politics & AI.

In this explosive interview:

• Why the Gaza aid drops were never humanitarian
• How Israel’s actions are reshaping U.S., Europe & Arab world responses
• Finkelstein critiques identity politics and warns the real left
• Why ChatGPT is driving a wedge between him and his students

Youtube for more

by ANTANASIJEVIC ANASTAZIJA GOVEDARICA, KRSTIC JANA

Members of the Centre for Girls from Niš believe that school philosophy must not remain trapped in canons that exclude women and other marginalised authors, and that it must become a living and engaged practice of critical thinking about the contemporary world. On 7 May, they submitted a proposal to the Institute for Education Improvement requesting the introduction of gender equality themes, feminist deconstruction, and intersectionality into philosophy teaching in Serbian secondary schools.

The project itself was initiated by women philosophers who never received feminist education during their formal education. It represents a response to centuries of neglect regarding women’s contributions to philosophical thought, as well as the need to offer schools content that reflects contemporary social issues—such as gender equality, marginalisation, and the systemic invisibility of certain groups in the philosophical canon.

The project is led by Jana Krsti?, a PhD student in philosophy whom we interviewed. The team includes Jelena Joksimovi?, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology, Natalija Petrovi?, Master of Philosophy, Saška Stankovi?, philosophy teacher, and Bojana Vuleti?, political scientist.

Why is it important to introduce themes of gender equality, feminist deconstruction, and intersectionality into Serbian school curricula?

The crisis in Serbia’s educational system has been in the public eye for some time. After the trajic shooting incident at the “Vladislav Ribnikar” Primary School two years ago,[1] this crisis surfaced in daily politics. Despite all the protests then, and today’s blockades and strikes by education workers, there have been virtually no changes to the education system. In fact, there have been no changes to the education system for decades, although the world we live in has changed dramatically.

Our education system needs serious reform. Research by KOMS shows that nearly two-thirds of young people do not believe they have gained relevant knowledge and skills that would prepare them for later life after completing secondary school.

When we talk about philosophy as a subject, according to the current curriculum (Official Gazette of RS 4/2020), the main goal is to develop critical thinking. However, many of the topics on which students should sharpen their critical minds are not current, leaving students unprepared to critically observe reality. The oppression of certain social groups, the history of marginalisation based on gender, class, skin colour, sexuality, and the like, as well as gender roles that do not leave much freedom for individuals in a patriarchal society, are integral parts of our everyday life.

If we aim to develop critical thinking, we cannot and must not omit all these interpretations of reality from the canon. The questions of what it means to be a woman/man and how women/men should behave and what they should do today are answered by parents, schools, media, the work environment, peers… Thus, the entire society constructs our identity by telling us what we are and what we are not, while the task of philosophy is to teach us to critically examine all of this.

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres for more

DEMOCRACY NOW

Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his predecessors used to say in private.”

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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.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to renew Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, saying the Israeli military will return to, quote, “intense fighting” unless Hamas agrees to release all remaining hostages by Saturday noon. This comes after President Trump said “all hell is going to break out” if the hostages aren’t freed. Hamas has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday met with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House, where Trump repeated his threat to take over Gaza and displace the entire Palestinian population. Reporters questioned Trump about his Gaza proposal.

REPORTER 1: Mr. President, you said before that the U.S. would buy Gaza, and today you just said we’re not going to buy Gaza.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re not going to have to buy. We’re going to — we’re going to have Gaza. We don’t have to buy. There’s nothing to buy. We will have Gaza.

REPORTER 1: What does that mean?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: There’s no reason to buy. There is nothing to buy. It’s Gaza. It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it.

REPORTER 2: Mr. President, take it under what authority? It is sovereign territory.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Under the U.S. authority.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump, sitting next to a grimacing King Abdullah of Jordan, who later wrote that they will not accept the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And the president of Egypt, President Sisi, canceled his trip to the White House next week after these comments.

We’re joined now by Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, author of over 50 books, including, just out, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024.

Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us on this side of the pond. But I do have to ask you: Mick Jagger wrote that Rolling Stones song for you, “Street Fighting Man”?

TARIQ ALI: Yeah, he wrote it and sent it to me, a handwritten version, saying, “Could you put this in the paper? I just wrote this for you.” I edited a radical newspaper at the time. “And the BBC are refusing to play this song.” So, we did publish the song. And, of course, a few weeks later, the BBC did play it. I mean, that was a time when politics and culture, radical politics, radical culture, were very mixed up together, in a good sense.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s go back to Gaza. You have President Trump doubling, doubling, tripling, quadrupling down, saying he doesn’t even have to buy Gaza, he’ll have it, he’ll take it. He’s also said, originally said, “The world’s people will be there, yes, including Palestinians,” now, “No, Palestinians have no right of return.” Your response to what’s going on there?

TARIQ ALI: It is so appalling, Amy, what is going on now. Trump said, says it in public, what his predecessors used to say in private, that, effectively, they are going to let Israel have its way, both in Gaza and, believe you me, in the West Bank. They will both be ethnically cleansed. That has been Israeli policy for decades, and now they feel they’ve had leaders in the United States. Trump is, of course, shameless and open about it. Biden did exactly the same thing. For six months, Hamas had agreed to the ceasefire plan. Netanyahu didn’t want a ceasefire, and Biden backed him.

So, one problem we have today, that the reason you have Trump is because the previous administration was so weak-willed and so weak-minded, incapable of doing anything, whereas in this very country we had Reagan, Bush, Truman calling Israel to heel when they exceeded what was considered to be decent, honorable, according to United States policies. When they refused to obey, they were called to heel. Neither Biden and now Trump calling these people, “Enough. The whole world has seen what you’re up to. Enough. We will not tolerate it.” Netanyahu threatening to break the ceasefire, and the response of the United States president is what? The response is nothing to do with the ceasefire, but “We’re going to take Gaza. We can.” The Israelis have got it for you by killing over 100,000 people. “And now we’ll do with it as we please.”

I mean, if this is the way the United States Empire is going to carry on functioning, there will be more and more — not immediately — there will be more and more resistance. If even the king of Jordan and Sisi in Egypt, who have so far backed the United States, are getting slightly scared, it’s not because they’ve changed greatly. It’s they are scared there will be an uprising in their countries. Jordan is three-quarters Palestinian anyway. And the Egyptian masses are seething. So, you have a really extremely serious situation building up in the Middle East, where they publicly, in front of everyone, want to expel the Palestinians. No cover-up. Netanyahu says, “We’re going to do it.” The U.S. president supports him.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, the famous Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said was a friend of yours. You’re write about him in your memoir. Said was prophetic in many ways in terms of his skepticism of the possibility of a two-state solution. What is your sense of how he would have responded to what’s happening today?

TARIQ ALI: Well, yeah, Edward was a very dear friend. We often discussed Palestine. And he felt, as did many others, that the only serious solution for that region was a one-state solution with equal rights for all its citizens — male, female, Jews, non-Jews, etc. — that that was the only way we could proceed, because a two-state solution had become a joke. I mean, if you look what’s been happening in Gaza for a year — an open genocide — if you see what they’re starting to do to the West Bank now, a two-state solution is impossible. No one will believe in it.

Democracy Now for more

In-Depth Interview with Tariq Ali on His New Book, “You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024”

DEMOCRACY NOW

We speak at length with Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker. He is an editor of the New Left Review and the author of over 50 books, including his latest, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980–2024.

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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.

We continue with Part 2 of our conversation with Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, author of over 50 books, including, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024. He has just come to the United States, did a big event at the Brooklyn Public Library, interviewed by our own Nermeen Shaikh, who has known him for decades.

I want to really focus on the book. I mean, your years of antiwar activism, your writing, your involvement with the arts. First, start with the title, You Can’t Please All.

TARIQ ALI: Well, it’s our life as dissidents, Amy, you know, constantly going against mainstream opinions of politics on a global and domestic scale. And this is a plea to people who, you know, think, “Maybe we should move. The world is not looking in our direction.” And it’s a message for them and many others, saying, “You can’t please all. You have to say what you want to say. Don’t try and please anyone. Just speak the truth.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq, this is a sprawling memoir, over 800 pages, but about a third of the way into the book, you have a section on your family, which talks about how you became engaged in politics in your home environment. Could you talk about that a little bit?

TARIQ ALI: Well, I was very lucky. My sort of extended family was an old feudal family, pretty conservative in politics. None of them were religious extremists in any sense, but they were conservatives. And what would have happened had my parents not turned out different, I didn’t know, because that shaped my biography considerably — is that in the late ’20s and ’30s, when India was still occupied by the British, both my parents became radicals, even though they belonged to the same family. And my father joined the Communist Party in the ’30s, my mother later on. So our house was filled with two types of people: one, those related to the family, who could be chiefs of police, generals, leading politicians, etc. — usually, one had to be polite to them, though I avoided mixing in that company too much — and, secondly, trade union leaders, peasant leaders, poets, Bohemians of every sort, who were great fun and didn’t patronize us, even when we were children. And that was my parents’ milieu, politically speaking. And so I grew up in that. There was no big rebellion, as far as I was concerned, against my parents, except in the sense that they were orthodox CP members, and when I came to Oxford, I became a Trotskyist, which I think irritated them, but they took it. So, it had an effect on me.

My first meeting was attending a May Day rally in 1949 when I was under 6 years of old, and the big chant at the rally was “The Chinese are going to win.” China’s revolution was on the march, and everyone was chanting, “China will win! Long live Mao Zedong!” And, of course, sitting looking at China in 2025, it’s an obsession with the United States now and the West, because this country has taken off in a huge way and is seen now as the biggest economic rival to the United States. So, one wonders whether a military solution will be attempted there. It would be totally crazy and would lead to a world war, if some crazies from here tried it. So let’s hope they don’t and they keep the competition to an economic level. But that was my first big meeting which I attended. And those chants of the people for China still echo in my ears sometimes.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I’m wondering also, you spent so much of your life in the U.K. and the — probably the greatest demographic change of the 20th and early 21st century is the migration of people from the Global South to the metropolises of the colonizer nations. To what degree has Indian and Pakistani migration changed or transformed the United Kingdom?

TARIQ ALI: To a considerable extent. For one thing, Juan, when I arrived in Britain to study at university in ’63, the food was truly awful. It was so bad that it was impossible to eat. I had to teach myself how to cook. But one of the great contributions of migrants from all parts of the world, especially South Asia, but also the Caribbean, has been that the food culture of Britain has been totally transformed. I don’t think future generations, whatever the color of their skin, will be able to live without this food and revert to what was being eaten during the war years and after.

Democracy Now for more

by AMMAR ALI JAN

Now that the dust has settled after the battle between India and Pakistan – the most significant aerial conflict between the two countries to date – it is worth reflecting on its wider significance. What were its origins and how will it affect the politics of the region? The immediate trigger was the terror attack in Pahalgam carried out by Kashmiri militants in late April, in which 26 tourists were killed. The Indian government accused its Pakistani counterpart of having orchestrated the shooting. Pakistan denied the allegations and offered to launch a joint investigation, but the Indian political class was implacable, and began beating the drum for war. Pakistan’s military high command declared that the country would retaliate against any aggression, raising the possibility of nuclear confrontation. It was not long before the two sides began to exchange fire, leaving 31 dead over the next four days.

The conflict erupted on 7 May, when India fired a barrage of missiles at so-called ‘terrorist sites’ inside Pakistan. More than two dozen civilians were killed, including at least one child. Pakistan’s military responded by deploying Chinese-manufactured J10 aircraft armed with PL-15 missiles – which meant that the conflagration was, on one level at least, a test of the PRC’s military hardware against that of the West. As reports began to circulate that five Indian jets had been downed in the battle, some defence analysts remarked that the real winner of the skirmish was China.  

Both sides immediately claimed victory after this initial round of hostilities. Yet hopes of a swift negotiated settlement were dashed on 8 May, when India sent a large number of Israeli-manufactured drones into Pakistani territory. The Pakistani military claimed it had intercepted nearly all of them before they could damage civilian or military infrastructure. But the onslaught was stepped up two days later, with more Indian drones and missiles hitting densely populated civilian areas in Pakistan’s major cities. At this point the Pakistani military leadership decided to retaliate with aerial and drone strikes of its own, some of which targeted Indian airbases. Talk of nuclear escalation suddenly seemed credible, and panic began to spread. 

Accounts of what happened next are varied. One version suggests that, having thwarted India’s attempt to assert its aerial superiority, Pakistan effectively forced its neighbour to accept a ceasefire. Others claim that Pakistan was feeling cornered and signalled its readiness to use the nuclear option if the conflict persisted, which accelerated talks to end the fighting. Either way, backdoor negotiations with Washington ended up brokering a fragile peace which Donald Trump announced on social media, claiming credit for the deal. In India, critics alleged that the government had buckled under US pressure without achieving any of its war aims. In Pakistan, the atmosphere was euphoric. Many there believe that the Chinese-backed Air Force has now successfully re-established military equilibrium and undermined India’s claim to regional hegemony. 

New Left Review for more

by VIJAY PRASHAD

Israel’s attacks on Iran, backed by the US and EU, violate international law and aim to maintain regional dominance by undermining Iran’s sovereignty, despite Iran’s compliance with nuclear agreements.

Israel’s consistent attacks on Iran since 2023 have all been illegal, violations of the United Nations Charter (1945). Iran is a member state of the United Nations and is therefore a sovereign state in the international order. If Israel had a problem with Iran, there are many mechanisms mandated by international law that permit Israel to bring complaints against Iran.

Thus far, Israel has avoided these international forums because it is clear that it has no case against Iran. Allegations that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, which are constantly raised by the United States, the European Union, and Israel, have been fully investigated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and found to be unfounded. It is certainly true that Iran has a nuclear energy programme that is within the rules in place through the IAEA, and it is also true that Iran’s clerical establishment has a fatwa (religious edict) in place against the production of nuclear weapons. Despite the IAEA findings and the existence of this fatwa, the West – egged on by Israel – has accepted this irrational idea that Iran is building a nuclear weapon and that Iran is therefore a threat to the international order. Indeed, by its punctual and illegal attacks on Iran, it is Israel that is a threat to the international order.

Over the past decades, Iran has called for the establishment of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone, a strange idea coming from a country accused of wanting to build a nuclear weapon. But this idea of the nuclear free zone has been rejected by the West, largely to protect Israel, which has an illegal nuclear weapons programme. Israel is the only country in the Middle East with a nuclear weapon, although it has never tested it openly nor acknowledged its existence. If Israel was so keen on eliminating any nuclear threat, it should have taken the offer for the creation of a nuclear-free zone heartily.

Neither the Europeans, who so often posture as defenders of international law, nor the United Nations leadership have publicly pushed Israel to adopt this idea because both recognize that this would require Israel, not Iran, to denuclearize. That this is an improbable situation has meant that there has been no movement from the West or from the international institutions to take this idea forward and build an international consensus to develop a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

Israel does not want to build a nuclear-free zone in the region. What Israel wants is to be the sole nuclear power in the region, and therefore to be exactly what it is – namely, the largest United States military base in the world that happens to be the home to a large civilian population. Iran has no ambition to be a nuclear power. But it has an ambition to be a sovereign state that remains committed to justice for the Palestinians. Israel has no problem with the idea of sovereignty per se, but has a problem with any state in the region that commits itself to Palestinian emancipation. If Iran normalized relations with Israel and ceased its opposition to US dominion in the region, then it is likely that Israel would end its opposition to Iran.

Israel and the United States prepared the way

In January 2020, the United States conducted an illegal assassination at Iraq’s Baghdad Airport to kill General Qassem Soleimani, the leader of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Soleimani, through the Quds Force, had produced for Iran an insurance policy against further Israeli attacks on the country. The Quds Force is responsible for Iranian military operations outside the boundaries of the country, including building what is called the “Axis of Resistance” that includes the various pro-Iranian governments and non-governmental military forces. These included: Hezbollah in Lebanon, various IRGC groups in Syria that worked with Syrian militia groups, the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, several Palestinian factions in Occupied Palestine, and the Ansar Allah government in Yemen. Without its own nuclear deterrent, Iran required some way to balance the military superiority of Israel and the United States. This deterrence was created by the “Axis of Resistance”, an insurance policy that allowed Iran to let Israel know that if Israel fired at Iran, these groups would rain missiles on Tel Aviv in retaliation.

The assassination of Soleimani began a determined new political and military campaign by the United States, Israel, and their European allies to weaken Iran. Israel and the United States began to punctually strike Iranian logistical bases in Syria and Iraq to weaken Iran’s forward posture and to demoralize the Syrian and Iraqi militia groups that operated against Israeli interests. Israel began to assassinate IRGC military officers in Syria, Iran, and Iraq, a campaign of murder that began to have an impact on the IRGC and the Quds Force.

Taking advantage of its genocidal war against the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel, with full support from the United States and Europe, began to damage the “Axis of Resistance”, Iran’s insurance policy. Israel took its war into Lebanon, with a ruthless bombing campaign that included the assassination of the Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah on September 27, 2024. This campaign, while it has not totally demolished Hezbollah, has certainly weakened it. Meanwhile, Israel began a regular bombing campaign against the Syrian military positions around Damascus and along the road to Idlib in the north. This bombing campaign, coordinated with the US military and with the US intelligence services, was designed to open the roadway for the entry of the former al-Qaeda fighters into Damascus and to overthrow the government of al-Assad on December 8, 2024. The fall of the al-Assad government dented Iran’s strength across the Levant region (from the Turkish border to the Occupied Palestinian Territory) as well as along the plains from southern Syria to the Iranian border. The consistent campaign by the United States to bomb Yemeni positions further resulted in the loss of Ansar Allah’s heavy equipment (including long-range missiles) that fundamentally threatened Israel.

What this meant was that by early 2025, the Iranian insurance policy against Israel had collapsed. Israel began its march to war, suggesting an attack on Iran was imminent. Such an attack, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows, would help him in a domestic political fight with the ultra-orthodox parties over the question of a military exemption for their communities; this will prevent his government from falling. Cynical Netanyahu is using genocide and the possibility of a horrendous war with Iran for narrow political ends. But that is not what is motivating this attack. What is motivating this attack is that Israel smells an opportunity to try to overthrow the Iranian government by force.

Peoples Dispatch for more