Category: Uncategorized

by BENJAMIN ASHRAF

Onijah Robinson flipped the script on decades of anti-Pakistan sentiment in Western media in this captivating yet chaotic TikTok saga, says Benjamin Ashraf.

I’m sure it didn’t take Onijah Robinson long to realise that, much like New York, survival in Karachi is all about hustle.

She must have felt it the moment she landed at Jinnah International Airport, surrounded by a sea of shalwar kameez-clad locals shouting, “Madame, please”, as she grabbed her bags off the carousel, preparing herself to meet her e-husband in Pakistan for the first time.

It’s a daunting prospect for the uninitiated; the scenes at the arrival hall contain just about every element necessary to heighten the senses.

Even for us Pakistanis, Karachi has something of a reputation as Pakistan’s untamed and outgrown metropolis — a place where the promise of riches and romance are tested along the shores of the Arabian Sea.

Karachi’s motto, therefore, ought to be one of caution. In the city of 20 million, most who chase fortune end up empty-handed. Few leave their mark. But Onijah Robinson, the ‘American woman in Pakistan’, clearly ignored this advice and, for nearly a week, stole our screens and hearts.

In a world where debating the merits of bachelors and bachelorettes has become a global pastime, and self-conscious trivialisation carries the weight of political discourse, it’s perhaps no surprise that she took over our timelines.

It’s a love story tailor-made for the internet: a ‘catfish’ romance between a 33-year-old African American and a 19-year-old Pakistani, fuelled by fleeting anxieties and an unhealthy dose of peacocking — until it spiralled into a meme.

But I’d argue that the story of the ‘American woman in Pakistan’ is more than just algorithm-induced brain rot. Without sounding dramatic, the whole event felt somewhat allegorical.

In the weeks leading up to Onijah Robinson’s arrival in Pakistan, anti-South Asian hate had again crystallised across the Atlantic. In Britain, communities of Pakistani descent were scapegoated for the crime of child grooming. In the United States, South Asians faced the wrath of MAGA following the H-1B visa debacle, while figures like J.D Vance and Elon Musk backed efforts to rehire a DOGE staffer who had openly called for the “normalisation of Indian hate.”

It felt impossible to go a day without seeing videos that ridiculed South Asian accents, appearance, or cleanliness for likes. And this tide of xenophobia appeared unrelenting until Onijah Robinson entered the fray.

Only in Pakistan

Not even the wildest imaginations of Lollywood could have scripted what happened next.

Rejected by her suitor’s family, Onijah Robinson moved from heartbreak to hustle, standing before a bewildered Pakistani press corps and began issuing a series of absurd demands.

“My plan is to reconstruct the whole country, I am asking for $100,000 or more,” she said. The ‘moah’ emphasised with a thick New York accent, her hair partly covered with a black hijab. Then, she demanded more money, land, and a Pakistani passport. “I won’t speak unless I get $5,000 a week from you — in US dollars,” she told reporters.

Bingo. And just like that, folks, a niche internet micro-celebrity is born.

Yes, there are real concerns about her mental health. Yes, it’s alleged that she used Instagram filters to pose as a white woman with blonde hair. But no, this story isn’t just about Onijah Robinson — it’s about how she was treated. 

New Arab for more

by LORRAINE BOISSONEAULT

Archaeologists pushed back the date of cave paintings at three sites to 65,000 years ago—20,000 years before the arrival of humans in Europe

Put yourself in the distant past, 65,000 years ago, and imagine entering a cave in Spain. Keep in mind this was the era of megafauna, animals like saber-toothed cats and cave hyenas and cave bears that were 50 percent larger than modern grizzlies. “[Humans] would’ve used small torches and their field of view would’ve been so small, and the light would’ve been flickering,” says archaeologist Chris Standish, of the University of Southampton. “You have all these fantastic speleothems [formations like stalactites] in the cave and sometimes calcite crystals that sparkle. So it must’ve been quite amazing, but also very daunting.”

Yet humans entered the caves again and again, armed with their flickering torches and red or black pigments, all so they could leave their mark on the walls. For decades, these abstract artistic renderings have been a meager glimpse of life in the Ice Age, and evidence of the cognitive abilities of our ancient ancestors. Or so we thought.

In a paper published today in Science, Standish and others argue the paintings are too old to have been made by Homo sapiens, who only entered Europe sometime around 40,000 years ago. Instead, they think this art might’ve been the product of Neanderthals.

“It’s very exciting that they’re getting these dates for art, especially as we’ve been working towards arguing for the cognitive capacities of Neanderthals for many years,” says paleoanthropologist Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, who wasn’t involved with the study but has previously studied Neanderthal rock engravings in Gibraltar. “The only word of caution is that there’s no direct evidence that this is Neanderthals. It’s inferred because of the age.”

Smithsonian Magazine for more

DOUG CAMERON interviewed by ZAC GILLIES-PALMER

An interview with Doug Cameron

Once the left of the Australian Labor Party was committed to working-class politics. To avoid collapse, Labor must return to that legacy — but today’s Labor Left is more committed to neoliberalism and serving US foreign policy.

In 2019, Australian Labor Party (ALP) senator Doug Cameron summed up his eleven-year senate career with characteristic candor. “It all comes down to one thing: socialism,” he said.

Cameron’s words — and the commitment underlying them — stem from his career as a blue-collar unionist in the Hunter Valley, an industrial hub in New South Wales. Unlike his more urbane ALP colleagues, Cameron’s working-class demeanor resonated with Labor’s trade-union base. After all, he cut his political teeth working in shipyards, car plants, and power stations.

In 1973, on his first day at work, Cameron joined the Amalgamated Metal Workers and Shipwrights Union (AMWSU). A decade later, he was elected as an AMWSU organizer for the Hunter Valley before rising quickly through the union’s ranks. A series of amalgamations saw the AMWSU become the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU), and from 1996 to 2007, Doug Cameron served as its national secretary.

Cameron left the union to stand as a Labor candidate for the Senate in the 2007 federal election, which former prime minister Kevin Rudd won in a landslide. Cameron’s commitment to Labor’s working-class roots quickly earned him a firebrand reputation that has not diminished since he retired in 2019.

Cameron spoke to Jacobin about the incumbent ALP government, offering his view on what PM Anthony Albanese should be doing as he approaches the 2025 election.

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Zac Gillies-Palmer

What’s your assessment of the Labor government’s legislative record as it heads toward the federal election likely to be held in May?

Doug Cameron

The government has passed a lot of legislation that I regard as positive. But I also think the quality of reforms has been mixed. It’s not just the number of bills, but what they do for the working class — that’s the important test for me.

On that front, it’s been a mixed bag. I know the union movement has welcomed Labor’s industrial relations reforms, especially the legalization of multiemployer bargaining and new protections for  gig-economy workers. But there is still much more Labor could have done to help people struggling on social security payments. And like many ALP members, I was concerned by the government’s decision to support Liberal Party tax cuts and the AUKUS military pact with the United States.

Zac Gillies-Palmer

Labor promised to implement those policies as part of its “small target” 2022 election strategy. What do you think should have been different about Labor’s approach?

Doug Cameron

I’m saying that Labor should have gone back to its values — that is, helping those who need help during the cost-of-living crisis. Of course, Labor will always do more for the working class than the Coalition — but the party should set itself a higher standard. At the very least, that standard should mean helping working-class people more than it has this term.

I must say, I always felt very comfortable as an ALP senator when Bill Shorten was the opposition leader, which is bizarre given the fights and differences I had with him and other members of the Labor Right faction over many years. That’s because Bill took a very good progressive agenda to the 2019 election, including a promise to abolish tax breaks for property speculators, like negative-gearing and capital-gains tax concessions. It was always the Left of the party that championed these issues — which is bizarre because now, although we have a Labor Left PM, Anthony Albanese has taken a very different approach.

Zac Gillies-Palmer

The counterargument is that Shorten took a progressive platform to the 2019 election and lost. Didn’t Albanese’s victory vindicate his small target strategy?

Jacobin for more

by PETER SCHWARZ

The US and Russian foreign ministers are meeting in Saudi Arabia Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine and the restoration of bilateral relations. These talks have nothing to do with achieving “peace.” Rather, they are another step in a global conflict that threatens humanity with nuclear annihilation.

The Trump administration exposed the real stakes last week when it sent Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Kiev to propose a deal to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: In exchange for past and future US support, Ukraine would cede half of its rare earth, lithium and titanium deposits—worth half a trillion dollars—to the US. Since the majority of these resources are in Russian-occupied territory, Trump needs an agreement with Moscow.

Whether such a deal will materialize remains uncertain. Washington has repeatedly mixed offers with threats of military escalation and economic sanctions. Trump is also pressuring Putin for concessions in the Middle East, where the US is preparing to expel Palestinians from Gaza and launch an attack on Iran, while also seeking to weaken Russia’s alliance with China, the central target of the US war drive. As Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated last week, “The US is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific.”

Zelensky, who initially proposed the resource deal, hesitated to accept Trump’s mafia-style demand, as it would effectively reduce Ukraine to an American colony. He also relies on support from the European imperialist powers, which are outraged by Trump’s attempt to cut a deal with Putin at their expense.

“According to my calculations, we have provided Ukraine with more than €134 billion,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told Reuters. “That makes us the biggest international donor.” Kallas spoke bluntly about what she thinks of Trump’s course: “It cannot be that Russia gets the Ukrainian territories, the US gets the natural resources and Europe foots the bill for peacekeeping,” she told Germany’s Tagesschau news program. “That doesn’t work. We have to mobilize our strength now.”

This dispute—not concerns over “democracy” or “Western values”—is the root of the growing rift between the US and its European allies. Under Biden, the US and Europe coordinated their war against Russia. Now, European powers fear being cheated out of the spoils by Trump.

Recent actions by the Trump administration have made clear its contempt for its European “allies.” First, Defense Secretary Hegseth questioned US security commitments to Europe and proposed a peace deal with Russia that would abandon NATO’s previous deman

WSWS for more

by MARIA J. STEPHAN

Federal workers, faith leaders, unions and ordinary Americans are already showing the power of collective defiance and how to make cruelty backfire.

The Trump-Musk administration has moved rapidly, ruthlessly and often illegally to consolidate authoritarian control and empower billionaires at the expense of ordinary people. In an administrative coup guided by Project 2025, the White House has sought to dismantle the separation of powers and deny critical services, punishing working people at home and abroad. 

Making good on his promises of revenge and retribution, Trump has sicced the Justice Department and IRS on perceived enemies, notably those who believe in a more diverse, equitable and inclusive America. The administration is cruelly scapegoating historically-targeted communities, including immigrants, trans people and the poor in an attempted divide-and-rule strategy. It has all but endorsed political violence and intimidation through the pardoning of nearly all of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. These actions threaten our most fundamental freedoms and the safety and well-being of our communities.  

Like all autocrats, Trump and his oligarchic henchmen are trying to overwhelm, disorient and distract. They want people to believe that they are invincible, and that any resistance is futile. But autocratic regimes, including this one, are weaker than they appear — and we are stronger than we think. Their kryptonite is their reliance on ordinary people, in different parts of society, to carry out their orders and go along with the status quo. They rely on workers’ labor, business revenue, civil servants implementing policies, religious leaders offering moral and organizational backing, and police and military obeying orders to arrest and repress. Support can be given, and support can be taken away. 

The long history of popular resistance to government tyranny in this country and globally shows how broad-based movements can prevail, even in the face of cruelty and abuse. They have relied on a wide range of nonviolent tactics, including those grounded in love, humor and hope, all while engaging in collective defiance and remaining resilient and disciplined. 

Noncompliance and backfire

Organized noncooperation, which involves withdrawing social, political and economic support from autocratic regimes via strikes, boycotts, walkouts and other forms of collective stubbornness, has been critical to the victories of pro-democracy movements. The most powerful campaigns of the U.S. civil rights movement — including the bus boycotts, lunch counter sit-ins and worker strikes organized by groups like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — dismantled systems of racial apartheid through disciplined non-compliance. Planning and preparation for these campaigns, which faced violent backlash, happened in Black church basements and Quaker meeting houses. 

Z Network for more

by OWEN HATHERLEY

Just outside Sofia’s city centre sits a high-rise concrete hotel, visible from many directions silhouetted against Mount Vitosha, the hulking mountain on the outskirts of the Bulgarian capital. There are plenty of Brutalist hotels in this part of the world, but this one is a little different – sleeker, but also visibly prefabricated. It bears a faint resemblance to a Japanese ‘capsule’ hotel, which is not accidental. This was originally the Vitosha New Otani, designed in 1974 by the celebrity architect Kisho Kurokawa, co-founder of the Metabolist Movement and one-time supporter of the Japanese Communist Party, at the time best known for the recently demolished Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo. The Vitosha hotel was built in collaboration with Mitsubishi and partly funded by the Japanese government. What on earth is it doing in Sofia? There are, on the face of it, few places so incongruous, so unlikely to be linked, as Bulgaria and Japan, and few economies so dissimilar as that of the eastern Balkans – now dedicated to tourism, agriculture and low-value services – and East Asia, with its cutting-edge high-tech industries and futuristic public infrastructure.

Victor Petrov’s new book Balkan Cyberia shows, however, that between the sixties and the eighties, state socialist Bulgaria was bent on becoming the Japan of the Warsaw Pact, and almost succeeded. In this revelatory revisionist account, Petrov, a historian of modern Europe at the University of Tennessee, evokes a mostly forgotten past in which Bulgaria became one of the world’s leading manufacturers, designers and exporters of computers, establishing trade links with East and South Asia in order to do so. At its height Buglaria’s computing firms significantly outpaced some of their American competitors – partly through forming close ties with Japan, a country that Bulgaria’s post-Stalinist dictator Todor Zhivkov thought could serve as a national model. Notwithstanding its sober tone, Balkan Cyberia is a wild book, completely rewriting the early history of mass personal computing through placing Bulgaria at its centre. Drawing on dense archival research as well as interviews with Bulgarian computer programmers, engineers and boosters, the book traces the rise – and fall – of the country’s Cold War tech industry, and considers its effects on everything from local science fiction to the utopian speculations of Bulgarian Communists.

New Left Review for more

by CAMILLA TOWNSEND

For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices

If you are interested in the themes of this Essay, please join us at Sophia Club New York on 13 February for our live event ‘How to live well in a slippery world’, where we’ll delve into the world of Aztec philosophy.

I gripped the steering wheel as the car started to slide. Slowly, slowly I manoeuvred the tyres back into the sandy tracks of what they called the road. I had set out from the tiny desert town of Cuba in northwestern New Mexico and had left the highway behind me where the sign pointed toward Chaco Canyon. The owner of the ranch where I was staying had told me that she had heard the road to Chaco was open today and I had nodded cheerfully. I realised now that I should have wondered why it might not be.

The loose sandy track was from another century. If it had been raining, it would certainly have sent me spinning off the edge. As it was, the car managed to hold on. Just barely. Hours later, I lurched through the entrance of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. It was 104 degrees Fahrenheit outside of the car, and almost blindingly bright. I tried to let my eyes adjust, determined to manage without the sunglasses or hats that hadn’t existed when ancient Puebloan peoples built this place 1,000 years ago. I lasted 10 minutes, then put on the shades.

Soon, armed with food and water and a map, I set out. I was excited. I was entering a world I had not known existed. No book, no map and no website had been able to prepare me for this hidden land. The segment of the San Juan River that had once cut into rock and forged the canyon where I stood still existed as a trickle. About a quarter of a mile on either side of the wash rose the dramatic cliff walls of the canyon, and scattered along the base of those walls were about 20 ancient structures. It was hard to tell what they were without going closer.

I walked along the path to Pueblo Bonito. Heat-seared grasses swayed in the breeze. Part of the rock-built structure rose several stories. I entered a sort of alley between the great wall of the building and the wall of the cliff. Looking down, I saw a shard of black-and-white pottery: I was standing, I supposed, on top of an ancient garbage dump. In the silence, insects whirred, making the same sound heard by the person who had left the pot here, something like 40 generations ago.

Aeon for more

by PERVEZ HOODBHOY

Imagine that Narendra Modi, not Jawaharlal Nehru, was the Prime Minister of India in 1947. What might have today’s India looked like in scientific terms? Nehru passed away on May 27, 1964

Jawaharlal Nehru would never have won a popularity contest in Pakistan quite simply because he did his best to oppose our country’s creation. But nowhere is he reviled more than in India’s current ruling circles and among those whose loyalty they command.

The accusations against Nehru are often breathtaking: that he was degenerate and dissolute; born in a brothel and eventually died of syphilis; impregnated a Catholic nun; claimed to be a Kashmiri Pandit but secretly ate onion; and from age 19 onwards would be drunk every day starting at 9 am. As with America’s alt-right which insists that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim, Hindutva activists allege Nehru’s grandfather was Ghayasuddin Ghazi, a Muslim kotwal serving the Mughal court.

If only anonymous internet nutters were making such attacks, they wouldn’t matter. But a concentrated attack by leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is leading to the steady purge of Nehru from India’s history books.

Betwa Sharma reported in 2016 that students of Class 8 in BJP-ruled Rajasthan are no longer learning that Nehru was India’s first Prime Minister or that Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. Nehru’s iconic Tryst With Destiny speech has already been removed from school syllabi and textbooks in some states, reminding one of how Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s famous August 11, 1947 speech “disappeared” in the Ziaul Haq era.

This campaign of personal vilification against Nehru is, in fact, a proxy war against the concept of India as a secular entity. Of course, here in Pakistan we never for a moment believed Nehru when he declared India’s intent to become a pluralistic, liberal, syncretic state whose strength would lie in diversity. For us, all these were just fine words justifying Hindu majoritarianism under the cloak of democracy. Only now that the BJP controls India with a viciously communal agenda have some Pakistanis realised what loss of secularism, even imperfect secularism, actually means.

But irrespective of what Muslims and Pakistanis may have thought in the past, or perhaps still think, the RSS always took Nehru at his word. It both feared and hated him for it. In particular, it has never forgiven him for banning the RSS after Gandhi’s murder and for fiercely opposing a Hindu Rashtra, or Hindu nation. One Hindutva activist wistfully writes that had Nehru handed over charge of India after Independence to the deserving Sanghis, India would have “attained Ram Rajya by now, with a hundred crore people chanting ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ a dozen times a day”.

National Herald India for more

by B. R. GOWANI

in South Asia

(and many other parts of the world)

marriage is a must

for husband, in-laws, or both

wife is not enough

they also want many amenities and luxuries to accompany the wife

the word for those things is dowry

the husband and in-laws survived, since husband’s birth, without dowry

so why do they need it now?

because they failed in the rat-race to get those things

or have become more greedy in a world full of things but little money

this is intrinsic curse of capitalism

a small segment of population will have everything

whereas most will have nothing or will have very little

people will use any every mean to get the things they desire or want

21-year-old Sonali Budholia got married in 2019

on wedding day, Sonali’s father gave cash Rs 20 lakh as dowry

that is, 2 million rupees or US $28,571 (as per 2019 currency exchange rate)

a few days later, husband and in-laws demanded a car

Sonali’s father was not in a financial position to fulfill the demand

“On the wedding day, I gave them Rs 20 lakh in cash as dowry but days later, Sandeep [the husband] and his family began making new demands. They wanted a car. I told them it is beyond my means to buy them a car. He and his family then started assaulting my daughter. I even approached the police over this once and we had arrived at a compromise.”

the glitter of capitalism has blinded us to reality

not only that,

it has turned us into a stubborn child who wants his/her candy or whatever

then there was the girl factor

there is an Indian saying:

“Bringing up a daughter is like watering a plant in another’s courtyard.”

Sandip and his parents wanted a son who could water their own plant

Sonali gave birth to a daughter named Darshita

Sonali’s father Sanjeev Tripathi:

“Sandeep wanted a boy. After the delivery, he and his family left my daughter alone in the hospital. I had to go to the nursing home to complete the payment. I took her home. Sandeep came a month later to receive Sonali and Darshita.”

of course, for many years, Sonali suffered tortures, beatings, verbal assaults

the husband didn’t get his candy, i.e., car

he didn’t get a son

so he killed his wife in Feb 2025

Sonali’s father:

“This morning, I got a call, saying my daughter’s health has deteriorated. After some time, I received another call, saying she hung herself. As soon as I reached there, I learnt that she was dead.”

four-year-old Darshita drew a picture of what her father did

Darshita told the police:

“Papa assaulted and killed mummy. He then said ‘die if you want to’. He hanged her body and hit her head with a stone. Later, he brought down the body and dumped it inside a sack.”

“I had told him once that if you touch my mother, I will break your hand. He used to beat her, saying she should die and that I should meet the same fate as her.”

Sonali is one more person added to statistics

in this capitalistic world, no one has time for anyone

everyone is rushing to get as many things as they could get

without thinking the harm they are doing in the process

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