A man looking at smoke billowing after explosions in Doha’s capital Qatar as a result of Israeli attack IMAGE/AFP
To be weak is to be wrong/ To be right is not enough/ To be good/ You need to be strong.
We are at a turning point of regional and global history because of several seminal developments. The moral, institutional, political, and economic degeneration of the US. The berserk aggression of Israel, which has finally destroyed the credibility of the US as a force for regional and international stability.
The realisation among Arab elites that they can no longer rely on a
trade-off between national humiliation and external protection against
Arab streets. China’s recognition that its diplomacy will not
significantly postpone a day of reckoning with a fearful and implacable
US. The emergence of a vast Afro-Asian Muslim playground waiting to be
co-opted by the East as deliverance from the West. India’s failure to
transition from regional power status to international power status, and
become a credible partner for the US against China.
Above all, climate change
in the Anthropocene age, in which human activity becomes a principal
determinant of the rate of global warming and the fate of plant and
animal species, including human beings. Because of the irresponsibility
of the principal industrial powers, climate change will shortly become
irreversible.
Management of and adaptation to climate change may at most delay, but
not avert the demise of human civilisation — possibly within this
century. As a result, Noam Chomsky observed that far from the noblest of
God’s creatures, mankind will be the stupidest and most short-lived of
animal species. All of the above is reflected in the last reset of the Doomsday Clock, which at 89 seconds to ‘midnight’, is the closest yet to doomsday. The next reset next January will be even closer.
The Muslim consolidation of votes strategically against the BJP has been higher in Bihar since 2015, given the overwhelming hegemony of the BJP across North India in 2014 and 2019.
There is a certain myth that moves around
Indian elections as smoothly as the holy river Ganges through Bihar – a
myth insistently simple and yet quietly complex. That the ‘Muslim vote’
is a single, easily counted thing you can herd into a booth and, like
cattle, brand with the mark of a single party.
Walk through Phulwari Sharif in Patna late at night or stand by a chai stall in Siwan at dawn. Mingle among minorities in Sakri (a Nagar Panchayat in Madhubani district) or among shoppers and shopkeepers of Glesan Bazaar (named after British administrator and linguist George Abraham Grierson) in Madhubani town. Or wander along the small lanes of Kishanganj.
And one sees the absurdity of that simplicity. Voting is
unequivocally strategic and intimate; it is a conversation between
memory and fear, between grievance and hope. It is also arithmetic and
algebra.
The Caste Within The Minority
While
travelling across Bihar, learn to look for the small inner maps a place
keeps of itself: the way a city will remember a river, a language, a
habit.
Bihar keeps such maps within its Muslim population – not
one map, but many: the old, vertical lines of ashraf/ajlaf/arzal; the
newer political edges traced by the Persian word Pasmanda; the scattered
geography of Seemanchal and Mithilanchal, where numbers change the
rules of the game.
To ask ‘how do Muslims vote?’ in Bihar is to
ask a question that wants a single latitude and longitude but will only
accept a constellation of answers.
Muslims Vote According To Caste, Numerical Strength In Constituency
Two insightful and useful rules have been argued by scholars who specialise in minority voting behaviour.
The
pioneering work was conducted by Yale Professor Harry W Blair, now at
Bucknell University, who explored the intersection of caste and religion
in Bihar. Writing from an older, careful, and empirical perspective, he
argued Muslim voting in Bihar tends to be shaped by caste divisions and
by numbers.
Poet Munir Niazi reciting his famous poem hamesha der kar deta hooN meiN VIDEO/Aditya Chaudhary/Youtube
Pakistani poet Munir Niazi (1923 – 2006), equally loved and respected in India as in Pakistan, used to write in his mother tongue Punjabi as well as, in Hindi/Urdu, national languages of India/Pakistan respectively. He also wrote film songs such as:
jA apni hasratoN per ANsooN bahA ke sau ja / kahin sun na le zamAnA ae dil khamosh ho jA
cry your heart out over all your unfulfilled desires and go to sleep / the heart should remain silent lest the world comes to know your weep
Film: Susral. Playback singer: Noor Jehan. Music: Hassan Latif Lilak. Actress (on whom the song is picturized): Nighat Sultana.
The Columbia professor’s new book argues that Gaza is the measure by which any moral framework must be judged
Hamid Dabashi’sAfter Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization is a book that does not nudge; it wallops.
Written in the long shadow of Gaza’s devastation,
it refuses euphemism, demolishes the polite fictions that anaesthetise
Western consciences, and insists on a simple thesis: Gaza is the ethical
ground zero of our time.
What we call “the West” has been revealed, not as a civilisational
high point, but as a system of domination that dresses barbarism in
moral drag.
Read it if you’re ready to stop pretending. Read it if you want
language equal to the horror, and a map for thinking, and acting, beyond
it.
Published by Haymarket Books, it opens not with hedging but with the unvarnished vocabulary of genocide.
Dabashi peppers the book with quotes from Conrad to Ayelet Shaked,
showing how the injunction to “exterminate all the brutes” is not a
relic of empire but a living operating system, retooled for a besieged
strip of land that has become the world’s moral mirror.
The result is a searing, scandalously explicit indictment and a celebratory defence of Palestinian life and culture as a generative, life-making force.
Gaza as the new categorical imperative
Dabashi’s most provocative move is philosophical: he rewrites Kant
from the rubble. The book argues that Gaza has overturned the
“metaphysics of morals” and exposed a metaphysics of barbarism at the
heart of the West.
If a universal law permits mass death so long as it is rationalised by security, then the universal law is rotten.
Gaza, he insists, is the test: either we orient our ethics from there, or our ethics are counterfeit.
If a universal law permits mass death so long as it is rationalised by security, then the universal law is rotten
This isn’t ivory-tower wordplay; it’s a demand for a total reframing of moral philosophy in the wake of livestreamed atrocity.
The chapter-length meditations hammer the point: from official
language that brands Palestinians “human animals”, to policy choices
that starve and bomb civilians with impunity, the book refuses to let
philosophy float above the blood.
A categorical imperative, Dabashi says, now lives or dies under the
dust of collapsed apartment blocks. That’s not melodrama; that’s
accountability.
Israel is not merely backed by “the West”, it is “the West”.
The book’s core political claim is blunt: Israel is the condensed,
weaponised expression of western imperial history, a garrison state
projecting imperial interests, not a normal country gone astray.
From witness to martyr
This is more than the familiar settler-colonial framing; it’s an
argument that Gaza exposes the DNA of the West’s self-exculpating myth,
linking Indigenous erasure in the Americas, the transatlantic slave
trade, and European fascism to the ongoing Palestinian catastrophe.
Dabashi leans on Cesaire’s cold insight: the West only truly
recognised “the crime” when the methods of empire were used on Europe
itself. That recognition never translated into universal empathy; Gaza
proves it.
The author is not asking to swap one victimhood for another. He marks
the Holocaust’s specificity while rejecting the move that isolates it
from the larger architecture of European genocidal practice.
In this telling, Zionism is not a prophylactic against antisemitism
but a colonial project that keeps the region and Jews living within a
militarised enclave that is permanently unsafe.
Runways, influencers, and fast fashion are embracing an image that discreetly evokes a reactionary feminine ideal — and the look is proving seductive to younger generations
“Quiet luxury hinted at fatigue of the loud, anything-goes
culture of the previous decade. Many women were simply tired of being
told ‘sex sells’ or that empowerment means ever-shrinking hemlines.
Quality over quantity, tradition, subtlety — these were back in vogue.”
The passage could have appeared in an old book about the perfect woman, but it actually comes from an April article titled How Fashion Predicted A Trump Triumph in the magazine Evie, a fashion and lifestyle publication that embraces and espouses conservative values. The influence of Evie in the United States has led even The New York Times to dedicate an extensive profile to its founder, Brittany Martinez.
The magazine is not the only one to have explored the links between fashion and reactionary shifts. A quick search on the subject pulls up dozens of articles in publications that are hardly MAGA. “If anyone says I didn’t know our country was going down a conservative path, I would ask you, have you been on the internet in the past four years at all?” joked TikToker Lindsey Louise in a viral video posted after the last presidential election.
looking at trends, it has be obvious our climate was moving conservative for years, i wrote about this on my substack and i honestly could talk about this forever lol. from everything wellness to trad wife content to old money aesthetic to the constant need to be “edgy” we have seen the shift in culture online. also i note that some of these concepts have been taken from indigenous cultures and were constructed into ytness and “ luxury “ rebrand.
Fashion is not just about clothes, as sociologist Diana Crane points out in her 2000 book Fashion and its Social Agenda.
Rather, she says, it is a reflection of our norms and cultural values.
As such, it has the potential to influence social attitudes towards body
image and beauty standards.
The idea is perfectly
applicable a quarter-century after her book’s publication. In recent
years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of aesthetics
inspired either by nostalgia or by the archetype of the billionaires have taken hold. From floral dresses meant to evoke a bucolic shepherdess, to beige suits that could be worn by Siobhan Roy in Succession, or the flawless (and highly desirable, like a donut) face with a slicked-back bun of Hailey Bieber and her followers.
At
first glance, these elements might seem unrelated, if not for the fact
that a deeper reading of these macro-trends reveals a kind of pursuit of
perfectionism and discretion that fits like a glove with more
conservative values.
“If we want to understand current
trends, we can observe what is happening in the world in political
terms,” reflects Daphné B., cultural journalist and author of Made-Up: A True Story of Beauty Culture Under Late Capitalism.
“There has been an obvious rise of the ultra-right, in Europe as well
as the United States. In consequence, the values and aesthetic of
conservative movements are appreciated, because they are those closest
to power.”
Tags like #coquette, #cleangirl and #oldmoney now belong to the general slang of young people; so do words like Ozempic, tradwife and the lamentable “classic chic.”
Nearly two years of carpet bombing, mass murder and a starvation
blockade of the Gaza Strip have turned Israel into a pariah state,
despised and hated throughout the world. Nevertheless, the German
government stands steadfastly behind the Israeli government, surpassed
in this only by the Trump administration.
In the face of growing outrage, Berlin’s official position has shifted slightly. In mid-June, Chancellor Friedrich Merz had attested that the Zionist state was “doing the dirty work for all of us;” now he urges greater humanitarian consideration and will no longer approve weapons for use in Gaza. Yet, in practical terms, nothing has changed. Germany continues to support Israel politically and militarily, opposes all sanctions, and prosecutes opponents of the genocide as alleged “antisemites.”
This is supposedly justified by Germany’s
special responsibility for the Holocaust. In 2008, Chancellor Angela
Merkel declared Israel’s security to be a German “Staatsräson” (matter
of state policy), the same formulation found in the current government’s
coalition agreement. Three months ago, in a speech marking the 60th
anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, Federal
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier celebrated the “miracle of
reconciliation after the civilizational rupture of the Shoah.” At that
time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long been sought on
an international arrest warrant for crimes against humanity.
To
justify the Israeli army’s war crimes by citing reparations for the
Shoah is disgusting and repulsive. Responsibility for the genocide of
the Jews does not obligate Germany to support another genocide.
Historically, this justification is based on a myth devoid of any
factual basis.
The close collaboration between Germany and Israel
never had anything to do with “reparations,” atonement for the Shoah, or
anything comparable. It was a reciprocal deal: Germany supplied the
beleaguered Zionist state with weapons, economic aid and financial
assistance; in return, the Israeli government turned a blind eye to the
continued presence of Nazi elites in the state and economy of the
Federal Republic of Germany and helped it gain international standing.
Multi-year overview of the Gallic Wars. The general routes taken by Caesar’s army are indicated by the arrows. MAP/Wikpedia
Ancient Roman historians often told the story of how a small, rather
undistinguished city-state in central Italy became a huge empire
exclusively by fighting defensive wars. At school everyone used to read
of how Caesar conquered all of Gallia (Gaul) by doing nothing more than
responding with moderation to intolerable provocations by tribelets in
what we now call France, Switzerland, Germany and the Low Countries. But
for his heroic intervention, Caesar claimed, those tribesmen would soon
have been howling and screaming for blood around the sacred pomerium
of the City of Rome, 1,500 kilometres away and on the other side of the
Alps. Plutarch claims that Caesar killed a million Gauls and enslaved a
further million. Even if this is an exaggeration, it is agreed that the
scale of the destruction was enormous. How odd that the other side
always initiated the war, that they usually suffered the most
casualties, and that the conflict usually ended with Rome snipping off
another piece of someone else’s territory.
Every pupil used also to read, in Virgil’s Aeneid, the story
of a band of defeated wanderers from the ruined city of Troy, who were
driven into exile ‘by fate’, but were also promised great things by the
god Jupiter: that they would one day become a mighty nation if they
returned to their ‘ancient mother’, the homeland from which their
ancestors sprang, namely Italy. Virgil recounts the enormous
difficulties the exiled Trojans had in establishing themselves in Italy,
including the long and bloody war they had to fight against the tribes
who were already there.
Is there a contemporary parallel to any of this? Does one come spontaneously to mind?
Since 1948, Israel has conducted wars and military operations against
virtually all of its neighbours (Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq,
Iran, Yemen, Qatar; have I left any out?), while pursuing a relentless,
murderous campaign against the Palestinians. In the midst of all this,
those Zionists who also wish to be thought of as liberals are
perennially fervent in their calls for a peaceful resolution. Peacefully
resolving conflict, through negotiation and discussion, is indeed a
laudable liberal virtue, provided, of course, that it is not a Tacitean
peace: ‘they devastate the place and call that peace’ (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant),
Tacitus writes, referring to the Romans’ conduct in Britain. Making
peace can be very difficult, especially when one side insists on
assassinating or imprisoning the adversary’s potential negotiators (see
yesterday’s airstrike on the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar, to cite
only the most recent instance).
In view of Israel’s track record – and daily conduct – its
protestations of peaceful intent and promises to negotiate in good faith
ring hollow. Netanyahu and his supporters claim that they want a peace
which could be immediately realised if Hamas released its hostages, but
also state that they fully intend to fight on even if the hostages are
released. Netanyahu and the other hardline Zionists in his cabinet
argue: ‘They attacked us first, so we have a right to do
whatever we want. We propose to take as much land as we can by force,
and just you try to stop us.’ On the softer end of the Zionist spectrum,
liberal Zionists reiterate the usual claims that Israel is concerned
only with peace and security in the region: ‘Why do they always threaten
us? Why won’t they ever give us the peace and security which is all we
really want?’ The ‘security’ which former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali
Bennett, appearing on Piers Morgan Uncensored last week, said
he wants Israelis to enjoy means in the first instance unchallenged
occupation of land, most of which was appropriated, mostly very
violently, from Palestinians within human memory, and which he,
naturally, proposes to keep. Bennett went on to appeal to Hamas to
surrender and disarm voluntarily, and to place its trust in Israel to
end the war. Imagine Lucius Gellius or Marcus Crassus making a similar
offer to Spartacus. Can we imagine Spartacus accepting it?
As far as the prospects for the future are concerned, hardline
Zionists want a Greater Israel (maximally from the Nile to the
Euphrates), while many liberal Zionists still nominally support a
two-state solution. Thus the Israeli historian Fania Oz-Salzberger, a
commentator with impeccable liberal Zionist credentials, wrote in the Financial Times
recently, ‘We need Israel and Palestine to share the land, either by
partition or by a creative confederate structure enabling sovereignty
and self-rule for both nations. Israel must be democratic, peaceful and
secure; Palestine at the very least stable and unsupportive of terror.’
By habit, the choreographed Indian crowd began to chant “Modi Modi” at an event for the Indian prime minister’s two-day visit to China. The Chinese hosts, on the other hand, greeted him with a knowledgeable display of Indian classical music, something Indians would struggle to reciprocate if it ever came to that. There’s a trade deficit, and there’s evidently a cultural deficit too. Three sari-clad Chinese women performed Vande Mataram, an Indian nationalist favourite, in Rag Desh on the sitar and santoor as the third kept rhythm on the tabla. But there are more urgent reasons than China’s showcasing its soft power to woo a pro-America Narendra Modi, on an emotional rebound, to make a compelling case for BRICS. Dumping the Western capitalist model that has spawned wars and exploitative sanctions is a need that preceded the dismantling of the USSR.
Western perfidy targets friend and foe alike if business interests
clash. The malaise is older than Donald Trump. Among my early
observations in this regard was the West’s betrayal of Kuwait before
Saddam Hussein was hustled into completing the job. The story goes back
to the 1987 stock market crash when the Thatcher government was in the
process of selling its remaining 31.5 per cent stake in BP. The crash
threatened to derail this massive sale, potentially costing the treasury
billions. The Kuwait Investment Office, the investment arm of the
Kuwaiti sovereign wealth fund, stepped in to bail out the UK. It began
purchasing BP shares on the open market. Initially, the UK government
was pleased. The KIO’s buying provided crucial support to the BP share
price, helping to ensure the success of the government’s own share sale.
In a short time, the KIO had acquired a 21.6pc stake in BP, making it
by far the largest shareholder. The UK government’s stake was now zero.
Suddenly, Margaret Thatcher’s government was uncomfortable with a
controlling stake being held by a foreign government, even a friendly
one. A 21.6pc stake gave Kuwait significant power and the idea of a
major British icon falling under effective control of an OPEC member
state was politically toxic, even for a pro-market government like
Thatcher’s.
India has 800m on food dole, signalling the contradiction between
its right-wing government shored up by big money and people’s
priorities.
Thatcher formally instructed the KIO to reduce its holding. They were
ordered to sell down their stake to no more than 9.9pc. The government
made it clear that if Kuwait did not comply voluntarily, it would use
its legal and regulatory powers to force the issue, potentially damaging
diplomatic relations and Kuwait’s other investments in the UK. Kuwait, a
close ally that relied on Western protection, ultimately complied to
maintain good relations.
Workers sing while setting off colourful smoke flares during a demonstration outside the Parliament building in Jakarta on August 28, 2025. IMAGE/GETTY
The protests currently sweeping Indonesia are not fleeting outbursts, but rather the culmination of long-suppressed grievances over abuses of power.
Less than 11
months into his term, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto faces a
stark choice. He can be remembered either as a leader whose presidency
was defined by public anger and discontent, or as one who recognised the
challenges facing his country and acted in the national interest.
The anti-government protests sweeping
Indonesia over the past two weeks are not fleeting outbursts but the
culmination of long-suppressed grievances against abuses of power, the
erosion of constitutional norms, and the violation of basic human
rights. The protesters are not seeking an apology or even sympathy from
the president; they demand the chance to live a decent life in which
their dignity and human rights are respected and upheld.
Prabowo’s
administration has set its sights on making the country the world’s
fourth-largest economy by 2045 – a goal that would require sustained annual growth of 8%. But with 68% of Indonesia’s population
living below the poverty line for upper-middle-income countries, such
ambitions mean little if millions of citizens remain trapped in poverty
and hardship.
Indonesians
have experienced rapid growth before, most notably during the long
dictatorship of Suharto (1967-98), Prabowo’s former father-in-law. Given
that history, they know that lasting and inclusive development gains
depend on political and social reform, not strongman rule.
