by ABDULLAH ZAHID & PRAGYAN SRIVASTAVA

At a Southasian panel discussion, participants from Bangladesh analysed the country’s future with some cautious optimism and hoped for progress beyond the ongoing struggles for minorities, women, and the working class.

The recent upheaval in Bangladesh made headlines around the world. And while the struggles fueling the situation are not new, the situation raises many complex questions.

Who will benefit from this monumental change? Can the current caretaker government make the tough calls that are needed? How will the rhetoric churned out by corporate Indian media and the ruling class impact the dynamics between the two countries – and the region as a whole?

Panellists from Bangladesh at a recent discussion on ‘Navigating Challenges and Building Unity for a Stable Future’ hosted by the Southasia Peace Action Network, or Sapan, shared insights from the ground and discussed the possibilities of national unity and reconciliation.

Event host Fauzia Deeba, a physician and passionate advocate for Southasian solidarity and a Sapan founder member, opened the webinar with a personal reflection on her connection with Bangladesh.

As a Pashtun from Balochistan, Dr. Deeba shared how deeply Bengali culture shaped her upbringing in Pakistan – learning Bengali as a second language and watching Bengali dramas on TV. The 1971 separation left lasting scars. “We have lived with survivors’ guilt since then,” she remarked, recalling her childhood friendship with Farida, who returned to Dhaka after the war.

Sapan events, held on the last Sunday of the month since the global organisation’s launch in March 2021, traditionally start with the Sapan Founding Charter. Prominent feminist activist Khawar Mumtaz in Lahore, also a Sapan co-founder, presented the Charter, which calls for soft borders, enabling trade and people-to-people meetings within the region, upholding human rights and dignity, and collaborating on all issues.

A brief In Memoriam honouring prominent activists whose work Sapan aims to take forward was shared by global community activist Faisal Lalani. The meeting also commemorated those who passed away over the past month, including feminist short story writer and poet Saeeda Gazdar and editor Khaled Ahmad among others.

Recovery

Sushmita Preetha, a senior journalist with the Daily Star, Dhaka, moderated the subsequent hour-long discussion with economist Prof. Anu Muhammad, sociologist Dr. Seuty Sabur, advocate Manzur Ali Matin and indigenous rights activist Arjyashree Chakma.

The discussion pointed to cautious optimism as the country, with a 143 million strong population, recovers from the violence of the past months, which cost an estimated 15,000 lives of protestors and security personnel.

The caretaker government has established 11 commissions to work on issues like workers’ rights, women’s rights, institutional reform, and energy.

Insaf Bulletin for more

by JAWED NAQVI

LOS Angeles is burning, singeing the rich and the homeless in its wake. Gaza is in cinders, leaving an unconscionable toll of a perpetually violated people, but not without wounding and unnerving the tormentors. The fire and the slaughter are both manmade tragedies and are linked, though difficult to accept as such.

As the stag is caught in the headlights of the approaching milk van, which crushes the animal in the end to leave it crippled or dead while keeping the delivery deadline before daybreak, the world is standing frozen on the crossroads of a hurtling catastrophe. It doesn’t see nature’s wrath it has invoked with at least a century-old abuse of the planet.

Worse, it remains sanguine about the supremacy of nuclear fission and gunpowder as protection against the oncoming calamity. Israel is emblematic of the tragedy. Created as a home for survivors from Nazi ghettos, it is today a replica of Nazi Germany. As the Nazis rationalised their thirst for blood and land with European race theories, the Jewish elite embraced Zionism and took a leaf from their torturers to covet Palestinian land with claims of divine exclusivism.

Imperialism, which transformed Israel into its unsinkable ship, doesn’t always see the need for divine excuses. It has set its eyes, for example, on its own allies in Greenland and Canada. Its entrenched interest lies crucially in denial of climate change although the hunt for critical resources is on in case someone read it wrong.

On a different scale, in India, corporates close to the government are being facilitated by the state to stake a claim on the nation’s natural resources. They are cornering forests and water resources and displacing the indigenous inhabitants. They care little that the Himalayan ice is melting, rivers are running dry and a water-sharing treaty between India and Pakistan is being weaponised. There seems no room to sidestep the milk van, which is speeding like China’s bullet train to Tibet but with no guardrails to deter the stag’s botched fate. The global stage has ingredients of Greek tragedies that lay low the protagonists with speeding inevitability. Occasionally, it’s luck that runs out on the hero. Among the least concerned by the mayhem is Donald Trump.

It would, of course, have been better for the world if its joys and sorrows were not determined by America’s four-yearly mood swings and its pursuit of perennially shifting ‘core interests’. But that’s not the way the world is structured. Trump’s second coming starting next week brings with it a more extreme variant of the worry. The core interests have suddenly shifted to terrifying claims on allies, making them palpably nervous. Or to be clearer, Trump brings worry for some and hope for others. The variation is evident.

While the Chinese president expectedly turned down the invitation to Trump’s Jan 20 swearing-in, the Indian prime minister is reportedly disconsolate at not being invited, that too after exerting efforts including his foreign minister’s alleged stakeout in Washington, D.C. Trump has raised close to $200 million from the coming inaugural, says the Fortune magazine.

There are greater worries stemming from and hopes hinging on Trump’s second presidency including in South Asia. Trump’s overriding interest in the Global South is, of course, his fear of BRICS. It’s difficult to see any South Asian country ditching the most promising alternative that BRICS has become to gun-toting US imperialism. At an individual level, there have been write-ups about Trump’s soft corner for Imran Khan who, reports say, he could help get back his job. The story is more complex given the quid pro quo Trump would demand from those he favours: betraying BRICS.

There are accusations, and there are reasons to believe them, that the Biden administration waylaid Imran after he met Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Richard Grenell, a close associate of Trump, did, however, publicly demand the release of Imran Khan.

Bangladesh would be on edge too, given the fact that the current dispensation in Dhaka is seen as being close to Hillary Clinton. Her India connection is remembered for the bhangra she danced at an Ambani wedding in 2018. That the tycoon shores up Modi is no secret. For the other regional countries, their ties with the US for the next four years would be measured through the prism of Sino-US relations, Trump’s top priority.

The larger world, meanwhile, remains sandwiched between two bad choices. The outgoing Democratic administration has been neck-deep complicit in the horrific genocide in Gaza. It’s equally responsible for setting off the slaughter underway in Ukraine by insulting and provoking Russia.

Dawn for more

by DARREN ORF

• Due to go online in 2028, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is designed to understand the evolution of “ghost particles” known as neutrinos and antineutrinos.
• While this could help scientists determine why matter dominated antimatter in the early universe, it could also help shed light on another physics idea—Large Extra Dimensions (LEDs).
• LEDs could explain why gravity is weaker than the other fundamental forces of nature, and why neutrinos have such tiny masses in the first place.

Although many fascinating experiments take place on land or even in orbit around the planet, some of the most fascinating science is taking place beneath our feet. The world’s premiere particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, is nestled safely below ground in Geneva, Switzerland. The world’s first laser interferometer, KAGRA, was built entirely underground, and its gravitational-wave detector ancestor, LIGO, similarly has infrastructure burried in the earth.

However, perhaps the most highly-anticipated subterranean science experiment is the upcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). As its name suggests, its primary mission is to study neutrinos and antineutrinos, sometimes known as “ghost particles” due to their famously elusive nature. DUNE has its work cut out for it, because these particles—in all three “flavors”—each contain a mass billions of times smaller than that of an electron. Even still, neutrinos and antineutrinos could be the explanation behind why matter won out against antimatter at the beginning of the universe, leading to the formation of… well… everything.

With a project of this size—around 800 miles long, to be precise—other discoveries are also possible. In fact, a recently published study in the Journal of High Energy Physics from the High Energy Physics Center at Chung-Ang University in South Korea indicates that DUNE could shed light on an idea known as Large Extra Dimensions, or LEDs.

MSN & Popular Mechanics for more

by SEAN MATHEWS

In Riyadh meeting, US and Saudi Arabia agreed they had ‘once in thirty-year opportunity’ to sideline Hezbollah with election of new president

The US has told Lebanese officials that Saudi Arabia is prepared to deploy hundreds of millions of dollars to reconstruct their war-torn country if Lebanese army commander Joseph Aoun is elected president, one senior Arab official and one former senior US official told Middle East Eye.

The carrot of an influx in Saudi cash was dangled by US envoy Amos Hochstein during his trip to Lebanon on Monday, where he lobbied intensely for Aoun, including with Lebanese parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri.

Aoun already has the support of Lebanon’s Sunni Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

“The Americans are dead set. They do not want any other candidate but Aoun,” the senior Arab official told MEE. “Hochstein has tied Aoun’s election to Saudi Arabia bankrolling Lebanon’s reconstruction.”

The Lebanese parliament is slated to hold elections for a president on 9 January, but have been delayed in the past.

The vote comes at a critical time, with negotiations for the renewal of a 60-day ceasefire that ended brutal fighting between Hezbollah and Israel approaching in just three weeks, on 26 January. 

It has long been an open secret in Beirut’s political circles that the US wants Aoun to fill the presidential post that has been vacant since 2022. By tradition, the office of president is reserved for a Maronite Christian. Jihad Azour, a senior banker at the International Monetary Fund, is considered a second pro-US candidate.

The US is pushing for Aoun as president because it believes his military credentials will be important to implement the ceasefire, the current and former officials said.

With Hezbollah weakened, Lebanese and American officials believe Israel and Lebanon could officially demarcate their borders after an Israeli withdrawal, the Arab official said.

What makes the US’s push for Aoun more powerful now is that the US has brought Saudi Arabia on board – in an attempt to revive the kingdom’s role as the main Sunni powerbroker in the Mediterranean state.   

Reviving Saudi Arabia’s role in Lebanon

Saudi Arabia played an outsized role in Lebanon’s reconstruction after its civil war ended, with a deal brokered about three decades ago in the Saudi city of Taif.

After the 2006 Lebanon war, Saudi Arabia pledged a $500m grant to reconstruct Lebanon and wealthy Saudis scooped up luxury villas and apartments in Beirut.

Middle East Eye for more

by AMREMAM

The new warnings come less than a month after a retired Israeli diplomat, David Govrin, accused Egypt of violating the 1979 peace treaty with his country.

Israeli military and political officials are once more sounding the alarm over what they describe as ‘build-up’ by the Egyptian military in the Sinai Peninsula, calling for caution and warning against a potential confrontation with Egypt in the future.

Citing Egyptian military activity in the north-western territory, which was liberated by Egypt from Israeli occupation in 1973, the officials referred to logistical preparations and the construction of cement obstacles in central Sinai.

These obstacles, they were quoted by some Israeli media outlets as saying, aim at blocking Israeli armoured vehicles.

Egypt, they claimed, maintains more than a dozen tunnels between Rafah in the Gaza Strip and points deep in Sinai, which have not been demolished yet.

The new warnings come less than a month after a retired Israeli diplomat accused Egypt of violating the 1979 peace treaty with his country by increasing troop presence in Sinai.

David Govrin, who served as Israel’s ambassador to Cairo from July 2016 to May 2019 and was Israel’s first ambassador to Morocco, told the Hebrew news site, Ynet, last month that Egypt was sending more troops into Sinai than stipulated in the security annex of the treaty.

Egypt is investing, he said, huge amounts of money in the military build-up, even as no other country threatens it and despite its tough economic conditions.

Critical time

Egypt’s enhanced security measures in Sinai come at a tough time for the Arab country, Israel and the region.

The Israeli war on Gaza and threats to navigation in the Suez Canal are causes for concern in Cairo which shudders at the prospect of the Israeli war on Gaza seeping out of the Egyptian territory and into Sinai, a piece of land larger than Israel; the occupied West Bank; Gaza, and Lebanon combined.

Egypt is also apprehensive about the Israeli army acquiescing to calls by Israel’s far-right for the displacement of Gaza’s population of more than 2.3 million into Sinai, a prospect that will, according to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi in October 2023, threaten the Egypt-Israel peace.

Citing all these fears, Egyptian military analysts highlight the importance of the measures Egypt is taking in Sinai and find no reason for Israeli concerns.

“Repeated Israeli media reports about special Egyptian measures in Sinai are only part of Israel’s psychological warfare which aims to keep ordinary Israelis worried about their country’s security,” Gen. Ali Hefzi, a former assistant to the Egyptian minister of defence and a former governor of North Sinai, told The New Arab.

“The fact is that Egypt continues to abide by the terms of its peace treaty with Israel, while all of Egypt’s security arrangements in Sinai move hand in hand with these terms,” he added.

Even before the Israeli war in Gaza, Egypt increased troop presence in Sinai, as per previous remarks by the Egyptian president, in the Arab country’s bid to uproot a branch of the Islamic State (IS) group in the north-western territory that stands in proximity to the Suez Canal and the Red Sea.

IS militants, an amalgam of Sinai Bedouins, jihadists from other parts of Egypt and jihadi salafists from Gaza, wanted to establish an Islamic emirate in Sinai.

The New Arab for more

by RAVI KANT

The public look like the losers as government drags down India Railways, sells off airports to Adani Group

That’s the standard technique of privatization: Defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.

Noam Chomsky

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, public transportation – especially electric streetcars – formed the backbone of American cities, with over 17,000 miles of streetcar lines operating in major urban centers. For decades, these systems were considered vital to urban life.

While the idea of using public funding is often labeled as socialist by the American right, public transportation infrastructure offers remarkable benefits such as reducing traffic congestion, improving air quality and maintaining sustainability.

However, by the mid-20th century, this public infrastructure was dismantled. A widely discussed conspiracy theory suggests that General Motor intentionally bought and shut down streetcar lines to promote car dependency, driving Americans toward a private transportaiton system based on automobile dependency.

Statistics support the extent of this shift: 90% of US households own at least one car each, with 25% owning three or more (as of 2021). Transportation costs are the fourth-highest household expenditure in US families, totaling $1.6 trillion annually. Comparatively, European households spend 5% less on transportation due to efficient public transit systems, many of which still use streetcars today.

India under Narendra Modi seems to be following an American-style playbook.

Indian Railways: A national asset in decline

Indian Railways, a 171 -year-old institution, is a cornerstone of India’s connectivity and mobility. With 24 million daily passengers, 19,000 trains, and 7,112 stations, IR is Asia’s second-largest and the world’s fourth-largest railway network. It plays a vital role in India’s economic and social development, fostering geographic connectivity, citizen mobility and commercial activity. As India’s largest employer, it supports 1.6 million jobs, including 400,000 contract workers.

Asia Times for more

by JUNAID B. JAHANGIR & KRISTOPHER WELLS

Each summer, Pride is celebrated across the world in support of LGBTQ+ inclusion, diversity and human rights. Given the recent backlash against LGBTQ+ communities in Canada and elsewhere, Pride is more important than ever to promote visibility and challenge discrimination.

In recent months, some Muslim communities in Canada and the United States have protested against LGBTQ+ inclusion. Socially conservative Muslims have criticized what they see as growing LGBTQ+ “indoctrination” in schools and society more broadly.

In Michigan, a Muslim majority city council banned Pride flags from being flown on city property. In Ottawa, young children at an anti-LGBTQ+ protest stomped on Pride flags.

Similar protests also took place in Calgary and Edmonton, where one teacher was surreptitiously recorded lecturing Muslim students about skipping school as part of a national protest movement against Pride month activities. The National Council of Canadian Muslims cited the teacher’s comments as Islamophobic.

Pride and protest

This year the Christian anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition, organized a National Pride Flag Walk-Out Day on June 1 designed to target Pride month celebrations in public schools. The walk-out protests were also supported by a series of “pray-ins” held at Catholic school boards and dioceses across Canada.

Given their vast financial resources and faith networks, Christian evangelicals have redoubled their efforts targeting LGBTQ+ communities, which have been buoyed by recent political lobbying successes in Uganda, which saw the government pass some of the harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the world.

The Conversation for more

by KANIKA SHARMA

The British Empire used a great democratic ideal to manufacture racial difference and rationalise colonial domination

Law was central to the British colonial project to subjugate the colonised populations and maximise their exploitation. Convinced of its superiority, British forces sought to exchange their law for the maximum extraction of resources from the colonised territories. In The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), F D Lugard – the first governor general of Nigeria (previously governor of Hong Kong) – summed up the advantages of European colonialism as:

Europe benefitted by the wonderful increase in the amenities of life for the mass of her people which followed the opening up of Africa at the end of the 19th century. Africa benefited by the influx of manufactured goods, and the substitution of law and order for the methods of barbarism.

Lugard, here, expresses the European orthodoxy that colonised territories did not contain any Indigenous laws before the advent of colonialism. In its most extreme form, this erasure manifested as a claim of terra nullius – or nobody’s land – where the coloniser claimed that the Indigenous population lacked any form of political organisation or system of land rights at all. So, not only did the land not belong to any individual, but the absence of political organisation also freed the coloniser from the obligation of negotiating with any political leader. Europeans declared vast territories – and, in the case of Australia, a whole continent – terra nullius to facilitate colonisation. European claims of African ‘backwardness’ were used to justify the exclusion of Africans from political decision-making. In the 1884-85 Berlin Conference, for example, 13 European states (including Russia and the Ottoman Empire) and the United States met to divide among themselves territories in Africa, transforming the continent into a conceptual terra nullius. This allowed for any precolonial forms of law to be disregarded and to be replaced by colonial law that sought to protect British economic interests in the colonies.

In other colonies, such as India, where some form of precolonial law was recognised, by using a self-referential and Eurocentric definition of what constituted law, the British were able to systematically replace Indigenous laws. This was achieved by declaring them to be repugnant or by marginalising such laws to the personal sphere, ie, laws relating to marriage, succession and inheritance, and hence applicable only to the colonised community. Indigenous laws that Europeans allowed to continue were altered beyond recognition through colonial interventions.

Aeon for more

by AIDAN J. SIMARDONE

Trump plans to recognize Somaliland in order to bolster the west’s foothold in the Horn of Africa against Yemen and counter Chinese influence, but in doing so, risks alienating key regional allies critical for Israel’s wars in West Asia.

In a move that surprised many, US President-elect Donald Trump is set to recognize Somaliland as an independent state. This unprecedented decision, revealed by former British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson and reported by Semafor, could dramatically reshape geopolitics in the Horn of Africa and the waterways of West Asia.

Positioned near the Arabian Peninsula, Somaliland’s recognition would give the west a new strategic foothold in its war against Yemen, which has since October 2023 blockaded ships heading to Israel. However, this move risks straining US relations with key regional allies like Egypt and Turkiye, both of whom maintain strong ties with Somalia.

A rising country in the region

Somaliland declared independence from Somalia in 1991 but remains unrecognized by any sovereign state. Despite this, the region has carved out a distinct identity. Home to a third of Somalia’s population, Somaliland is roughly the size of Florida and has maintained relative stability, unlike its war-torn neighbor. 

While clashes in its eastern regions have intensified since 2023, the bulk of Somaliland remains peaceful. Strategically located near the Gulf of Aden, it commands a crucial maritime corridor for vessels heading to the Suez Canal and Yemen.

Since the onset of the 2014 Yemen War, the UAE has sought partners in the Horn of Africa against the Ansarallah-dominated government in Sanaa. In 2016, the UAE signed a $442 million deal to build a port in the Somaliland city of Berbera, which is only 260 kilometers away from the Yemeni port city of Aden. 

A year later, the port was expanded to include a naval and airbase and, since 2018, has been used to strike inside Yemen. The military base continues to expand, with hangars under construction for more planes.

Possible normalization with, and recognition of Israel 

The UAE is now reportedly working on securing a deal between Somaliland and Israel. Interested in securing a foothold near the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, in 2010 Israel became one of only a few countries to establish diplomatic relations with Somaliland, albeit without formal recognition. 

The Cradle for more