by JARRETT A. LOBELL

A millennium ago, the Chimú built a new way of life in the vast city of Chan Chan

The Moche River Valley in northern Peru was an unlikely place to build a city. Though barely 1,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean, the valley received less than a tenth of an inch of rain per year. Nevertheless, in about A.D. 1000, a people known as the Chimú selected a location in the valley some four miles north of the river and set about making it habitable. Called Chimor in colonial accounts, and now commonly known as Chan Chan, it became the largest urban center in the Americas.

What enabled the Chimú to build a city in this unpopulated coastal desert was their tremendous engineering skill, which they used to create an extensive network of irrigation canals that channeled snowmelt from the Andes Mountains into the Moche River. What drove the Chimú was the desire for a place to call their own. The valley had no one to conquer and evict, no existing structures to raze, and no troubled history to erase. “Chan Chan is an invented city in an artificially irrigated valley,” says archaeologist Gabriel Prieto of the University of Florida. “The Chimú transformed the landscape, created an entirely new society, and became the most powerful rulers in coastal Peru. Chan Chan was an experiment that worked for almost five hundred years.”

The Chimú built their new capital, which spread over more than seven square miles, in a way that distinguished them from other Andean cultures and was intended to reflect their particular social system. “There were enormous social differences and a clear recognition of social distinctions in Chimú society,” says archaeologist Jerry Moore of California State University, Dominguez Hills. “What is so important about Chan Chan is that it shows a very different kind of architectural style from other Andean societies.” Even their myths reveal how, for the Chimú, division between classes was at the center of their worldview. One myth says that royal and noble males were spawned from a gold egg, noblewomen from a silver egg, and everyone else from a copper egg. “I like the egg myth because it suggests that the Chimú understood that social and political inequality is ‘baked in’ to humanity from the beginning,” says anthropologist Robyn Cutright of Centre College.

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by ERIC TOUSSAINT

The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which have admitted five more states (Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Iran), met in Rio de Janeiro on 6 and 7 July 2025. Saudi Arabia was present but did not officially join as a member country. Representatives from 20 other states considered partners were also present.

While the President of the United States is stepping up unilateral actions on both the military and commercial fronts, the BRICS countries are defending multilateralism and the United Nations system, which are in crisis. They are also defending the capitalist, productivist-extractivist mode of production that exploits human labour and destroys nature.

The BRICS countries represent half the world’s population, 40% of fossil energy resources, 30% of global GDP and 50% of growth. They have the resources to change their export-oriented capitalist development model, but they don’t want to.

It is necessary to express a clearly critical view of the BRICS. This stance in no way prevents us from denouncing, first and foremost and with the utmost firmness, the government of the United States, as well as its European and Indo-Pacific allies (Japan, Australia, etc.), for their imperialist policies.

This policy is blatantly expressed through their support for the State of Israel, which is responsible for the ongoing genocide in Gaza and military aggression against neighbouring countries. Israel is the armed wing of the United States in the region. Without Washington’s unwavering support and the complicity of Western Europe, the neo-fascist Israeli government would not be able to continue the genocide.

For their part, the BRICS countries are not taking any concrete measures as a group to effectively prevent the continuation of the massacres and genocide.

In this series of questions and answers, Eric Toussaint analyses the final declaration of the BRICS summit released on 6 July 2025, as well as the practical policies of the BRICS and the institutions they have established.

Is it true that the BRICS countries are not condemning the ongoing genocide in Gaza?

Yes. In the final declaration of the BRICS summit published on 6 July 2025, the BRICS countries do not use the term genocideto describe what is happening in Gaza. The BRICS countries criticise Israel’s use of force in points 24 to 27 of their statement, but nowhere do they use the terms “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing” or “massacre”.

What is also striking is that the part of the 6 July 2025 statement concerning Gaza is almost identical to what is found in the final statement of the previous BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024 (point 30 of the final statement).

It is as if the evidence of genocide, which is mounting every day, still does not justify the clear use of this term.

Is it true that the BRICS countries are not proposing sanctions against Israel?

Yes, it is true: in their final statement, the BRICS countries did not propose sanctions against Israel. They did not propose to break the various agreements that bind them to the State of Israel. Yet the ongoing genocide and massacres of Gazans in search of food justify and demand action that goes beyond protests by the BRICS and other states.

The protests expressed by the BRICS countries were totally insufficient in October 2024 at the Kazan summit and are even more so in 2025. Only governments and multilateral bodies can take the required concrete and strong action. Of course, street demonstrations, occupations of public spaces and universities, and legal initiatives by citizens’ organisations are fundamental, but they cannot replace action by states and international institutions.

Are the BRICS countries taking concrete measures against the Israeli government?

The BRICS countries as a group are not implementing any concrete measures against the Israeli government, such as boycotts or embargoes. Admittedly, South Africa has taken the initiative of filing a complaint against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which is positive, but its practices are at odds with this legal action. Indeed, South Africa maintains trade relations with Israel, notably by allowing South African companies to regularly export coal to Israel by ship.

Since the genocide began, it is reliably estimated that 17 shipments have taken 1.6 million tonnes of coal to fuel the Israeli grid. There have been protests attended by hundreds, called by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, community groups in coal-mining areas, and climate activists against Glencore on 22 August 2024 and 28 May 2025 (a global day of action) and at its local partner African Rainbow Minerals on 5 April 2025; that company is run by Patrice Motsepe who is South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s brother in law.

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by JINOY JOSE P.

Dear reader,

My Instagram handle is Jinoymash. No, this is not a social media plug. That is simply how I am—or perhaps how I once was—known in my village. I have been what Indian imagination would easily call a “tuition mash” for many years, especially during my college days, teaching little children who wandered into my life, one of whom was barely three.

I can still see little Sanjo, whose father, a bank employee, wanted him to start school with “some basics”. Sanjo could not even pronounce his own name properly. He would say fa for sa: “Fanjo wants bifcuit.” It was so beautiful, so innocent, that I never once tried to correct him. When his father worried aloud about whether this would remain, I consulted a friend studying psychology who reached out to someone in speech therapy, and the professional reassured us it was harmless, something he would outgrow. And so it was: Sanjo shed fa for sa and became, in his father’s relieved words, “normal”. His father thanked me—the “mash”—for helping, but in truth it was the family’s patience, their willingness to wait, to withstand social pressure, to understand the boy as he was, that gave him the room to bloom.

But Anoop Kumar’s (name changed) family had none of that understanding or knowledge, for they were poor, uneducated, and above all, unsupported. Anoop used to stammer; he could never finish the “r” in Kumar. He was, I know now, autistic. And his mind worked in remarkable, unexpected ways. Take this one example: he struggled to memorise the multiplication table of nine. It simply refused to lodge in his memory. So he invented a trick. Each time he recited, he placed both hands on the table. For 1×9, he folded one finger on his left hand and, quick as lightning, counted the nine that remained. For 2×9, he folded the second finger, saw the single finger on one side and eight on the other, and instantly declared “eighteen”. He did this all the way through the table, his eyes darting, his mind racing, and the answers always right.

I never knew whether he had discovered an old trick or conjured it himself, but it worked. When I asked him why he did it, whether it was cheating, the frail little boy—he was still in primary school—looked up at me with wet eyes and whispered, “This is how I learn, mashe.” That helpless honesty pierced me. I did not stop him, but I did murmur that one day he might have to learn the “usual” way. I remember feeling a small sting of shame as the words left my mouth.

Anoop had many such habits that the mainstream would dismiss as flaws, but to me, he was brilliant, witty, shy in a unique way, with a crooked smile that could disarm anyone. We grew close. By then, I was tutoring nearly every child in the village. Some families paid me, many did not, but they gave me love, respect, and plates of boiled bananas and eggs whenever they could.

My little army grew fast: Anoop, Dhanya, Drishya, Remya, Chinnu, Ponnu, Paru, Avinash, and many others. We shared our afternoons, laughed, traded gossip. They told me everything—their schools, their teachers, their parents. In fact, they were my teachers; I was endlessly amazed by their intelligence, their presence of mind, their sharp grasp of the world.

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by JESSICA MOUZO

A team of scientists identifies a molecular mechanism that helps explain how airborne toxins influences Lewy body dementia

Air pollution makes people sick and can be deadly — in many ways. It has been shown to drive cardiovascular diseases, respiratory infections, and cancers such as lung cancer. It is responsible for 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide every year. There is no doubt about its harmful potential, but science is increasingly trying to pinpoint the exact links between pollution and different illnesses. A new study, published on Thursday in Science, focuses on the connection between air pollution and the risk of developing dementia, a group of neurodegenerative diseases traditionally associated with aging and characterized by the loss of memory and individual autonomy.

Specifically, researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, who authored the study, focused on Lewy body dementia, a neurodegenerative disorder marked by the abnormal accumulation in the brain of a protein called alpha-synuclein. These harmful deposits (Lewy bodies), which are distinctive signs of this type of dementia and also of Parkinson’s disease, are responsible for motor problems and memory loss. And according to this new research, that protein may also hold the key to explaining how prolonged exposure to air pollution increases the risk of developing this type of dementia. The study provides scientific support for the potential of air pollutants to fuel disease and suggests that alpha-synuclein is a crucial mediator linking environmental damage to brain damage.

Xiaobo Mao, a researcher in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University and author of the study, explains that his intention was to dig deeper into a major knowledge gap — “a black box” that made it impossible to understand exactly how pollution damages the brain. The association between pollution and the risk of developing dementia had already been demonstrated, but, he notes, “the specific molecular mechanisms were not clear.”

The researchers focused specifically on Lewy body dementia because of its public health impact — it is the second most common neurodegenerative dementia, after Alzheimer’s — and because its link to pollution was “a blind spot for science,” he says, almost unknown. “We saw a pressing need to investigate whether this common environmental exposure could be a risk factor for this devastating and widespread disease,” he explains in an email response.

The first thing the scientists did was delve into epidemiological research to confirm the association already suggested by earlier scientific literature. They used data from 56 million U.S. patients hospitalized with neurodegenerative diseases between 2000 and 2014. They focused on those with Lewy body-related diseases and also calculated their exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — an airborne pollutant produced by vehicle combustion, factories, or the burning of materials. When they cross-referenced the data, the scientists found that as exposure to these environmental toxins increased, so did the risk of hospital admission for these neurodegenerative conditions.

Then, in experiments with mice, they confirmed that normal rodents exposed to these pollutants developed buildups of alpha-synuclein and ultimately suffered brain atrophy, neuronal death, and cognitive decline — all hallmarks of dementia. In contrast, when the same pollutants were given to genetically modified mice that did not produce alpha-synuclein, no significant brain changes were observed: no atrophy, no cognitive decline. “The pollution was still present, but without its key target protein, it could not cause this specific type of neurodegeneration,” the researcher adds.

The scientists’ hypothesis is that environmental toxins such as PM2.5 could trigger abnormal accumulations of alpha-synuclein capable of spreading damage throughout the brain.

El Pais for more

by B. R. GOWANI

Muslims should remember three precepts:

•     Allah is a concept – it cannot be destroyed.
•     Muhammad is with his Allah*, so is beyond any harm.
•     Quran is reprintable and can be replaced when haters burn Quran.

*Muslim scripture consoling words for bereaving believers at time of death are:

“Indeed, we belong to Allah, and indeed, to Him we return.”

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

by KAMRAN ASDAR ALI

A person of immense courage, resilience, simplicity and sacrifice, this communist leader is a beacon in the movement for women’s rights in India.

I sometimes feel that when future generations remember all of you, will they ever think of Alys (Faiz Ahmad Faiz’ wife) or me. We have always walked with you, although you were a step ahead of us. Sometimes you would look back to perhaps make sure that we were still there, following behind you. And we would reassuringly smile back although our hearts would cry out in pain.

– Excerpt from a letter by Razia Sajjad Zaheer, wife of Sajjad Zaheer, to Faiz Ahmad Faiz in June 1951 when Faiz and Zaheer had been imprisoned in the Rawalpindi conspiracy case. Current Time 0:00/Duration 2:04

In the opening pages of her novel, Aakhir e Shab ke Humsafar, the writer Qurratulain Hyder depicts a scene in a crumbling old house in the early 1940s in the old city of Dhaka where the protagonist (a young Bengali Muslim woman, Deepali) and her Christian friend (Rosie Banerjee) are welcomed by a young man called Mahmood ul Haque. In the conversation that follows, Rosie (a reverend’s daughter), is shown as possessing progressive ideals yet holds biases regarding Muslims; she thought of them as fanatics, toadies of the British and womanisers, not always in that order. So, while speaking to the mostly young Muslim men in this gathering Rosie is surprised to notice that many among them had Left leaning political views.  

A back and forth ensues while Rosie’s hosts share a list of names of Muslim revolutionaries and radicals in India and elsewhere, like the Indian student Mirza Abbas who had been taught how to make bombs by the Russians, and of the great Indian revolutionary who died penniless in the US, Maulana Barkatullah. The Muhajareen, which included people like Shaukat Usmani, Fazal Ilahi Qurban and Ferozzuddin Mansoor, who had traveled to the Soviet Union in the early 1920s to study at the University of Eastern Toilers, were mentioned. Finally, Dada Amir Haider’s (the seaman/lashkar who became the member of the communist party in the US) name was added. 

The Wire for more

by FAYE BRADLEY

Before sunrise in Dien Phuong, Vietnam, clay artists set up their workbenches beneath swaying bamboo by the Thu?Bon River, shaping ceramic works to the sound of birdsong. Each October, when the river swells with rainwater, workers pause, move their tools and wares away, and only return once the waters recede.

Inspired by the rhythm of the rainy season, Vietnamese architecture firm Tropical Space opened a flood-resistant studio for local artist Le Huc Da, dubbed Terra Cotta Studio, in 2016. Each year, the monsoon waters consume the lower reaches of the striking cube-shaped structure — but rather than sweeping it away, the rising tide flows gently through its perforated brick walls. The studio’s lattice-brick design also harnesses airflow and shade to withstand central Vietnam’s unforgiving climate.

In 2023, the architects expanded the project with Terra Cotta Workshop, a neighboring facility featuring studio space for other local artists, as well as a large kiln and visitor center. Inside, artisans store their work on 6.5-foot?high platforms, above the highest flood levels seen in the village this century. The workshops’ electric wiring was installed three feet above the ground, and equipment can be moved safely to high shelves during monsoons.

“We did not design the structure to resist or oppose the water,” Tropical Space’s co-founder, Nguyen Hai Long, said of the original studio building in an email interview. “Instead, it stands there and quietly observes the rise and fall of the river.”

Nguyen is part of a new generation of architects in the country, turning to local materials and time-honored building techniques — not only the distinctive brickwork but also stilted foundations and floating bamboo platforms — as enduring tools of climate resilience. He said the designs of Terra Cotta Studio and Workshop were influenced by the region’s traditional merchants’ houses, which often survived seasonal floods thanks to their perforated walls.

CNN for more

by ANURADHA BHASIN

A writer whose own book has been banned speculates on the reasons and on the serious repercussions of this move.

Someone in Jammu and Kashmir’s home department must have spent months reading books on Kashmir before singling out 25 that could be banned and forfeited under Section 98 of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. If that exercise was truly carried out, the person may be the most well-read in the region’s bureaucracy. 

A government notification announcing a ban on the books claims that “available evidence based on investigations and credible intelligence unflinchingly indicate that a significant driver behind youth participation in violence and terrorism has been the systematic dissemination of false narratives and secessionist literature, often disguised as historical or political commentary, while playing a critical role in misguiding the youth, glorifying terrorism and inciting violence against Indian State.”

It argues that such materials “would deeply impact the psyche of youth by promoting culture of grievance, victim hood and terrorist heroism.”

What were the investigations based on? No evidence of the link between violence and the now banned books, one of them authored by me – A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After 370 – has been provided. What are the objectionable passages and words they found? They are either lost in obscurity or are some closely guarded secret. 

What evidence they found of the written word and terrorism or violence?

Did the ‘misguided’ youth tell them during interrogation that first they dug into such books before they picked up a gun or resorted to violence?

Or did someone in the home department or a committee of people turned into voracious reader(s) and deciphered the secret codes in the texts that preached secession, terrorism and violence? 

But more important, did anyone in the Jammu and Kashmir administration actually read any of the books, now declared as “propagating false narrative and secession”? If they had read, they would have been enriched with some intellectual depth, not the desire to heavy-handedly crackdown on knowledge and information that these books provide. At least, they would have known that some of these books are not available in India except in their exorbitantly priced foreign editions.

So, was it a typical case of an ill-thought bureaucratic decision based on mere whims and imagination where books were randomly and selectively picked up, based perhaps on a random open AI search or the advice of some ‘unpadh salahkar’ (illiterate adviser)? 

The Wire for more

DEMOCRCAY NOW

In a major victory for environmental advocates, chemical giant DuPont and its related companies have agreed to pay $2 billion to clean up four industrial sites in New Jersey that are contaminated with “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, which have been found to persist in everything from rainwater to human breast milk. It is the third such settlement New Jersey has reached in less than three years, and marks a growing movement against the widespread use of PFAS, a class of chemicals still used to produce countless industrial and consumer goods, even though they have been linked to cancer and birth defects for over half a century. For more, we’re joined by investigative journalist Mariah Blake, the author of a new book on PFAS and the fight against them, to discuss the history of the pervasive toxins and the dangers they pose to human health.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

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

Officials in New Jersey have won what they say is the largest environmental settlement ever achieved by a single state, when chemical giant DuPont and its affiliates agreed to pay $2 billion to clean up four industrial sites contaminated with forever chemicals, or PFAS, which are widely used in industrial and consumer products, even though they’re linked to cancer and birth defects. It’s the third PFAS-related settlement New Jersey has reached in less than three years.

This is Maya van Rossum of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which is part of the litigation.

MAYA VAN ROSSUM: We have PFAS contamination of the fish that live in the Delaware River. It’s so insidious. And, of course, PFAS, PFOA, various members of this man-made family of chemicals, is literally in the bodies of people in New Jersey and nationwide, having devastating health consequences. … I think that this case really is going to send a message loud and clear that’s going to reverberate across the nation.

AMY GOODMAN: Studies show how PFAS contamination is now so ubiquitous that forever chemicals have been found in rainwater and the blood of almost all humans. This comes as the Trump administration has shuttered the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, which helped test for PFAS.

And we’re going to talk about just what PFAS are with our next guest, Mariah Blake, investigative journalist and author of the new book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. It’s on Ralph Nader’s list of books to read this summer. Her guest essay for The New York Times is headlined “This Is How to Win an Environmental Fight: Meet the Unlikely Warriors on the Front Lines of a Major Environmental Battle.” In her book, Mariah Blake reveals how the U.S. government’s top-secret Manhattan Project, that developed the atomic bomb that was dropped 80 years ago this week on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was also responsible for the development of PFAS.

A lot to go through here. Mariah, welcome back to Democracy Now! First, start off by telling us what PFAS — P-F-A-S — are, and then talk about the victory in New Jersey. And then we’ll talk about this historic week, 80th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs on Japan, and how that links to PFAS. Start with what they are.

MARIAH BLAKE: OK. So, PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, are a large family of substances that have some pretty remarkable properties. They’re extremely resistant to heat, stains, water, grease, electrical currents. They stand up to chemicals that are so corrosive they burn through most other materials. And this has made them extremely useful. So, they helped usher in the aerospace travel and high-speed computing. They’ve transformed thousands of everyday items, from cookware to dental floss to kitty litter.

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