“Refugees from the massacre… Each of these peasants lost half a dozen kinsmen in the massacre by machete, three-pronged knife, club or, rarely, rifle fire.” IMAGE/Life (6 December 1937).
“Between October 2 and October 8, 1937, between 15,000 and 40,000 Haitians and Black Dominicans were slaughtered by Dominican troops…”
Between October 2 and October 8, 1937, between 15,000 and 40,000 Haitians and Black Dominicans were slaughtered by Dominican troops and citizens in the northeastern border towns on Hispaniola, the island of two nations. Known as the Kout Kouto [“knife chop” or stabbing] in Haiti and El Corto [the “cutting”] in the Dominican Republic, this was among the twentieth century’s most horrific massacres – a genocide in the Western Hemisphere. It was ordered by the racist dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, a mulatto whose grandmother was Haitian, who wanted to rid the country of Black people.
Recent recoveries of archival material and oral history research demonstrate that the massacre lasted weeks and not days. Scholar Edwardo Paulino writes, “the operation lasted several weeks and had been planned at least a year in advance. Men, women, and children who were black and deemed Haitian were arrested and taken to secluded areas of the Dominican countryside and murdered, mostly by machete to evade recriminations of a pre-meditated, large- scale operation by the army.” The cutting. By machete. The dismembered bodies of Haitian and Black Dominican children, women, and men were discarded in the Dajabón River, also known as the “Massacre River.”
On December 17, 1937, two months after the massacre, Haitian communist activist and author Jacques Roumain wrote a dispatch for the World-Wide News Service and Crusader News Agency, which was published in the Black newspaper, the Philadelphia Tribune. Roumain described the brutality massacre in terrible detail: “Hundreds of peasants were…killed and their bodies thrown to the sharks. In the woods …a frightful manhunt was conducted. The cutlasses completed on the women and children the works of the guns.” He also explained the economic reason for the presence of poor Haitians working in slave-like conditions. He argued that US occupation and imperialism had turned Haitians into cheap labor to cut sugar cane for the region (especially in Cuba and the Dominican Republic), describing it as the “Trade in Blacks.”
Yet for decades, there was a silence surrounding the genocide of 1937. The Dominican Republic never apologized for their actions and the comprador Haitian governments during that time – and since – have not memorialized this grisly event, nor demanded reparations, especially for the remainingsurvivors.
Haiti and its people continue to pay for having gained their freedom from slavery and upending global white supremacy. The country continues to suffer the blows of US imperialism, which are matched by regional racism and anti-Haitianism – even amongst other Black countries whose people benefited from Haiti’s sacrifices.
As wehave done in the past, and will continue to do, we memorialize this massacre and commemorate the Haitian people. This year, we do so with a reprint of Jacques Roumain’s report on the massacre. Please read it below.
“Trade in Blacks” Practiced in Haiti; Tension Among Peasants Increases”
by JACQUES ROUMAIN
(Editor’s note: The writer of the following article is a prominent Haitian writer, well known in international journalistic circles. The following article was written expressly for World-Wide News service and Crusader News Agency, and is being released in the Philadelphia area through The Tribune.)
Haiti – An unimportant incident has occurred, declared the Honorable Senor Pastoriza, Minister of Santo Domingo at Washington, when interviewed about the bloody events which took place at the north-eastern frontier of the Haitian Republic. The investigation of the American State Department established that the number of victims of this “unimportant incident” amounted to thousands.
Let us review the facts: A great number of unemployed Haitians engaged for the zafra (harvest of sugar cane), crossed the frontier. They took along with them their wives and their children.
On the 9th of October, these unfortunate people were attacked by an excited mob. Excited by whom? It would be interesting to know this. The Dominican police intervened but in order to participate in this massacre and direct it. During three days, the Dajabon-Montechristi was the theatre of a bloody orgy. Hundreds of peasants were, for convenience, packed into camps and fortresses, and there killed and their bodies thrown to the sharks. In the woods and the savannahs, a frightful manhunt was conducted. The cutlasses completed on the women and children the works of the guns.
MASSACRE LASTED 3 DAYS
It is necessary to note immediately that the responsibility of the Dominican Government is proved by the fact that this massacre lasted three days. The dictator [Raphael] Trujillo cannot pretend to have been ignorant of a crime perpetrated by the auxiliaries of his regime. For if acts of indiscipline had occurred, they could not have been pursued so long without the Dominican Government, being informed, suppressing them immediately.
And one cannot entertain a single doubt if one recalls that Trujillo and [Stenio] Vincent, the two competitors of dictatorship, tried to hide this grave affair for more than two weeks.
“COMPLICITY OF SILENCE”
This complicity of silence could be explained partly in the following matter: Administrative measures prohibit the recruitment of Haitian workers destined for agricultural enterprises in Cuba and Santo-Domingo – except with authorization of the Haitian Government, which in reality means this latter reserves for its favorites the benefits of the TRADE IN BLACKS – for it is impossible to denounce in more moderate terms the ignoble traffic of which the Haitian peasants are victims.
Reclaiming Pan-Africanism from contemporary distortions
In this long read, Malick Doucouré draws our attention to the increased repression of homosexuality and LGBT+ rights within states proclaiming to uphold Pan-African values, which he sees as an alarming recent trend. He argues the anti-LGBT stance of states such as Burkina Faso and Senegal must be understood as a mechanism through which political elites mobilise support, consolidate authority, and construct a unified national identity in opposition to a perceived external threat. Doucouré calls for a return to the inclusive Pan-Africanism of Kwame Nkrumah and Thomas Sankara that contemporary pan-African leaders have forgotten.
West Africa has experienced a series of significant geopolitical developments in recent years, with the potential to reshape both its political landscape and economic trajectory. These are, in many ways, years in which decades have passed. Longstanding regimes have collapsed, populations have expanded rapidly, and economic growth has, in aggregate terms, generally trended upwards across the region. Yet these positive developments have been accompanied by equally serious challenges. A persistent jihadist insurgency continues to destabilise the Sahel, military coups have undermined the post-90s move towards democratisation, and regional institutions such as ECOWAS have seen their legitimacy increasingly questioned, particularly in light of the emergence of the Alliance of Sahel States as a contender to the Pan-African aspiration of politically uniting the region.
An increased repression of LGBT+ communities
Among these developments, one particularly alarming trend, and the focus of this submission, concerns the resurgence of legislative and political repression targeting gender and sexual minorities. Recent developments in Burkina Faso and Mali illustrate the severity of this trend. In Burkina Faso, the military government under Captain Ibrahim Traoré introduced legislation imposing a maximum 5-year prison sentence for homosexuality. This was later unanimously passed by his transitional assembly, materially jeopardising the social acceptance and relative safety of a country where LGBT Burkinabés had previously lived without fear of imprisonment (The Guardian, 2025). This change followed a similar law announced by the military government of neighbouring Mali, which also banned same-sex relationships and introduced mandatory 2-7 year prison sentences for an entire community of people, supposedly in the name of defending ‘traditional and moral values’ (Kojoué, 2024).
These developments, while alarming, are not entirely surprising when situated within the broader political context. Both regimes have simultaneously overseen restrictions on political and civil liberties such as the right of public assembly, alongside crackdowns on journalists and dissidents (Hughes, 2025). However, these actions must not be divorced from the context of the ongoing deadly Sahel insurgency as well as the structural economic constraints associated with longstanding patterns of dependency – i.e. Françafrique. As I have outlined elsewhere, if extremism is to be understood as a germ, poverty is the condition that allows said germ to spread rapidly (Doucouré 2024), with said poverty being directly attributable to the persistence of uneven trade dependencies and extractive commerce rooted in colonialism. It is no coincidence that in two of the poorest and most economically exploited nations of our planet, we may observe serious political instability, the rise of military rule, and extremism. With that said, it would be analytically insufficient to attribute the rise in the persecution of gender and sexual minorities solely to military governance or neocolonial pressures. Indeed, the Republic of Senegal offers an intriguing and instructive mini-case study through which we may complicate the easy answers to questions to be asked of this trend. This is a country that, per Regional/Central bank data, attained for its citizens over 85% of the GDP per capita of both Burkina Faso and Mali, combined. Although, like many emerging economies, the material reality of this relatively strong economic performance is deeply uneven, with poverty very much remaining a significant issue in Senegal.
Concerning the rise in homophobic repression across West Africa, Senegal is a useful case study to consider here not primarily because of its economic position relative to Burkina Faso and Mali but, rather, because the country has generally been praised by geopolitical observers for having preserved a ‘democratic tradition’ (Center for Strategic and International Studies,2024); the transfer of power from civilian to civilian has persisted in spite of domestic and numerous regional constitutional crises (Yabi and Holman, 2024). The country has never experienced a single coup d’etat, a matter of significance given that the fact that Africa as a whole has experienced, until 2010, at least 169 coup attempts – with 51.5% ultimately being successful seizures of power (Powell and Thyne 2011, p. 255).
America is trying to hold onto its superior tech while China is sharing with the rest.
When Xi Jinping sits down with Donald Trump in Washington on September 24, the American side plans to raise AI-directed cyberattacks and accusations that Chinese labs copied U.S. models. Less than two weeks earlier in New Delhi, Xi offered the BRICS bloc something incredibly valuable and low-cost: an open-source AI zone, a digital industry cloud platform, and a BRICS engineer-training alliance.
The two agendas describe different contests. Washington is arguing over who gets to hold the best model. Most of the world is asking for something plainer: can a health ministry in Jakarta or Pretoria download a model, run it on its own servers, retrain it in its own languages, and keep it running when relations with Washington sour?
The market answered before the diplomats did. Alibaba’s Qwen suite of AI applications passed three billion downloads in August, ahead of Meta and Google. Inside the U.S. market, Chinese models have taken more than 30 percent of weekly token usage—by U.S. customers on OpenRouter since February—peaking at 46 percent. American developers are not choosing DeepSeek or Kimi out of solidarity with the Global South. The license is permissive, and the bill is smaller.
Southeast Asia has run this experiment for three years without calling it geopolitics. Singapore’s AI model SEA-LION, trained across 13 regional languages, is built on open foundations including Qwen and Llama. Indonesia adapted it into Sahabat-AI for citizen services. Neither program would survive per-token billing in dollars at a national scale.
Africa holds roughly 0.6 percent of global data center capacity. A closed model reaches Lagos as a metered service, priced and hosted abroad, and terminable by officials no Nigerian voter elected. An open-weight model arrives as a file. Once downloaded, it stays downloaded.
Beijing gains from this. Every ministry that builds on Qwen inherits a tokenizer, an evaluation suite, and engineering habits made in Hangzhou. The training alliance extends that reach at low cost: pedagogy is cheaper to export than silicon and far harder to sanction. The offer has gaps too. Serving a model to millions of citizens still takes accelerators, cooling, and power that most members lack, so the cloud platform carries the weight of the package and is the piece least likely to arrive on time. The bloc’s own New Delhi Declaration says nothing about free download and adaptation—without the code and data sets, it’s open weight rather than open source—and India has model ambitions of its own.
Washington’s response so far has been to talk about theft and ceilings. Anthropic published a report on September 10 alleging nearly 200 million exchanges of unauthorized distillation by Chinese labs, 151 million of them attributed to Alibaba. The evidence is the company’s own telemetry, unaudited. China’s Commerce Ministry had already rejected a similar charge from U.S. agencies. Days later, Dario Amodei proposed that frontier labs in democracies agree on common capability limits under an antitrust carve-out, while the United States stops selling China powerful chips and chipmaking equipment, all to “widen America’s lead significantly.”
Read that from Nairobi. A company that paid $1.5 billion in July to settle claims over piracy now proposes limits drawn by the field’s leaders, which countries with no frontier lab would have to live under without having negotiated them. Chip policy offers no steadier ground. In January, the Trump administration approved H200 sales to China with a 25 percent fee attached. Access granted for a fee can be withdrawn, however, and summit host Narendra Modi warned that weaponizing technology and critical minerals hinders shared progress.
American industry is split. The open-weights letter signed in July by Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Hugging Face, and IBM called distillation a standard technique rather than a theft, and warned that premature restriction would hand the default to someone else. Signatories have since passed 270 organizations, including Google and OpenAI. Anthropic has not signed.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attends a vigil marking the third anniversary of the October 7 in New York. IMAGE/AP/Frank Franklin II
The vigil was organized by the liberal Zionist group Israelis for Peace to mark the Hamas-led attack on Israel that was used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the casus belli to carry out the ongoing campaign of mass murder that has killed close to 74,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians. The DSA mayor chose to attend the Zionist vigil rather than events called by pro-Palestinian groups.
Mamdani was met by counter-protesters who chanted “traitor” and branded him an “opportunist,” “coward” and “sellout.” Several pro-Palestinian youth groups organized the counter-protest, including the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA). However, the YDSA’s parent organization quickly intervened to shut down its participation.
Wednesday’s political debacle for Mamdani is part of growing opposition among those who were attracted to the DSAer and voted for him due to his rhetoric in defense of Palestinians and, more broadly, his posture as an opponent of Trump and the Democratic Party establishment. Since taking office last January amid growing social anger and political radicalization, Mamdani has continually reassured the ruling class and the political establishment that he will protect their core interests.
This process accelerated in recent weeks, during which Mamdani backtracked on a promise to arrest indicted war criminal Netanyahu while he was in New York City and instead allowed the New York Police Department (NYPD) to arrest scores of anti-Netanyahu protesters; held a meeting and press conference with Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion; and announced a strategy against antisemitism that funnels millions in public funds to Zionists groups.
Mamdani’s rightward shift is accompanied by an intensifying effort on the part of the New York City DSA to suppress dissent, including within its own organization. When the New York City YDSA and four student chapters (Hunter College, Lehman College, the City College of New York, and The New School) posted notices on social media endorsing the planned anti-Mamdani protest on October 7, the parent body responded swiftly.
A statement of the NYC-YDSA Steering Committee explained:
[T]he NYC-DSA Steering Committee requested that the post [promoting the protest] be removed and the endorsement revoked, even though NYC-YDSA Steering had voted unanimously to sign on. Along with objecting to a protest critical of Mayor Mamdani, a chapter elected official, the NYC-DSA Steering Committee took issue with the use of an inverted red triangle and Arabic text in the post, which they described as “pro-Hamas dog whistles.” YDSA Steering members were told explicitly that chapter leadership was considering removing funding from NYC-YDSA or stripping our organization of representation on NYC-DSA Steering as repercussions.
The YDSA Steering Committee capitulated and agreed to take down the social media posts promoting the protest. Three of the four student chapters also submitted, with the New School being the only exception. However, Youth Steering Committee members continued to promote the protest individually, prompting further attempts by the NYC-DSA leadership to shut them down and shield the Democratic Party mayor from criticism. Such, apparently, is the “democracy” practiced by the Democratic Socialists of America.
The turmoil in the NYC-DSA reflects an increasingly impossible political task that Mamdani and the DSA face: managing the capitalist state on behalf of a ruling class in deepening crisis while simultaneously trying to placate the aspirations of radicalizing workers and youth. This tenuous balancing act was on display on October 7, and not only during the vigil. Earlier in the day, Mamdani issued a statement condemning what he called “horrific war crimes of October 7” by Hamas while simultaneously denouncing “the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide.”
Mamdani, along with the NYC-DSA and its “pro-Hamas dog whistle” charge, thoroughly accepts the narrative that equates the violence of the oppressor with the violence of the oppressed. It is a presentation that omits the conditions of life that exist for millions of Palestinians, including the open-air prison of Gaza, to say nothing of the 80-year history of Zionist dispossession and oppression.
From the Upanishads to Gandhi, questioning has been at the heart of how we think, understand the world and challenge what we are told.
…that is the country and the world we inhabit. That is our home.
When we were born, we opened our eyes and cast our first glance upon the world. We turned our bewildered gaze around, wide-eyed with wonder. Astonished. A wellspring of curiosity emerged within us. There was so much to understand, and so much that was beyond our comprehension, that we burst into tears.
Thus began our life’s journey – in this country, in this world. Or rather, no sooner had it begun than questions, one after another, began popping into our minds. Questions about the world around us and about ourselves. And, babbling away, we grew eager to ask.
Look what trying can make us do – we began to speak.
As we began to speak, words stirring within us began to find expression, and a growing store of new words accumulated around them. A series of questions followed that gave us our voice. Mma … Ma was the first sound to escape our lips. Then came why, where, when, how and what for. Ceaselessly.
Questions about everything. Questioning was the only way to understand the world, find our place within it and gain knowledge.
The number of answers we found was not what mattered. What mattered was how the quest for those answers led us along a path of reflection, contemplation and ceaseless exploration. Questions became our teachers, training us to think critically, reflect and investigate thoroughly.
Here’s what was important to understand – at the other end of a question is not an answer, but dialogue. A space that exists between two sides. A bridge that forges a connection between the two, an exchange of friendship.
Questioning is the very human instinct that has led nations and the world, century after century, to vast repositories of knowledge. Whether in science, literature, philosophy or the business of everyday life, it is questions that have lit our way. Questioning is linked to thinking, and thinking to understanding. Where there are questions, thought follows; where thought exists, understanding emerges.
There may be times when life seems to be moving along a steady, well-worn path, and we feel we need only keep going as we are. But then comes a question – a question that shakes established beliefs – and our eyes open to new paths, new ways of understanding.
Had our ancestors in the Rigvedic age not asked questions, where would the Nasadiya Sukta have come from? And what a remarkable hymn it is – in the very act of offering answers, it gives birth to an eternal question, a question that we know will leave us forever in a state of doubt: that the ultimate answer may never be found. And doubt ultimately directs one toward comprehension.
Without questions, how would the Upanishads have come into being? A question would arise, and from there would begin an exploration stretching from the genesis of the cosmos to its very end. Each time, another Upanishad would emerge from this process.
Recall Prince Siddhartha. Here again, the power of inquiry comes to the fore. Observing the ordinary events and manifestations of everyday life, an extraordinary question arises in his mind: why does suffering exist? He sets out in search of an answer and, in the process, transforms from Siddhartha into the Buddha. He showed us an alternative path.
This year, Piker’s young following has been large enough that he’s been able to mobilise support for outsider candidates in the Democratic Party, writes Daniel Lindley. IMAGE/Getty
If you follow US politics at all, you probably would have noticed the raging debate about the role of controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker in endorsing several candidates from the left of the Democratic Party. For most people over 35, your first questions will be: what is a Twitch streamer? Why is this man getting so much attention?
Twitch is a website where users livestream themselves. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, it was largely confined to niche gaming enthusiasts, but with billions of people stuck indoors, Twitch suddenly got a huge new audience. Streamers expanded beyond gaming into music, movies, art, and other topics and the biggest personalities became celebrities in their own right. Increasingly, Twitch began to resemble an evolution of television rather than simply a platform for watching nerds play video games.
Another big development is that the US right, aka MAGA, picked up on this new platform where millions of people spend hours of their time every week, and organised to make it a venue for the dissemination of right-wing discourse.
With their massive funding and advertising advantages, Twitch streamers with a MAGA agenda like Adin Ross and FaZe Banks gained massive followings, even though the overwhelmingly young Twitch audience wasn’t their most natural ally.
That contradiction is where Hasan Piker came in. His early streams mostly featured him playing video games while talking about current affairs from his idiosyncratic leftist, anti-imperialist perspective. Along with him just being very charismatic and funny, it resulted in him having 3.1 million subcribers, a far larger and more organic following than any of the MAGA streamers he was effectively an alternative to.
In more recent years, some of his streams have focused on discussing political issues with other personalities, and even interviewing ‘Yemeni Timothée Chalamet’ during the 2024 Red Sea blockade.
This year, Piker’s young following has been large enough that he’s been able to mobilise support for outsider candidates in the Democratic Party. For instance, he’s widely considered to have played a crucial role in Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign.
Several other Democrats from the ‘democratic socialist’ wing of the parties have appeared on his stream in the last year, or have benefited from his fundraising efforts. The most prominent has been Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the Michigan Senate election, who has even had Piker speak at his rallies.
But Piker’s most important intervention in that campaign was to publicise a clip of someone who sounds a lot like El-Sayed’s election opponent Jeremy Moss, saying that the “entire purpose” of his campaign was to ensure “continued United States support for Israel”, and that it’s not wrong for American Jews to “put Israel first” because the United States “is not our homeland.”
We’ve since had very bizarrely framed coverage. For example, in one piece published by the Washington Post, there is acknowledgement that experts have determined there’s no evidence the clip was edited by AI, spliced together or anything to indicate it’s not authentic; yet the conclusion is that AI content has “made it harder for voters to know what to believe.”
Pakistani poet/author Fehmida Riaz was a feminist in a true sense of the word. She was fearlessly independent and was for full rights for women, that is, total equality between men and women. Riaz also opposed Muslim fundamentalists. Her open criticism of military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in the late 1970s and 1980s forced her to go into exile in India where she stayed for many years and returned after Zia’s death.
Here are four poems, depicting her innermost views, in Roman Urdu and their English translations.
Riaz’s poem Aqlima is about Eve’s or Hawa’s daughter over whom her two brothers Habil and Kabil (Abel and Cain in Jewish and Christian Bible) fought. Allah had asked both brothers to offer a sacrifice. Allah liked Habil’s sacrifice but rejected Qabil’s.
“Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.”
…
8 “Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.”[d] While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.”
(Christian and Jewish God was a meat-eater and hated fruits. Very unhealthy fellow. So bad.)
“Recite to them the truth of the story of the two sons of Adam. Behold! they each presented a sacrifice (to Allah): It was accepted from one, but not from the other. Said the latter: “Be sure I will slay thee.” “Surely,” said the former, “Allah doth accept of the sacrifice of those who are righteous.”
Riaz states that Allah should have also asked something to Aqlima. The brothers were fighting over who gets Aqlima.
In the above video, Fehmida Riaz gives a little description about Aqlima at 4:33 and recites it between 15:05 and 16:22.
Aqlima
aqlimA jo hAbil ki qAbil ki mAN-jA.i hai maN-jA.i magar mukhtalif mukhtalif biich meN rAnoN ke aur pistAnoN ke ubhAr meN aur apne pet ke andar aur kokh men in sab ki qismat kyun hai ik farba bher ke bachche ki qurbAni vo apne badan ki qaidi tapti hui dhuup men jalte Tiile par khaDi hui hai pat’thar par naqsh bani hai us naqsh ko ghaur se dekho lambi rAnoN se uupar ubhre pistAnoN se uupar pecheeda kokh se uupar Aqleema ka sar bhi hai allAh kabhi aqlimA se bhi kalAm kare aur kuchh poochhe
Aqlima
Aqlima born of the same mother like Habil and Qabil born of the same mother but a distinct one distinct between the thighs and the prominence of the breasts and within the abdomen also within the womb
The poem Chador aur char-diwari (Chador and four-walls) is about how the woman feels suffocated in covering herself in chador and within the four walls of home — which is a fate of many a woman. Look at Afghanistan. More than 20 million women have been forced into the four walls. The Islamists in Pakistan are also very crazy, the things there could turn ugly too.
The poet addresses a Jeffrey Epstein kind of sexual pervert who uses young girls, even minors, for gratification and throw them out once they are used as Sahir Ludhianvi said: woman gave birth to men, men gave her the brothel / at will, he used and abused her; at his will he discarded her
Epstein was an Israeli agent but the character in Riaz’s poem is not.
You can the watch Fehmida Riaz reciting the following poem in the above video between 0:55 to 4:35.
2. Chadar aur char-diwari
huzur maiN is siyAh chAdar kA kyA karuNgi ye Ap kyuuN mujh ko bakhshte haiN ba-sad inAyat
na sog meN huuN ki us ko oDhuN gham-o-alam khalq ko dikha.uN na rog huuN maiN ki is ki tArikiyoN meN khiffat se Duub jA.uN na maiN gunAhgAr huuN na mujrim ki is syAhi ki mehr apni jabiN pe har haal meN lagA.uN agar na gustAkh mujh ko samjheN agar maiN jAN ki amAn pA.uN to dast-basta karuN guzArish ki banda-parvar huzur ke hujra-e-ma.attar meN ek lAsha paDA huA hai na jAne kab kA galA saDA hai ye Ap se rahm chAhtA hai huzur itnA karam to kiije siyAh chAdar mujhe na dijiye siyAh chAdar se apne hujre ki be-kafan lAsh DhaNp dijiye ki us se phuTi hai jo ufunat vo kuche kuche meN hANpti hai vo sar paTakti hai chaukhaToN par barahangi tan ki DhANpti hai suneN zarA dil-kharAsh chikheN banA rahi haiN ajab hayule jo chAdaroN meN bhi haiN barhanA
ye kaun haiN jAnte to hoNge huzur pahchunte to hoNge
ye lauNDiyAN haiN ki yarghamAli halAl shab-bhar rahe haiN dam-e-sub.h dar-ba-dar haiN huzur ke nutfe ko mubArak ke nisf virsa se be-mo'atabar haiN ye bibayAN haiN ki zaujagi kA khirAj dene qatAr-andar-qatAr bAri ki muntazir haiN ye bachchiyAN haiN ki jin ke sar par phirA jo hazrat kA dast-e-shafqat to kam-sini ke lahu se rish-e-saped raNgin ho ga.i hai huzur ke hajla-e-mo.attar meN zindagi khuun ro ga.i hai paDA huA hai jahAN ye lAsha tavil sadiyoN se qatl-e-insAniyat kA ye khuN-chakAN tamAsha ab is tamAsha ko khatm kiije huzur ab is ko DhANp dijiye
siyAh chAdar to ban chuki hai meri nahiN aap ki zarurat ki is zamiN par vajud merA nahiN faqat ik nishAn-e-shahvat hayAt ki shAh-rAh par jagmagA rahi hai meri zehAnat zamin ke rukh par jo hai pasina to jhilmilAti hai meri mehnat
ye chAr-divAriyAN ye chAdar gali saDi lAsh ko mubArak khuli fazAoN meN bAdbAN khol kar baDhegA merA safina maiN Adam-e-nau ki ham-safar huuN ki jis ne jiiti meri bharosa-bhari rifAqat
Chador and four-walls
your honor, what will I do with this black chador? why you bestow this gift umpteen time on me?
neither am in mourning that I should veil my head to display to the world my sorrowful condition nor am I some malady that should drown disgrace in its darkness nor am I a sinner or a criminal in my every state, I should impressmy forehead with darkness if you don't consider me impudent if I am granted safety of life then with folded hands, I would respectfully request: my lord your honor's scented-room has a corpse don't know how long has been rotting there it desires your mercy please, your honor, do this favor don't give me the black chador with black chador, cover the shroudless corpse in your room because of which there is fetid smell all over they are gasping in lane after lane they are banging their heads on doorsteps they cover the body's nakedness just listen to their heart-rending screams
they're making amazing shadowy forms who are bare even in chadors
you must be aware as to who they are your honor must be acquainted with them
these are the helpless-girls these captives are halal for the entire night by the dawn they again have no shelter blessed be your honor's roguery, they'll get no part of bequest
these ladies to pay obeisance as spouses are expectantly waiting in queues these are little girls
when your honor's affectionate hand caresses one's head the feel of tender blood turns the white beard colorful in your honor's bride-alcove, life wept blood where this corpse is laying for centuries, the bloody spectacle of murdering humanity is on now please end this spectacle your honor, now please cover it up
the black chador has now become your necessity, not mine my existence on this earth is not simply a sign of desire my intellect is dazzling on the boulevard of existence the sweat on the face of earth shows my shimmering labor
blessed be the rotten corpse with these four walls and chador in open atmosphere, my ship with open sail would proceed ahead I am the progressive Adam's equal companion traveler the one who earned my trusted comradeship
Author, poet, and human rights activist Fehmida Riaz IMAGE/Dawn
Riaz explains about the poem Condolence Resolutions (at 7:22) in the top video that when the poet is alive, he/she is accused as traitor, anti-Islam, anti-Pakistan. So when that poet dies, her/his friends arrange a gathering and say she/he was for Islam, was a devout Muslim, and was in favor of Pakistan. She reminds us that this happened in case of very famous Pakistani Josh Malihabadi (1898-1982), Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-1984), and others. She recites the poem between 8:12-10:23 in the top video.
3. Taaziyati Qaraardadein
yAro bas itnA karam karnA pas-e-marg na mujh pe sitam karnA mujhe koi sanad na atA karnA diindAri ki mat kehnA joshe-e-khitAbat meN dar-asal ye aurat momin thi mat uThnA sAbit karne ko mulk-o-millat se vafAdAri aur mat koshish karnA apnA leN hukAm kam-az-kam lAsh meri
yArAN yArAN kam-zarfoN ke dushnAM to haiN e'zAz mere mimbar tak khAh vo na Aa sake kuchh kam to nahiN dilbar mere, dam-sAz mere
he haqiqat jAN meN nihAN aur khAk-o-sabA humrAz mere tauhiin na inki kar jAnA
khushnuudii-e-mohtasibAN ke liye mayyat se na muAfii mangvAnA
tajsiim miri gar ho na sake mat ghabrAnA jungle meN lAsh ko chhoD AnA
ye khayAl hai kitnA sukuuN afzA jungle ke darinde Aa leNge bin jANche mere khayAloN ko vo hAD mire aur mANs mire aur merA lA'l-e-badakhshAN dil sab kuchh khush ho kar khA leNge vo ser-shikam hoNtoN pe zabAneN phereNge aur uun ki be-isiyAN ANkhoN meN chamkegi tum shAYad jis ko keh na sako vo sachAi ye LAsh hai aisi hasti ki jo apni kehni keh guzri tA umr hargiz na pachhtAi
Condolence resolutions
friends, please show some grace post death, don't inflict more cruelty on me by gifting me a certificate of religiosity in a speech full of fervor, don't say: "this woman was a devout Muslim, in fact" don't rise to prove my loyalty to the nation and country don't try that the authorities accept my corpse at least
friends, o friends abusing shallow people are my awards if they can't come to the pulpit I don't lack sweethearts and intimates
within me is concealed the truth the dust and the morning breeze are my confidant don't insult them, please
to make the rulers happy don't make the dead person ask for forgiveness
if shrouding is not possible* don't get alarmed just leave my corpse in jungle
it's a tranquility enhancing thought the vultures will take my corpse without examining my thoughts my bones and my flesh and my heart like a ruby from Badakhshan happily they'll eat everything those voracious animals will lick their lips and their rebelliousness will shine in their eyes
you perhaps may not be able to utter that truth this corpse is of a person who said whatever she wanted to convey without repentance throughout her life
*The religious clerks may refuse to offer funeral prayers.
The poem Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle (You turned out exactly like us) was written about Hindu fundamentalists who have always been a nuisance but gained more prominence in the early 1980s. In the early 1990s, the Hindu extremists demolished the Babri Masjid. The 2000s saw Narendra Modi’s meteoric rise and the pogrom against the Muslims under Modi as Gujarat’s chief minister. Straight from there, Modi became the Prime Minister and turned India into his Hindu kingdom.
Riaz says Pakistan is already in hell because of Muslim zealots and now India is headed in that direction. She passed away in 2018 but saw her prediction come true.
4. Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle
tum bilkul hum jaise nikle ab tak kahAN chhupe the bhA.i vo murakhtA vo ghAmaDpan jisme humne sadi gaNvA.i Akhir pahuNchi dvAr tumhAre arey badhA.i bahut badhA.i
pret dharam kA nAch rahA hai qA.em Hindu rAj karoge sArey ultey kAj karogay apnA chaman tArAj karoge tum bhi baiThe karoge sochA puuri hai vaisi tayyAri
kaun hai hindu kaun nahiN tum bhi karoge fatwe jAri hogA kaThin yahAN bhi jiinA dANtoN AjA.egA pasinA jaisi-taisi kaTA karegi yahAN bhi sab ki sANs ghuTegi
kal dukh se sochA karti thi soch ke bahut haNsi Aj A.i tum bilkul hum jaise nikle hum do quom nahiN the bhAi bhAD meiN jA.e shikshA-vikshA ab jAhil-pan ke gun gAnA Age gaDhA hai ye mat dekho vApas lAo gayA zamAna mashq karo tum Aa jA.egA ulTe pANv chalte jAnA dhyAN na duujA man meN Aa.e
bas pichhe hi nazar jamAnA ek jAp sA karte jAo bAram-bAr yahi doharAo kaisA viir mahAn thA bhArat kitnA Ali-shAn thA bhArat phir tum log pahuNch jAoge
bas parlok pahuNch jAoge ham to haiN pahle se vahAN par tum bhi samay nikAlte rahnA ab jis nark meiN jAo vahAN se chiTThi-viTThi DAlte rahnA
You turned out exactly like us
well, you turned out exactly like us hey bro, where were you hiding all this time that obtuseness, that blockheadedness in which we lost a century ultimately, reached your doorstep too hey, congratulations, many congrats
the ghost of religion is dancing around long lasting Hindu Raj you'll establish every thing will be turned upside down you will ravage your garden badly while seating, you will ponder often about the preparation done
who is Hindu and who is not you'll issue fatwas* too it will be tough living over here the existence will turn into perdition the life will somehow pass by but here too, people will feel suffocated
yesterday sadly I was thinking today I burst out laughing well, you turned out exactly like us we aren't two-nations, brother to hell with education and learning start singing the excellence of illiteracy don't look at the hole in the front bring back the old times keep on working and it will come back keep on walking backward no other thought should enter you mind
just keep your eyes glued to the past a slogan you should chant keep on repeating continuously how great and brave India was how much grand our India was then you people will reach there
yes, you will reach the hereafter we are already there you should take out some time whatever hell you go to please drop a letter or two
They hail from three sectors of society, with different demographics, ideologies and economic interests. Two are familiar, although with only recently ascendant political power: the Christian fundamentalists like Pete Hegseth who wage holy wars and White nationalists like Stephen Miller who see brown and black people as a form of filth to be cleansed.
The book’s brilliant twist is to characterize a third group as end-times fascists as well: the tech oligarchs who profess themselves helpless in the face of the destructive AI gods they’ve summoned into being.
Klein and Taylor’s book came out last week and I read it over the weekend. It’s a fiery condemnation of the apocalyptic, anti-human ideology that has swept up the nation’s elites.
By giving up on solving the scarcity and instability of our current era, the end-times coalition, Klein and Taylor argue, are traitors—not to the nation state, but to humanity and the earth itself. I couldn’t agree more. End-times ideology radiates a powerful and unproductive message: our problems are no longer worth solving. Plan now to save you and yours.
This is why those of us who care about a shared future here on the blue marble need to organize against this ideology. The crystallizing term “end-times fascist” is a perfect slogan to mobilize the broadest possible coalition into an pro-human, pro-earth, anti-fascist movement that can do just that.
It’s a good sign that the book is getting covered in mainstream news outlets such as the New York Times, given its radical argument. Although some seem to be timid about actually letting Klein and Taylor make their case. For example, when David Marchese of the New York Times “Interview” podcast featured the authors, he dwelled repeatedly on the title of the book. Is this really fascism, Marchese insisted, again and again. His point seemed to be that this coalition’s goals could not actually be as bad as the term “fascism” would suggest.
Pshaw! MAGA’s coalition of Christian fundamentalists and White nationalists fall easily into my working definition of fascism. Fascism casts social problems as forms of contamination requiring the purging of pollutants. Where the rest of us see complex problems of multiculturalism or resource scarcity or religious diversity requiring cooperation and compromise, fascist ideology sees pure “real” people encroached upon by filthy outsiders and interlopers. They see their leaders as so spiritually attuned to this underlying purity that they can authoritatively lead the people without having to ask for their consent. Their solutions–purging non-believers for the Christian fascists and purging black and brown people for the White nationalists—follow.
It’s totally fair to describe the tech oligarchs as fascists, too. They support and abet the other fascists. But it struck me while reading the book that the end-times ideology of the tech oligarchs is also distinct in ways that could matter. The holy warriors and the race warriors have all submitted to Trump as their spiritual leader. The tech oligarchs on the other hand are still fighting among themselves. Their current union under Trump is not spiritual but instrumental. He’s useful to them because he’s promised easy access to the megawatts they need to build their digital god.
Making Revisions tells the story of a collaboration between British artist Patrick Waterhouse and the Warlpiri communities of Yuendumu and Nyirippi in Central Australia — from their first encounters and the making of the work to the curation of the Revisions exhibition. The project began when Waterhouse brought colonial-era documents — including maps, photographs and archival material — to the Warlukurlangu Art Centre and invited Warlpiri artists to respond to them through the traditional technique of dot painting. The resulting works are layered with ancestral symbols, stories and ceremonial patterns, transforming official records into artworks that reflect Aboriginal knowledge, history and experience. The film offers a perspective on Australia’s colonial legacy and the endurance of Aboriginal culture. When British settlers arrived in 1788, they declared the land terra nullius — belonging to no one — overlooking the complexity of Aboriginal society and its deep connection to land. The Warlpiri people, like many Indigenous groups, have continued to uphold and pass down a distinct worldview through oral history, ceremony and art-making. Filmed over several years, the documentary captures the unfolding of this collaborative process — from the initial exchange of materials and ideas to the shared authorship of each revised document. It also follows the curation of the Revisions exhibition, developed over three months in 2022 through a series of conversations and decisions made jointly by Waterhouse and community members in both Yuendumu and Nyirippi. It suggests that history, like land, is layered — and that through shared storytelling, what was once buried can be brought to the surface.
Credits: Director / Producer: Patrick Waterhouse with the communities of Yuendumu and Nyirripi at the Warlukurlangu Art Centre Cinematographer / Editor: Matt Deavin Colourist: Chris Hicks Additional filming: Mauro Bedoni Warlpiri translation: Otto Jungarrayi Sims, Ormay Nangala Gallagher, Sarita Quinlivan, Jacob Jungarrayi Spencer.
With special thanks to Cecilia Alfonso, Gloria Morales, Otto Jungarrayi Sims, Jacob Jungarrayi Spencer, Ormay Nangala Gallagher, everyone at the Warlukurlangu Art Centres, and everyone in the communities of Yuendumu and Nyirripi for their incredible generosity, guidance, and hospitality.
