Category: Uncategorized

by KIM PETERSEN

While living in the Middle East, a Palestinian friend taught me about Arabic culture, which he said was still preserved in Yemen. Arabic etiquette, he told me, was that a guest was to be protected, housed, and otherwise looked after.

White House etiquette is something else. I was quite taken aback by viewing how Donald Trump and JD Vance ganged up on their Ukrainian guest Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This is not to side with Zelenskyy who is a disagreeable personage to me; by refusing a security agreement, he set the stage for an unwinnable war against Russia which has condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men to death.

Zelenskyy made some bizarre and distorted utterances during the videoed meeting. Nonetheless, there is a proper way for Trump and Vance to express disagreement. But diplomacy, etiquette, and niceties are often rare in the bullyverse of Trump.

Moreover, an often heard complaint from Trump is that things are not fair. Was it fair to have two native English speakers against one non-native English speaker?

Fairness

A common saying tells us that bees are more attracted to honey than vinegar. Maybe the Trump-led administration doesn’t give credence to this saying, or it believes it can bully others into submission — probably the latter. Trump believes he can use tariffs as a big stick to gain an upper hand in trade. Given the size of the US economy and its willingness to resort to violence to back its demands, smaller countries find themselves in a precarious situation. Without another big country’s backing, smaller countries are susceptible to regime change operations. Witness what happened to the Syrian government in late 2024.

Fortunately, China is willing to engage in win-win trade with other nations. The Chinese honey appears to be preferable for much of the Global South to the American vinegar. China is also a military power, and it can readily defend itself against any US military provocations. China is unlikely to let the US physically interfere in its trade arrangements with willing partners. Neither is Russia about to do this. This has led to a global realignment, one feature of which is the deepening relationships of China and Russia with African countries.

But the record shows that Donald Trump does not limit himself to smaller countries. During his first administration, Trump began a trade war with China, and he does not look to be letting up this time. Trump, however, considers the world as his oyster, to deal with as he pleases. Even the US’s erstwhile allies are targeted, including its northern neighbor, Canada.

Will Canada Supplicate Trump?

United States President Donald Trump sounded off during the first cabinet meeting of his second term, among other topics was that of Canadian sovereignty:

I say Canada should be our 51st state. There’s no tariffs, no nothing. And I say that we give them military protection. They have a very small military; they spend very little money on military. On NATO they are just about last in terms of payment because it’s not fair. It’s not fair that they’re not paying their way. And if they had to pay their way, they couldn’t exist.

Upon what basis does Trump claim that the US is protecting Canada? Because Canada is a member of NATO and NORAD? The latter allows the US military access into Canada, the junior partner in the relationship. And just who are these enemies that the US is purportedly protecting Canada from? Is there any country posing a credible military threat to Canada? If so, it seems that the US would come first to mind. If Canada is a willing and uncoerced member of certain military organizations, then Canada should abide by its agreed upon commitments. Canada does come up short of the 2% minimum of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defence spending in NATO, but that 2% minimum is a guideline and not a hard-and-fast obligation. Trump speaks about fairness, but how fair is it that one NATO member gripes about what it determines another member’s contribution should be?

Dissident Voice for more

by TARIQ ALI

India and Pakistan are preparing for war. The casus belli is, once again, occupied Kashmir. Control over this disputed region has since 1947 been the main obstacle to normalising relations between the two states. On 22 April, a group of Kashmiri militants targeted and killed 26 tourists enjoying the beauty of Pahalgam’s flower-filled meadows, crystal streams and snow-capped mountains; responsibility for the attack was claimed and then quickly disavowed by a little-known organization called the ‘Resistance Front’. This was a particular affront to Narendra Modi (whose record includes presiding, as Chief Minister, over the slaughter of an estimated 2,000 civilians in the 2002 Gujarat massacre, and long a defender of anti-Muslim pogroms). A far-right Hindu nationalist now in his third term as India’s Prime Minister, Modi had previously declared that there was no longer any serious Kashmir problem. His final solution – revoking Kashmir’s autonomous status in 2019 – had succeeded.

Nothing justifies the slaughter of the Pahalgam holidaymakers, and vanishingly few Kashmiri or Indian Muslims would support actions of this sort. But historical context is necessary to understand the overall situation in the province. Even Israel has a Ha’aretz. Not India. Kashmir remains an untouchable subject. This Muslim-majority province has never been allowed to determine its own fate, as promised by Congress leaders at the time of Independence. Instead, it was partitioned between the new republics of India and Pakistan after a short war in which the British commander of the Pakistan Army refused to agree to its use, leaving a ragtag force to face off against India’s regular troops. That well-known pacifist, Mahatma Gandhi, blessed the Indian invasion. Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution were supposed to guarantee Kashmir’s special status, not least by forbidding non-Kashmiris the right to buy property and settle there. This was combined with brutal repression of any stirrings of discontent, turning Kashmir into a police state with military units never too far away. Killings and rapes were common. Mass graves had been discovered.

Courageous Indian citizens (Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra and others) relentlessly exposed these crimes. Angana Chatterji cited numerous examples uncovered in the course of her 2006-11 fieldwork:

Many have been forced to witness the rape of women and girl family members. A mother who was reportedly commanded to watch her daughter’s rape by army personnel pleaded for her child’s release. They refused. She then pleaded that she could not watch and asked to be sent out of the room or else killed. The soldier put a gun to her forehead, stating that he would grant her wish, and shot her dead before they proceeded to rape her daughter.

This would not have been illegal. The 1958 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act grants impunity for uniformed defenders of the Central State in ‘disturbed areas’, upheld by the Indian Supreme Court.

Modi’s strategy in 2019 was to flood Kashmir with Indian troops, imposing lockdowns, arresting local leaders and journalists and instilling enough terror in the population to ensure that there would be no protests such as might prompt objections from the Western powers. The goal was turning the Valley into the dairy centre for the whole country. Repression seemed to have worked – until now.

*

The Indian Government is convinced that the killings were orchestrated by the Pakistan Army. No proof has so far been provided, but the charge is more plausible than the Pakistani response that this was a false-flag operation. To add to the confusion, on 24 April Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khwaja Asif confirmed on UK television that Pakistan had a long history of training and funding such terrorist organizations, saying ‘We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades’. A few days later Asif also forecast an Indian ‘excursion’ into Pakistan, only to later retract the remark.

Indian politicians of most stripes are calling for war. Shashi Tharoor, a Congresswallah and a former senior UN official has stated: ‘Yes, blood will be spilled but more of theirs than ours.’ The popular mood is for a short, sharp war of revenge. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been approvingly referenced, but another model is more likely. After Israel bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus in April 2024, the CIA rushed to organise a carefully controlled response by Iran, with US, French, British and Jordanian air defences in the region primed to shoot down the incoming Iranian drones and missiles.   

The Indian Army and Air Force are currently engaged in planning an assault, but it may be of the Iranian variety. Retired generals are boasting of India’s drone reserves. The most extreme measure being discussed is to occupy Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and unite it with its Indian-occupied sibling. Threats to cut off the water supply to Pakistan are pure bluster and Bilawal Bhutto’s riposte – ‘If the water does not flow your blood will’ – was immature and stupid, even for a former Pakistani Foreign Minister.

The Indian press has alleged that an inflammatory public address to representatives of the Pakistani diaspora on 17 April by the country’s Army Chief, General Asim Munir, was the signal for Pahalgam. Others, including a former Pakistani army major, Adil Raja, are claiming that the attack was a personal initiative by Munir to boost his own standing and pave the way for a new military dictatorship. This was putatively opposed by the ISI. Damage control or truth? Difficult to say, though Munir’s appalling speech offers some clues.

The address was clearly designed to make clear to wealthy overseas Pakistanis that the Army runs the country. Some in the audience must have been hired to give standing ovations to the Army Chief’s unprecedentedly crude, uncouth and ignorant remarks. I cannot recall a single military dictator of the country ever speaking in such a fashion. Sandhurst-trained General Ayub Khan was bland and secular. General Yahya Khan was highly entertaining when drunk and avoided public appearances. General Zia-ul-Haq was a religious sadist, but desperate for a deal with India; denouncing Hindus was not his style. General Musharraf was essentially secular, relatively cultured and very keen on a rapprochement with India.

General Munir’s attempt to pose as a uniformed Pakistani version of Modi was a dismal failure. He made three assertions, all of them disgusting nationalist lies. First, that Hindus were and always had been the enemy, and that Muslims could never live with them. This is the inversion of Modi’s claim that all Indian Muslims are converts from Hinduism and ought to return to the old faith. Someone should have educated the General: Muslims co-existed with Hindus and later Sikhs for nearly twelve centuries prior to 1947. The Mughal period (hated by Modi and Islamic fundamentalists alike) led to integrated armies with Hindu and Muslim generals and soldiers defending the Muslim-created Empire.

New Left Review for more

A progressive pope?

by MAHIR ALI

BEFORE going in for heart surgery, a “rather vain Jesuit” asks God whether this is the end, and is informed that he would live for another 40 years. Delighted, he subsequently goes in for “a hair transplant, a facelift, liposuction, eyebrows, teeth”. Emerging from the clinic, he is run over by a car. It proves fatal. He is incensed upon meeting his Maker. “Oops, sorry!” Is the divine response. “I didn’t recognise you.”

This joke is borrowed from a guest essay published in The New York Times last December, credited to none other than Pope Francis. It was adapted from his autobiography, published the following month. It is hard to imagine any of his three immediate predecessors publicly sharing a similar quip.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s sense of humour was among the more endearing features of his dozen-year stint as the Bishop of Rome. The Argentinian child of Italian immigrants was an unexpected choice when Benedict became the first pope in almost 600 years to resign. He took his name from the 13th-century Italian friar Francis of Assisi, best remembered for his devotion to the poor, to animals, and to the environment.

As pope, Francis honoured the legacy of his namesake to a considerable extent, but frequently fell short of progressive expectations, while consistently attracting the wrath of conservative Catholics, especially from the US. Many of them saw him as a heretic, notwithstanding the notion that all popes are divinely ordained. The conservatives were wary of his overtures to LGBTIQ+ conservatives and to women (who remain excluded from the clergy), but equally angered by Francis’ empathy for refugees, and his revulsion over deportations from Europe or North America.

During a visit to Mexico in 2016, the pope decried those talking about building walls rather than bridges. “This is not the gospel”, he noted. The thin-skinned Donald Trump, not yet president, dubbed the comment “disgraceful”, adding that “No … religious leader has the right to question another man’s religion or faith.” Now the re-elected US president intends to attend the pope’s funeral. “Rest in peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!” Trump declared on his Truth Social feed, the exclamation marks barely concealing his delight.

Francis leaves behind a complicated legacy.

Trump’s vice-president, J.D. Vance, a self-described “baby Catholic” was seemingly the last foreign visitor to receive an audience with the pope, albeit only for a couple of minutes. There’s little scope for any conspiracy theories, mind you, given that Francis suffered a near-death experience in February, but after his apparent recovery was keen to be seen as remaining in charge.

On his last full day on earth, Francis’ final Urbi et Orbi message delivered in St Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday decried the “contempt stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalised, and migrants”, calling for trust in those “who come from distant lands”, because “all of us are children of God”.

Francis came to the papacy at a time when all too many Europeans were revolting against immigrants, and pointed to common humanity as a guiding path. His well-meaning endeavours have, in the final analysis, made little difference. More broadly, his description of capitalism as “the dung of the devil” deserves to be appreciated. His 2015 encyclical Laudato Si focused on climate change and those who would suffer most from it. “Capitalism,” he recognised therein, “is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challe­nges facing hum­anity in our day.”

Dawn for more

Opinion | An Elegy For A Beloved Pope

by SHASHI THAROOR

I join the rest of the world in mourning the passing of Pope Francis, a figure of profound compassion and unwavering dedication to the human spirit. His departure leaves a void, not only within the Catholic Church, but across the vast landscape of humanity. 

He was, above all, a shepherd who walked among the poorest and weakest of his flock, understanding their struggles with a rare and genuine empathy.

Pope Francis possessed a remarkable breadth of knowledge, encompassing theological scholarship, historical awareness, and a keen understanding of contemporary global issues.  His wisdom, however, was never confined to academic circles. Thanks to his long years of experience serving in difficult conditions in Argentina, he translated complex realities into accessible truths, speaking directly to the hearts of the marginalized, the forgotten, and the dispossessed.

From Buenos Aires To The Vatican

His depth of experience, gleaned from a life lived in service, from the streets of Buenos Aires to the Vatican, imbued his leadership with a unique authenticity. He understood the pain of poverty, the fear of displacement, and the yearning for justice.  He brought this lived experience to the forefront of his papacy, challenging the powerful and comforting the vulnerable. It is striking that his final pastoral message on Easter Sunday was in defence of freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and the human rights that are under threat in so many authoritarian systems. 

On a weekend that speaks to the spirit of the resurrection of hope, Pope Francis left us a positive message of determination to stand up for the right and to resist the wrong.

NDTV for more

Pope Francis’ legacy of inter-faith diplomacy

by ELDAR MAMEDOV

After similar outreach to Sunnis, the pontiff’s 2021 meeting with Shia’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani transcended boundaries and fostered co-existence

One of the most enduring tributes to Pope Francis, who passed away this Easter, would be the appreciation for his legacy of inter-religious diplomacy, a vision rooted in his humility, compassion, and a commitment to bridging divides — between faiths, cultures, and ideologies — from a standpoint of mutual respect and tolerance.

Among his most profound contributions is his historic meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, Iraq, on March 6, 2021. What made this meeting a true landmark in inter-faith dialogue was the fact it brought together, for the first time, the spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics and one of the most revered figures in Shia Islam, with influence on tens of millions of Shia Muslims globally. In a humble, yet moving ceremony, the meeting took place in al-Sistani’s modest home in Najaf. A frail al-Sistani, who rarely receives visitors and typically remains seated, stood to greet the 84-year-old Pope and held his hand, in a gesture that underscored mutual respect.

The visit to Najaf was part of a broader Vatican diplomatic outreach to the world of Islam. Pope Francis previously engaged with Sunni leaders, signing in 2019 the Document on Human Fraternity with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb from Al-Azhar University, the pre-eminent scholar of Sunni Islam. The meeting with al-Sistani extended this outreach also to Shia Islam, the second principal branch of Islam. Najaf is a spiritual center of Shia Muslims, home to the tomb of Imam Ali, the pre-eminent saint of Shia Islam, and the Hawza seminary, led by al-Sistani.

That outreach was particularly meaningful as al-Sistani represents a community often misrepresented in Western discourse as inherently menacing through vague but sticky metaphors such as “Shia Crescent,” fueled by media sensationalism and geopolitical tensions driven, in part, by evangelical groups like Christians United for Israel who often conflate Shiism, Iran and hostility to Christians and Israel.

Pope Francis took a different approach: he went to Najaf not to proselytize, not to hold theological debates, and not to issue political demands, but to engage in conversation marked by shared concern over the humanity’s future, peace, justice and dignity for all people. Francis, as a Jesuit with a history of activism against the fascist dictatorship in his own home country, Argentina (1976-1983), was particularly well-suited for this role. His meeting with al-Sistani sent a bold message: in a world scarred by conflict and bloodshed, leaders of faith should unite to reject violence and promote co-existence.

The context of that visit was particularly significant as it also sent an equally strong political message: it took place in Iraq, a nation ravaged by war, particularly the U.S. invasion in 2003, driven by neoconservative fantasies of turning the Middle East into a paragon of liberal democracy, subsequent sectarian strife and rise of ISIS which treated both Shiites and Christians as enemies and apostates.

Responsible Statecraft for more

Remembering Pope Francis on Earth Day: How He Linked Capitalism, Climate & Catholicism

As the Vatican prepares the funeral for Pope Francis and church leaders begin to consider his replacement, we look at the late pontiff’s environmental legacy. Pope Francis frequently called for action on the climate crisis and urged his followers to be good stewards of the Earth. He also openly criticized the role of wealthy nations and capitalism in causing the climate crisis.

“He brought together the riches of Christian and Catholic tradition to bear with the prophetic work of social movements around the world in confronting a global crisis,” says Nathan Schneider, professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Schneider is also a contributing writer at America, a national Catholic monthly magazine published by the Jesuits, where he has been covering Catholic engagement with climate change and the economy.

Pope Francis argued that “our relationship with the Earth depends on justice among people, and that in order to address this environmental crisis, we need to also address the crisis of disposability, of treating not only the planet, but each other, as disposable,” says Schneider.

AMY GOODMAN: The Vatican has announced the funeral for Pope Francis will take place Saturday in what is expected to be a scaled-down ceremony. In his will, Pope Francis asked to be buried in what he called a “simple tomb” at Saint Mary Major Basilica. Cardinals around the world are heading to the Vatican for the funeral and then to pick the pope’s successor. Pope Francis died Monday at the age of 88 of stroke and heart failure. He made his last public appearance on Easter Sunday, when he repeated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Today, on this Earth Day, we look at Pope Francis’s long record calling for action on the climate crisis. On Monday, the top United Nations official on climate change, Simon Stiell, remembered Pope Francis as a, quote, “towering figure of human dignity, and an unflinching global champion of climate action,” unquote.

In 2015, the pope issued a groundbreaking papal letter, or encyclical, on the climate crisis, where he wrote, quote, “The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.” The pope openly criticized the role of wealthy nations in causing the climate crisis, writing, quote, “The idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology … is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit,” he said.

In 2015, Pope Francis made a plea to address the climate crisis when he spoke at the White House.

POPE FRANCIS: When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history. We still have time to make the change needed to bring about a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change. Such change demands on our part a serious and responsible recognition not only of the kind of the world we may be leaving to our children, but also to the millions of people living under a system which has overlooked them.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Pope Francis speaking in 2015.

We’re joined now by Nathan Schneider, professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, also a contributing writer at America magazine, a national Catholic magazine published by the Jesuits, where he’s been covering Catholic engagement with climate change and the economy.

Democracy Now for more

Francis, the Pope who came from the ends of the earth

by DANIEL VERDU

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentine pontiff who initiated a historic process of reforms in the Church in 2013, also unleashed an unprecedented war with the ultraconservative sector of the Catholic world

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentine outsider among the leading papal candidates, appeared on the balcony of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on March 13, 2013. Speaking in Italian with a strong Buenos Aires accent and exhibiting typical sacristy sarcasm, he presented his credentials to a packed St. Peter’s Square. “You know that it was the duty of the Conclave to give Rome a Bishop. It seems that my brother Cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to get one, but here we are.”

The “ends of the earth” was not just a distant place, but also a metaphor for how far his vision of the universal Church diverged from the doctrines of his predecessors. He was announcing revolution, passion, and sweeping changes. Twelve years after his arrival, Bergoglio has died in Rome from a lung infection. Today, one might say the Holy Spirit has deemed his reforms complete. It is now up to history — and his successors — to determine the extent and permanence of the transformation led by the 266th pope of the Catholic Church.

God is not afraid of change, Jorge Mario Bergoglio always replied to his critics. He was an influential cardinal who knew how to deftly move between the hallways of power in the palace and the smell of sheep in Argentina’s slums. If it’s difficult to imagine how any of us will age, it must have been impossible for Bergoglio, then a graduate in chemistry who began working in a food analysis laboratory in the 1950s, to even remotely imagine that one day he would become the Pope in Rome.

Yet in March 1958, at the age of 21, Bergoglio opted for religious studies, entering the metropolitan seminary of Buenos Aires and beginning his novitiate with the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. When he became Pope Francis, he explained that he had joined the Jesuits because he was “attracted by their status as a forward-thinking force in the Church, speaking in a military language, based on obedience and discipline, and oriented toward missionary work.”

El Pais for more

Fallibility, Dirty Wars, and Pope Francis I

by BINOY KAMPMARK

The very idea of infallibility sets one up for the mighty fall. But the Pope, temporal head of all Catholics, is one such character, the papacy one such institution, arrogantly paraded before religion, faith and principle, as an individual and office hovering between humankind and God. Unfortunately for the papal record, infallibility in any spiritual sense is no guard against spotty records and stains. It certainly does not erase what came before, though good efforts are often made to reinvent it.

Pope Francis I, eulogised as the pontiff of the periphery and the oppressed, was not averse in his pre-papal iteration to courting the powerful and the authoritarian when a US-backed military dictatorship seized power in his native Argentina in 1976. That dictatorship, responsible for the forced disappearance of 30,000 people, came to be known as the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganization Process). In 1978, on a visit to Buenos Aires to attend the football World Cup as dictator Jorge Videla’s guest, former US National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was filled with praise for the murderous methods of the Proceso in its efforts to combat “terrorism”.

On their seizure of power, the junta were also keen to grease palms and cultivate ties with the Catholic Church. Archbishop Adolfo Tortolo obligated, urging Argentinians “to cooperate in a positive way with the new government.” Argentina’s bishops also issued a statement declaring that the security services could hardly act “with the chemical purity” expected of them in times of peace. Some freedom had to be shorn. Church figures who did not play along, such as Enrique Angelelli, the bishop of the Andean diocese of La Rioja, were murdered. In a 2012 interview, Videla expressed satisfaction at Church-state relations during his rule. “My relationship with the church was excellent. It was very cordial, frank and open.”

Dissident Voice for more

by BAQAR HASNAIN

We are transported into a magical land of half-truths.

“Older men declare war, but it’s the youth that must fight and die.” This bloodstained reminder by Herbert Hoover, the 31st American President, fell on deaf ears as the US continued to engage in wars throughout the remainder of the last century. Gen William Westmoreland, who led the US troops in Vietnam War, conceded, as an apologetic afterthought, that the military don’t start war, politicians do.

Ever since the Pahalgam tragedy, politicians and the media at large on both sides of the Indo-Pak border are playing ping-pong of scathing rebukes and damning indictments with no convincing or irrefutable evidence to substantiate their allegations. People in the two countries are being brainwashed into believing one-sided narratives while demonising the other side.

We are transported into a magical land of half-truths. We seem to have capitulated to these half-truths and cover-ups because the entire truth is often too ugly. To add insult to injury, any attempt at reconciliation or a hand shake between the two neighbours is met with a slap on the wrist.

Pakistan, turning a blind eye to its history of political miscalculations and mismanagement, lambasts India (and perhaps rightly so) for their involvement in a separatist insurgency in Balochistan. India, on the other hand, denying any role in supporting the insurgency in Balochistan, accuses Pakistan of financing and supporting terrorist networks operating in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan slams Prime Minister Modi’s BJP for promoting Hindutva ideology creating sectarian fissures in a country that once was lauded for being a multicultural pluralistic, inclusive and secular society. We can and should criticise Modi’s Hindutva ideology, but it’s the pot calling the kettle black since we too in Pakistan have a dismal record of protecting the rights of minorities.

Politicians and the media can also add fuel to fire. Before the world could mourn for the victims of the Pahalgam tragedy, India took no time to blame Pakistan for the terrorist attack. Pakistan retaliated by calling the terrorist attack a false-flag operation. People on both sides displayed conformation bias implying that they agreed with that information and that information alone that confirmed their existing beliefs and values.

At moments like these, when two nations butt heads like rams to establish dominance, we often abandon rational thinking and find solace and refuge in emotions. Rage and revenge replace self-reflection and foresight. Our echo chambers, deceptively reassuring, give us a sense of moral righteousness and a feeling of superiority. Whether Indian or Pakistani, our bigotry blinds us. We look down upon our neighbors across the border. We become each other’s perpetual enemies.

The Express Tribune for more

by SHAWN TULLY

The new leader of the Catholic Church will inherit a financial mess that Pope Francis spent much of his reign trying to fix

Even on his deathbed, Pope Francis didn’t pause from pursuing a dogged campaign that distinguished his reign: reforming the Vatican’s infamously troubled finances. On February 27, the pontiff’s 13th day at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital suffering from exhaustion and bronchitis, the pontiff unveiled the formation of a high-level commission assigned to raise donations for helping plug chronic budget deficits. Francis launched the fund-raising enterprise as a gambit aimed at blunting demands by top officials in the Curia, his vast administrative arm, that the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics halt his drive for deep spending cuts. The bureaucrats bristled at the Pope’s recent draconian moves: Since 2021, he’d slashed salaries for the Church’s 250-odd cardinals three times. In 2023, he nixed the rich housing subsidies for elite staff, and last September for the first time in decades demanded that the Vatican set a rigorous timeline for achieving a “zero deficit” regime.

When Pope Francis passed away at age 88 on Easter Monday in his modest Vatican apartment, his brave campaign had made big strides, but stopped short of the promised land.

This writer began covering the Pope’s righteous charge right at the creation. In early 2014, I traveled to Rome for a firsthand view of all the new and historic financial guard rails and disciplines Francis was installing, as well as the influx of business experts he’d summoned across the globe to assist him. When Francis took office the previous year, just about everything that involved how the Vatican handled money needed fixing: the huge and ever-rising gap between revenues and expenses; the leadership dominated by clergy lacking expertise in accounting and investing; and a scandal-scarred reputation. The stain of corruption, or at least incompetence, lingered from the Banco Ambrosiano affair of the early 1980s, when financier Roberto Calvi scammed the Institute for Religious Works, a.k.a. the Vatican Bank, in a caper that cost the IOR $250 million and emptied a big portion of its reserves.

Days after his institution collapsed, Calvi’s body was found hanging under London’s Blackfriars Bridge; the British courts couldn’t determine whether the cause of death was suicide or murder. Calvi’s schemes duped his “buddy” who headed the IOR, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, whom in the mid-1980s I interviewed at the IOR’s home in the ninth-century Gothic prison built by Pope Nicholas VI. The six-foot-eight Marcinkus, dubbed the Gorilla, had risen in the Vatican from a power base as Pope John Paul II’s bodyguard. During our meeting, he chain-smoked Camels and pontificated for hours about how the IOR was the Vatican’s biggest moneymaker courtesy of pocketing the “spread” between the tiny interest it paid the Jesuits and other religious orders for their deposits, and the much higher rates it garnered re-channeling those funds to European banks. 

On Ambrosiano, Marcinkus insisted that charges he’d “guaranteed” the bank’s debts on behalf of the IOR was a bum rap, and that the Vatican only repaid the $250 million to safeguard its image. Shortly before, the Italian government had dropped an arrest warrant for Marcinkus that had exiled him for a year to the Vatican grounds, a liberation that perhaps explained his ebullient mood. “I may be a lousy banker,” once told a close friend of his whom I interviewed for my story, “but at least I’m not in jail.” 

Francis quickly showed that in money matters, he was a new kind of leader

My sources were all business leaders newly appointed to aid in the Pope’s offensive. On background, they related a dramatic meeting in the summer of 2013 where Francis first addressed a dimension of his domain that he deemed crucial—its chronically stumbling role as a commercial enterprise. The pontiff spun the globe to appoint a team of seven business leaders to a committee. Its task: pinpointing the problems and recommending specifics for a broad overhaul. They included the French executive heading asset management for U.S. mutual fund giant Invesco, the CEO of German insurer ERGO, the chief of Malta’s largest bank, and the former prime minister of Singapore. 

Instead of holding the confab at the Apostolic Palace, the Renaissance showplace where pontiffs traditionally greeted visitors in high style, Francis ushered the distinguished guests into a nondescript conference room at the Casa Santa Marta, a five-story limestone guesthouse on the sub-luxury scale of a four-star hotel where the pontiff resided in a second-floor one-bedroom suite. No religious art or objects adorned the walls. Attired in a simple white cossack and metal cross, the Pope took the kind of highly managerial “I’m the boss” approach his invitees might have recognized from addressing their own lieutenants.

Speaking fluent Italian, pausing frequently so that a translator could repeat his words in English, the former cardinal of Buenos Aires stated that for his spiritual message to be credible, the Vatican’s finances had to be credible as well. The Vatican hadn’t overcome the practices formed by centuries of secrecy and intrigue to either manage its money efficiently, or issue a coherent accounting on where the funds came from and where they were spent. His primary mission, the new Pope stressed, was helping the poor and underprivileged. The Vatican budget careening from small surpluses to yawning deficits undermined that goal by inhibiting charity. “When the administration’s fat it’s unhealthy,” he declared, adding that he wanted a far leaner and efficient organization that would prove “self-sustaining.” Getting there would require strict rules and protocols. 

It particularly incensed the pontiff that the managers kept paying overruns on fixed price contracts, when the businesses should have eaten the excess billings. From now on, he admonished, when the Vatican gets a bill for a project where it’s the contractor who is legally responsible for the extra costs: “We don’t pay!” Like a great CEO, the Pope charted a clear strategy. As one participant characterized the command: “Let’s make money for the poor.” Francis finished by intoning, “I trust you. You’re the experts. I want solutions to these problems.” Pope Francis wasn’t a micromanager who’d study balance sheets, but he was a born leader expert at establishing clear objectives and choosing specialists needed to meet them—he’d rely on real bankers not amateurs in the Marcinkus mold. Then, without taking questions or extending pleasantries, he left the room.

On finances, Pope Francis proved the greatest of all holy reformers. But the Vatican’s budget woes persist to this day

Following the meeting, that prestigious board helped design a radically new architecture directed not by the religious leaders who’d run the machine for centuries, but seasoned managers and consultants from around the world. The new regime hired KMPG to install internationally accepted accounting principles replacing the old crazy quilt of standards, EY to scrutinize the books of the tiny nation’s stores and utilities, and Deloitte & Touche and Spencer Stuart to respectively audit the P&L and recruit fresh talent at the Vatican Bank. Pope Francis also established a new body called the Secretariat of the Economy that for the first time centralized all authority under a single agency and leader. Today, the top official is an MIT grad who has spent a long career in management positions for Catholic universities and prominent institutions of the church.

Tighter oversight brought new discipline to runaway spending and boosted investment returns, but didn’t end the Vatican’s long history of headline-grabbing misdeeds. In 2014, the cardinal who served as second-ranking official in the Secretariat of State schemed with still another shady Italian magnate to purchase shares in a London building; the Secretariat subsequently took full control of the property for the highly inflated price of roughly $400 million, then sold it a few years later at a $150 million loss. An investigation launched in 2019 discovered that many millions of Euros disappeared in kickbacks and self-dealing. But this time, the authorities imposed tough justice. The Vatican courts sent eight people including the cardinal to jail, and levied fines on two others.

Shortly after taking power, Pope Francis ordered a hiring freeze that remains in force to this day. Indeed, his strategy of shrinking the workforce through attrition has succeeded. But the Vatican is still haunted by the burden of the way-underfunded pension plans that he inherited. The Vatican’s financial world is divided into two parts. The first is the City State, the 110-acre sovereign country that generally runs a budget on the scale of a midsize municipality, employs the ceremonial Swiss guards and “gendarme” police force, and generally generates an operating surplus due to big revenues from the Vatican museum, the world’s second most visited museum behind the Louvre, and the likes of sales of souvenir coins. 

The second is the Holy See or Curia, the Pope’s sprawling bureaucracy that does everything from detective work to naming new saints to operating the equivalent of embassies in three dozen countries to operating nine cabinet-like “congregations.” It’s perpetually in deficit—once again, largely via what it owes its legions of retirees. In recent years, the Curia has been spending around $800 to $900 million a year, and running structural deficits of well over $50 million. And that’s after allocating for operating expenses tens of millions of dollars in “Peter’s Pence.” That’s money gathered in the collection baskets passed through church aisles in from Sydney to Warsaw on the Sunday marking the feasts of Saints Peter and Paul in late June. It’s one time the world’s faithful, rich and poor alike, send funds to the Vatican en masse.

The late pontiff always wanted to steer Peter’s Pence solely to its original purpose of supporting the impoverished. It was a goal he cherished but didn’t live to achieve. Still, Pope Francis worked a near miracle bringing transparency, competence, and integrity to perhaps the most notoriously byzantine corner of the financial world. From his hospital bed in his final days, the pontiff kept fighting the Vatican establishment for reform that elevated sound money management as a tool for filling the role of his model and namesake, St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th century Italian friar devoted to raising the downtrodden. Only if his successor shares Francis’s rare knack for business strategy will the job be finished.

Fortune for more

by B. R. GOWANI

annual Met Gala known as “fashion’s biggest night,” is big business

(Met stands for Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York)

it’s also called “the Oscars of Fashion,” “fashion Oscars,” etc.

Rihanna’s 2015 Met Gala dress was for many “pizza and omelettes“

and for many others it was “rolled condoms” — designed by Guo Pei

the gala is an expensive elitist event

2025’s Met Gala was dedicated to black fashion and was held on May 5

theme for the costumes was: Superfine: Tailoring Black Style

it was inspired by 2009 Monica L Miller’s book

Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity

a single ticket cost $75,000, whereas a table for 10 started at $350,000

the money thus collected goes to the costume institute

it would have been much better if the proceeds were utilized differently …

it could have been used to fight police atrocities* against blacks & others

Vogue editor, Anna Wintour, has the dictatorial power for the gala

(she popularized fur and is hated by Pamela Anderson because

she bullied “young designers and models to use and wear fur”)

costumes, many of them, were uncomfortable and/or ugly

Wintour decides who is invited — she has banned Trump from the Galas

one of the attendees this year was singer/actress Sabrina Carpenter

Sabrina Carpenter in an interview to fashion magazine Vogue said:

“This is Pharrell [Williams]. I’m such a massive fan of Pharrell’s and have been to the show and I was just like, ‘If I could go this year with him, that would be my dream.’ And it came true.”

“He was like, ‘You’re quite short [5ft], so no pants for you.’ So here we are. Here we are.”

the added benefit was a relief for the kidneys:

“Never been to the bathroom once because I’ve never been able to use it in my outfit. So tonight might be the night.” “We’ll see… And I’m just gonna let everybody know what it looks like. I’m sure it’s just a normal museum bathroom, but I’m excited to find out.”

with such cumbersome dresses, see below, one would hold pee infinitely

Pharrell’s reason for dressing Carpenter without pants

“You’re quite short, so no pants for you.“

that is not a very convincing reason

look at the following three pictures of Carpenter in pants

she looks perfectly fine and stylish in pants …

Carpenter looks much better above than the costume she wore at the Gala

same is the case with Pharrell’s wife Helen Lasichanh

Lasichanh, a designer/stylist/model, is a full foot taller than Carpenter

Carpenter is 5ft where as Lasichanh is 6 ft (Pharrell is 5ft 8 ½ inches)

Lasichanh is in a leather corset top and tights

now compare her picture above with the picture below

she looks very pretty in mini skirt and a blazer. than the gala corset top

Amber, a social media person, put pants on Carpenter & commented

“I would never suggest this color or the “ringmaster” costume to begin with, but it’s a perfect example of how dressing against your body type can go horribly wrong.”

Carpenter’s reply showed sportsmanship:

“damn i fucked up..“

many people on social media got mad …

Gabrela wrote:

“As a (very) short woman, like sabrina, I nearly got offended by his comment. It’s limiting and degrading for short women. And it’s dumb and lazy cause wearing pants has nothing to do with height and everything to do with tailoring, fitting and style”

*(After heartless and gruesome murder of black person George Floyd in 2020, Wintour apologized to her staff:

“I want to say plainly that I know Vogue has not found enough ways to elevate and give space to black editors, writers, photographers, designers and other creators. We have made mistakes too, publishing images or stories that have been hurtful or intolerant. I take full responsibility for those mistakes.”

“I want to say this especially to the black members of our team — I can only imagine what these days have been like. But I also know that the hurt, and violence, and injustice we’re seeing and talking about have been around for a long time. Recognizing it and doing something about it is overdue.”

“It can’t be easy to be a black employee at Vogue, and there are too few of you.” “I know that it is not enough to say we will do better, but we will – and please know that I value your voices and responses as we move forward. I am listening and would like to hear your feedback and your advice if you would like to share either.”

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

by ALEX MACDONALD

An Israeli mayor has said “never again” applies to everyone at an event commemorating Yom HaShoah – Israel’s day of remembrance for the six million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany – warning that the destruction of Gaza will not lead to the return of captives.

Amir Kochavi, mayor of the central Israeli city of Hod Hasharon, told attendees that “Jewish morality” dictated that the lesson learned from the genocide against Jews should be that similar atrocities should be condemned regardless of who commits them.

“We must not remain silent in the face of atrocities committed against people of other nationalities in the world, even if they are committed in our name,” he said.

“Jewish morality dictates ‘never again’ not only to us, but to all peoples as a moral and ethical imperative of a just and healthy society… 59 brothers and sisters are still held hostage in Gaza, their ‘never again’ still continues.”

He added that “the lust for revenge, blood and destruction” had failed to return those held by Hamas, whether living or dead.

Sirens echoed across Israel on Thursday and activity ground to a halt in tribute to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Traffic halted and pedestrians stood still to mark Yom HaShoah, which is separate from International Holocaust Remembrance Day, observed on 27 January.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a state event at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, which he used as an opportunity to pledge to continue the assault on the Gaza Strip, which has so far killed more than 51,000 people and left the enclave in ruins.

Middle East Eye for more

by TIM BAYNE

When we see the Earth as ‘a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’ what do we learn about human significance?

On St Valentine’s Day 1990, NASA’s engineers directed the space-probe Voyager 1 – at the time, 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles) from home – to take a photograph of Earth. Pale Blue Dot (as the image is known) represents our planet as a barely perceptible dot serendipitously highlighted by a ray of sunlight transecting the inky-black of space – a ‘mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’, as Carl Sagan famously put it. But to find that mote of dust, you need to know where to look. Spotting its location is so difficult that many reproductions of the image provide viewers with a helpful arrow or hint (eg, ‘Earth is the blueish-white speck almost halfway up the rightmost band of light’). Even with the arrow and the hints, I had trouble locating Earth when I first saw Pale Blue Dot – it was obscured by the smallest of smudges on my laptop screen.

The striking thing, of course, is that Pale Blue Dot is, astronomically speaking, a close-up. Were a comparable image to be taken from any one of the other planetary systems in the Milky Way, itself one of between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the cosmos, then we wouldn’t have appeared even as a mote of dust – we wouldn’t have been captured by the image at all.

Pale Blue Dot inspires a range of feelings – wonderment, vulnerability, anxiety. But perhaps the dominant response it elicits is that of cosmic insignificance. The image seems to capture in concrete form the fact that we don’t really matter. Look at Pale Blue Dot for 30 seconds and consider the crowning achievements of humanity – the Taj Mahal, the navigational exploits of the early Polynesians, the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, the inventions of Leonardo da Vinci, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Cantor’s theorem, the discovery of DNA, and on and on and on. Nothing we do – nothing we could ever do – seems to matter. Pale Blue Dot is to human endeavour what the Death Star’s laser was to Alderaan. What we seem to learn when we look in the cosmic mirror is that we are, ultimately, of no more significance than a mote of dust.

Contrast the feelings elicited by Pale Blue Dot with those elicited by Earthrise, the first image of Earth taken from space. Shot by the astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, Earthrise depicts the planet as a swirl of blue, white and brown, a fertile haven in contrast to the barren moonscape that dominates the foreground of the image. Inspiring awe, reverence and concern for the planet’s health, the photographer Galen Rowell described it as perhaps the ‘most influential environmental photograph ever taken’. Pale Blue Dot is a much more ambivalent image. It speaks not to Earth’s fecundity and life-supporting powers, but to its – and, by extension, our – insignificance in the vastness of space.

But what, exactly, should we make of Pale Blue Dot? Does it really teach us something profound about ourselves and our place in the cosmic order? Or are the feelings of insignificance that it engenders a kind of cognitive illusion – no more trustworthy than the brief shiver of fear you might feel on spotting a plastic snake? To answer that question, we need to ask why Pale Blue Dot generates feelings of cosmic insignificance.

Aeon for more

by PERRY ANDERSEN

How important is the role of ideas in the political upheavals that have marked great historical changes? Are they mere mental epiphenomena of much profounder material and social processes, or do they possess a decisive autonomous power as forces of political mobilization?footnote¹ Contrary to appearances, the answers given to this question do not sharply divide Left from Right. Many conservatives and liberals have, of course, exalted the transcendent significance of lofty ideals and moral values in history, denouncing, as base materialists, radicals who insist that economic contradictions are the motor of historical change. Famous modern exemplars of such idealism of the Right include figures like Friedrich Meinecke, Benedetto Croce or Karl Popper. For such thinkers, in Meinecke’s words: ‘Ideas, carried and transformed by living personalities, constitute the canvas of historical life.’ But we can find other major figures of the Right who attack rationalist delusions in the importance of artificial doctrines, upholding against them the far more enduring significance of traditional customs or biological instincts. Friedrich Nietzsche, Lewis Namier, Gary Becker were all—from differing standpoints—theorists of material interests, intent on sardonically deflating the claims of ethical or political values. Rational choice theory, hegemonic over wide areas of Anglo-Saxon social science, is the best-known contemporary paradigm of this kind.

1

The same bifurcation, however, can be found on the Left. If we look at great modern historians of the Left, we find complete indifference to the role of ideas in Fernand Braudel, contrasted with passionate attachment to them in R. H. Tawney. Among British Marxists themselves, no-one would confuse the positions of Edward Thompson, whose whole life’s work was a polemic against what he saw as economic reductionism, with those of Eric Hobsbawm, whose history of the twentieth century contains no separate sections devoted to ideas at all. If we look at political leaders, the same opposition repeats itself even more pointedly. ‘The movement is everything, the goal is nothing’, announced Bernstein. Could there be a more drastic devaluation of principles or ideas, in favour of sheer factual processes? Bernstein believed he was loyal to Marx when he pronounced this dictum. In the same period, Lenin declared—in an equally famous maxim, of exactly antithetical effect—as something every Marxist should know, that ‘without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement’. The contrast here was not just between the reformist and the revolutionary. In the ranks of the revolutionary Left itself, we find the same duality. For Luxemburg, as she put it, ‘in the beginning was the deed’—not any preconceived idea, but simply the spontaneous action of the masses, was the starting-point of major historical change. Anarchists never ceased to agree with her. For Gramsci, on the other hand, the labour movement could never gain durable victories unless it achieved an ideal ascendancy—what he called a cultural and political hegemony—over society as a whole, including its enemies. At the head of their respective states, Stalin entrusted the building of socialism to the material development of productive forces, Mao to a cultural revolution capable of transforming mentalities and mores.

2

How is this ancient opposition to be arbitrated? Ideas come in different shapes and sizes. Those which are relevant to major historical change have typically been systematic ideologies. Göran Therborn has offered a penetrating and elegant taxonomy of these, in a book whose very title—The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (1980)—offers us an agenda. He divides ideologies into existential and historical, inclusive and positional types.

New Left Review for more