by B. R. GOWANI

LUCA may have been the beginning of all the creatures

then from various family trees emerged different varieties of life

Canidae family has coyotes, wolves, jackals, dogs, foxes, etc.

Felidae family has cats, tigers, cougars, fishing cats, etc.

…

Ape family has bonobos, orangutans, humans, chimpanzees, etc.

human-apes became bipedal and got ahead of non-human apes

bipedalism changed their world and screwed up others’ world

but for a long time, they were also baffled, scared, and confused

lack of any understanding or control over natural forces was frustrating

so humans became Madonna and gave birth to goddesses and gods

creating myths & legends to grasp natural phenomenons in simple manner

then humans went for one Supreme Being, God of the entire universe

how did it happen?

why did humans opted for one God?

animals, including human being, do have a herd mentality

but what could have influenced people to follow one God

could it be, probably

the dictatorial leaders could have been the role models

if people can accept one leader and can carry out his command

for whom, they wouldn’t mind killing others or sacrificing their own life

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

by CHRIS McGREAL

Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised in a wealthy family under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Musk’s family history reveals ties to apartheid and neo-Nazi politics. We speak with Chris McGreal, reporter for The Guardian, to understand how Musk’s upbringing shaped his worldview, as well as that of his South African-raised colleague Peter Thiel, a right-wing billionaire who co-founded PayPal alongside Musk. “Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life,” said McGreal. “If you were a white South African in that period and you had any money at all, you lived with servants at your beck and call.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show with Part 2 of my recent interview with the reporter Chris McGreal, who was the Johannesburg correspondent for The Guardian during the last years of apartheid through 2002. He’s been closely following the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and raised under the country’s racist apartheid laws. Some of McGreal’s pieces include “What does Elon Musk believe?” and “How the roots of the ‘PayPal mafia’ extend to apartheid South Africa.” I began by asking Chris McGreal to discuss Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman.

CHRIS McGREAL: We see Musk’s grandfather, Joshua Haldeman. He immigrates to South Africa in 1950. And that’s really when apartheid has just started to kick in. The 1950s are when the most — the first laws — South Africa had had discriminatory laws before, but you see the specific apartheid laws, which are much more aggressive, and in many ways reminiscent of the Nazi Nuremberg laws against Jews in the 1930s. They have very similar echoes in stripping Black people from the right to work in certain places, their movements, controlling them, confining them to areas. You already had a situation which has now, you know, come to the fore because of recent events with Trump, but —

AMY GOODMAN: You mean with Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute?

CHRIS McGREAL: Yes, but also with the sanctions over land, is that the 1913 Land Act had already deprived most Black people of land in South Africa anyway. At that point, the 7%, or 10%, as it was, of the population that was white owned more than 85% of the land under the Land Act of 1913. So, the apartheid laws kick in in the 1950s.

Musk was born — Elon Musk was born in 1971 in Johannesburg, and at that point the prime minister was a guy called John Vorster. And John Vorster’s background is very telling, really, because Vorster, in the 1930s, had been a member of a neo-Nazi militia called the OB, which was openly sympathetic and linked to the Nazis in Germany. It was responsible for all kinds of attacks, but including burning Jews out of their businesses in Johannesburg.

AMY GOODMAN: And we’re talking about what years?

CHRIS McGREAL: In the 1930s, so the late 1930s. And then South Africa goes to war as an ally of Britain against Hitler. The OB and the groups that support them, like Vorster, people like Vorster, they actively oppose that. They actually are in touch with — OB is in touch with German military intelligence, and they plan to assassinate the prime minister of South Africa, Jan Smuts, and overthrow the government and have it support Hitler. That plan fails, because the Germans are unable to provide the necessary weapons and back out.

But in 1942, John Vorster, later prime minister, stands up and gives a speech, and he talks about the system that they — their kind of ideological belief system, which was Christian nationalism. And he says Christian nationalism in South Africa is the same as Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy. It’s all anti-democratic. It’s all the same thing. By 1971, when Elon Musk is born, that man is the prime minister of South Africa. And Christian nationalism is the basis of not only the political philosophy, but the entire education system that Elon Musk is brought up into.

AMY GOODMAN: So, take us from Elon Musk’s grandfather moving to South Africa in the ’50s to his father, how they gained their wealth.

CHRIS McGREAL: So, Musk — Elon Musk’s grandfather moves there in 1950s. He’s not particularly prosperous. He arrives without a lot of money. But it’s Elon Musk’s father, Errol, who makes the real money, principally through investments in emerald mines in Zambia. And, you know, mining conditions in southern Africa in that period were really pretty dire in the 1960s and ’70s, very high death rate, very poor conditions. But the owners got very rich.

And Musk lived what can only be described as a neocolonial life. If you were a white South African in that period and you had any money at all, you lived with servants at your beck and call. You lived in sprawling housing. And what you see with Errol Musk is that when we get a glimpse into just how much money he had, when he and Elon’s mother get divorced, she says at the time that, well, he owns a yacht, he owns a jet, he owns several houses. So there was considerable wealth there.

AMY GOODMAN: Was the grandfather of Elon Musk on the record in his support for Vorster?

CHRIS McGREAL: Well, he was certainly on the record in his support for apartheid, very vividly so, yes. And he said that that’s why he had moved to South Africa from Canada in 1940, was in support of it. Now, the grandfather himself is killed a few years later in a plane crash, but it’s not known what Elon Musk’s grandmother’s personal views of Vorster particularly were, but they were both avid supporters of the apartheid system, and the grandmother lived for a number of years afterwards.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you’ve been talking about Elon Musk’s maternal grandparents and how they moved to South Africa, but talk about their roots in Canada.

CHRIS McGREAL: Originally, the grandparents have no connection to South Africa. They’re born and grew up in Canada. And in the 1930s, the grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, he’s head of the Canadian branch of a U.S. movement called Technocracy Incorporated. And Technocracy Incorporated is essentially a movement to overthrow democratic governments in the United States and have technocrats, but big businessmen, in many ways, come in and run the country. That’s partly a reaction to FDR’s election and New Deal and massive reforms that he’s introduced in the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: So, from Canada, they would help to launch a coup against FDR?

Democracy Now for more

BBC

VIDEO/BBC/News Chanel/Youtube

Every city in the world has been designed and built by men. But what if the other half had a go? Barcelona might be able to give us that answer.

For the past four years the city has had a female mayor with a profoundly feminist agenda. We spoke to feminists working in urban planning in the city to find out what they think needs to change to make cities better for women.

BBC for more

by REBEKAH WALLACE

When medieval scholars sought to understand the nature of angels, they unwittingly laid the foundations of modern physics

What do the angelic forces of the Heavenly Host have to do with orgasms? The answer, according to the 12th-century philosopher and theologian Maimonides, was simple. Some invisible forces that caused movement could be explained by God working through angels. Quoting a famous rabbi who talked about ‘the angel put in charge of lust’, Maimonides commented that ‘he means to say: the force of orgasm … Thus this force too is called … an angel.’

Before the discovery of gravity, energy or magnetism, it was unclear why the cosmos behaved in the way it did, and angels were one way of accounting for the movement of physical entities. Maimonides argued that the planets, for example, are angelic intelligences because they move in their celestial orbits.

While most physicists would now baulk at angelic forces as an explanation of any natural phenomena, without the medieval belief in angels, physics today might look very different. Even when belief in angels later dissipated, modern physicists continued to posit incorporeal intelligences to help explain the inexplicable. Malevolent angelic forces (ie, demons) have appeared in compelling thought experiments across the history of physics. These well-known ‘demons of physics’ served as useful placeholders, helping physicists find scientific explanations for only vaguely imagined solutions. You can still find them in textbooks today.

But that’s not the most important legacy of medieval angelology. Angels also catalysed ferociously precise debates about the nature of place, bodies and motion, which would inspire something like a modern conceptual toolbox for physicists, honing concepts such as space and dimension.Angels, in short, underpin our understanding of the cosmos.

Angels have been around at least since Biblical times, and are described in various, and sometimes odd, ways. In the Book of Ezekiel, for example, the Cherubim have intersecting wheels sparkling like topaz that move them in all four directions without turning, and their ‘entire bodies, including their backs, their hands and their wings, were completely full of eyes, as were their four wheels’. However, aside from these googly-eyed angels, angels were also, as we can see from Maimonides, a way of explaining movement in the world. They were spiritual substances that could take on the appearance of corporeal beings, but also acted as invisible, intelligent, immaterial forces.

This view of angels as immaterial ‘intelligences’ became pretty standard in medieval philosophy and theology. But the scholastic period saw an increasing desire to systematise, systematise, systematise. The precise nature or essence of angels became a serious cause for debate, and these debates were not mere thought experiments. Rather, because of the real belief in the existence of angels, theologians and philosophers could think through angels as a way of understanding the nature of the physical world and things like place, bodies and motion. This was motivated by significant theological concerns. One concern was that, if angels are immaterial intelligences, then what makes them different to God? For us, our bodies are what make us limited, able to exercise force only directly, such as when I throw a ball. Does this mean angels, having no body, could exist everywhere or act at a distance? This was dangerous territory for theologians, potentially challenging God’s omnipresence and omnipotence.

Aeon for more

by ZAIN HAQ

Nuclear physicist calls for a radical shift in priorities, urging the government to break from the status quo

Pakistan’s failure to dismantle its feudal order has entrenched corruption and deepened environmental and social inequality, physicist and commentator Pervez Hoodbhoy said, warning that the country remains in the grip of dynastic elites. 

“Pakistan’s tragedy is that it was never able to overturn the feudal order,” he said. “Today, our national and provincial assemblies are filled with the sons and sometimes daughters of feudals. Independent people don’t make decisions.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Hoodbhoy called for a radical shift in the country’s priorities, urging the government to break from the status quo. 

“We need to embrace renewable energy, implement effective family planning, and address the root causes of environmental degradation,” he said. “Without these changes, Pakistan will remain trapped in a cycle of crisis.”

On the environmental crisis, the nuclear physicist and activist cautioned about the devastating toll of coal mining, water mismanagement, and the failure to embrace renewable energy, offering a bleak assessment of the country’s future.

On the most pressing issue of the Thar coal mining project in Sindh, Hoodbhoy did not hold back in his criticism. “We are poisoning the water. To run a coal mining project, you have to have lots and lots of water. And when it’s put back into the ground, it is poisoned.” Thar’s coal, he said, is of poor quality, with high sulfur content and low energy efficiency.

Despite the availability of cheaper and cleaner alternatives like solar energy, Pakistan, he said, remains heavily reliant on coal. Hoodbhoy noted that while solar power is gaining traction at the domestic level, with many households installing panels, large-scale projects are being overlooked in favor of lucrative coal deals.

“Solar has an enormous amount of promise, but it’s small scale and distributed. Coal involves mega infrastructure projects and profits,” he explained.

But coal is only part of a larger crisis. Raising the alarm, Hoodbhoy said that Pakistan’s population is doubling every 25 years, a trend that could have catastrophic consequences.  “If this doesn’t change, we could reach 500 million in 25 years—then a billion. Within six doubling periods, Pakistan’s population could exceed the current global total,” he warned, blaming the clerics for the crisis.  “The clerics have so intimidated the government that it does not dare openly promote contraceptives or say, stop it, because you’re ruining the country.”

When asked about water mismanagement, he warned that the country’s rivers, including the Indus, are drying up due to excessive agricultural use and upstream diversions. “The Indus River barely exists by the time it enters the delta. The sea is encroaching, and it’s not just the climate crisis—it’s the overuse of water for agriculture upstream,” Hoodbhoy explained.

The Express Tribune for more

by MARY TUMA

Dr. Damla Karsan lives in fear for her patients—and for all pregnant Texans. 

The Houston OB-GYN has spent the last four years painfully navigating the state’s draconian abortion bans, oftentimes for patients who face severe complications. With vaguely defined exceptions for medical emergencies, the law has forced doctors to either delay or deny life-saving care out of worry they could face lawsuits or prison time for performing pregnancy termination. 

Karsan knows the risks well: When she promised to perform abortion care in 2023 for Kate Cox, a Dallas mother who saw her health steadily deteriorate after doctors failed to terminate her fatal pregnancy, she was met with direct threats of prosecution from Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cox eventually fled the state. Paxton’s attacks on reproductive healthcare workers have only escalated since then, most recently with the arrest of a Houston-area midwife for allegedly giving abortion pills to a patient—the first criminal charges under the state’s ban that took effect after the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade.

Karsan has had other patients who were hemorrhaging during a miscarriage—just a few steps away from death—and still faced delayed care at the ER. Some of her patients are too scared to even get pregnant, while others have fled Texas in order to start their families safely. Her experiences mirror the flood of traumatic stories from other Texans and providers. 

“These laws are torturing women, there’s no other way to put it,” Karsan told the Texas Observer in between deliveries from her practice just south of the Houston Medical Center. “It is absolutely horrible having to try to help patients get care when the state has barred us from using our best medical judgment.” 

Texas Observer for more

by VIJAY PRASHAD

There is a rich tradition of women writers on the African continent who have played key roles in publishing and national liberation movements alike, from Andrée Blouin to Flora Nwapa. Learn more about their legacy and efforts to carry forward their torch today.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

In 1962, Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa (1931–1993), mostly known as Flora Nwapa, sent a book manuscript to the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (1930–2013). Four years earlier, Achebe, at the tender age of twenty-eight, had published his landmark novel Things Fall Apart with Heinemann. The novel arrived in Heinemann’s London office as the decolonisation movement began to change the shape of the African continent (Ghana won its independence in 1957, three years before Nigeria – both countries with an English-speaking population, however small, that used Heinemann’s science and English books in their education system). Achebe’s book inspired Heinemann’s Alan Hill to recruit Evander ‘Van’ Milne from Nelson Publishers (where Milne had published the autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah in 1957). Both Hill and Milne had left-wing politics, which is why Heinemann’s African Writers Series (AWS) published the work of Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, and other national liberation leaders. By the time Flora Nwapa sent her book to Achebe, he was working as an advisor to the AWS and sent her money to mail her manuscript to London.

Heinemann published Nwapa’s book Efuru in 1966, making it one of the first English-language novels by an African woman to be published and the twenty-sixth in the series. The next book by a woman, again Nwapa, was Idu (1970), the fifty-sixth in the series. The women authors in this landmark series of African fiction were stunning both for their brilliance and their rarity:

No. 100: Bessie Head (South Africa), Maru (1972)
No. 131: Doris Lessing (Zimbabwe), The Grass is Singing (1973)
No. 149: Bessie Head (South Africa), A Question of Power (1974)
No. 159: Martha Mvungi (Tanzania), Three Solid Stones (1975)
No. 177: Nadine Gordimer (South Africa). Some Monday for Sure (1976)
No. 182: Bessie Head (South Africa), The Collector of Treasures (1977)
No. 203: Rebeka Njau (Kenya), Ripples in the Pool (1978)
No. 227: Buchi Emecheta (Nigeria), The Joys of Motherhood (1979)
No. 220: Bessie Head (South Africa), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981)
No. 248: Mariama Bâ (Senegal), So Long a Letter (1989)

The former French and Portuguese colonies were no different in this regard. Aminata Sow Fall of Senegal led the way with Le revenant (The Ghost, Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, c. 1976) in French while Paulina Chiziane of Mozambique led the way in Portuguese with Balada de Amor ao Vento (Love Ballad to the Wind, Maputo: Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos, 1990) alongside Filomena Embaló of Guinea-Bissau with Tiara (Tiara, Lisboa: Instituto Camões, 1999). Each of these books is grounded in the struggle for freedom.

Meanwhile, Mabel Dove Danquah and Efua Sutherland pioneered journalism in Ghana, with Danquah running Accra Evening News in 1951 and Sutherland running the literary magazine Okyeame and founding the Ghana Society of Writers in 1957 (Sutherland also created the Ghana Experimental Players and Ghana Drama Studio in 1961). In South Africa, Noni Jabavu published her memoir Drawn in Colour: African Contrasts with the London-based publisher John Murray in 1960 while Miriam Tlali published her fabulous novel Between Two Worlds (originally released as Muriel at Metropolitan) with Ravan Press in 1975. In Kenya, Grace Ogot became the first woman to be published by the East African Publishing House with her novel The Promised Land (1966) while in Nigeria Zulu Sofola produced her play The Deer and The Hunters Pearl (1969). Egypt’s Nawal El Saadawi, Morocco’s Khanata Banuna, and Algeria’s Assia Djebar broke ground for many other women writing in Arabic. There is a rich tradition of women writing on the African continent.

The Tricontinental for more

by MEHMET OZBAGCI

On March 18, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) presidential candidate, had his university diploma revoked. The decision was made by a committee at Istanbul University, where ?mamo?lu had graduated, with a majority vote. Under Turkish law, a university degree is required to run for president, so the decision effectively disqualified ?mamo?lu’s candidacy.

Many saw the ?mamo?lu as the only politician capable of defeating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled the country for 23 years. Imamoglu’s disqualification through such a crude maneuver sparked widespread anger among opposition supporters. However, in line with a longstanding tradition within Turkey’s opposition, Imamoglu himself chose to absorb this anger rather than mobilize it. He responded to the annulment of his diploma with a restrained video statement filmed at a Ramadan dinner. In the video, he emphasized the Islamic concept of “kul hakki” (right of the believer), and argued that the revocation of the diploma he obtained 33 years ago signaled a broader threat to private property and civil rights in Turkey. Imamoglu’s statement included neither a call to protest the decision nor a clear roadmap for how he intended to challenge it.

The cost of this restraint would be heavy. On the morning after the university’s decision, dozens of police vehicles were stationed in front of Imamoglu’s home. The mayor of Turkey’s most populous city was taken into custody. Around the same time, nearly 100 individuals, including journalists, opposition politicians, and municipal staff, were also detained, and Imamoglu’s construction company was seized by the government. The charges against him included leading a criminal organization, corruption, bribery, and money laundering. A few days later, on March 23, ?mamo?lu was officially arrested.

Imamoglu’s detention sparked large-scale protests, particularly on university campuses. In response, the government canceled police leave, suspended public transportation in major cities, and placed public squares under heavy police control. Twelve years after the nationwide Gezi Protests, Erdogan’s government and opposition groups were once again set to confront each other in the streets.

Timing the Takedown

In political trials, reality and fiction intertwine, and secret witness testimonies and questionable procedural practices are routinely employed. Since its early years, Erdo?an’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has used such trials as its primary tool for political retaliation. Therefore, while the sudden branding of the mayor of the country’s largest city as the leader of a criminal organization was shocking, it was not unexpected. The key question here is why the AKP government felt the need to use this tool at this particular moment.

The primary factor that drove the government to launch an operation against Imamoglu was, without a doubt, his political rise. In the March 2019 municipal elections, Imamoglu defeated AKP’s former prime minister, Binali Yildirim. However, the election was annulled on the grounds of alleged irregularities. When the vote was held again, Imamoglu won with an even larger margin, securing the Istanbul mayoralty. In the 2024 elections, he successfully retained his position, increasing his vote share.

Erdogan, who once served as Istanbul’s mayor himself, had famously stated that “Whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey.” After winning Istanbul three times, and with the CHP emerging as the leading party in the 2024 local elections, it became increasingly clear that Imamoglu’s next target would be the presidency.

Monthly Review Online for more

by MELISSA BERTHET

Humans can effortlessly talk about an infinite number of topics, from neuroscience to pink elephants, by combining words into sentences. This is thanks to compositionality: the ability to combine meaningful units into larger structures whose meaning is derived from the meaning of its units and the way they are combined.

For years, scientists believed that only humans extensively used compositionality. Animal communication was thought to be mostly a mere random assortment of calls, with only rare instances of compositionality. However, our new study, recently published in the journal Science, says otherwise.

By extensively researching the vocal communication of bonobos in their natural habitat, the Kokolopori Community Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we found that vocal communication between bonobos – our closest living relatives, along with chimpanzees – relies extensively on compositionality, just like human language.

A bonobo dictionary

Investigating compositionality in animals first requires a strong understanding of what single calls and their combinations mean. This has long presented a challenge, since accessing the minds of animals and reliably decoding the meaning of their calls is difficult.

To remedy this, we developed a new way of reliably determining the meaning of bonobo vocalisations, and used it to determine the meaning of all of their single calls and combinations.

We assumed that a bonobo call can have different types of meaning. It can give an order (“Run”), announce future actions (“I will travel”), express the internal states (“I am afraid”) or refer to external events (“There is a predator”).

The Conversation for more