While the world debates whether
Palestinians deserve electricity, young people in Gaza are building tech
incubators from the rubble.
Not one. Three.
Taqat began with a single solar panel and a
car battery. A flicker of light in a blackout zone. Today it is Gaza’s
largest incubator: three hubs — Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Nuseirat —
sustaining more than 400 freelancers, creating over 100,000 hours of
work each month, and keeping alive the possibility of a future Israel is
determined to erase.
This is not “resilience.” This is refusal.
Empire’s Favorite Word
Western NGOs and donors love to say
“resilience.” It is how they launder complicity. It is how they
celebrate survival without ever naming the hand on the trigger.
But nothing about Taqat is resilience in
that empty sense. Taqat is resistance. It is infrastructure under siege.
It is solar panels standing in for a bombed-out grid. It is adolescents
coding while their schools lie in rubble. It is Gaza insisting: we will not disappear.
What They Built While the World Looked Away
The numbers themselves are an indictment:
$500,000+ in monthly earnings by Gaza freelancers.
100,000+ hours of digital work produced every month.
50+ new jobs created.
2,000 people on a waitlist, desperate to join.
All of this in a place where:
80% of the population is unemployed.
1.9 million people are living in tents.
70% of the internet and power grid lies in ruins.
The same governments that subsidize Silicon
Valley’s failure machines subsidize Israel’s war machine. One burns
capital on apps nobody needs. The other burns people. Gaza’s youth are
showing them both what innovation actually looks like.
Brick by Brick
Taqat’s timeline is the anatomy of defiance:
June 2024 — one solar panel. One battery. A single shared desk.
September 2024 — expansion into a second hub as more than a million people were displaced south.
December 2024 — training programs scaled to hundreds of youth.
February 2025 — a third branch opened.
Now — Gaza’s foremost incubator, with over 500 active members and an
ecosystem of training, mentorship, and global work opportunities.
“For us, Taqat symbolizes
perseverance and resistance in turning challenges into opportunities,
and remaining creative despite all circumstances. It is an expression of
dignity through work, productivity, and building a better future,” said Noor Nashwan, International Relations Coordinator at Taqat.
This article is part of an ongoing
collaboration with Taqat, who first reached out to me — and I take
seriously the responsibility of carrying their story with care, though
their determination to keep building under siege speaks louder than any
words of mine.
Where the occupation drops bombs, Palestinians drop fiber cables. Where schools collapse, adolescents join Taqat Hero—
a program teaching coding, design, and digital arts to teenagers who
have lost years of education but refuse to lose their futures.
Even Cambridge University is collaborating,
offering English training and mentorship. The irony is brutal: students
in Britain are shielded from the word Palestine, while
students in Gaza are denied schools altogether. And yet, it is Gazan
teenagers who are the ones coding their way into the world.
“What
criteria allow us to label a particular country as imperialist? What
should be the rule for measuring each state’s place in the international
system? Insisting on a defence of the ‘letter’ of Lenin’s work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,
rather than on his method of analysis, would amount to stubborn
dogmatism. There is much more Leninism in an update of his theory of
imperialism than in the obtuse defence of his 1916 book.”
— Valério Arcary
It is never as easy to get lost as when one thinks they know the way.
Popular Chinese proverb
1.
From Lenin we
inherited a theory concerning the nature of imperialism. It rested upon
three distinct, divergent ideas, even as they were intertwined. The
first was that imperialism marked a stage in capitalism’s unfolding, its
pinnacle of development, signaling, in dialectical terms, both its
zenith and the onset of its decline, or an age of revolution. In other
words, a criterion of historical periodisation was stratified under the
supremacy of the imperialist powers at the center, surrounded by a vast
periphery of dominated nations, integrated to sharply unequal degrees,
many colonies, some semi-colonies and very few independent countries,
meaning a rigid and hierarchical international state system, that is a
global order. The third was the constituing elements of an imperialist
state as it existed in the twentieth century. In essence, a standard of
measurement for determining the mode of incorporation into the world
market and the position occupied within the international state system.
2.
These three ideas, articulated across distinct
levels of abstraction, retain their full political and theoretical
power. The most radical proposition maintained that modern imperialism
ushered in an era in which capitalism reached its height even as it
entered a phase of decay. It remains unassailable, having withstood the
test of historical experience. The imperialist system led humanity into
two calamitous world wars. The twentieth century was one of revolutions
that uprooted capitalist domination in societies encompassing some 30%
of humanity. The preservation of an imperialist order threatens
humankind’s continued survival for no less than four compelling reasons:
(1) the menace of new destructive economic crises like those of 1929
and 2008; (2) the looming catastrophe of global warming and the systemic
incapacity of capitalism to effect an emergency energy transition; (3)
the global arms race and the military intimidation by the Triad, notably
the U.S., aimed to assert imperialist control over the world; (4) the
rise of a neo-fascist, nationalist far-right that fights for power,
overturning the democratic advances of the past three generations.
3.
Of course, Lenin was not a flawless prophet. His
work established solid methodological foundations, yet his legacy
fundamentally offered a conceptual framework for studying tendencies and
counter-tendencies, not a millenarian doctrine. A good Marxist engages
in prognostic assessment, but this should not be confused with mere
fortune-telling. Nor one can escape the need to revise the other two
theses. The world order is far from what it once was, having undergone
qualitative transformations more than once and the standards for
assessing what counts as an imperialist state have not remained intact.
Over a hundred years later, both the world market and the state system
have shifted. The structure of the imperialist order has evolved and
become increasingly intricate.
Criminal lawyer Nick Hanna investigates the Vice President of the International Court of Justice, Judge Julia Sebutinde, and how her extremist Christian Zionist beliefs have compromised her voting record. In doing so, Hanna exposes Sebutinde’s close ties to Watoto Church, and its funding of an Israeli organisation that provides material support to the IDF.
Judge Sebutinde and the ICJ’s INSANE ISRAEL SCANDAL
A research paper predicting that artificial intelligence will go rogue in 2027 and lead to humanity’s extinction within a decade is making waves in the tech world.
The detailed scenario, called AI2027, was published by a group of influential AI experts in the spring and has since spurred many viral videos as people debate its likelihood. The BBC has recreated scenes from the scenario using mainstream generative AI tools to illustrate the stark prediction and spoken to experts about the impact the paper is having.
The author and political activist Arundhati Roy has faced prison and censorship. Her Booker Prize-winning novel “The God of Small Things” made her an international literary star when it came out in 1997. Since then, Roy has spent most of her career writing about the struggles of marginalized and oppressed people, and she has been targeted repeatedly by India’s government under the populist leader Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Roy tells “The Interview” host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that she knows what’s coming for America under President Trump, and she shares advice for how to survive in what she calls a “culture of fear.” Roy’s new memoir, “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” comes out on Sept. 2.
“The Interview” features conversations with the world’s most fascinating people. Each week, co-hosts David Marchese and Lulu Garcia-Navarro talk to compelling, influential figures in culture, politics, business, sports and beyond — illuminating who they are, why they do what they do and how they impact the rest of us.
The years ahead are shorter than those already lived. Time therefore to honour two Pakistanis lost to history: Ch. M. Zafrulla Khan (1893-1985) and Eqbal Ahmad (1933-1999). Both shared a deep affinity with the Palestinians and fought, albeit armless, for their cause. Like the Arabist T.E. Lawrence, they too wrote their “will across the sky in stars”.
Chaudhry Zafrulla served as our first foreign minister, and then as
president of both the UN General Assembly and the International Court of
Justice.
In November 1947, Ch. Zafrulla addressed the UN General Assembly in
New York on the plan to divide Palestine. He spoke scathingly of the
inequity of a proposed arrangement under which Jews who constituted 33
per cent of the population received 60pc of the area of Palestine. Of
the irrigated, cultivable areas, 84pc would go to the new Jewish state
and only 16pc to the Arabs.
Despite Ch. Zafrulla’s persuasive rhetoric, the state of Israel came
into being on May 14, 1948. The US recognised it the same day.
The ideals espoused by two Pakistanis have been relegated to oblivion.
In Eqbal Ahmad’s case, conflict birthed his pacifism. Wounded during
the Kashmir conflict in 1948, he later participated in the revolution in
Algeria that led to that nation’s independence from France in 1962. The
US involvement in Vietnam agitated him and because he had the support
of like-minded thinkers, the US administration longed to get rid of this
‘troublesome’ intellectual.
In 1971, the FBI arrested him on the implausible charge that he, as
part of the Harrisburg Seven, planned to abduct Dr Henry Kissinger (then
national security adviser to Richard Nixon). After a ridiculously long
trial, he and his fellow accused were acquitted. In his later years,
like a moth attracted to a flame, Eqbal returned to the US where he
became a respected if isolated academic.
His riposte in 1968 to Samuel Huntington (of The Clash of
Civilisations fame) deserves to be recalled. Ahmad identified the
perceptible gap between Third World countries’ impatience for change and
America’s obsession with order, their longing for national sovereignty
and America’s preference for pliable allies, and their desire to see
their soil free of occupation and America’s need for military bases
abroad.
Both Ch. Zafrulla and Eqbal Ahmad have become prisoners of their own
reputations. The ideals they espoused and their voices of reason have
since been relegated to oblivion. Mercifully, they have not lived to
see Prime Minister Netanyahu flout the authority of the International
Criminal Court after it issued his arrest warrants for war crimes
and crimes against humanity. So far, Netanyahu has escaped arrest and
punishment. The Nazis at Nuremberg couldn’t. Nor have they lived to see
President Donald Trump (like some flaxen-haired Samson) pull down the
numerous pillars of order that define civilisation, on himself and on
us.
Over 48 Hours, Witnessing Nepal’s Descent Into Anarchy
by DINESH KAFLE
A protester throws a photograph of Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli outside the Singha Durbar, the seat of Nepal’s government’s various ministries and offices, on September 9, 2025. IMAGE/AP/PTI.
Despite the violence, arson and impending uncertainty, I encounter triumphant protesters convinced about their ability to build a new nation free of corruption.
Kathmandu: I cannot even begin to summarise the first two days of the ‘Gen Z’ upsurge in Nepal without taking refuge in the words of Charles Dickens:
“It was the
best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch
of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of
darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we
had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going
direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”
This was just the second day of the Gen Z movement and it was already difficult to keep track of the monumental changes that had occurred in Nepal’s politics in just 24 hours. The unprecedented national mourning over the murder of 19 protesters on the first day swiftly turned into a national uprising on Tuesday as people came out on the streets despite strict curfews and began vandalising everything that came their way.
By the afternoon, it was easier to
tell which major government building or which leaders’ houses were left
out rather than which had been torched.
In what could be symbolic of the
dismantling of Nepal’s democratic structure, the protesters on Tuesday
attacked all three arms of the government – the executive, the judiciary
and the legislature – as they torched the Singha Durbar, the Supreme
Court and the parliament buildings, apart from the office of the
president as well as the private homes of the president the prime
minister and the leader of the opposition, among others.
By afternoon, videos emerged of
protesters with foreign minister Arzu Rana Deuba and her husband, the
former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, both beaten and visibly
shaken. Ministers were escorted to safety in Nepal Army helicopters, and
leaders across political parties had fled their homes for fear of their
lives.
Smoke billows out after Nepal’s office of the attorney general and the Supreme Court were set on fire by agitators on September 9, 2025. IMAGE/PTI/Abhishek Maharjan.
An uprising
Monday’s tragedy had by Tuesday
afternoon given way to anarchy as the Gen Z movement was joined, even
taken over, by citizens of all ages and from all walks of life.
Corruption, nepotism and the social media ban, the three concerns of the
Gen Z movement, seemed inconsequential in just a day as the slogans now
involved “change” – although there was no unanimity in what it is that
they really wanted to change.
Unable to face public anger, Prime
Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned, paving the way for the formation of a
new government. But at this point, there are hardly any takers for the
prime minister’s position, which had for the past two decades remained
the hot potato of Nepali politics.
Each of the top leaders of all three
major political parties – the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of
Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and the Maoist Centre – has been
targeted and rejected on the streets. The leaders of the fourth- and
fifth-largest parties – the Rastriya Swatantra Party and the Rastriya
Prajatantra Party – have announced their resignations en masse.
This has left a political vacuum that
is unprecedented in Nepal’s political history. No one can tell whom the
enraged people will accept as their leader at this moment.
But there are signs. In what could be
taken as the desire of at least one significant section of the
population, protesters stormed into the Nakkhu jail on the outskirts of
the Kathmandu valley to release Rabi Lamichhane, the embattled
parliamentarian of the Rastriya Swatantra Party and former home minister
who is undergoing trial in a corruption case.
And all day, a section of the protesters called on Kathmandu Metropolitan City mayor Balen Shah to come forward and take the lead, with major newspapers toeing the line.
Fearless, restless, and leaderless: What the Gen Z movement can learn from history
by MANEESH PRADHAN
Gen Z protest in Khatmandu, Nepal, on September 8, 2025 IMAGE/Skanda Gautum/THT
If we learn from history, build strong institutions, and channel collective hope into meaningful action, the ashes of today can become the foundation for a more just and prosperous Nepal
“Once in an age, a single day arrives. It brings upheaval, turmoil, transformation.”
Gopal Prasad Rimal wrote those words for a revolution during the final years of the Rana regime [the Rana dynasty 1846–1951], and strangely, it has found its relevance again. The events of September 8th and 9th felt like one such day. Nepal has witnessed many political upheavals: the democratic movement that toppled the Rana regime, the People’s Movement that paved the way for multi-party democracy, the Maoist insurgency, and the republican movement. Yet the current movement stands apart. In just two days, it shook the country to its core. The government fell, leaving behind destruction and anarchy, while claiming many young lives. Grief, fear, and uncertainty swept through families and communities, leaving the nation struggling to imagine what the future might hold.
What
makes this movement truly unprecedented is its leadership – or rather,
its absence. Driven by Gen Z and largely without a formal political
organisation, this is a leaderless uprising. And as the country tries to
steady itself from the uncertainty, it is worth looking into history
for lessons. From the French Revolution in the 18th century to the Arab
Spring in the 2010s and more recent uprisings in Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh, these movements show us a pattern. They show us both the
extraordinary power of leaderless movements and the challenges they face
in translating energy into lasting change.
These movements don’t start over political doctrines. They are often non-ideological, unlike major political upheavals throughout history. At their core, such movements are propelled by long-standing frustrations: inequality, lack of opportunity, a sense of voicelessness, corruption, and deep distrust in the political establishment and leadership. Then, when a tipping point is reached, a single spark (such as the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia, the student protests against the quota system in Bangladesh, or social media restrictions in Nepal) ignites everything.
Leaderless uprisings can mobilise large groups of people very
quickly. Their strength lies in being perceived as authentic, less
hierarchical, and free from elite capture. And it connects through
visceral anger. Social media amplifies this effect, allowing movements
to spread rapidly and connect participants across the country. These
movements reveal the depth of ordinary people’s frustrations and
demonstrate their ability to act collectively without waiting for
direction from established leaders.
This teaches us our first
lesson: energy and authenticity can unite people quickly, but sustaining
momentum requires foresight and organisation. Mobilisation is easy;
consolidation is hard.
Such movements often benefit from the
clarity of their demands. Simple goals, such as ending corruption or
removing an unpopular leader, are easy to rally around and create a
strong sense of shared purpose. However, once the movement achieves the
immediate target, it often struggles to define the next step. In Egypt,
after Mubarak stepped down, divisions between secularists, Islamists,
and the military led to chaos. In Sri Lanka, the ouster of Gotabaya
Rajapaksa did not result in systemic change, as the political elite
largely reasserted itself.
Hence, the second lesson: simple and
clear demands can unite people, but without a roadmap for what follows,
movements risk fragmentation. Shared anger unites, but visions for the
future divide.
A further challenge is the vacuum created by the
absence of clear leadership or organisational structures. Without
direction, it becomes difficult to negotiate gains, consolidate
achievements, or guard against counter-revolutions. And the void left by
a fallen regime often gets filled by the next most organised group.
During the French Revolution, unstructured energy led to cycles of
violence before giving rise to Napoleon’s authoritarian rule. In Egypt,
the army quickly regained control. In Sri Lanka, protesters ousted a
president, yet the old elite returned to power soon after. Both internal
factions and external actors often exploit this vacuum. Military
forces, religious groups, entrenched elites, or outside powers can step
in, supporting, undermining, or even hijacking movements, sometimes
turning initial hopes into outcomes far from what protesters intended.
The lesson is clear: without leadership and organisational capacity, even powerful uprisings risk being co-opted before meaningful change can take root.
Sushila Karki: How Gen Z protestors chose Nepal’s first woman prime minister on Discord
by VISHWAM SANKARAN
Nepal’s newly appointed Prime Minister Sushila Karki (C) is congratulated by her supporters IMAGE/AFP via Getty Images
Over the week, multiple polls were held by representatives of the protest movement on Discord to nominate possible leaders and Karki emerged as a favourite, widely praised for her integrity
The protests, fanned by dissatisfaction over the government’s ban on several popular social media platforms, soon snowballed into a wider discourse on corruption and unemployment as the Generation Z – people in their teens and 20s – took to the streets with banners and slogans. At least 51 people were killed and more than 1,300 were injured in the nationwide protests that erupted after the government tried to shut down social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, causing deep anger to boil over.
The protests turned violent as security forces used live bullets,
tear gas, and batons while demonstrators toppled barricades, looted
businesses, and set fire to government offices and politicians’
residences.
Fire
rages through the Singha Durbar, the main administrative building for
the Nepal government, in Kathmandu on September 9, 2025 (AFP via Getty Images)
The protesters also burned the Singha Durbar palace, the seat of the Nepali government, and damaged airports and a TV news station building.
The prime minister and four of his ministers resigned last week, and
the military took over the capital, immediately enforcing a nationwide
curfew. The military relaxed the curfew for a few hours to allow people
to buy supplies.
The outlet reported that one server with more than 145,000 members hosted a debate about who could be an interim leader.Over
the week, multiple polls were held by representatives of the protest
movement on the social media platform Discord to nominate possible
leaders. Ms Karki emerged as a favourite, widely praised for her integrity.
It was a first for an electoral democracy. Backers say it is more transparent than what politicians do. But it has risks.
Kathmandu, Nepal – As Nepal burned on Thursday after
two days of deadly unrest that ousted a government accused of
corruption, thousands of young people gathered in a heated debate to
decide their nation’s next leader.
To them, the country’s mainstream politicians across the major parties were discredited: 14 governments representing three parties have taken turns at governing since 2008, when Nepal adopted a new constitution after abolishing its monarchy.
But in the wake of a brutal crackdown on protesters by security
forces that killed at least 72 people, their trust in the country’s
political system itself had been shattered. They wanted to select a
consensus leader who would steer the country of 30 million people out of
chaos and take steps towards stamping out corruption and nepotism. Just
not in the way countries usually pick their heads.
So, they chose
Nepal’s next leader in a manner unprecedented for any electoral
democracy – through a virtual poll on Discord, a United States-based
free messaging platform mainly used by online gamers.
The online huddle was organised by Hami Nepal, a Gen Z group behind the protest with more than 160,000 members.
Hami
Nepal ran a channel on the platform called Youth Against Corruption,
where a fiery debate on the country’s future brought together more than
10,000 people, including many from the Nepali diaspora. As more people
tried to log in and failed, a mirrored livestream was held on YouTube to
allow about 6,000 more people to see the debate.
[Screenshots from the Discord debate on next Nepal leader]
After hours of debate that included difficult questions for protest leaders and attempts at reaching out to potential prime minister candidates in real time, the participants chose former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki to lead Nepal. The 73-year-old took the oath of office as the country’s interim prime minister on Friday.
But Nepal’s transition is only beginning, say analysts, and the approach protesters took to choose the country’s leader only underscores how a chaotic new experiment in democracy appears to be under way, with rewards as well as risks.
Discord enables users to connect through texts, voice calls, video
calls and media sharing. It also allows communication through direct
messages or within community spaces known as servers. It was one of the
platforms banned by the government earlier this month alongside two
dozen other popular applications, including Instagram, Twitter and
YouTube.
The ban, protesters said, was the last straw that
spiralled into a nationwide movement against Prime Minister KP Sharma
Oli’s government. The demonstrators accused it of being unrepresentative
of young people, as well as of widespread corruption and nepotism.
Tens of thousands of young protesters hit the streets on Tuesday, torching government buildings,
including the parliament and residences of top politicians, and forcing
Oli to resign. On Friday, President Ramchandra Paudel dissolved
parliament and called for a general election in March.
By
then, Nepal’s Gen Z protesters had turned to Discord to decide who
should lead their nation until March. The social media ban was lifted
after the killings earlier in the week.
Virtual polls on mobile
screens allowed participants to nominate their interim leader in real
time, marking a radical experiment in digital democracy.
“People
were learning as they went,” said 25-year-old law graduate Regina
Basnet, a protester who had then joined the Discord debate. “Many of us
didn’t know what it meant to dissolve parliament or form an interim
government. But we were asking questions, getting answers from experts,
and trying to figure it out together.”
The discussion revolved
around a wide range of issues Nepal must battle now, including jobs,
police and university reforms, as well as the state of government
healthcare, as the moderators urged the participants to focus on the
main question before them: the next leader.
Five names were shortlisted for the final voting: Harka Sampang, a social activist and mayor of the eastern city of Dharan; Mahabir Pun, a popular social activist running the National Innovation Centre; Sagar Dhakal, an independent politician who ran against the powerful Nepali Congress leader, Sher Bahadur Deuba, in 2022; advocate Rastra Bimochan Timalsina, also known as Random Nepali on his YouTube channel, who has been advising the Gen Z protesters; and Karki.
Nepal’s Gen Z Uprising and the Unraveling of South Asia’s Old Order
by S. D. MUNI
What
began as a youth-led outcry against corruption and a ban on social
media morphed into Nepal’s most violent political upheaval in decades,
leaving the pillars of its republic in ruins. The uprising, part of a
wider South Asian wave, has unsettled not just Kathmandu’s old guard but
also India, China and the US, each wary of losing influence in a region
on the boil.
Demonstrators
hold placards and raise slogans during a protest against the
government, in Kathmandu, Nepal, on September 11, 2025. Photo: PTI
The
crisis in Nepal is part of a wider wave of unexpected popular uprisings
and regime changes in South Asia. It was preceded by a similar
phenomenon in Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024. This wave is the
fall out of an explosive cocktail of domestic turmoil and occurs
against the backdrop of regional and global geo-political rivalries.
South Asia’s domestic terrain is on the boil owing to demographic and developmental changes.
States in the world’s most populous
sub-regions have not been able to meet the aspirations of this
demographic bulge. The pace of development is slow and highly
inequitable. Governance is fraught with corruption, nepotism,
inefficiency and repression. Frustrated by their conditions, people are
reacting with huge demonstrations, aggressive uprisings and violence. In
the hands of tech savvy youngsters, social media is facilitating
networking and the mobilisation of widespread popular dissent.
Fuelling this domestic fire are
regional and global geopolitical rivalries, with China on one side and
the US and India on the other competing for strategic presence and
influence. Over the past decade, particularly under President Xi, China
has built high stakes across Asia. Its stakes in South Asia, a densely
populated, fast-growing and strategically located region bordering its
turbulent western frontier and the Indian Ocean, have become sharper and
deeper. Through economic incentives, cultural outreach and diplomatic
moves, Beijing has sought to shape and sustain friendly regimes in the
region.
This growing Chinese presence is not
palatable to India and the US, and both of them have used all their
diplomatic and political capabilities to contain Beijing. In supporting
the popular uprising against the Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka, both
India and the US appeared to be on the same page. In Bangladesh however,
the US dislike for the Hasina regime and preference for the BNP was in
direct conflict with that of India’s. In Nepal too, there seems to be a
degree of convergence between the US and India in the disapproval of the
Oli regime, seen by them as overtly pro-China.
The wave of regime change in South
Asia must be seen in the context of domestic turmoil amplified by
geopolitical rivalries. Recent political shifts in Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, and Nepal share striking similarities: sudden uprisings of
unexpected scale, triggered by economic hardship for ordinary people and
the repressive methods of ruling regimes.The uprisings have been led by
largely unconventional, marginalised and youthful leadership, but
extensively supported by wider sections of society. In all three cases,
varying degrees of violence, arson, targeted attacks on political
leadership and governing systems have been witnessed.
The political explosion against the
regime was the loudest and most brutal In Nepal. Sixty lives and
counting are estimated to have been lost and more than a thousand
casualties are being treated in hospitals. A large number of public and
personal properties have been burnt and damaged, the private homes of
the president and former prime ministers. Many prominent business
leaders and political activists were attacked and their houses and
properties destroyed. Key political leaders from both the ruling and
opposition parties are under the army’s protection to save their lives.
Nepal’s parliament, central secretariat (Singh Durbar) and Supreme Court
were gutted along with many police stations and the Central Bank. The
establishments of principal media groups like that of Kantipur newspaper
and television were also destroyed.
This uprising was led by various Gen Z
groups, spearheaded by Sudan Gurung of the Hami Nepal NGO. For the past
decade, these groups have been raising questions about the corruption,
nepotism and misgovernance of the regime. They were exposing their
misdeeds. The display of arrogant and affluent lifestyles of the
children of ruling elites have offended the sensitivities of Gen. Z who
have been creating networks of dissenting groups through social media.
During these years, three parties and their leaders, K.P. Sharma Oli of the United Marxist-Leninist (UML) party, Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ of the Maoist Centre and Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress have been circulating themselves on the seats of power, all indulging in extensive plunder of public resources at the cost of public good and the country’s economic well-being.
The red square on this 1767 map of St. Croix marks where Danes believed the Maroon settlement was. IMAGE/Paul Kuffner/Royal Danish Library
“For a long time now, a large number of [escaped slaves] have
established themselves on lofty Maroon Hill in the mountains toward the
west end of the island [of St. Croix]. … They are there protected by the impenetrable bush and by their own wariness.”
Those are the words of Christian Oldendorp, a Danish missionary who visited the Caribbean island of St. Croix in 1767. His account is one of the few Danish historical records of Maronberg, a community of escaped slaves, known as Maroons, in the northwest mountain ranges of the island.
In 1733, the Danish West India-Guinea Company purchased St. Croix
from France and quickly expanded the island’s sugar and cotton
production. This also meant expanding the slave population to harvest
lucrative plantations. But the Danes were never able to fully control the island – or the enslaved. By the end of the 1700s, nearly 1,400 people – more than 10% of the enslaved population – successfully escaped captivity. But where did they escape to? Only recently have researchers started to shed more light on this centuries-old mystery.
An aerial view of Peru’s Moche Valley shows Chan Chan, a massive city constructed beginning in the early eleventh century A.D. by the rulers of the Kingdom of Chimor, leaders of a people known as the Chimú. Chan Chan sprawled across more than seven square miles and had a population of as many as 40,000. Its dense urban core contained nine separate walled palace enclosures, two of which are seen here.
A millennium ago, the Chimú built a new way of life in the vast city of Chan Chan
The Moche River Valley in northern Peru was an
unlikely place to build a city. Though barely 1,000 feet from the
Pacific Ocean, the valley received less than a tenth of an inch of rain
per year. Nevertheless, in about A.D.
1000, a people known as the Chimú selected a location in the valley some
four miles north of the river and set about making it habitable. Called
Chimor in colonial accounts, and now commonly known as Chan Chan, it
became the largest urban center in the Americas.
What enabled the Chimú to build a city in this unpopulated coastal
desert was their tremendous engineering skill, which they used to create
an extensive network of irrigation canals that channeled snowmelt from
the Andes Mountains into the Moche River. What drove the Chimú was the
desire for a place to call their own. The valley had no one to conquer
and evict, no existing structures to raze, and no troubled history to
erase. “Chan Chan is an invented city in an artificially irrigated
valley,” says archaeologist Gabriel Prieto of the University of Florida.
“The Chimú transformed the landscape, created an entirely new society,
and became the most powerful rulers in coastal Peru. Chan Chan was an
experiment that worked for almost five hundred years.”
The Chimú built their new capital, which spread over more than seven
square miles, in a way that distinguished them from other Andean
cultures and was intended to reflect their particular social system.
“There were enormous social differences and a clear recognition of
social distinctions in Chimú society,” says archaeologist Jerry Moore of
California State University, Dominguez Hills. “What is so important
about Chan Chan is that it shows a very different kind of architectural
style from other Andean societies.” Even their myths reveal how, for the
Chimú, division between classes was at the center of their worldview.
One myth says that royal and noble males were spawned from a gold egg,
noblewomen from a silver egg, and everyone else from a copper egg. “I
like the egg myth because it suggests that the Chimú understood that
social and political inequality is ‘baked in’ to humanity from the
beginning,” says anthropologist Robyn Cutright of Centre College.
The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa),
which have admitted five more states (Egypt, the United Arab Emirates,
Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran), met in Rio de Janeiro on 6 and 7 July
2025. Saudi Arabia was present but did not officially join as a member
country. Representatives from 20 other states considered partners were
also present.
While the President of the United States is stepping
up unilateral actions on both the military and commercial fronts, the
BRICS countries are defending multilateralism and the United Nations
system, which are in crisis. They are also defending the capitalist,
productivist-extractivist mode of production that exploits human labour
and destroys nature.
The BRICS countries represent half the
world’s population, 40% of fossil energy resources, 30% of global GDP
and 50% of growth. They have the resources to change their
export-oriented capitalist development model, but they don’t want to.
It
is necessary to express a clearly critical view of the BRICS. This
stance in no way prevents us from denouncing, first and foremost and
with the utmost firmness, the government of the United States, as well
as its European and Indo-Pacific allies (Japan, Australia, etc.), for
their imperialist policies.
This policy is blatantly expressed
through their support for the State of Israel, which is responsible for
the ongoing genocide in Gaza and military aggression against
neighbouring countries. Israel is the armed wing of the United States in
the region. Without Washington’s unwavering support and the complicity
of Western Europe, the neo-fascist Israeli government would not be able
to continue the genocide.
For their part, the BRICS countries are
not taking any concrete measures as a group to effectively prevent the
continuation of the massacres and genocide.
Is it true that the BRICS countries are not condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza?
Yes. In the final declaration of the BRICS summit published on 6 July 2025, the BRICS countries do not use the term genocideto
describe what is happening in Gaza. The BRICS countries criticise
Israel’s use of force in points 24 to 27 of their statement, but nowhere
do they use the terms “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” or “massacre”.
What
is also striking is that the part of the 6 July 2025 statement
concerning Gaza is almost identical to what is found in the final
statement of the previous BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, in October
2024 (point 30 of the final statement).
It is as if the evidence of genocide, which is mounting every day, still does not justify the clear use of this term.
Is it true that the BRICS countries are not proposing sanctions against Israel?
Yes,
it is true: in their final statement, the BRICS countries did not
propose sanctions against Israel. They did not propose to break the
various agreements that bind them to the State of Israel. Yet the
ongoing genocide and massacres of Gazans in search of food justify and
demand action that goes beyond protests by the BRICS and other states.
The
protests expressed by the BRICS countries were totally insufficient in
October 2024 at the Kazan summit and are even more so in 2025. Only
governments and multilateral bodies can take the required concrete and
strong action. Of course, street demonstrations, occupations of public
spaces and universities, and legal initiatives by citizens’
organisations are fundamental, but they cannot replace action by states
and international institutions.
Are the BRICS countries taking concrete measures against the Israeli government?
The
BRICS countries as a group are not implementing any concrete measures
against the Israeli government, such as boycotts or embargoes.
Admittedly, South Africa has taken the initiative of filing a complaint
against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague,
which is positive, but its practices are at odds with this legal action.
Indeed, South Africa maintains trade relations with Israel, notably by
allowing South African companies to regularly export coal to Israel by
ship.
Since the genocide began, it is reliably estimated that 17
shipments have taken 1.6 million tonnes of coal to fuel the Israeli
grid. There have been protests attended by hundreds, called by the
Palestine Solidarity Campaign, community groups in coal-mining areas,
and climate activists against Glencore on 22 August 2024 and 28 May 2025
(a global day of action) and at its local partner African Rainbow
Minerals on 5 April 2025; that company is run by Patrice Motsepe who is
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s brother in law.
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