by SAHAR KHAN & DAVID VINE

Amid a seeming flood of terrible news, the string of countries that last week refused President Donald Trump’s request to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz is an encouraging sign. For the first three weeks of a war that many experts have characterized as illegal under both U.S. and international law, Spain was initially the rare country to stand up to Trump by refusing to allow the use of U.S. bases it hosts for attacks on Iran. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described the war as “reckless and illegal,” and continues to stand his ground.

Despite widespread global opposition to the attacks, the U.S. can wage the war in part because of its vast network of military bases in the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. Two U.S./Spanish bases in southern Spain are longstanding logistics hubs that have provided U.S. forces access to the Mediterranean Sea to launch military operations into Africa and the Middle East, including the 2003 U.S.-led war on Iraq. While Spain has said “no” to the U.S. using its bases in a new Middle East war, more than a dozen countries have allowed the use of U.S. installations on their soil as part of the conflict.

Given the role these bases are playing in enabling the fighting, host countries share responsibility for the war, along with the U.S. and Israeli governments. Which means they share some responsibility for the war’s killing and injury, displacement and destruction, for violations of international law, and for any potential war crimes, such as the killing of at least 165 civilians at the Minab girls school.

The Spanish government and others hosting U.S. bases during prior conflicts have shown there is another path by refusing to support war. Countries hosting U.S. bases should be emboldened by governments refusing to assist in patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. They can and must put a stop to the U.S. government using their territory to support any aspect of this war other that any legitimate defense of their citizens. They can go further to pressure President Donald Trump to stop the fighting, which has already caused so much harm and risks spiraling out of control into complete global economic calamity and a regional (or even world) war that could significantly eclipse the damage of past conflicts in the Middle East.

The Infrastructure for War

Military bases, by design, provide infrastructure for war, not peace. The reason the Iranian military has attacked many of its neighbors is that they host U.S. bases, which are launching and supporting the planes and ships bombing Iran, and providing surveillance, communications, and logistical support to sustain the war.

Counterpunch for more

by JONATHAN COOK

Netanyahu pitched the war as a repeat of Israel’s apparent ‘audacious feat’ of smashing Hezbollah. The US president should have noted instead Israel’s moral and strategic defeat in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must have persuaded Donald Trump that a war on Iran would unfold much like the pager attack in Lebanon 18 months ago. 

The two militaries would jointly decapitate the leadership in Tehran, and it would crumble just as Hezbollah had collapsed – or so it then seemed – after Israel assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese group’s spiritual leader and military strategist.

If so, Trump bought deeply into this ruse. He assumed that he would be the US president to “remake the Middle East” – a mission his predecessors had baulked at since George W Bush’s dismal failure to achieve the same goal, alongside Israel, more than 20 years earlier. 

Netanyahu directed Trump’s gaze to Israel’s supposed “audacious feat” in Lebanon. The US president should have been looking elsewhere: to Israel’s colossal moral and strategic failure in Gaza. 

There, Israel spent two years pummelling the tiny coastal enclave into dust, starving the population, and destroying all civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.

Netanyahu publicly declared that Israel was “eradicating Hamas”, Gaza’s civilian government and its armed resistance movement that had refused for two decades to submit to Israel’s illegal occupation and blockade of the territory. 

Iran, which has been readying for this fight for decades, has plenty of surprises in store should they dare to invade

In truth, as pretty much every legal and human rights expert long ago concluded, what Israel was actually doing was committing genocide – and, in the process, tearing up the rules of war that had governed the period following the Second World War. 

But two and a half years into Israel’s destruction of Gaza, Hamas is not only still standing, it is in charge of the ruins.

Israel may have shrunk by some 60 percent the size of the concentration camp the people of Gaza are locked into, but Hamas is far from vanquished. 

Rather, Israel is the one that has retreated to a safe zone, from which it is resuming a war of attrition on Gaza’s survivors.

Surprises in store

When considering whether to launch an illegal war on Iran, Trump should have noted Israel’s complete failure to destroy Hamas after pounding this small territory –  the size of the US city of Detroit – from the air for two years.

That failure was all the starker given that Washington had provided Israel with an endless supply of munitions. 

Even sending in Israeli ground forces failed to quell Hamas’ resistance. These were the strategic lessons the Trump administration should have learnt.

MEE for more

by RALPH NADER

March 27, 2026

What should the American people, especially the hundreds of millions of their voters, expect Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden to do against the vicious, serial law-violating, violent, corrupt, agency-dismantling Donald Trump and the crony Trumpsters who are wrecking our government and our economy?

These former Presidents should mobilize the citizenry from the grassroots to the Capitol and take on the unpopular Tyrant Trump. Having sworn to uphold the Constitution and “…take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” they should strongly uphold their patriotic duty to resist tyranny and save our Republic and our besieged democratic institutions, and stop the assault on our civil liberties and civil rights.

Our former presidents all get along with each other. They have the stature to: (1) get mass media; (2) raise immediately large amounts of funds for strong IMPEACH TRUMP citizen groups in every Congressional district to increase and expand the present majority of Americans wanting to FIRE TRUMP; (3) stay the course as Trump keeps worsening his criminal dictatorship and destruction of our democracy; and (4) highlight the many programs they initiated that Trump has illegally destroyed or is dismantling.

Instead, they are living luxurious lives and are largely AWOL from connecting with the existing but overwhelmed civic opposition to Trump. Bush is painting landscapes as Trump has destroyed his AIDS program in Africa, and the Bush wing of the Republican Party. Obama has campaigned for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as governors of Virginia and New Jersey, satirizing Trump in some of his speeches. His present passion, however, is the March Madness basketball championships. Clinton has left it up to Hillary, who wrote a guarded New York Times op-ed back on March 28, 2025, taking Trump to task for jeopardizing our national security and not “preparing for real fights with America’s adversaries.”

Then there is Joe Biden, who received then President-elect Trump and Melania on the morning of January 20, 2025, with the gracious “welcome home.” In return, Biden got that afternoon and every day since hundreds of foul epithets from Trump, scapegoating him for almost everything he could fabricate, including solar energy and wind power projects. Delaware Joe managed a few critical replies at a Democratic Party dinner in Nebraska on November 7, 2025. “Trump has taken a wrecking ball not only to the people’s house but to the Constitution, to the rule of law, to our very democracy.” Unfortunately, Biden has mostly been silent.

Credit these retired Presidents with knowing the historic dangers and existing damages of the TRUMP DUMP in Washington and around the country. They also know their supporters would be very receptive to their organized, persistent leadership from them to send Trump back to Mar-a-Lago. Why are they AWOL?

First, they fear Trump’s retaliation, upsetting their comfortable lives. Trump is now deep in the QUICKSAND of the Middle East. He is being pilloried by a million stickers at gas pumps picturing Trump pointing to the booming price per gallon and saying, “I did that.” He is openly declaring there should be no elections in November and continues to send or keep his stormtroopers in America’s cities. An expanding police state is not exactly a credible perch for effective profanity. Show a modest bit of moxie!

A second excuse is that they have done some of what Trump is doing:

*Bush’s mass murder in the illegal war on Iraq.

*Clinton’s distracting raids abroad against innocents and his womanizing.

*Obama’s “signature strikes,” killing over three thousand mostly young men in places like Yemen.

*Biden’s illegal co-belligerence with Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, which has taken over 600,000 civilian lives.

True enough. But people live in the present and are most worried about what Dangerous Donald is doing NOW to their livelihoods, freedoms, health and safety, and the consequences in casualties and their tax dollars of another endless war.

Our former Presidents have no excuses. They simply lack a modicum of courage. Remember Aristotle declared, “Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”

Ralph Nader for more

by ALI ABOU JBARA

Behind the polished image of Qatar’s flagship media project lies a tightening grip on dissent, where speech – and even silence – is increasingly policed in line with shifting regional alignments.

The choice of a cubic structure for the building in Education City was not incidental, nor merely an architectural decision. The project, launched under the umbrella of Northwestern University in Qatar and promoted as a global symbol of free media, was framed as a new “Media Kaaba” – a center around which narratives revolve, and a supposed beacon of free expression in the Arab world.

Yet this polished image has steadily unraveled with each real political test. The US-Israeli war on Iran proved decisive, stripping away what remained of the facade and exposing the “Media Kaaba” as little more than a soft projection masking far firmer policies aimed at controlling public opinion.

At a sensitive regional moment, Qatar did not confine itself to articulating positions in international forums. It turned inward. The public sphere began to be reshaped with visible force. The issue is no longer limited to dissenting voices – it now extends to those who remain silent. The emerging equation leaves no room for neutrality: align fully with the official narrative, or fall under suspicion.

This shift is reflected in a wave of arrests targeting dozens, even hundreds, of residents from various nationalities under vague charges such as “inciting public opinion” and “spreading rumors” – charges broad enough to capture virtually any speech deemed undesirable.

Baraa Rayan: a tweet and forced exile

The case of Palestinian academic Baraa Nizar Rayan stands as one of the clearest examples. Rayan, who is the son of a Hamas leader and professor at Qatar University, posted a tweet stating: “They paid Trump trillions to protect them, but instead he set their house on fire. So Learn from this, O people of insight.”

The tweet posted after the 12-day June war last year fell squarely within the bounds of political critique, pointing to the contradiction of massive financial outlays to the US alongside the outbreak of war in the region. But even that narrow margin proved intolerable.

Within less than 24 hours, Rayan was summoned, arrested, and subjected to intensive interrogation and pressure, including demands to unlock his phone and surrender personal accounts. His refusal – rooted in protecting his family’s privacy – was met with further escalation. 

The episode concluded with his deportation alongside his family, a ban on his return, and the loss of his livelihood. He was charged with “inciting public opinion,” an offense carrying a potential three-year prison sentence.

What deepens the case is what sources tell The Cradle: Qatari authorities allegedly asked Hamas to intervene and pressure Rayan to delete the tweet and close his account. 

According to the sources, the movement complied, pointing to a notable overlap between security coordination, political pressure, and influence networks.

When silence is treated as defiance

If Rayan’s case illustrates the limits of speech, the arrest of political analyst Saeed Ziad reveals something more fundamental: the criminalization of silence itself.

The Cradle for more

Is the United States on the verge of another financial crisis? Some top Wall Street executives fear the bankruptcies in the $3 trillion private credit industry could spread, as firms prevent investors from withdrawing their capital, in what resembles a bank run. Then there are problems with the AI bubble and Big Tech stock market bloat. Ben Norton explains.

Youtube for more

by N. R. MOHANTY

Iran, though a middle power, is possibly the only country in the world that has openly pursued an anti-Western agenda since the Islamic revolution in 1979. It will prove to be the US’ Achilles heel, like Afghanistan and Vietnam did before.

The war in West Asia has entered its second month. It’s difficult to surmise how and when this raging war will come to an end. But one thing is certain: at the end of this war, the politics in West Asia would undergo a sea change. United States (US) President Donald Trump has promised the world that he will bomb Iran into the ‘Stone Age’, but it appears that even a flattened Iran is likely to reorder how the US and its client state Israel operate with impunity in West Asia.

A war between Israel and Iran would have made it a West Asian war; but the active involvement of America, the world’s mightiest economic and military power, on the side of Israel has lent it a global character. Iran is clearly vulnerable to complete decimation. It could have taken on Israel on its own, but to fight the combined might of Israel and the US makes it like the proverbial David vs Goliath battle.

Like Trump and Netanyahu, the rest of the world had expected Iran to cave in on the very first day of the surgical bombings that killed top Iranian officials, including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But that Iran has not only survived them but has been able to retaliate, and retaliate fiercely, despite being subjected to carpet bombing over the last several weeks tells us a different story.

In the last 80 years, since the Second World War, the West led by the US set the template for the world order. The former Soviet Union was a challenger to that order for almost four decades. After its disintegration in the 1990s, the US emerged as a unipolar arbiter of the rules of the international order.

China has evolved as a countervailing world power in the 21st century, both economically and militarily, but it has not yet engaged in any direct military battles against the West or any of its puppet regimes to establish its supremacy on the world map. China remains engaged with the West for economic reasons.

Iran, though a middle power, is possibly the only country in the world that has openly pursued an anti-Western agenda since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Many countries are highly critical of the Zionist state, but would not like to burn bridges with the US, of which Israel is the foster child. But there is no place for such hypocrisy in Islamic Iran’s foreign policy. It has called a spade a spade and it has paid a heavy price for it – it has faced severe sanctions ordained by the US, crippling its economy.

Countries like India, with a centuries-long relationship with Persian civilisation, have refrained from any trade with Iran in order to avoid the wrath of the US. Iran has survived largely thanks to China, which has defied the Western sanctions and continued its trade with Iran. China, in fact, accounts for more than 80% of Iran’s export of oil, which is a lifeline for Iran’s economy.

That leaves Iran in an unenviable position; it sups with the enemies of the West while all other countries of West Asia are not only client states of the US, they are also eager to break bread with Israel to remain in the good books of their common Master. In this West Asian power play, Iran stands out as a sore thumb.

Israel wants complete monopoly in the affairs of West Asia so that it can establish Greater Israel by killing or displacing all Palestinians from West Bank and Gaza and by partitioning Lebanon. Iran is the sole obstacle in this path. So long as it stands its ground, Israel cannot complete its colonial mission. Israel also knows that it could not militarily take on Iran alone. That’s why the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been soliciting US support in the venture to obliterate Iran.

Successive US presidents had refused to take the bait as Iran never posed any direct military threat to Israel, and it could not be a military threat to the US, located continents away.

In fact, Iran’s military preparedness has always been of a defensive kind, to protect itself from an openly aggressive and expansionist Israel. It militarily collaborated with resistance groups in Palestine and Lebanon only to help them defend themselves from the Israeli military onslaught.

But this time Netanyahu succeeded in doing a Winston Churchill. During the Second World War, the British Prime Minister had managed to persuade the US to break with its policy of isolationism and join on the side of the allied forces ranged against the military axis led by Nazi Germany. And that proved decisive in the victory of allied powers. The Israeli Prime Minister succeeded in enticing President Trump for a swift Iranian adventure that would assure him the top billing in American history as a decisive president.

But the script went awry. Iran, despite carpet bombardment by both Israel and the US, didn’t crumble. It not only stood firm but also gave back an eye for an eye. Its unique ballistic missile arsenal, buried deep inside mountain trenches, was beyond the reach of powerful American bombs.

The Wire for more

by B. R. GOWANI

Mahsa Amini/Zhina Amini

 in 1979, Iran's secular US-supported tyrant was forced to leave
the replacement was a Muslim tyrant -- who was equally cruel
 Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was out and into the US lap fell
 Ruhollah Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini was in, after a long exile

a month and quarter after his arrival, Khomeini issued hijab order:
"At Islamic ministries women should not appear naked.
Women can be present so long as they are with hijab.
They face no barrier to work as long as they observe Islamic hijab."

the same year in July, women everywhere had to wear hijab
another strict order was issued on August 9, 1983:
"Women who appear in public without religious hijab
will be sentenced to whipping up to 74 lashes."

religious rulers saw women/girls with uncovered hair as "naked"
blind rulers couldn't see how bloody naked they themselves were
naked rulers have always been around in almost every country
currently we're blessed with Trump, Netanyahu, Modi, Munir, etc.

Mahsa means "like the moon" or "moon-like"
Jina or Zhina in Kurdish language means "life"
Zhina belonged to persecuted minority Kurdish community
Jina Amini or Mahsa Amini wanted to become a doctor

with her brother she was visiting the capital Tehran
Iran’s “morality” police (gasht-e ershad) stopped her
the reason being her hair were not properly covered
she was pushed into a van and was beaten

her brother was assaulted too when he protested
they were told that Mahsa will attend "educational" class
education was about how a woman should dress
the education institute was the Vozara detention centre

in the van, Zhina was tortured and suffered head injury
Jina went into coma and was transferred to Kasra hospital

arrested on September 13, Mahsa died on September 6, 2022 at age 22
within three days, the young moon full of life lost its light, as it
couldn't withstand the religious sun's oppressive and scorching heat

Hypocrisy

The young Kurdish-Iranian girl’s murder by Iranian police on September 16, 2022, for not wearing a hijab properly, was a great tragedy. It showed how men in most societies still control women for one reason or another and can go to any extent if their decree faces defiance.

In the US, the National Partnership for Women and Families have listed 55 ways in which Donald Trump presidency has harmed women and families, in the first year of his second term.

Zhina/Mahsa Amini’s murder became political for Western leaders — as usual. These countries have a lot of rot in their own countries and a past full of land grabs, genocides, and violence in the name of superiority, democracy, human rights, and so on. And the present is not any better, either, but full of overt/covert wars and exploitation.

Hillary and Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Justin Trudeau, and so many others, criticized Iran’s leaders for Mahsa’s murder. (See more names here.) Former queen of Iran Farah Pahlavi also joined the chorus.

(Biden who stood with the “brave women of Iran” when Mahsa was killed, didn’t say anything about Zainab al-Khazali, who was killed in US bombing around the same time!)

Did any of the above leaders voice concern after US bombing of a school in Iran? NO.

On February 28, 2026, Israel incited the US under Trump; both attacked Iran, for no reason at all. On the very first day, the US bombed a school killing 156 people, revised figure. There were 120 students (73 boys and 47 girls), 26 teachers (all women), 7 parents of students (4 men and 3 women), a school bus driver, a pharmacy technician from a nearby clinic, and a six month old fetus.

Opposition to the War

Of course, there are always opposers to the war, and there are. Even from those who oppose, some are genuine who always oppose illegal and unjust wars, whereas others criticize because the opposition party is waging the war.

Priyanka Chopra

Priyanka Chopra, a Bollywood and Hollywood actress and a former UNICEF
Goodwill Ambassador, is a celebrity who selectively knows when and who to citicize based on the preservation of her career. After Zhina’s untimely death, Chopra came out in support for the women of Iran.

Chopra on her Instagram:

“Women in Iran and around the world are standing up and raising their voices, publicly cutting their hair and many other forms of protest for Mahsa Amini, whose young life was taken away so brutally by the Iranian Morality Police for wearing her hijab ‘improperly’. The voices that speak after ages of forced silence, will rightfully burst like a volcano! And they will not and MUST not be stemmed.  

“I am in awe of your courage and your purpose. It is not easy to risk your life, literally, to challenge the patriarchal establishment and fight for your rights. But, you are courageous women doing this every day regardless of the cost to yourselves. 

“To ensure that this movement will have a lasting effect, we must hear their call, understand the issues and then join in with our collective voices. We must also get everyone who can influence others to join as well. Numbers matter.

“Add your voice to this critical movement. Stay informed and be vocal, so these voices can no longer be forced to stay silent.

“I stand with you. Jin, jiyan , azaadi… Women, life, freedom.”

One cannot not appreciate Priyanka Chopra’s concern for Iranian women. But:

how come she has no sympathy for the girls and women (children, elders, and men) bombed to death by US and Israel? This was not surprising since she has been selectively silent on past atrocities, too.

In 2002, during the Gujarat state enabled pogrom under Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now Prime Minister), a Muslim woman Bilkis Bano, a five-month pregnant mother of five, was gang-raped by eleven men after seven of her family members (including her husband and their three year old daughter), were brutally killed by a mob of more than 20 men. She survived to tell the story.

Did Priyanka ever come out to console or voice concern about Bilkis Bano or other Muslim, Christian, and Dalit victims, by criticizing Modi or his goons? No, never.

Chopra and others have faced criticism:

Bollywood star Priyanka Chopra and other Indian media personalities who are showing support for women in Iran have been called “hypocrites” for “staying silent” on the treatment of minorities in India pic.twitter.com/VXlcRHtOjE— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 11, 2022

When Muslim women in India are denied their right to wear hijab, does Chopra take up their cause? No.

Poet and activist Nabiya Khan called Chopra a “false feminist”:

“@priyankachopra your activism of convenience is pukeworthy. This means nothing when you choose to look away from the plight of hijabi women in India who are denied education for wearing a piece of cloth over their head, harassed by hindutva goons and state. You are a Hypocrite!”

“@priyankachopra never spoke up when police barged into universities. You were silent when women of shaheen bagh were spending their nights out in chilly winters protesting for their dignity.  You are a coward. You are no role model.  You are a false feminist. You should shut up.”

Indian journalist/author Rana Ayyub asked Chopra:

“Indian celebrities speaking about Iran will look the other way through this fascism and apartheid in their home country. This is a lawmaker in the Indian government asking for economic boycott of Muslims. Will the likes of @priyankachopra speak up for Muslims in India?”

In May 2020, a black person George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman by asphyxiation while live videos by people were viral all over. Chopra wrote on her Instagram:

“Please, I can’t breathe.” George Floyd

Wealthy clever people know where to utter and where to go silent.

Chopra, so vocal about Mahsa, has never uttered a word about tens of thousands of children killed by Israeli monsters. Even when Spanish actor Javier Bardem said: “Free Palestine. No war,” Chopra didn’t join him. Well, even for maintaining silence, you need courage.

Bhawna Jaimini writes:

“I decided to go through Priyanka Chopra’s Instagram feed to find traces of solidarity to those protesting in India – in case I had missed something. During the period her home country burned, Chopra was busy gracing red carpets at Grammy and Golden Globe Awards – while celebrating the amassing of 50 million followers – and there were some quotes about shattering the glass ceiling. She even visited India during this period to play Holi with the Ambanis.”

Mukesh Ambani is India’s richest person and is a good friend of Modi, a fellow Gujarati. Chopra invited Modi at her wedding reception in Delhi, and she is very careful to stay loyal to him.

Modi should have thanked Chopra for providing him with an opportunity to have yet another laughing photo go viral. Most Indians may be crying with their myriad of problems, but their premier, at least, presents a laughing face to the world.

Instead it was Chopra who thanked Modi sycophantically:

“A heartfelt thank you to our honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modiji for gracing us with your presence. Touched by your kind words and blessings.”

Chopra held three wedding receptions. The first was held at Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur. The second was in Delhi, and included Modi. The third wedding reception was held in Mumbai

Three receptions for one wedding. A concerned UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador would have held one small reception and would have donated the considerable savings of money to UNICEF projects.

Elnaaz Norouzi

Iranian born Elnaaz Norouzi, a model, began her film career with the 2018 Pakistani film Maan Jao Naa. Same year she also did a Punjabi movie Khido Khundi in India, and settled down in Mumbai to work in the Hindi/Urdu film industry.

She champions women’s rights and believes that fighting for their rights, are inherent in Iranian women’s blood.

In the wake of Jina’s loss of life, Norouzi protested with a strip show. Fully clothed with hijab, she took her clothes off one by one until she was left with only white panties. She kept her naked breasts covered with her hands. This was her way of protesting Jina’s death.

Many actresses in Bollywood films and on social media are seen in bikinis — some in tiny ones — and their bras cover, in many instances, even less than 50% of the breasts, so the video of her stripping was not a big deal.

The Egyptian activist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy protested against US supported military’s tyrannical rule by posting her naked photo on October 3, 2011.

Now this was an example of real bravery. Aliaa got death threats and was also kidnapped. After her release, she got asylum in Sweden.

Rana Ayyub commented on celebrities who oppose foreign rules:

“These [Bollywood] ‘celebrities’ have stayed silent through [Indian] state sanctioned violence against Muslims. Their activism is obscene.”

Now, Norouzi is supporting Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, whom Pakistan’s Defense Minister called an “imperial whore.” And many believe, he is. He lives in the US, has very friendly relations with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and is waiting for an opportunity to settle his former royal ass on the Peacock Throne.

Yes, Iran’s theocratic regime is brutal, but Pahlavi is not better for the Iranians (his father Shah’s regime was very brutal), especially if he is brought to power through US and Israel bombing, killing of scientists, and colossal destruction of infrastructure.

This is the problem with people like Norouzi — they hate Iran’s regime and call for its removal, but they don’t mind brutal murders of fellow citizens, and getting help from the world’s two most violent states, the US and Israel. Israel, a nuclear power, wants a weakened Iran with no nuclear weapons. The US wants oil which belongs to the Iranian people. In 1951, the Iranian government ousted Shah and nationalized oil companies. The US overthrew the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinstalled Shah whose US supported atrocious rule brought Khomeini to power in 1979.

If Norouzi seriously wants a change, she should go for someone who is secular, progressive, and people oriented, rather than support the dictator Pahlavi dynasty.

Whatever the current Iranian regime’s many faults, one has to admire their courage and self-respect in not bowing to the US — unlike Pahlavi who is willing to collaborate with the transgressors, and who lives a luxurious life in the US.

This “imperial whore” has shown no self-respect, how can he make Iran a respectable nation which could be self-sufficient enough to stand on its own, and not rely on US alms and mercy?

The celebrities who selectively criticize some atrocities have never criticized the atrocities of Gaza genocide.

All violence, murders, and unjust wars should be condemned, irrespective of where they occur. Greed and expansionism acts should be exposed and opposed.

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

by TABISH KHAIR

Mohammed Hanif’s hilarious page-turner is a witch’s cauldron of bubbling satire in which no one is spared.

I would call it “westsplaining”, if Putin supporters had not already appropriated that term, but then how else can you describe the tendency among Western critics to bundle Mohammed Hanif together with Salman Rushdie? True, there is this nebulous Pakistani-British connection, and both the novelists tend to be caustic about state power and established religion. But Rushdie belongs in the ranks of magic realism, whether or not he accepts the designation, and Hanif is a satirist whose novels can more accurately be placed within the long lineage that is epitomised by Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

Essentially, such novels do not present an admixture of the fantastic and the realistic, as magic realism does, but something different: an exaggerated, slightly warped version of realistic characters and historical situations. This enables them to say things about “the world out there” that would be difficult otherwise, and to do so at a brisk and captivating pace of narration. Hanif’s new novel Rebel English Academy is an excellent example of this novelistic tradition. Maybe one should call it warp realism?

The novel starts with the hanging of Pakistan’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and an intelligence officer, Captain Gul, sent to organise photos of the dead man’s private parts in order to prove that he was not circumcised. Gul’s failure to produce any such evidence gets him banished to OK Town, a provincial outback where the dashing and ambitious officer doesn’t easily get the whiskey and the women he is used to.

In OK Town, we meet the owner of the Rebel English Academy, known as Sir Baghi, a reluctant queer whose old socialist aspirations have transformed—after a brutal encounter with the Bhutto regime—into the infusion of English literature, with its hopefully subversive potential, into local boys and girls competing solely for petty government jobs.

One of his students who has actually made it is the local police officer, A.D. Malang, whose dramatised respect for his ex-tutor would warm the cockles of the hearts of all adherents of the powerful guru-sishya brigade in India as well. Sir Baghi’s “academy”, which is also his living quarters, is situated in a commercial complex built around the local mosque, which is run by his cousin, known to him as Molly. Molly is a devout Muslim; he is also a man who believes that God tempts those he really loves.

Molly’s temptation is Sabiha Banu, the athletic daughter of a trade unionist whose locally renowned photograph with Bhutto has, in these post-Bhutto times, resulted in his incarceration and disappearance. When Sabiha is brought by Molly for refuge in Sir Baghi’s academy, the cauldron is set boiling. Add to it Captain Gul’s affair with his commanding officer’s imperious daughter, who claims pregnancy without having sex with him, and his infatuation with the doughty Sabiha, and a few other believable but often larger-than-life characters, such as the beedi-smoking lawyer-palmist Noor Nabi, throw in the mystery of rumours that Bhutto is alive and coming any day to OK Town, and we have a witch’s cauldron of bubbling, captivating, hilarious satire in which no one, not even Sir Baghi, is finally spared.

The characters of OK Town

Hanif has an eye for situations and characters, and he warps them just a bit to bring out those aspects that defenders of “real life” often want us to overlook: the hypocrisy, the contradictions, the cant, and the injustice of it all. All of it is given to us with a combination of dark humour and occasional slapstick, and in a language that contains various registers but never loses its essentially satiric bite.

Here is one of Captain Gul’s women finally giving him the true report on his much-vaunted prowess as a lover: “What was I supposed to say? You gave me statistics about the Bengal famine to divert attention from the fact that you couldn’t get it up. You called my vagina the Bermuda Triangle and then spent all our time together lecturing me about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. When you did finally get an erection in the morning, you couldn’t find the Bermuda Triangle.” The novel maintains this brisk and slightly risqué pace throughout its 315 pages.

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by TAAPSEE PANNU

Taapsee Pannu reveals that OTT platforms only want to pick up films that are box office success

Actor Taapsee Pannu believes women-led and unconventional films are on the verge of becoming “extinct” as there is a lack of support from audiences for such stories.

Pannu, who has seamlessly balanced both mainstream and offbeat cinema, has built a reputation as a dependable performer and featured in a series of hard-hitting dramas such as “Thappad”, “Mulk” and “Pink”.

According to the actor, the battle to bring unconventional stories to the big screen has become harder.

“We are on the verge of becoming an extinct species, we mean films like ‘Assi’. There is a certain template that our so-called commercial cinema abides by and we don’t conventionally fall in that template of sorts,” Pannu told PTI in an interview.

“Assi” is Pannu’s new movie with acclaimed filmmaker Anubhav Sinha and marks their third collaboration after 2018’s “Mulk” and “Thappad” in 2020.

The actor debunked the notion that such films will always find a home on digital platforms, saying that the streamers have shifted their focus to luring “massy” audiences.

“The reality is people think that these kinds of films will keep coming on OTT and we will keep watching it. But no, OTT’s don’t want these kinds of films either. They have clear mandates, that only the films that are working in theatres are the films that they want to pick.

“They want to take that theatre audience to their platform. They are like, ‘We already have this kind of audience, we want those massy pot boilers audiences of our country to subscribe to the platform’, That’s why I say we are on the verge of becoming extinct unless people realise that we need to watch it. Sometimes it’s good to watch reality as well,” Pannu added.

Comparing cinema to a range of cuisines, the 38-year-old actor said that while “Mughlai”, which is the commercial cinema, has its appeal, the industry also needs its “dal chawal”: stories rooted in everyday reality.

She also believes that the habit of waiting for a digital release of a film is “suicidal” for the future of meaningful cinema.

“We should subscribe to all kinds of cinema. Only the audience can help us by going to theatres and watching (all kinds of) films. I hope they realise this before we lose this. Then we won’t have the right to crib that our cinema cannot compete with world cinema, we only make a particular kind of film.

“We have a lot of people saying we don’t make good and rooted stories. But when did you support rooted stories? By sitting at home and watching it on OTT is not how you support good cinema. If you like the film, spread the word, let more people come into theatres.” Reflecting on her journey, Pannu said leading a film to release today feels like a “daily pain” and a constant “battle”.

She believes the scenario changed post COVID-19 pandemic.

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