by MARIA POPOVA

“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer… feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote. Words are the invisible hands with which we touch each other, feel the shape of the world, hold our own experience. We live in language — it is our interior narrative that stitches the events of our lives into a story of self. We love in language — it is the lever for every deep and valuable relationship, which Adrienne Rich knew to be “a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.” When two people meet in a third language, parts of each always remain unmet by the other. When two people meet in the same language, they must learn to mean the same things by the same words in order to meet in truth. And so we must love language in order to love each other well, in order to love our own lives.

I know of no greater love letter to language, to its simple pleasures and its infinite complexities, than the one Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904–September 23, 1973) tucks into his posthumously published Memoirs (public library) under the heading “Words” — a stream-of-consciousness prose poem nested between chapters about his changing life in Chile and his eventual choice to leave Santiago, “a captive city between walls of snow,” half a lifetime before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for “a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams.”

A generation after Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice that “words belong to each other,” Neruda writes:

… You can say anything you want, yessir, but it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend … I bow to them … I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down … I love words so much … The unexpected ones … The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop … Vowels I love … They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew … I run after certain words … They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem … I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives … And then I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go … I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves … Everything exists in the word … An idea goes through a complete change because one word shifted its place, or because another settled down like a spoiled little thing inside a phrase that was not expecting her but obeys her … They have shadow, transparence, weight, feathers, hair, and everything they gathered from so much rolling down the river, from so much wandering from country to country, from being roots so long … They are very ancient and very new … They live in the bier, hidden away, and in the budding flower.

Nested into Neruda’s passionate ode to the brightness of language is also a reminder of the darknesses out of which its light arose:

What a great language I have, it’s a fine language we inherited from the fierce conquistadors … They strode over the giant cordilleras, over the rugged Americas, hunting for potatoes, sausages, beans, black tobacco, gold, corn, fried eggs, with a voracious appetite not found in the world since then … They swallowed up everything, religions, pyramids, tribes, idolatries just like the ones they brought along in their huge sacks … Wherever they went, they razed the land … But words fell like pebbles out of the boots of the barbarians, out of their beards, their helmets, their horseshoes, luminous words that were left glittering here … our language. We came up losers … We came up winners … They carried off the gold and left us the gold … They carried everything off and left us everything … They left us the words.

The Marginalian for more

by PAULO SERODIO

In a new three-paper Series published in The Lancet, my colleagues and I tackle a deceptively simple question: what will it take to move humanity away from ultra-processed diets, and towards food systems that support health and equity rather than undermine them?

The stakes could not be higher. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) now provide more than half of all calories in some high-income countries, and their consumption is rising rapidly across the rest of the world. A growing body of cohort studies and meta-analyses links high UPF intake to higher risks of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression and premature mortality. This is no longer a story about occasional “junk food”, it is about a structural shift in what people eat, and the health consequences that follow.

The Lancet Series, Ultra-processed foods and human health, brings these strands together. The first paper synthesises evidence on health impacts and mechanisms; the second sets out a menu of policies to halt and reverse the ultra-processed dietary pattern; and the third, which I co-authored, examines corporate power and global governance, asking what kind of coordinated response might realistically change the trajectory we are on.

Why ultra-processed foods are a global health issue

The Series uses the NOVA classification, which distinguishes between minimally processed foods, culinary ingredients, processed foods and ultra-processed foods. UPFs are not just “foods in packets”; they are industrial formulations of ingredients assembled through multiple processing steps and containing additives such as flavourings, colours, emulsifiers and sweeteners that are rarely used in home kitchens.

Across diverse countries, higher dietary shares of UPFs are consistently associated with poorer overall diet quality (more free sugars, unhealthy fats and sodium), and with increased risks of a wide range of chronic conditions and all-cause mortality. These associations remain even when controlling for energy intake or more traditional nutrient indicators, suggesting that how foods are formulated, structured and promoted matters over and above what nutrients they contain.

The Series reviews plausible mechanisms: UPFs tend to be hyper-palatable, energy-dense, aggressively marketed, easy to consume quickly and often stripped of their original food matrix. They displace minimally processed foods and home-cooked meals from the diet and may expose consumers to concerning levels of certain additives and processing-related contaminants.

Importantly, these are not marginal effects. Recent estimates suggest that in several high-income countries, ultra-processed diets may already account for between roughly 4% and 14% of premature deaths. That makes UPFs a population-level risk factor on a par with many of the classical hazards that have long been the focus of public health research.

Ultra-processed diets are built into today’s food systems

One of the most important messages of the Series is that ultra-processed diets are not an unfortunate by-product of individual poor choices, they are a structural outcome of how contemporary food systems are organised.

Over recent decades, global UPF sales have grown to nearly US$2 trillion, with the fastest growth in low and middle-income countries. A small group of transnational manufacturers (household names like Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Danone, Mondelez and Kraft Heinz), now control a large share of the sector’s assets, brands and distribution infrastructure and have a presence in almost every world market.

The Series frames this as a story about profitability and corporate strategy. UPFs are highly profitable: they rely on cheap commodity inputs and processing technologies to minimise production costs and on intensive marketing and product design to maximise consumption. We argue this profitability advantage drives capital towards the ultra-processed sector and, over time, pushes entire food systems in the direction of ultra-processed diets. What looks like a set of individual choices at the checkout is in fact the visible expression of deeper economic and political dynamics.

ISER for more

by DREW FAVAKEH

For years, there have been whispers that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had ties to key officials in the US and foreign governments, was involved with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

However, the Epstein/Mossad ties were often labeled by US corporate media as “unfounded” (New York Times, 8/24/25), dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” (New York Times, 7/16/25), or said to have been “largely manufactured by paranoiacs and attention seekers and credulous believers” (New York Times, 9/9/25). Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has claimed that “Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel.”

It’s true that far-right antisemites like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have promoted a conspiratorial version of the Epstein/Israel connection as part of their bigoted, attention-seeking narratives. But recent investigations by Drop Site News—the nonprofit investigative outlet founded in July 2024—into a major hack targeting Israel revealed that Epstein did play a significant role in brokering multiple deals for Israeli intelligence. Despite the hack’s significant revelations, US corporate media coverage remains scant.

‘Knack for steering the superpowers’

Drop Site (10/30/25): “Epstein was an invaluable resource for Israel’s former prime minister [Ehud Barak]…even advising him on how to engage with the Mossad.”Since 2024, a hacking group called “Handala” with reported ties to the Iranian government (Committee to Protect Journalists, 7/9/25) has carried out a series of cyberattacks targeting Israeli government officials and facilities (Press TV, 12/1/24; CyberDaily, 6/16/25).

Aspects of the Handala hack were published on the website of nonprofit whistleblower Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS), including hundreds of thousands of emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, one of Epstein’s closest connections.

Since the hacked information was released, numerous independent media outlets—including Reason (8/27/25), All-Source Intelligence (9/17/25, 9/29/25, 10/13/25), Grayzone (10/6/25, 10/9/25, 10/13/25), the (b)(7)(D) (10/16/25, 10/21/25) and DeClassified UK (9/1/25, 11/3/25)—have published investigations on its contents. Among the independent media outlets, Drop Site’s coverage stands out for its in-depth research and broad scope.

Drop Site’s investigations into the Handala hack have included six major stories since late September, four of which have centered around “Epstein’s work on behalf of Israeli military interests, particularly as it relates to his role in the development of Israel’s cyber warfare industry.”

Drop Site reporters Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim (9/28/25) detailed how Epstein wielded his influence to expand Israel’s cyber warfare industry into Mongolia. Drop Site wrote:

Jeffrey Epstein…exploited his network of political and financial elites to help Barak, and ultimately the Israeli government itself, to increase the penetration of Israel’s spy-tech firms into foreign countries.

In their next piece, Drop Site revealed (10/30/25) that Epstein created an Israel/Russia backchannel to attempt to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Hussain and Grim reported that Epstein also worked with Barak and Russian elites to pressure the Obama administration into approving strikes on Iran, demonstrating his “knack for steering the superpowers toward Israel’s interests by leveraging a social network that intersected the Israeli, American and Russian intelligence communities.”

In the same piece, Hussain and Grim quoted Epstein asking Barak to “wait until they could speak privately before Barak notified intelligence leaders of a deal” with Russian-Israeli oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, and to “not go to number 1 too quickly.” Number 1 has long been a nickname for the head of the Mossad, DropSite noted.

Another article (11/7/25) recounted that Epstein sold surveillance technology to Côte d’Ivoire: “Epstein helped Barak deliver a proposal for mass surveillance of Ivorian phone and internet communications, crafted by former Israeli intelligence officials.”

Most recently, Grim and Hussain (11/11/25) reported that an Israeli spy regularly stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment. The spy, Yoni Koren, “made his intelligence career working in covert operations alongside the Mossad.”

Failing to cover the Handala hack

The New York Post (8/31/25) had no problem using Handala info to document Epstein’s ties to a disgraced British royal.

Hacked information must be handled ethically by journalists—including by verifying the files, considering public interest, concealing identities when necessary, and noting its origins. This is what Drop Site has done. And its reporting has significant public interest, revealing the ways in which Epstein served Israel’s interests.

Yet in a search of ProQuest’s US Newsstream collection for “Handala,” as well as a supplementary Google search, the only US corporate media outlet found to have covered the Handala hack is the New York Post (8/31/25). Its single 700-word story, drawing from Reason (8/27/25) and the Times of London (8/30/25), focused on how Prince Andrew stayed in contact with Epstein for five years longer than previously stated—sidestepping the revelations from Drop Site about Epstein’s ties to Mossad.

Hussain, who had not seen the New York Post story, said US corporate media is “deliberately ignoring” the story:

It’s such a goldmine of stories. They’re not going through it, they don’t want to talk about it. I think it’s very difficult for them to conceive what these emails refer to because they’ve spent so much time talking about it as a conspiracy theory. And now contravening evidence is emerging, or well-substantiated evidence, showing that it’s really not a conspiracy theory.

Indeed, recent mentions of Epstein’s ties to Israeli government officials have continued to dismiss them as conspiracy theories, ignoring the hack and Drop Site‘s work. For instance, an LA Times op-ed (10/10/25) on antisemitism in the GOP listed Tucker Carlson’s suggestion that “Epstein was a Mossad agent” (and accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza) as evidence of “appalling behavior,” alongside things like “entertaining Hitler/Nazi apologia” and suggesting that “Jews had something to do with [Charlie] Kirk’s death.”

The New Yorker (10/10/25) suggested that drawing a connection between “the war in Gaza” and “fealty to Israel” is part of a “dark alternative view of the world.”

The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang (10/10/25) asserted in his weekly column:

On Planet Epstein, everything that happens—the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the war in Gaza, the suppression of speech by the Trump Administration—proves the country is run by blackmail, pedophilia and fealty to Israel.

While it is of course absurd to blame “everything” on Epstein or Israel—and right-wing conspiracy theories that incorporate antisemitism are very real and dangerous—is it really unreasonable to blame “the war in Gaza” on too much “fealty to Israel”? After all, from October 7, 2023 to September 2025, the US sent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project—more than a quarter of Israel’s total post–October 7 military expenditures. Epstein’s evident connections to Mossad do raise the question of whether there is more to that “fealty” than the $100 million the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC spent on both parties during the 2024 election cycle (Common Dreams, 8/28/24).

By using the “conspiracy theory” frame, Kang not only overlooked the recently revealed files from Drop Site, but also failed to convey the full scope of Epstein’s influence, leaving the actions of associates and key government officials unscrutinized.

Other Handala revelations

All Source Intelligence (9/17/25) published a story based on the Handala leak documenting a Canadian billionaire couple’s support for an Israeli program to sabotage critics online.

Other aspects of the Handala hack have also been well-covered by independent media, including reports of billionaires funding an Israeli cyber campaign against anti-apartheid activists (All-Source Intelligence, 9/17/25). Other stories describe Iran striking a secret Israeli military site near a Tel Aviv tower (All-Source Intelligence, 10/13/25; Grayzone, 10/13/25), and Larry Ellison’s son, David Ellison, meeting with a top Israeli general to plan spying on Americans (Grayzone, 10/6/25). The Grayzone (10/9/25) also reported that a former US ambassador secretly worked with a top Israeli diplomat to help Israel access several prestigious UN committees.

In Israeli media, Haaretz (3/9/25) reported that thousands of Israeli gun owners were exposed in an Iranian hack-and-leak operation. The paper (7/9/25) also revealed the leak of a database containing thousands of résumés belonging to Israelis who served in classified and sensitive positions within the Israel Defense Forces and other military and security agencies.

?These details, like those about Epstein, have also been met with silence in US corporate media.

There has been wall-to-wall US corporate media coverage of the Department of Justice’s Epstein files and the battle over its release. So why has the hack largely been ignored by US corporate media? One possible reason is the hack’s likely origin. It has been reportedly attributed to Banished Kitten, a cyber unit within Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (Committee to Protect Journalists, 7/9/25). Hacks purportedly emanating from Iran are rarely covered in US corporate media—and when they are, the origin of the hack, not its content, becomes the focus.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting for more

by ARIF HASAN

According to the Old Testament, God promised the Israelites the land between the Nile and the Euphrates. This land according to the Bible was inhabited by the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and occupied much of this
land. The Bible gives details of how it was occupied and how its cities were destroyed and plundered and their citizens massacred by the Israelites. There are remarkable similarities between what happened then and what is happening today in the Holy Land. So, it is interesting to note what the Bible has to say about the Israelite occupation of the Holy Land in about 1200 BC. There are hundreds of verses describing the destruction of the cities and the massacre of the inhabitants of the Holy Land, but I can only give a few for editorial reasons. The Bible from which these quotations are taken is the New International Version of the Philippines Bible Society,
Manila 1984, and the chapter and verse number precede the quotes.

In the Chapter on Exodus Moses speaks in the verse below.

3.8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
The Israelites sent spies into Palestine to ascertain conditions. The Chapter on Numbers gives their feedback and follow-up in the following verses.

13.27 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.”

21.2 Then Israel made this vow to the LORD: “If you will deliver these people into our hands, we will totally destroy their cities”. 3 The LORD listened to Israel’s plea and gave the Canaanites over to them. They completely destroyed them and their towns.
But the Israelites also encountered resistance from Sihon, King of the Amorites, and from Og, King of Bashan. The Bible tells us how their towns were destroyed by the Israelites and all men,women and children were killed “leaving them no survivors”. The expansion continued as
described in the following verses in the Chapter on Numbers

31.10 They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. 11 They took all the plunder and spoils. Including the people and animals, 12 and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.

31.14 Moses was angry with the officers of the army. 15 ”Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. 16 “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and were the meansof turning the Israelites away from the LORD. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who
has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”

33.50 On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the LORD said to Moses, 51 ”Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, 52 drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. 53 Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess. 54 Distribute the land by lot, according to your clans.

The Chapter on Deuteronomy has detailed descriptions regarding the occupation of Palestine and contains promises of victory that the LORD made to the Israelites encouraging them to continue with their expansion. Some relevant verses are given below.

1.6 The LORD our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain.7 Break camp and advance into the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighboring peoples in the Arbah, in the mountains, in the western foothills, in the Negev and along the seacoast, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates. 8 See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land that the LORD swore he would give to your fathers – to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – and to their descendants after them.”

9.1 Hear, O Israel. You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. 2 The people are strong and tall – Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?” 3 But be assured today that the LORD your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you.

20.10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the
LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.

20.16 However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.

The Chapter on Joshua describes the final occupation of the Holy Land and the destruction of its cities in the following verses.

Arif Hassan for more

The rise and fall of globalisation: the battle to be top dog (part I)

by STEVE SCHIFFERES

For nearly four centuries, the world economy has been on a path of ever-greater integration that even two world wars could not totally derail. This long march of globalisation was powered by rapidly increasing levels of international trade and investment, coupled with vast movements of people across national borders and dramatic changes in transportation and communication technology.

According to economic historian J. Bradford DeLong, the value of the world economy (measured at fixed 1990 prices) rose from US$81.7 billion (£61.5 billion) in 1650, when this story begins, to US$70.3 trillion (£53 trillion) in 2020 – an 860-fold increase. The most intensive periods of growth corresponded to the two periods when global trade was rising fastest: first during the “long 19th century” between the end of the French revolution and start of the first world war, and then as trade liberalisation expanded after the second world war, from the 1950s up to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Now, however, this grand project is on the retreat. Globalisation is not dead yet, but it is dying.

Is this a cause for celebration, or concern? And will the picture change again when Donald Trump and his tariffs of mass disruption leave the White House? As a longtime BBC economics correspondent who was based in Washington during the global financial crisis, I believe there are sound historical reasons to worry about our deglobalised future – even once Trump has left the building.

Trump’s tariffs have amplified the world’s economic problems, but he is not the root cause of them. Indeed, his approach reflects a truth that has been emerging for many decades but which previous US administrations – and other governments around the world – have been reluctant to admit: namely, the decline of the US as the world’s no.1 economic power and engine of world growth.

In each era of globalisation since the mid-17th century, a single country has sought to be the clear world leader – shaping the rules of the global economy for all. In each case, this hegemonic power had the military, political and financial power to enforce these rules – and to convince other countries that there was no preferable path to wealth and power.

But now, as the US under Trump slips into isolationism, there is no other power ready to take its place and carry the torch for the foreseeable future. Many people’s pick, China, faces too many economic challenges, including its lack of a truly international currency – and as a one-party state, nor does it possess the democratic mandate needed to gain acceptance as the world’s new dominant power.

The Conversation for more

The rise and fall of globalisation: why the world’s next financial meltdown could be much worse with the US on the sidelines (part II)

by STEVE SCHIFFERES

Globalisation has always had its critics – but until recently, they have come mainly from the left rather than the right.

In the wake of the second world war, as the world economy grew rapidly under US dominance, many on the left argued that the gains of globalisation were unequally distributed, increasing inequality in rich countries while forcing poorer countries to implement free-market policies such as opening up their financial markets, privatising their state industries and rejecting expansionary fiscal policies in favour of debt repayment – all of which mainly benefited US corporations and banks.

This was not a new concern. Back in 1841, German economist Friedrich List had argued that free trade was designed to keep Britain’s global dominance from being challenged, suggesting:

When anyone has obtained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he climbs up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him.

By the 1990s, critics of the US vision of a global world order such as the Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz argued that globalisation in its current form benefited the US at the expense of developing countries and workers – while author and activist Naomi Klein focused on the negative environmental and cultural consequences of the global expansion of multinational companies.

Mass left-led demonstrations broke out, disrupting global economic meetings including, most famously, the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1999. During this “battle of Seattle”, violent exchanges between protesters and police prevented the launch of a new world trade round that had been backed by then US president, Bill Clinton. For a while, the mass mobilisation of a coalition of trade unionists, environmentalists and anti-capitalist protesters seemed set to challenge the path towards further globalisation – with anti-capitalism “Occupy” protests spreading around the world in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.

The Conversation for more

by TITHI BHATTACHARYA

Liberation, not Liberal Zionism

Social media is filling up with images of what can only be called joyous determination—images of Gazans returning to their devastated city and rebuilding, reconstructing, renewing. I cannot stop watching videos of children hugging their cats, of women and men laying bricks on a bombed-out home, of twins reuniting. All this amidst what the IOF called “finishing touches” to their two-year holocaust: as they were forced to retreat from Gaza, they set fire to food, homes, and a critical water treatment plant in their own version of “festival of the oppressor.”

The current ceasefire includes consistent bad faith deals from the usual suspects. The Israeli list of Palestinians to be released as part of the hostage exchange has carefully left out the names of several popular leaders whose release Hamas has insisted upon. Among them are Marwan Barghouti (popular leader, often called the Palestinian Mandela), Ahmad Saadat (Secretary-General of the Marxist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), Hassan Salameh (Qassam Brigade member with forty-eight life sentences, the third highest among all Palestinian prisoners), and Abbas al-Sayyed (senior Hamas Leader).

The two sides at the negotiating table seem to have been negotiating for completely different realities, with Hamas asking for a permanent ceasefire guaranteed by the United States and Israel asking for a “demilitarized Gaza” with Hamas completely dismantled. In his televised address to the nation, Benjamin Netanyahu declared that “If this is achieved the easy way—so be it. If not—it will be achieved the hard way.”¹ The United States of course has refused to comment on any of this—perhaps the President is waiting for Jared Kushner’s riviera plan with Leo DiCaprio’s hotel chain?

In these circumstances every Palestinian—and everyone serious about winning freedom for Palestine— knows that the ceasefire is simply a respite, and an unstable one at that. After all, the IOF still controls 53 percent of Gaza. Even if the active genocide moves away from the headlines (undoubtedly to the relief of mainstream Western media), all of us know that the everyday violence will continue in Gaza and the West Bank. Ceasefire or no ceasefire, settlers and the IOF will continue to harass, violate, and kill Palestinians. Under these circumstances, nothing is more urgent than an assessment of the ceasefire and a collective discussion of future strategies for the international Palestine movement. It is the movement, of course, that has brought us to this point.

What Ceasefire on Stolen Land Looks Like

While is true that the Zionist project continues, the current respite has won some short-term victories:

1. Israel has been reduced to a global pariah.
2. None of the Palestinian leadership has been exiled.
3. The Blair Witch Project—Mouin Rabbani’s brilliant term for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s prospective leading role in Gaza’s interim authority—seems to have been put on hold.²
4. Some aid is trickling in.
5. Most importantly, Palestinians are finally returning to their homes in a city where caring for the living can never be paused, even for a moment, to mourn the dead.

While the wins may seem momentous after two years of publicly broadcast genocide, the alarming aspects of this ceasefire deal are also becoming more evident:

1. Israel has yet to be held accountable for their internationally recognized war crimes.
2. No major Western power has cut financial ties with Israel or imposed sanctions.
3. The plans for an archipelago of “Bantustans” in Palestine have not been withdrawn. Nor have the grotesque plans for Gaza as a beach resort.
4. Despite the two-year long holocaust, a full 76 percent of US Jews still view Israel’s existence “as vital for the future of the Jewish people” (though many of those remain critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza).³ The idea that Zionism and settler colonialism are the only solutions to (very real) European antisemitism continues to thrive.

Once the deal is weighed thus, it becomes clear that there can never be any permanent ceasefire on stolen land. For the movement, then, “right of return” and “land back” remain our goals.

Moving from Respite to Liberation

Let me clarify at the outset the social movements that I think brought us this small respite: the global spread of large internationalist marches, the campus revolts, the flotillas, the magnificent general strike in Italy, and the less spectacular but equally significant labor actions on campuses and other workplaces.⁴ And, finally and most importantly, Palestinian actions against the Occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. These actions, taken together, are what constitute “the movement” at this current moment. This movement, in all its component parts, needs to be strengthened and spread in order to move from respite to liberation.

Spectre for more

by AASIM SAJJAD AKHTAR

In the aftermath of the 27th Constitutional Amendment, there has been much conjecture about the increasingly dystopian direction of Pakistan’s militarised polity. But to date there is no street mobilisation to reflect this ostensibly popular sentiment. At the risk of oversimplification, I submit that there are two related explanations for what is happening — or not — in Pakistani society and politics today: coercion and consent.

The coercion part of the story is well-known, but articulated in fragmentary ways. The party which clearly won the popular mandate in the February 2024 general election with its leader in jail was forcibly prevented from forming the government. It has continued to face waves of repression ever since.

But there are also other political and social forces contending with the coercive apparatus of the state. Take Ali Wazir, farcically jailed for more than two years, represents many residents of the Pakhtun tribal districts who have been resisting militarisation of their homelands for decades. The current hybrid regime has recently started naming and treating the Afghan Taliban as an adversary, but Ali Wazir and others who have warned of the blowback of the state’s Afghan policy for decades remain in jail.

Then there is Mahrang Baloch, another voice from a peripheral region who has also been in jail for almost a year. She is pilloried as being a ‘soft recruiter’ for Baloch militants, but as is the case with political dissidents in this country, no concrete evidence has been presented to back up the allegation. Despite representing a wide cross-section of Baloch society, she is being met only with colonial statecraft.

Consent can mean choosing silence for fear of coercion.

There are many nameless others who face the big stick. Residents of katchi abadis and street vendors in metropolitan Pakistan routinely suffer eviction from their homes and livelihoods in the face of land grabs. Fishing communities, landless farmers and mountain dwellers face even more land, mineral, water and forest grabs in the peripheries. Blue- and white-collar workers who dare organise themselves in trade unions are fired and criminalised. Intellectuals who do not toe the line are silenced.

Seen thus, coercion is widespread. But there is little that binds the various social and political forces experiencing it together. Indeed, the ideological orientations of most dissenting groups are significantly opposed — the PTI, for instance, practised repression on leftists, worker-peasant formations and ethnic-nationalists when it was infamously on the ‘same page’ as the establishment.

This brings me to the consent part of the story. Systems of domination survive, and in fact, thrive, when they are able to ensure social control over enough of the population so that the ruling class can insulate itself from mass discontent. In Pakistan’s case, this equates to a critical mass of society accepting or even supporting coercion against dissenters in the name of the ‘greater national interest’.

But this does not mean that consenters are beneficiaries of the political and economic order. Consent can mean choosing silence for fear of coercion. It can also be explained by ideological influence, especially amongst educated segments of society — we saw many otherwise critically minded people fall in line behind the establishment after the military exchange with India in May.

Ultimately, however, consent cannot persist on the basis of ideology alone. Social control requires a material basis. When increasingly large numbers of ordinary people, who may not otherwise associate themselves with dissenters, fall into in­­­-tense social and economic hardship, the system of domination rings hollow. Mass discontent bubbles below the surface in Pakistan today, even if it has not yet taken the form of organised politics except in some cases like the recent movement in AJK.

The 27th Amendment has not triggered public protest because there is no obvious link between its passage and the everyday hardships faced by working people. The ideology that will ultimately challenge and transcend the political and economic order will centre the material needs of working masses while resisting increasing militarisation of state and society.

Dawn for more

by ALASDAIR FOTHERINGHAM

Half a century has passed since Francisco Franco’s dictatorship ended with his death, but some today valorise his rule.

This summer, Marina Roldan, a lawyer from Granada in southern Spain, finally got the phone call her family had waited decades for.

The body of Fermin Roldan Garcia, her grandfather, who was one of tens of thousands of people killed by General Francisco Franco’s death squads in the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, had finally been located and identified.

His remains were found in a ravine in the village of Viznar, a few kilometres outside Granada.

“My brother Juan called me. He’d been the family contact with the archaeological team carrying out the excavation,” Roldan told Al Jazeera. “When Juan told me my grandfather had been found, my first thoughts were for my [late] father.”

Her father, Jose Antonio Roldan Diaz, was just 10 months old when his father was killed at the age of 41.

Roldan Garcia was a tax inspector, a trade unionist and a member of the Socialist Party who stood unsuccessfully for parliament in the February 1936 elections in Granada.

As Marina remembers them, her voice falters with the emotion of it all. The noise of passing trams echoes through an open window of her office.

“I thought of [my father] and I thought of my late uncles, who would have liked to have heard the news, and my grandmother too. … I think they all deserved their husband, their father, to be found.”

On Thursday, Spain marks 50 years since the end of Franco’s dictatorship – four decades that ended with his death on November 20, 1975.

Al Jazeera for more

Zohran Mamdani’s transformative child care plan builds on a history of NYC social innovations

by SIMON BLACK

Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old New York State Assembly member and democratic socialist, was elected New York City’s mayor on Nov. 4, 2025, after pledging to make the city more affordable through policies that include freezing rents, providing free public buses and a network of city-owned grocery stores.

During his campaign, Mamdani’s promises clearly resonated with New Yorkers struggling with the high cost of living.

Of all of Mamdani’s campaign commitments, free high-quality child care for every New Yorker from 6 weeks to 5 years old – while boosting child care workers’ wages to match that of the city’s public school teachers – could be the most transformative.

The cost of child care in New York City is expensive. More than 80% of families with young children cannot afford the average annual cost of US$26,000 for center-based care. A recent study found that families with young children are twice as likely to leave the city as those without children. The study identified housing and child care costs as key drivers of migration out of the city.

New York’s child care problem mirrors a nationwide system that is seen by many experts as broken. U.S. families spend between 8.9% and 16% of their median income on full-day care for one child. And prices have been rising: Between 1990 and 2024, the cost of day care and preschool rose 263%, much faster than overall inflation.

Despite high prices, child care workers are poorly paid: In 2024, the median pay for child care workers, who are mostly women and often women of color, was $15.41 an hour, or $32,050 a year. That’s nearly at the bottom of all occupations when ranked by annual pay. Additionally, child care programs face high turnover, and it’s difficult for them to recruit and retain qualified staff. Program quality suffers as a result.

The Conversation for more

In Zohran Mamdani, Democracy Has Recovered Its Language

by APOORVANAND

The images and sounds from Zohran Mamdani’s victory celebration are surreal.

On one side, his Punjabi Hindu mother in a sari; on the other, his Ugandan-Gujarati-American Muslim father in a suit. His Syrian Arab wife by his side. And playing in the background, a Hindi Bollywood song, ‘Dhoom mach?le.’ It felt almost like a dream.

The scene radiated diversity, but it would have been incomplete without the words Mamdani spoke before all these people appeared on stage. Diversity, he reminded us, is never enough if it does not rest on the ground of equality. After all, the Republican Party too can claim diversity: the US Vice-President J.D. Vance’s wife is a Hindu of Indian origin; many of its officials are neither American-origin nor Christian. Yet, none of them, like their leader, Donald Trump, believes in the principle of equality.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral election is the result of millions believing in something that seemed impossible only a year back. In his victory speech, Mamdani – who has just turned 34 – reminded everyone how much was stacked against him: that despite his wish to be older, he could not not be young; that he is Muslim; and that he is a democratic socialist. And, most damning of all, that he refuses to apologise for any of these ‘deficiencies’.

There was something else that counted against him. Mamdani had declared without hesitation that if Benjamin Netanyahu ever came to New York, he would be arrested. Mamdani in called Netanyahu a war criminal. He refused to accept Israel as a Jew-only state. Even under provocation, he held firmly to his position: that Israel does have a right to exist as a sovereign state – but only as a nation where everyone enjoys equal rights. To say this, in New York – the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel – demanded an unshakable faith in the principle of equality.

Yet for Mamdani, it was not only a matter of his principles. He trusted that Jews in America and New York were, at heart, humane people who believed in justice. For what is humanity, after all, if it is not suffused with the spirit of equality and fairness? The Jews did not disappoint him. They rejected the idea of Jewish supremacy and affirmed that they were no different from other New Yorkers – that their needs, their dignity, and their longing for justice and equality could not be ranked above anyone else’s. Jews need not be seen as a people apart.

It is true that millions of voters believed in these ideas. But they did so because Mamdani himself believed in them with conviction. Whenever asked about his identity, he never tried to take the easy way out by saying he was “American first.” His courage lay precisely in his refusal to evade the question. Character is tested when one stands by what can harm them most. In America, the Muslim identity has been criminalised. To embrace it fully is not easy for any politician. Mamdani took that difficult path.

To call oneself a democratic socialist in America is no less risky, though the idea has a long history there. Just as Rahul Gandhi has been branded a Maoist or an “urban Naxal” in India, Mamdani too was branded a ‘communist lunatic’ to scare traditional voters. Yet he never flinched. He explained democratic socialism with a rare simplicity, invoking Martin Luther King Jr., “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism – there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.”

Mamdani’s campaign revolved around a single idea: that living in New York should be easy for everyone. He promised rent control, free bus service, and higher wages for workers. Where would the money come from? He said plainly: from higher taxes on the wealthy. What could be more terrifying in America than that? Billionaires poured millions into defeating him — but the power of money was met, and overcome, by the power of the people.

The Wire for more

In rebuke to Trump’s fascism, Mamdani elected mayor of New York City, Democrats sweep governor races

by JACOB CROSSE

On Tuesday, 190 elections spanning more than 30 states in the US took place, including the mayoral election in New York City and gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. The elections unfolded under conditions of mounting authoritarianism and deepening class polarization.

The New York City mayoral election

In the financial center of the American capitalism, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory marks a development of immense political significance. Until recently a virtually unknown assemblyman and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo, the son of former Governor Mario Cuomo and a longtime representative of the New York political establishment, and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Mamdani’s margin of victory was significant, achieving over 50 percent of the vote compared to Cuomo’s 41 percent and Sliwa’s 7 percent. Over 2 million votes were cast, the most since 1969, and 17 percent of those who voted were first-time voters.

According to the New York Times, more than 735,000 New Yorkers cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s in-person vote, the highest ever for a non-presidential election in New York City. Of those early votes, 42 percent were cast by people between the ages of 18-44, 2 percent higher than in the 2024 presidential election early vote. The last New York Times/Siena poll conducted in September found younger voters preferred Mamdani over Cuomo by 73 to 10 percent.

While Mamdani has gained the support of large sections of the Democratic Party establishment, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an ardent Zionist and one of the most vocal supporters of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, refused to endorse Mamdani—the winner of his own party’s primary. Asked about the race Tuesday, Schumer remarked: “I voted and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.”

Mamdani’s victory is not merely a rebuke to the Trump administration but to the Democratic Party establishment itself. The large vote for Mamdani is a distorted reflection of the growing support for socialism and the radicalization of the working class and youth.

WSWS for more

Zohran Mamdani and a small victory for the people

by MARGARET KIMBERLEY

New Yorkers experienced some democracy with Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the mayor’s race and are inspiring voters across the country to believe that change is possible. But the outcome is a challenge to the Democratic Party establishment and its donor class, who will not give up power easily in New York City or elsewhere.

The word democracy is thrown around rather loosely, and is largely misused by the scoundrels who want everything except governance by the people. There are many definitions of that word but its essence is the idea that the people will have their wants and needs met by the political system. Voting is one way to bring about democracy, but the system has become more and more corrupt over time, with billionaires making and breaking candidates and deciding who will or won’t be on a ballot before voters have any say in the process at all.

New York City voters gave themselves a little democracy by electing New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani as their next mayor. Mamdani is young, 34-years old, has served only three terms in the Assembly, and was largely unknown to the public until he ran in the Democratic Party mayoral primary in 2025. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and as such is on the left wing of the democrats and therein lies an important tale.

Former governor Andrew Cuomo was also a candidate in the primary. He resigned as governor in 2021 after growing and credible allegations of sexual harassment lead to a loss of political support and a possible expulsion from office. Cuomo was also responsible for requiring nursing homes to admit patients who tested positive for COVID-19, which led to an estimated 15,000 deaths which were covered up by his administration and which also gave immunity to those institutions where so many elderly people lost their lives. Cuomo was known for being vindictive and self-serving, so unconcerned about the welfare of New York State that he gave the 2020 census such a low priority that a congressional seat was lost.

Cuomo believed that name recognition and more importantly, the backing of billionaire donors, would suffice even if his scandals were not erased from public memory. He had good reason to be confident because money does rule politics in the United States. The candidate with a bigger campaign war chest is usually the winner and Cuomo was not unrealistic in thinking that he would emerge triumphant. But he came in second in the primary to Mamdani and continued his campaign as an independent.

Mamdani had prodigious fundraising of his own and he had a message which resonated with voters. He ran on the issue of  “affordability.” New York City has become largely unaffordable to working people, and in particular to Black people with 200,000 leaving since the year 2000. The price of housing is the primary cause of the exodus as even those neighborhoods which gave Black workers the possibility of home ownership are rapidly being gentrified. Living wage work is scarce and all of the promises of “middle class” life for U.S. workers are now illusory.

While corporate media and the Democratic Party establishment dismissed his ideas about city-run grocery stores, voters who are constrained by the rising cost of food or who live in food deserts, were supportive. Mamdani also proposes freezing rents for rent stabilized apartments and making public buses free.

These plans, which addressed pressing needs, were dismissed as being outlandish and impossible even though they have been a reality in the recent past. Former mayor Bill de Blasio enacted three rent freezes during his two terms in office. Buses were free during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Mamdani was painted as a Muslim socialist or a communist who would also bring Sharia Law to New York, voters were well aware that the City of New York could possibly do for them again what it had done previously.

BAR for more

Mayor Mamdani’s New York victory signals a moral awakening in the US

by HAMID DABASHI

Against a tide of Islamophobia and Zionist propaganda from billionaires to media elites, the election of the city’s first Muslim mayor affirms justice and working-class solidarity

They gave him all the venomous hate they had: their nefarious billionaires, their genocide-supporting rabbis, their Islamophobic hatemongers, their stinking tabloids, their bought and paid for television stations, their fake news, their AI-powered Instagram feeds – even their president – and they still failed miserably.

Mayor Mamdani of New York: let the river run.

In the heat of the final week of the mayoral campaign in New York City in late October 2025, a group of pro-Israel rabbis published a letter against Zohran Mamdani, detailing why they were leading a crusade against the sole Muslim candidate.

The very title of their letter, “The Jewish Majority”, was fake news – a fraudulent claim, as there is no verifiable reason to believe this squad of wealthy and reactionary rabbis actually represents the majority of Jewish New Yorkers.

It is a typical hasbara technique, seeking to discredit countless other rabbis and their constituencies who refused to be part of this smear campaign. Quite the contrary, a significant portion of Jewish New Yorkers supported Mamdani and even campaigned for him.

MEE for more

Nehru and Bollywood music: How Mamdani win resonates with Indian Muslims

by IMRAN MULLA

Indian opposition figures hail Mamdani, who has Gujarati Muslim heritage, as Hindu nationalist politicians rage

The news of Zohran Kwame Mamdani‘s election as mayor of New York City has triggered shockwaves thousands of miles away, in Mumbai and Delhi.

A man of Indian heritage being elected mayor of one of the world’s great cities would usually be a cause for celebration amongst Indian politicians and journalists.

Mamdani is not just an Indian but one of Gujarati heritage too, just like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But there is one key and consequential difference.

Zohran Mamdani is a Muslim and a staunch critic of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Video clips went viral of the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist and New York state assemblyman quoting India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in his victory speech.

“A moment comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance,” Mamdani proclaimed, reading from Nehru’s famous speech at the dawn of India’s independence from the British empire in 1947.

“Tonight, New York has done just that,” he added.

Zohran Mamdani closes victory speech as mayor of New York to Dhoom Machale. This is like a Bollywood movie in real life ?? pic.twitter.com/2M9ic2wazO — sohom (@AwaaraHoon) November 5, 2025

Mamdani then ended his victory speech to the sound of Dhoom Machale, a famous 2004 Bollywood song.

The music played as Mamdani’s Syrian-American wife Rama Duwaji, his Punjabi Hindu mother Mira Nair (a prominent filmmaker) and his Gujarati Shia Muslim father, the academic Mahmood Mamdani, joined him on stage.

BJP vs Mamdani

Mamdani has never hidden his Indian identity. He often appeared in campaign videos wearing traditional Indian clothing, and even faced racist abuse from right-wing American commentators after he was photographed eating biryani with his fingers.

Significantly, however, figures from India’s ruling BJP have been unusually quiet in response to Mamdani’s victory.

Many X users are still waiting for the customary congratulatory tweet from Prime Minister Modi. 

MEE for more

Why do NRIs hate Mamdani? Because he threatenstheir ‘American’ dream

by NISHTHA GAUTAM

Mamdani’s unapologetic leftism, his advocacy for tenants’ rights, and his support for Palestine challenge the sanitised image of “model minority”. Mamdani is more West Village than Wall Street, and this is what scares a section of NRIs in America.

One could get used to all kinds of sadness, stoics suggest. All except one: the kind that’s caused by seeing a nemesis rise higher and higher. Especially when the nemesis has managed to thwart all possible efforts to rein in their ascent. This variety of sadness begins and ends with hate.

As New York City danced to the tune of Dhoom Machale, the haters of the 111th mayor-elect, Zohran Kwame Mamdani, got burdened by the same unbearable sadness in the US and in India.

The Irony With Us

There’s something to be said about Indians still dissing Mamdani when the Trump administration has been turning up the heat on visa policies that directly hurt NRIs living in the US and stymie the plans of many prospectives. There’s something to be said about the immigration of traditional hatreds piggybacking on the H1B visa holders.

There is a particular brand of conservative Indians that is quick to label any compatriot who doesn’t believe in their divisive ideas as “self-hating Indians”. In a twist of fate, the label has now got affixed on their own foreheads. By constantly kicking the proverbial axe in a show of sterile rage, conservative Indians have been empowering the beast of racial hatred and discrimination. During Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, a bunch of Indian-Americans echoed the sentiments shared by the White supremacists.

By refusing to be apologetic about his identity, Mamdani has irked a lot of Indians, offshore and onsite! Constantly attacked for his criticism of Israel’s actions against Palestine by Americans, Mamdani became a garden-variety hate object for all majoritarian supremacists.

NDTV for more

by YANIS VAROUFAKIS

Turning the spotlight on the King while letting the barons off the hook will not stop Donald Trump and his copycats from amassing feudal powers. The illusion of the strong man who will fix everything cannot be dispelled by reviving the illusion that oligarchy offers the population democratic choices.

Project-Syndicate for more