Besieged Gaza City in June 2024. IMAGE/Rawanmurad2025, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
The series serves Israel’s interest in reviving the genocide in Gaza and spreading Netanyahu’s ethnic cleansing operations to the West Bank.
There
has been a prolonged furore over the BBC’s craven decision to ban a
documentary on life in Gaza under Israel’s bombs after it incensed
Israel and its lobbyists by, uniquely, humanising the enclave’s
children.
The English-speaking child narrator, 13-year-old Abdullah, who became the all-too-visible pretext for pulling the film Gaza:How to Survive a Warzone because his father is a technocrat in the enclave’s Hamas government, hit back last week.
He
warned that the BBC had betrayed him and Gaza’s other children, and
that the state broadcaster would be responsible were anything to happen
to him.
Exclusive: “If anything happens to me, the BBC is responsible.”
Abdullah al-Yazuri, the 13-year-old narrator of Gaza: How to Survive a
War Zone, speaks to MEE after the BBC pulled the documentary.
His
fears are well-founded, given that Israel has a long track record of
executing those with the most tenuous of connections to Hamas — as well
as the enclave’s children, often with small, armed drones that swarm through its airspace.
The noisy clamour over How to Survive a Warzone
has dominated headlines, overshadowing another new BBC documentary on
Gaza — this one a three-part, blockbuster series on the history of
Israel and Palestine — that has received none of the controversy.
And for good reason.
Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October, whose final episode
aired Monday, is such a travesty, so discredited by the very historical
events it promises to explain, that it earns a glowing, five-star
review from The Guardian.
It “speaks to everyone that matters,” the liberal daily gushes. And that’s precisely the problem.
What
we get, as a result, is the very worst in BBC establishment TV: talking
heads reading from the same implausibly simplistic script, edited and
curated to present Western officials and their allies in the most
sympathetic light possible.
Which
is no mean feat, given the subject matter: nearly eight decades of
Israel’s ethnic cleansing, dispossession, military occupation and siege
of the Palestinian people, supported by the United States.
But
this documentary series on the region’s history should be far more
controversial than the film about Gaza’s children. Because this one
breathes life back into a racist western narrative — one that made the
genocide in Gaza possible, and justifies Israel’s return this month to
using mass starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian people.
‘Honest Broker’ Fiction
The Road to 7th October presents an all-too-familiar story.
The
Palestinians are divided geographically and ideologically — how or why
is never properly grappled with — between the incompetent, corrupt
leadership of Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and the
militant, terrorist leadership of Hamas in Gaza.
Israel
tries various peace initiatives under leaders Ariel Sharon and Ehud
Olmert. These failures propel the more hardline Benjamin Netanyahu to
power.
The
United States is the star of the show, of course. Its officials tell a
story of Washington desperately trying to bring together the two
parties, Israel and Fatah (the third party, Hamas, is intentionally
sidelined), but finds itself constantly hamstrung by bad luck and the
intransigence of those involved.
Yes,
you read that right. This documentary really does resurrect the
Washington as “honest broker” fiction — a myth that was supposed to have
been laid to rest a quarter of a century ago, after the Oslo Accords
collapsed.
Former and current presidents of Philipines, Rodrigo Duterte (L) and Ferdinand Marcos Jr have fallen out. IMAGE/ X Screengrab
Opposed political clans on a collision course that threatens to divide security forces, spark violence and destabilize government
The Philippines has seen its fair share of dynastic rivalries.
But the deepening conflict between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and former President Rodrigo Duterte, recently escalated by the latter’s arrest and transfer to the Netherlands for trial, is more than just a political battle—it is a blood feud with dangerous consequences for governance, security and the wider region.
Unlike mere political rivalries, blood feuds in the Philippine
context involve personal vengeance, loyalty betrayals and the
mobilization of private armies, political clans and illicit financial
networks.
In Tagalog, dugo’t-higantihan (blood feud)
refers to long-standing enmities that go beyond political differences;
they are generational struggles driven by perceived betrayals, dishonor
and thirst for revenge.
Filipino scholars such as Jose Abueva and Alfred McCoy have documented how such feuds, often rooted in local padrino
(patron-client) systems, can destabilize entire provinces and, at
times, the national government itself. McCoy famously referred to the
country as an “anarchy of families.”
The Marcos-Duterte feud is no
exception—it is fueled by Duterte’s view that Marcos Jr is an
ungrateful leader who benefited from his support, only to discard him
and his allies once in power.
But this is not just about personal
grievances. The battle for supremacy between these two political titans
is believed to be fragmenting power centers across the country,
proliferating violence through the spread of small arms and illicit
funds from POGOs (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators) and the drug
trade.
Worse, this instability is spilling over into ASEAN, posing
a direct risk to Malaysia, Indonesia and the broader regional security
framework.
State in jeopardy
Duterte’s
political machine—rooted in Davao, Mindanao, and the powerful political
clans of the south—has been actively undermining Marcos Jr’s authority.
With Congress divided and local warlords sensing opportunity in the new
headline-grabbing crisis, the political landscape is tilting toward
uncertainty.
The Philippine military, which has historically
played kingmaker during leadership crises, is also showing certain signs
of division.
An IRI-sponsored ‘transgender dance performance’ on December 9, 2020 in Dhaka’s National Theater
As Trump attacks foreign spending on “woke” initiatives, a
GOP-aligned outfit has largely escaped scrutiny, despite using taxpayer
funds to sponsor “transgender dance performances” and what it called the
“largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh.”
According to documents obtained by The Grayzone, the
US-funded International Republican Institute sees gay and transgender
people as uniquely disruptive actors who can be deployed to manipulate
political realities overseas, stating, “LGBTI people tend to participate
in social change activities to eventually bring changes to politics.”
Read part one of The Grayzone’s investigation into International Republican Institute’s activities in Bangladesh here.
For years, the Republican
Party-aligned International Republican Institute’s (IRI) agenda in
Bangladesh has been dominated by ethnic minority and transgender issues,
with leaked documents revealing the Institute sponsored “the largest
published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh” and that a full 24% of
the 1,868 Bangladeshis who participated in IRI programs in 2019 and 2020
were transgender.
The IRI’s cultural activities were conducted with explicitly
subversive objectives, aiming to recruit socially excluded groups as
regime change activists. They mirrored the US government’s machinations
in Cuba, where, as The Grayzone reported, USAID funded rappers, artists, and “desocialized and marginalized youth” to undermine the country’s socialist government.
Since its founding in 1983, the congressionally-funded IRI has been
run by Republican politicians and operatives dedicated to the cause of
“democracy promotion” abroad. IRI’s Chairman, Sen. Dan Sullivan, is a
vehement opponent of same sex marriage who signed on to a GOP letter calling to restrict the participation of transgender youth in sports. While many of the institute’s board members are Never Trump Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney, the board also includes Sen. Tom Cotton, a top Trump ally who strongly opposes transgender medical interventions for youth.
The IRI’s eyebrow-raising statistics on trans participation in regime change activities were included in an internal report
on its PAIRS (“Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency
Support”) Program, which was obtained by The Grayzone in 2024. The
report boasts that “IRI issued 11 advocacy grants to artists, musicians,
performers or organizations that created 225 art products addressing
political and social issues that were viewed nearly 400,000 times [and]
supported three civil society organizations from LGBTI, Bihari and
ethnic communities to train 77 activists and engage 326 citizens to
develop 43 specific policy demands, which were proposed before 65
government officials.”
A mother paints the face of her son as they celebrate the Hindu festival of Holi in Mithi on March 13. IMAGE/AFP
Local police, administration officials say the city has a low crime rate, allowing them to easily make arrangements for the major religious festivals.
In the desert city of Mithi, Hindus prepare meals for fasting
Muslims, who in turn gather to welcome a Holi procession, a rare moment
of religious solidarity.
Discrimination against minorities runs deep, but those tensions are not to be found in Sindh’s Mithi, an affluent city of rolling sand dunes and mud-brick homes.
“All the traditions and rituals here are celebrated together,” Raj Kumar, a 30-year-old Hindu businessman told AFP.
“You will see that on Holi, Hindu youth are joined by Muslim youth,
celebrating together and applying colours on each other,” he added.
“Even at the end of the Muslim call for prayer, the imam says ‘peace to Hindus and Muslims’.”
This year, the Hindu festival of Holi and the holy month of Ramazan
fell together. Both events move each year according to the lunar
calendar.
Holi, the festival of colour, has for centuries marked the arrival of
spring and raucous crowds playfully throw coloured powder and water
over each other.
On Thursday, hundreds of Hindus held a procession through the streets
of Mithi, one of the few cities where they form the majority, to be
warmly welcomed at the city square by their Muslim neighbours.
“We have learnt to live together since childhood. This has come to us
through generations, and we are following it too,” said local Mohan Lal
Mali, 53, after arranging a meal for Muslims to break their fast.
Cows, considered sacred in Hinduism, roam freely through the streets
of Mithi, while women wear traditional embroidered sarees embellished
with mirror work.
There is no beef shop in town, as the meat is prohibited in Hinduism, and Muslims only sacrifice goats during festivals.
In Islam, one whole month of Ramzan is devoted to fasting. The Islamic calendar is lunar, thus shorter than the solar year by 10 to 11 days; thus Ramadan comes in every season.
“[Fasting for] a limited number of days. So whoever among you is ill or on a journey [during them] – then an equal number of days [are to be made up]. …
“The month of Ramadhan [is that] in which was revealed the Qur’an, a guidance for the people and clear proofs of guidance and criterion. So whoever sights [the new moon of] the month, let him fast it. …”
“It has been made permissible for you the night preceding fasting to go to your wives [for sexual relations]. … And eat and drink until the white thread of dawn becomes distinct to you from the black thread [of night]. Then complete the fast until the sunset. And do not have relations with them as long as you are staying for worship in the mosques.”
Religious fasting is an old practice that is observed by believers of various faiths, including Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. Many people also fast for medical, health, or other reasons.
Today, Muslims are to be found all over the world. In some places especially the far northern hemisphere, time between a sunrise and sunset can exceed 20 hours, making the fasts very long.
There are places where “the white thread of dawn” doesn’t show up for months because the Sun doesn’t set for months: Svalbard, Sweden gets no sunset for 1/3rd of the year, from about 19 April to 23 August. Same is the case with Finland’s northernmost point which is without sunset for 72 days in Summer.
The world’s northernmost mosque is in Tromso, Norway. Muslims living there had a serious problem as to what time they should offer fajr (dawn) prayers (and begin their fast or sehri) and perform the maghrib (sunset) prayer (and break their fast or iftari) as for two whole months, between May and July, the Sun never sets there.
Sandra Maryam Moe, deputy director of Alnor Senter in Tronso, Norway:
“We finally asked a shaykh in Saudi Arabia, and he gave us a fatwa [instruction] with three choices: Follow the timetable of Makkah, follow the timetable of the nearest city that does have a sunrise or sunset, or estimate the time and set a fixed schedule. We decided to follow Makkah for the part of Ramadan that falls under the Midnight Sun or Polar Nights, and then, for the other times, we follow our own sun.”
“Tromsø’s Alnor Senter and Al Rahma mosques have opted to sync their congregations’ prayer schedule to sunrise and sunset in Mecca” IMAGE/Fortunato Salazar/BBC
But not everyone follows the Mecca time. Two members of Al Rahma mosque, originally from France, follow the Paris time for sehri and iftari.
For most people, fasting for an entire month is not an easy or practical task, especially those whose daily-survival depends on hard labor. Muslims make a quarter of the world’s population and live in many countries, including those with Muslim majority. In many of these countries, eating or drinking anything during daytime in Ramzan is a crime.
Actually, it should be a crime to stop people from consuming food or drinking liquid at any time.
The Case of Mohammed Shami
On March 4, 2025, during a cricket match between Australia and India, Muslim Indian cricketer Mohammed Shami drank water or a beverage. A fellow Muslim, Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Bareilvi, called him a “criminal” for drinking during Ramzan (watch the above video).
“The five important pillars of Islam include roza or fasting which is mandatory. If a sensible and healthy adult doesn’t observe the fast than that person would be guilty of great sin and be answerable in God’s court. India’s famous cricketer Mr. Mohammed Shami quenched his thirst during a cricket match. Everyone was watching him. Since he was playing the game, it meant he was healthy and robust. In this fit condition, he not only didn’t fast, but also drank water in front of everyone present. The world watched him drinking water. So, he became a source of conveying the wrong message to the people; and, by not fasting he committed a sin. He shouldn’t have done that. In the eyes of Islamic sharia, he is a criminal and a sinner. He’ll have to answer Khuda [God in Persian language].”
Translated in English from Hindi/Urdu from the above video.
If Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Bareilvi thinks Mohammed Shami is “a criminal and a sinner,” and will have to answer Khuda than let Khuda take care of Shami rather than playing Khuda‘s Khuda. Like many people nowadays, he tried to stay in the news by creating news.
Shami was trolled online, with some supporting him and others criticizing him. Of course, a Hindutva leader from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party did not let this opportunity go to erroneously and overtly display his anti-Muslim rhetoric:
“We stand against such extremism. This is not a part of our Hindu religion. We say that in Islam, it is written, either you accept Islam, or you will be converted, or you will be killed. Now, even Mohammed Shami is experiencing this himself. This is why we praise our Hindu religion because such extremism does not exist in our faith,”
Former Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh, a Sikh, defended Shami:
“I think I just want to say that this is my personal view-I might be wrong or right. Sports should be treated separately. People who feel religion is playing this role or that role, I think it’s fine to kind of do your routine-what you do in your religion. But people expecting Shami to do this or Rohit Sharma to do this or any XYZ to do this or that during a certain period (is not fair).”
“You might be doing it because you are sitting at home or doing your own routine work. But when you are playing as a sportsman, if you don’t keep yourself hydrated, you might collapse.”
“And of course, with the kind of heat they are playing in, I think they need to drink water. They can’t go through the game without having a drink or a snack. It’s your body, after all-you need fuel.”
Former Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar commented indirectly:
“Roza is not an excuse. Its a motivation. Nothing should stop your from training. Use it in your benefit.”
One wonders what kind of inspiration one gets in 82 °F weather with a sweating body, hungry stomach, and dry mouth. Yes, some people have willpower or faith and can fast in extreme weather but not all people can. It would have been better if Akhtar had kept his mouth shut.
It is people like Akhtar who just don’t want people like Shami to emerge as inspiration for those who don’t want to fast but have to do so or have to pretend under pressure.
Decades back, I was visiting Karachi, a seaport and the largest city in Pakistan. I asked the driver to stop the vehicle by Rehmat-e-Shereen sweet shop — they make extremely delicious sweets. I bought the sweets and asked the driver to join me. He hesitated: “It’s Ramzan.” I asked: “Are you fasting?” The reply was in the negative. He parked the car in a quiet place and we enjoyed our goodies. This was not an isolated case. Many people have to pretend in public that they’re fasting because the atmosphere has gotten very fanatical.
Many Muslim countries have laws enforcing eating and drinking abstention.
Times have changed
Gods of all religions may have been omnipresent, but their knowledge of geography, technology, science, economy, physical, sexual, emotional needs, dehydration, and so on, was extremely limited. Knowledge of that time was dependent on the information of followers, whose knowledge was in turn restricted to the areas they resided in, or the places they journeyed and from the knowledge they gained from foreigners passing through their towns and cities.
When Muhammad died in 632, the Muslim territory consisted of a very small portion of present day Saudi Arabia. Check the map below where Mecca and Medina are shown in sky blue color. Yes, that small area was the first Islamic state.
Anyone who believes s/he has a mission would want to see their message spread far and wide. But Muhammad may never have thought in his wildest dreams, that one day there would be so many Muslims all over the world. (Same is true of Christianity. It was Roman emperor Constantine the Great‘s conversion to Christianity in the 4th century that made it the world religion it is today.)
The Muslims during Muhammad’s time were a small community with a totally different pattern of life than what we find today. Today you visit Muslim majority countries and in most of them (non-Muslim countries too) you would find majority of people hustling trying to make ends meet in extreme heat and polluted environment, amidst:
Corporations are busy looking for ways to cut cost and increase profit.
Governments are busy carrying out demands of corporations and businesses to relax business laws as much as possible who in turn may bribe them for being “business friendly.”
Clergy is busy issuing edicts and making common person’s life more miserable.
National Public Radio’s Diaa Hadid‘s report of May 2018 “Breaking Pakistan’s Ramadan Fasting Laws Has Serious Consequences” depicts the hell common people go through to survive and to take care of their family, but with an added burden of selling and consuming food and drink behind close door.
Ramzan is a problematic time for Pakistan’s poorest workers, many of whom don’t fast. Hadid was in an industrial city of Faisalabad where she visited a tea stall, near cotton-weaving factories. The owner Javed said people cannot eat outside but can eat inside the stall. Still he gets harassed by the authorities for extortion purpose.
“JAVED: (Through interpreter) If I stopped working, I can’t provide for my family. And if I don’t fast, I’m not considered a good Muslim.”
Then there is 50 year old Farid, who makes $230 a month and has to take care of 4 children.
Hadid found liberal atmosphere at LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences) in Lahore where Sher Ali, a Muslim who doesn’t fast, was drinking coffee. Sara, a Christian is also there. She avoids giving her last name for safety reasons.
This was Pakistan in 2018. Things haven’t got any better; but have gotten worse.
Dr. Sultan is so right but it’s clerics like Saifallah Rabbani who control the mike and the mob to unleash, when it serves their purpose. Neither the government nor the army has any time about these kind of issues.
Many other Muslim countries are harsh with people eating or drinking in public during Ramadan too. See here and here.
Progressive Muslims should raise their voices against this menace of clerics and religious authorities who are unjustly and cruelly forcing people to go without food and drink the whole month. Those who could eat or drink do it behind close doors but at the risk of violence and extortion.
VIDEO/DW/YoutubeMushroom cloud of unspeakable destruction rises over Hiroshima following the first wartime dropping of an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 IMAGE/US government photo
In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss
Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would
have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her
text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and
she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to
a great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent
to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid? Somebody photoshopped her
into a picture with Mussolini and Hitler. Somebody made an image of a
sunbather viewing troops rushing onto a beach.[i]
But could an 18-year-old in 2015 be expected to know that most of the
victims of WWII were civilians — men and women and children alike? Who
would have told her that? Certainly not her text books. Most definitely
not the endless saturation of her culture with WWII-themed
entertainment. What answer did anyone think such a contestant would be
more likely to give to the question she’d been asked, than WWII? In U.S.
culture as well, which heavily influences Italian, a top focus for
drama and tragedy and comedy and heroism and historical fiction is WWII.
Pick 100 average viewers of Netflix or Amazon and I’m convinced a large
percentage of them would give the same answer as Alice Sabatini, who,
by the way, was declared the winner of the competition, fit to represent
all of Italy or whatever it is Miss Italia does.
WWII is often called “the good war,” and sometimes this is thought of
as principally or originally a contrast between WWII, the good war, and
WWI, the bad war. However, it was not popular to call WWII “the good
war” during or immediately after it happened, when the comparison with
WWI would have been easiest. Various factors may have contributed to the
growth in popularity of that phrase over the decades, including
increased understanding of the Holocaust (and misunderstanding of the
war’s relationship to it),[ii]
plus, of course, the fact that the United States, unlike all the other
major participants, wasn’t itself bombed or invaded (but that’s also
true for dozens of other U.S. wars). I think a major factor was actually
the War on Vietnam. As that war became less and less popular, and as
opinions were deeply divided by a generation gap, by a division between
those who had lived through WWII and those who had not, many sought to
distinguish WWII from the war on Vietnam. Using the word “good,” rather
than “justified,” or “necessary,” was probably made easier by distance
in time from WWII, and by WWII propaganda, most of which had been
created (and is still being created) after the conclusion of WWII.
Because opposing all wars is considered radical and vaguely treasonous,
critics of the war on Vietnam could refer to WWII as “the good war” and
establish their balanced seriousness and objectivity. It was in 1970
that just war theorist Michael Walzer wrote his paper, “World War II:
Why Was This War Different?” seeking to defend the idea of a just war
against the unpopularity of the war on Vietnam. I offer a rebuttal to
that paper in Chapter 17 of Leaving World War II Behind.
We saw a similar phenomenon in the years 2002 to 2010 or so, with
countless critics of the war on Iraq emphasizing their support for the
war on Afghanistan and distorting the facts to improve the image of that
newer “good war.” I’m not sure many, if anyone, would have called
Afghanistan a good war without the war on Iraq or called WWII a good war
without the war on Vietnam.
In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump — in arguing that U.S.
military bases named for Confederates should not have their names
changed — proclaimed that these bases had been part of “beautiful world
wars.” “We won two world wars,” he said, “two world wars, beautiful
world wars that were vicious and horrible.”[iii]
Where did Trump get the idea that the world wars were beautiful, and
that their beauty consisted of viciousness and horribleness? Probably
the same place Alice Sabatini did: Hollywood. It was the film Saving Private Ryan that led Mickey Z in 1999 to write his book, There Is No Good War: The Myths of World War II, originally with the title Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the “Good War.”
An extreme Jewish supremacist activist convinced the police to
arrest me for criticizing her racist posts. She’s likely acting as a
front for a vast Zionist ‘lawfare’ initiative hostile to embarrassing
Canadian leaders.
Over the past 16 months I’ve annoyed many among the Jewish Zionist
establishment. My writing, social media commentary and reporting on
protests have circulated widely. But it’s a particular type of social
media journalism/activism that’s had the widest impact.
Around two million watched an interview I did with the mayor of the
Montreal suburb Hampstead, Jeremy Levi, in which he said he was okay
with Israel killing 100,000 Palestinian children because “good needs to prevail over evil”. As with some of the other interventions, my post was reported on by the Montreal Gazette and international media such as RT and Middle Eastern Monitor.
Many also watched my exposing Anthony Housefather, Mitch Garber and
Heather Reisman as genocidal Jewish supremacists. Over 10 million watched a video I did mocking a McGill rally promoting genocide.
At the end of April, I questioned
lawyer Neil ‘cancel man’ Oberman who has instigated over a dozen
injunctions or legal threats against opponents of genocide, including
the Palestine encampment at McGill university. (Oberman’s ‘lawfare’ is
part of a vast legal effort in service of genocide detailed recently in a
Canadian Jewish News article explaining that “CIJA’s new legal task
force is suing the federal government, universities and school boards
to ‘make people behave’.”) Subsequently, Oberman yelled at me in court.
At that point I was on ‘ban who I can’ Oberman’s radar and he assisted
extremist Zionist influencer Dahlia Kurtz.
John Legend’s concert in Rwanda signaled global elite support for Paul Kagame amid his bloody invasion of the DRC. The event was organized by Global Citizen, a pseudo-activist NGO backed by corporations hungry for Africa’s resource wealth.
On February 21st, as the Rwandan army
deepened its invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
John Legend took the stage in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. There, the
superstar singer-songwriter headlined a Move Afrika concert produced by Global Citizen,
the international NGO front for global elites, NATO, and a corporate
world order which bills itself as “the movement changing the world.”
The future that Global Citizen heralds is a borderless network of public-private partnerships in which oligarchs, global corporations, and the World Trade Organization profitably manage the world in the name of equity, sustainability, and climate defense. It’s the future promised in the Davos Agenda and the UN Pact for the Future passed by the UN General Assembly in 2024. (Russia, Belarus, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria opposed the pact as a threat to national sovereignty.)
Global Citizen doesn’t raise and
disburse funds; it conducts global “awareness” campaigns to manufacture
global consent – in this case, for the West’s decades-long proxy war for
DRC’s unparalleled resource wealth, which has left millions of
Congolese dead, and the rest of the country’s population with one of the
world’s lowest per capita annual incomes.
The NGO’s corporate “partners”
include tech giants PayPal, Cisco, WorldWide Technology, Verizon, and
YouTube (Alphabet/Google), all of which depend to a large extent on
minerals extracted from the DRC. Others, including Citibank, are hardly
known for commitment to human rights; Citibank is, in fact, implicated
in the 2001 UN investigators’ report on illegal resource traffic in DRC.
Global Citizen’s Global Board of Directors
includes executives from Citibank, Cisco, Delta, and a long list of
global asset managers, along with the former prime ministers of Norway
and Sweden, top UN agency officials, and officers of closely allied
billionaire-backed NGOs like the Open Society Foundations of George
Soros, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Its Country and Regional Boards evince a special interest in Africa, the world’s most resource rich
continent. Elites from Europe, Canada, Australia, and Africa are well
represented there, but figures from Latin America and Asia are not,
despite Global Citizen’s growing presence on those continents. In
November 2025, the NGO will head to Brazil with “Global Citizen: Amazonia, the World’s First Impact Concert in the Amazon” at the UN’s 2025 COP.
An impact concert? What kind of
impact? So far, participants have been promised a collection of “global
and local artists” who will “celebrate major COP commitments, spotlight
Indigenous leaders, and amplify campaigns for climate action.” Beyond
that, the details are vague. “More info coming soon,” Global Citizen
declares.
The consummately bland and
meaningless language that fills the NGO’s website is clearly intended to
gloss over any conflict or contradiction. But the blood-spattered
backdrop to Global Citizen’s Kigali concert was impossible to ignore.
The new general AI agent from China had some system crashes and server overload—but it’s highly intuitive and shows real promise for the future of AI helpers.
Since
the general AI agent Manus was launched last week, it has spread online
like wildfire. And not just in China, where it was developed by the
Wuhan-based startup Butterfly Effect. It’s made its way into the global
conversation, with influential voices in tech, including Twitter
cofounder Jack Dorsey and Hugging Face product lead Victor Mustar,
praising its performance. Some have even dubbed it “the second DeepSeek,”
comparing it to the earlier AI model that took the industry by surprise
for its unexpected capabilities as well as its origin.
Manus
claims to be the world’s first general AI agent, using multiple AI
models (such as Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and fine-tuned versions of
Alibaba’s open-source Qwen) and various independently operating agents
to act autonomously on a wide range of tasks. (This makes it different
from AI chatbots, including DeepSeek, which are based on a single large
language model family and are primarily designed for conversational
interactions.)
The next big thing is AI tools that can do more complex tasks. Here’s how they will work.
Despite
all the hype, very few people have had a chance to use it. Currently,
under 1% of the users on the wait list have received an invite code.
(It’s unclear how many people are on this list, but for a sense of how
much interest there is, Manus’s Discord channel has more than 186,000
members.)
MIT Technology Review was able to obtain
access to Manus, and when I gave it a test-drive, I found that using it
feels like collaborating with a highly intelligent and efficient intern:
While it occasionally lacks understanding of what it’s being asked to
do, makes incorrect assumptions, or cuts corners to expedite tasks, it
explains its reasoning clearly, is remarkably adaptable, and can improve
substantially when provided with detailed instructions or feedback.
Ultimately, it’s promising but not perfect.
