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THE WIRE ANALYSIS

The NYT has noted that “the direct language” Modi has used against Muslims contrasts with the image he presents globally.

In recent years, the Hindutva Right and BJP leaders have often used “puncturewalla”, a colloquial term for someone who repairs tyre punctures, as a slur against working-class Muslims in India.

On Monday (April 14), Prime Minister Narendra Modi ostensibly criticised the Congress party’s policies regarding the Waqf Board and said, “If it had been used as per its purpose, then today, my Muslim youth would not have had to spend their lives fixing punctures on bicycles.”

While pretending that he was merely implying that the Congress’s policies had left Muslims economically disadvantaged, he referenced the occupation in a way that perpetuates stereotypes about the community in line with the more direct slurs used by his supporters.

Since his days as Gujarat’s chief minister, Modi has made a series of controversial statements about Muslims that have drawn widespread criticism for furthering anti-Muslim hatred and deepening communal divides in the country. His most notorious Islamophobic remarks include calling Muslims “infiltrators”, mocking their family size, referring to relief camps as “baby-producing centres” and repeatedly using dog whistles to vilify the community.

Modi often uses coded language, but the intent and target are widely recognised by his supporters, analysts and even victims.

As the New York Times noted in April 2024, “the direct language used against the country’s largest minority was a contrast to the image Prime Minister Narendra Modi presents on the world stage.”

Modi has often used indirect language and dog whistles, such as references to “appeasement”, “vote bank politics”, “Mughals” (historical Muslim rulers) and “outsiders”, to suggest Muslims are disloyal or a threat to the Hindu majority.

His anti-Muslim rhetoric has been most explicit during election campaigns, especially when seeking to polarise Hindu voters.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, Modi made anti-Muslim remarks in at least 110 out of 173 speeches during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, wrongly accusing the opposition of favouring Muslims and fostering fear among Hindus through disinformation.

His speeches included untrue claims that the opposition ‘only promoted Muslim rights’ and that Muslims would be given priority access to resources, furthering the narrative of Muslims as outsiders or threats.

The BJP, under Modi’s leadership, has released campaign videos depicting Muslims as threats, such as one showing opposition leader Rahul Gandhi placing an egg marked ‘Muslims’ into a nest, and another accusing the Congress of planning to redistribute resources to Muslims.

Here is a list of some of the past instances where Modi has used anti-Muslim slurs in his public speeches that have been reported by the media.

‘Baby-producing centres’/‘Baby factories’

After the 2002 Gujarat riots, Modi was reported to have referred to relief camps for Muslim riot victims as “baby-producing centres” or “baby factories”, perpetuating the stereotype of Muslims as hyper-fertile and a demographic threat. “What should we do? Run relief camps? Should we open child-producing centres?”

At a campaign rally, he insinuated that relief camps for riot-affected Muslims might turn into “baby factories”, implying Muslims have large families and do not deserve relief from the government.

The Wire for more

by TARIQ ALI

To the victors, the spoils. A hundred years ago, after the conclusion of the First World War, the British Empire and its French ally broke up the old Ottoman-dominated Arab world and created new countries (Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia), principalities and outposts (the Gulf States, southern Yemen) and puppet states (Egypt, Iran), as well as laying the foundations on which Israel would be built, after the Second World War.

To the victors, the spoils. A hundred or so years later, after the collapse of the Communist world, the triumphant United States moved rapidly to balkanize the Arab world and remove all real and imagined threats to its hegemony. A tally of the 21st-century wars that have wrecked the Middle East provides a horrific balance sheet, by any standard. How is the situation they created viewed by the imperial strategists in Washington? ‘Freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are even more remote than they were under the authoritarian-nationalist Arab dictatorships. Even the most cynical occupants of the White House and the Pentagon find it difficult to justify in public the mess they have created.

Over the past year alone, the occupied Palestinian segment of the Arab world has been subjected to the most savage assault by the West, acting through its ever-loyal relay, Israel. The medieval Crusades were brutal, but the lack of technical superiority in weapons on either side gave the Arabs, fighting on their own lands, an advantage. This time Israel and its Western allies have been starving and killing Palestinians. Images of infant bodies being devoured by dogs wandering through deserted streets are a chilling symbol of the full-spectrum nature of this destruction. The British Prime Minister now wants to convince Trump to change the definition of genocide, to avoid future legal embarrassment. Western civilization/barbarism at play. Curiously enough, Trump, judging by his own remarks, may be less keen on killing than the leader of the British Labour Party.

On the face of it, American hegemony in the region is virtually complete. The us embarked on a global policy of divide, occupy, buy and rule. What started in earnest with the Yugoslav civil war has now become a regular feature of us strategy supported by Britain and most of the eu. The gains made by the West in the world’s richest energy zone since the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 have been breathtaking. A brief survey of the region can help to highlight what has been lost and signal the direction in which it is heading.

Saudi Arabia

The first foreign call made by Trump after his 2025 inauguration was to the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (mbs). Few were surprised. True, mbs had ordered the execution and dismemberment of a critic, Jamal Khashoggi, who backed another faction in the royal family and wrote regularly for the us press, criticizing mbs for ultra-liberalism and involvement in the Yemen war. Khashoggi’s family had been lampooned in Cities of Salt, the celebrated tetralogy by the exiled Saudi novelist, Abdurrahman Munif.footnote¹ Khashoggi’s uncle was the personal doctor of the founding monarch, Ibn Saud, and became a rich and influential businessman. This proximity to Saudi and Jordanian royals led Jamal to imagine that he was untouchable, an error of judgement that cost him his life. He traipsed along happily to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to collect an official document. Captured by an mbs assassination team, or firqat el-nemr (‘leopard squad’), he was shot dead and dismembered, his body parts packed neatly in separate parcels. The Turkish secret police filmed the whole business, since the Consulate was naturally under surveillance. They prevented Khashoggi’s remains from leaving the country and Erdo?an exposed the Leopard Prince to global scrutiny. American colleagues professed themselves shocked and Khashoggi was granted a Time cover and matching obituary; but mbs was secure. The fuss soon died down. With the Israelis killing over two hundred Palestinian journalists in Gaza, a solitary Saudi, despite the victim’s high-society contacts in Riyadh and Washington, seems a bagatelle.

New Left Review for more

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

The chimpanzee and bonobo are humans’ closest living relatives.

These three species look alike in many ways, both in body and behavior. But for a clear understanding of how closely they are related, scientists compare their DNA, an essential molecule that’s the instruction manual for building each species. Humans and chimps share a surprising 98.8 percent of their DNA. How can we be so similar–and yet so different?

So Much Alike…

Human and chimp DNA is so similar because the two species are so closely related. Humans, chimps and bonobos descended from a single ancestor species that lived six or seven million years ago. As humans and chimps gradually evolved from a common ancestor, their DNA, passed from generation to generation, changed too. In fact, many of these DNA changes led to differences between human and chimp appearance and behavior.

Examine the Evidence

Matching DNA? Human and chimp DNA is nearly identical when you compare the bands on chromosomes, the bundles of DNA inside nearly every cell. Which two chromosomes are more alike?

Banding Patterns

The light and dark bands on these chromosomes, created by a laboratory dye, reveal similarities and differences among human, chimp and mouse DNA.

Human and chimp X chromosomes both contain about 1,100 different genes, or sets of instructions. Each gene affects a particular trait in the body.

American Museum of Natural History for more

by JOHN PERRY

These top Washington think tanks are lobbying lawmakers for sadistic sanctions on some of the hemisphere’s poorest countries while raking in millions from corporations and arms makers.

Sanctions are a form of hybrid warfare that harms or even kills the target populations at little cost to the country imposing them. In Latin America alone, US sanctions (correctly known as “unilateral coercive measures”) have killed at least 100,000 Venezuelans. The US blockade of Cuba has been so destructive that one in ten Cubans have left the country. Sanctions have similarly deprived Nicaraguans of development aid worth an estimated $3 billion since 2018, hitting projects such as new water supplies for rural areas. 

Who formulates these devastating sanctions, covers up their real effects, works with politicians to put them into operation and promotes them in corporate media? In a perverse contrast with the poor communities hit by these policies, those doing the targeting are often well-paid employees of multi-million-dollar think tanks, heavily funded by the US or other Western-aligned governments and in many cases by arms manufacturers.

A study in corruption: top think tank lobbyists and their funders

Chief among these groups is the Wilson Center, which claims to simply provide policymakers with “nonpartisan counsel and insights on global affairs.” Boasting a $40-million budget, a third of which comes from the US government, the organization is headed by the former Administrator of USAID, Amb. Mark Green.

In 2024, the Wilson Center boosted its efforts to meddle in Latin America with the creation of the “Iván Duque Center for Prosperity and Freedom,” naming its newest initiative for the wildly unpopular former Colombian president largely remembered for his violent crackdown on students protests, his obsessive focus on regime change in Venezuela, and intentionally crippling the 2016 peace deal meant to end decades of civil war in Colombia.

While Duque has not produced much in the way of scholarship since joining the Wilson Center, he is living his best life at Miami nightclubs, where he’s frequently seen in as a guest DJ or regaling partiers with renditions of Spanish language rock hits.

The Gray Zone for more

by HOLGER POLITT

In Poland a new state president will be elected on 18 May 2025 when voters are called to the first round. It is not expected that the first round will decide the outcome since the winner has to gather more than 50% of votes behind him, which now looks impossible. This will lead to a runoff 14 days later between the two candidates who place best in the first round. Polls show that three candidates have reasonable chances to enter the final round: Rafa? Trzaskowski, Karol Nawrocki and S?awomir Mentzen.

Trzaskowski: Support from the liberal centre – rapprochement with the conservatives

Polls show Rafa? Trzaskowski (born 1972), the mayor of Warsaw, with a big lead. As the candidate of Donald Tusk’s politically and substantively wide-ranging, though essentially liberal-conservative, bloc, he can count on a good 35% of votes, according to the polls. Trzaskowski already brings to the race plenty of experience from the electoral campaign for the country’s highest office – in early summer of 2020 he gave Andrzej Duda (born 1972), the national-conservative incumbent, an exciting run for his money. Now, after two terms Duda cannot run again. Five years ago both candidates got more than 10 million voters in the runoff, an unusually high participation – moreover under pandemic conditions. The race was closely decided only at the finishing line in favour of Duda. The result emphatically demonstrated how divided Poland’s political life has become ever since the rise to power of the national conservatives. Up to now little has changed in this regard. The entire liberal and more left parts of the spectrum have stood behind Trzaskowski. The national conservatives around Jaros?aw Kaczy?ski and their government had early set the stage for a type of culture war, with the influential Catholic church eager to second them. A rigid, aggressive stance was adopted in the area of women’s rights and the rights of sexual minorities, which blossomed in the 2020 presidential electoral campaign. The liberal to left capital city was demonised, depicting Trzaslowski as its representative – peaking in the nonsensical accusation that if he won, he would try to reintroduce “communism”. For Trzaskowski the choice was obvious – he positioned himself as recognisably left liberal, in order to lend a unifying voice to the broad spectrum of Kaczy?ski opponents – from moderate conservatives to left. It is striking this year that in his campaign appearances Trzaskowski has shifted to a liberal-conservative milieu in the belief that this will attract decisive votes in the runoff.

Transform Network for more

by CHANCHAL

Nithyananda’s followers from Kailasa have been arrested for allegedly trying to take over lands in Bolivia.

Self-styled godman Nithyananda aka Arunachalam Rajasekaran, a fugitive who is facing sexual abuse charges and kidnapping in India, may have established a fantasy land for himself – a nonexistent so-called Hindu nation ‘United States of Kailasa’ – but he is now facing real-world trouble! His followers from Kailasa have been arrested for allegedly trying to take over land parcels in Bolivia.

The Bolivian officials have told the New York Times that as many as 20 people, linked to Kailasa, were arrested on the charges of “land trafficking” after they signed deals with indigenous groups to lease large parts of the Amazon for 1,000 years.

They said that the members of Kailasa were also deported to their home countries – India, the United States, Sweden and China.

In a statement, Bolivia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “Bolivia does not maintain diplomatic relations with the alleged nation ‘United States of Kailasa’.”

How Kailasa members managed to grab lands in Bolivia

According to the NYT report, Kailasa members entered Bolivia on tourist visas and connected with Indigenous groups promising assistance during forest fires.

Pedro Guasico, a leader of ‘Baure’, one of the groups, said the contact with the Kailasians turned into the signing of a 25-year lease worth $200,000 annually.

When the members of Kailasa returned, the deal mentioned 1,000-year lease with permission to ‘extract natural resources’.

But on paper, the $200,000 seemed more significant than the change in lease years. And Baure chief signed.

“We made the mistake of listening to them. They offered us that money as an annual bonus for conserving and protecting our territory, but it was completely false,” he was quoted as saying.

Mint for more

by SARA MALKANI

Last year, the Supreme Court of Pakistan affirmed that a woman is entitled to dissolve her marriage on the grounds that her husband, without her permission, married another woman. Recently, the Council of Islamic Ideology released a statement rejecting this decision, asserting that it is against Islamic law to permit a woman to dissolve her marriage because she did not consent to her husband’s marriage to another woman. The CII is an advisory body and cannot overrule the Supreme Court, but is deemed to be an authority on the requirements of Islamic law.

The fact that in 2024, the Supreme Court had to author a detailed judgement to clarify very straightforward statutory provisions in the Muslim Family Law Ordinance (MFLO), 1961, and the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939 — which was then repudiated by the CII — is an indication of the manufactured confusion around family laws in Pakistan.

Why does this confusion persist? Muslim personal law covers matters related to marriage, divorce and inheritance for the majority of Pakistan’s population. Personal law is partially codified in the form of statutes derived from religious jurisprudence. Courts and religious bodies often misinterpret the plain meaning of statutes to conform to their own views of Islamic jurisprudence. For example, courts have repeatedly misread the 1961 ordinance’s provisions on talaq, often refusing to enforce the notice and registration requirements in the law. They also tend to fill in the gaps in codified laws with conservative interpretations of Islamic law.

The origins of Muslim personal law lie in the British colonial era. As the colonial government began to introduce legislation regulating political and economic spheres, it carved out exceptions for matters related to marriage, divorce and inheritance, declaring that these would be dealt with in accordance with the custom and religious laws of each community.

The gap between codified law and court interpretations continue to create uncertainty.

Muslim political groups were keen to secure the primacy of the Sharia over custom in matters of family law and inheritance. In 1937, Muslims secured legislation that declared that personal law derived from the Sharia alone rather than custom would govern family matters and inheritance for Muslims.

Prior to independence, Muslims secured another codified law — the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act passed in 1939. While this law established the right of Muslim women to dissolve their marriage in certain circumstances, the motivation behind the law was not the promotion of women’s rights. In fact, it was passed to prevent Muslim women from renouncing their faith and marrying non-Muslims. Prior to this law, Muslim women seeking to end a marriage could only do so after they converted to another religion, which would lead to the automatic termination of their marriage to a Muslim man. This would also enable Muslim women to marry outside their faith after their marriage to the Muslim man stood terminated.

Dawn for more

by RICARDO VAZ

After an opening that suggested a more pragmatic approach, the Trump administration has since ramped up its attacks against Venezuela.

The Trump administration is barely two months into its term but every day feels like a rollercoaster. Migrants get rounded up, threats fly everywhere, and now a brutal bombing campaign is underway in Yemen. Wholehearted support for genocide in Palestine is the one constant.

When it comes to Venezuela, analysts put forward different scenarios for US policy approaches, ranging from a rehashing of Trump 1.0’s “maximum pressure” to more pragmatic scenarios that would see Washington leverage foreign policy weapons to favor US corporate interests.

An early direct engagement between the White House and the Maduro government created the illusion of a more heterodox and less hostile approach. However, all the subsequent moves point in a different direction. Trump is maximizing pressure against Venezuela.

What happens to Chevron?

Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela was seen by most as a bellwether of where the US’ re-elected reality-show host wanted to go. Allowing Chevron to continue would mean an admission that regime change was not in the cards and that a US energy giant should keep making profits. Driving Chevron out clearly meant trying to strangle Venezuela by all means possible.

After a lot of speculation, pressure from Florida’s “crazy Cuban” representatives led to the US Treasury Department withdrawing the company’s sanctions waiver and giving it 30 days, until April 2, to wind down operations.

However, Chevron later saw its deadline extended to May 27. The question is now whether this is really the end of the road or if Chevron could eventually remain on recurrent short-term licenses. This middle-ground policy would ensure the conglomerate does not suffer losses but also would discourage it from making any significant investments to boost production.

Venezuela Analysis for more

by TOM MACKAMAN

On April 19, 1775, 250 years ago today, the first battles of the American Revolution took place at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. The day of fighting, itself the outcome of a gathering revolutionary crisis, presaged the outcome of the war: the victory of the revolution over what was then the world’s greatest power, Great Britain, and the establishment of the world’s first major modern democratic republic.

By the spring of 1775, the upheaval in the British North American colonies had reached an advanced stage, especially in Massachusetts, where “the flames of sedition had spread universally throughout the country beyond conception,” in the words of Thomas Gage, the Commander-in-Chief of British North America and the recently appointed Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

On April 14, 1775, General Gage received his orders to extinguish those “flames of sedition” directly from Lord Dartmouth, secretary of the state for the colonies in the government of Prime Minister Lord North. “Seize and destroy all military stores,” Dartmouth wrote, and “arrest the principal actors.” Gage was told to put down the colonials lest their rebellion mature to “a riper state.”

WSWS for more

by ANDREAS KRIEG

From North Africa to the Gulf, the UAE has aggressively expanded its counter-revolutionary strategy in the wake of the Arab Spring

Earlier this month, Sudan’s government brought proceedings against the United Arab Emirates, accusing it of “complicity in genocide” in the Sudanese civil war. 

The case sheds light on the Abu Dhabi network providing lethal and financial support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a violent non-state actor fighting Sudan’s government in a bloody civil war. 

The RSF is but one of the nodes in a network of non-state actors the UAE has curated over the past decade. The small Gulf monarchy has tapped into secessionist causes from Libya, to Yemen, Sudan and Somalia, using surrogates as Trojan horses to generate strategic depth and influence. 

Like Iran’s “axis of resistance” – a network of non-state actors loosely tied together under an Islamic revolutionary banner – the UAE’s “axis of secessionists” comprises a network of non-state actors tied together under a counterrevolutionary banner. Like Tehran, Abu Dhabi has curated a multilayered network of violent non-state actors, financiers, traders, political figureheads and influencers to create bridgeheads in countries of strategic value to Emirati national interests. 

Middle East Eye for more