by MAHA HILAL

The depths of American state violence not only inflict harm on Muslims but also create a symbolic role to make it more palatable to its victims

On 8 July, Mazen Basrawi, a senior adviser to US President Joe Biden, announced the end of his tenure as the White House Liaison to American Muslim Communities.

Replacing him is Elvir Klempic, who most recently served as the White House Liaison for the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

The news of Basrawi’s departure came a little more than a year after he was appointed in April 2023, which was part of Biden’s fulfilled campaign promise to restore the position that former President Donald Trump had terminated.

At the time, Muslim organisations celebrated the announcement, calling it a step towards the government “building stronger relationships with the American Muslim community”.

However, rather than facilitate engagement with Muslims or make any substantive policy changes on issues that affect them, the liaison has thus far seemed only to parrot the positions of the administration. This is unsurprising, as the role itself was designed to undermine the Muslim community.

Like many US spokespersons and officials legitimising Israel’s genocide of Palestinians over the last nine months, Basrawi has regurgitated the official pro-Israel narrative while promoting superficial efforts to convince communities that Biden cares about them.

If there were any doubt that the new liaison would do anything more than faithfully serve the current administration, the first email sent from Klempic on 11 July was an announcement regarding the sanctioning of additional Israeli individuals and entities. 

This is not the first time that the State Department has imposed sanctions on extremist settlers over the past nine months of the genocide. Far from being a cause for celebration, such measures do nothing to stop the ongoing violence experienced by Palestinians, whether in the West Bank or Gaza.  

Hollow statements

Last month, as millions of Muslims across the globe – many of whom live under oppressive state violence – marked Eid al-Adha, Biden issued a statement to mark the occasion.

The president acknowledged that the holiday came “at a difficult time” for Muslims, but he failed to mention Israel’s wanton slaughter of Palestinians or the direct role his administration is playing in providing weapons, funding and diplomatic cover for it.

For several months, thousands of protesters have marched on cities and university campuses across the country, demanding an end to US complicity in genocide, only to face violent suppression and targeting by federal agents and police.

The current administration has remained defiant against these continued calls, including the growing campaign to “Abandon Biden” in the upcoming presidential election due to his hard-line support for Israel.

In his Eid statement, Biden employed the characteristic passive voice that has come to define western coverage of Israel’s war crimes – so much so that it has become its own genre on X. Palestinians just happened to be “suffering the horrors of war”, he lamented.

Middle East Eye for more

by TOM ENGELHARDT

Why There Is No Massive Antiwar Movement in America 

Well, it’s one, two, three, look at that amputee,
At least it’s below the knee,
Could have been worse, you see.
Well, it’s true your kids look at you differently,
But you came in an ambulance instead of a hearse,
That’s the phrase of the trade,
It could have been worse.

— First verse of a Vietnam-era song written by U.S. Air Force medic Bob Boardman off Country Joe McDonald’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag”

There was the old American lefty paper, the Guardian, and the Village Voice, which beat the Sixties into the world, and its later imitators like the Boston Phoenix. There was Liberation News Service, the Rat in New York, the Great Speckled Bird in Atlanta, the Old Mole in Boston, the distinctly psychedelic Chicago Seed, Leviathan, Viet-Report, and the L.A. Free Press, as well as that Texas paper whose name I long ago forgot that was partial to armadillo cartoons. And they existed, in the 1960s and early 1970s, amid a jostling crowd of hundreds of “underground” newspapers — all quite above ground but the word sounded so romantic in that political moment.  There were G.I. antiwar papers by the score and high school rags by the hundreds in an “alternate” universe of opposition that somehow made the rounds by mail or got passed on hand-to-hand in a now almost unimaginable world of interpersonal social networking that preceded the Internet by decades. And then, of course, there was I.F. Stone’s Weekly (1953-1971): one dedicated journalist, 19 years, every word his own (except, of course, for the endless foolishness he mined from the reams of official documentation produced in Washington, Vietnam, and elsewhere).

I can remember the arrival of that newsletter, though I no longer know whether I subscribed myself or simply shared someone else’s copy. In a time when being young was supposed to be glorious, Stone was old — my parents’ age — but still we waited on his words. It helped to have someone from a previous generation confirm in nuts and bolts ways that the issue that swept so many of us away, the Vietnam War, was indeed an American atrocity.

The Call to Service

They say you can’t go home again, but recently, almost 44 years after I saw my last issue of the Weekly — Stone was 64 when he closed up shop; I was 27 — I found the full archive of them, all 19 years, online, and began reading him all over again. It brought back a dizzying time in which we felt “liberated” from so much that we had been brought up to believe and — though we wouldn’t have understood it that way then — angered and forlorn by the loss as well. That included the John Wayne version of America in which, at the end of any war film, as the Marine Corps Hymn welled up, American troops advanced to a justified victory that would make the world a better place. It also included a far kinder-hearted but allied vision of a country, a government, that was truly ours, and to which we owed — and one dreamed of offering — some form of service.  That was deeply engrained in us, which was why when, in his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy so famously called on us to serve, the response was so powerful. (“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”) Soon after, my future wife went into the Peace Corps like tens of thousands of other young Americans, while I dreamed, as I had from childhood, of becoming a diplomat in order to represent our country abroad.

And that sense of service to country ran so deep that when the first oppositional movements of the era arose, particularly the Civil Rights Movement, the impulse to serve was essential to them, as it clearly was to I.F. Stone. The discovery that under your country’s shining veneer lay a series of nightmares might have changed how that sense of obligation was applied, but it didn’t change the impulse. Not at all.

Tom Dispatch for more

by STEVE ELLNER

)

With all the hype over María Corina Machado being the only real hope for Venezuela to overcome 25 years of autocratic rule, the mainstream media loses sight of several key factors surrounding the nation’s presidential elections slated for July 28. First, the U.S. has played a central role in favor of Machado’s candidacy and, once it was clear that the government of Nicolas Maduro would not allow her to run, Washington backed the notion that she had the right to choose who would represent the so-called united democratic opposition at the polls.

Second, it was never clear on what basis Machado claimed to have that right, especially in light of the fact that there were contenders who were as anti-Maduro as her pick and were infinitely more qualified. And third, Machado’s rise as the supreme leader of the Venezuelan opposition is part of a world-wide trend in which far-right leaders and movements have achieved major inroads. 

For every decision the opposition has made in recent months, the far-rightist Machado has had the last word, while center-right leaders have ended up capitulating to her demands. Her success has much to do with the backing she has received from two faithful allies: Washington and the mainstream media. Machado is not the godsend for the opposition portrayed by the media and her close supporters. But opposition leaders have more cause for hope than in the past. Unlike the 2018 presidential elections and subsequent electoral contests, all opposition parties, large and small, have opted for electoral participation. Even those most stridently opposed to the Chavistas (the followers of Hugo Chávez)
now recognize that electoral abstentionism had been a losing game.

Furthermore, the four main opposition parties known as the G4, and its broader alliance, the Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD), are united behind Machado. Last October, she was pronounced the winner in the opposition primaries with a whopping 92% of the vote. 

The Venezuelan government has disqualified Machado from holding public office for a number of reasons. The initial one was her acceptance in 2014 of a diplomatic position from the government of Panama enabling her to address the Organization of American States, where she called for foreign intervention in Venezuela. In June 2023 the National Controller reimposed the ban. 

After that, Machado insisted that popular support at home coupled with international pressure would force the Maduro government to back down. Shortly before the deadline for registering candidates this March, Machado switched gears by choosing a surrogate to run in her place. In a surprise move, she convinced Edmundo González Urrutia, a little-known former diplomat with no
charisma and admittedly no desire to run for office, to be PUD’s presidential candidate. Upon accepting the candidacy, González revealed that he had no intention of barnstorming around the country, adding “Maria Corina is doing it very well.” 

Code Pink for more

by B. R. GOWANI

Democracy can be considered a commodity with multitude of varieties. Each elite ruling class claims theirs is the best suitable for its people, and thus imposes it on them. Mind you, not the pure democracy: government of the people, by the people, for the people,” because that would amount to nothing less than socialism. The “democracy” countries profess to practice is nothing but an interpretation of the ruling class in those countries with the aim to control its general populace.

India has Modi-cracy where one man, Narendra Modi, is running the show. A year ago, he boasted: “India is the mother of democracy.” If India is the mother of democracy, then Modi must be the illegitimate father of democracy who was till last month busy Hindu-izing the country. (He did not get a simple majority in elections June 2024 and so his Hindu-ization project has slowed down, but it remains doubtful he’ll give up so easily. He could instigate a war with Pakistan, declare an emergency, and assume extraordinaire power. Never underestimate the power of elected fascists.)

England has monacracy and the taxpayers bear the burden of monarchy which can’t be called a true democracy.

The United States has oligacracy where a small group of extremely wealthy people decide the fate of more than 335 million common people in the name of democracy. Biden could fight the proxy war against Russia or support the genocide of Palestinians and nothing changes; but he loses a debate against Trump and the wealthy halt $90 million in donations.

Military Power

Then there is Pakistan’s militocracy. The military has ruled that country, directly or indirectly, for most of that nation’s existence. When the military favors a politician: that person becomes the prime minister but has to be subservient because the rein (important portfolios such as foreign policy, defense, etc.) is always determined by the military. When the premier tries to control the entire government machinery, that person is deposed and could be sent to prison. Politicians are at army’s mercy.

(Pakistan military and governments constantly plead and beg the IMF, Saudi and UAE rulers for a billion dollars or more.

The military torpedoed Nawaz Sharis’s past efforts to improve relations with India. But it now wants better relations. The increase in trade with India can help Pakistan to overcome its dire economic and financial condition.)

The 2018 election saw cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party become the Prime Minister, with the military’s blessing . But when Khan tried to do things his own way, a vote of no-confidence was engineered and Khan was ousted in 2022. At present, he’s in jail with over 100 cases registered against him. Even when a case is dismissed, police or some agency person issues another arrest warrant and he gets re-arrested. Khan, his wife Bushra Bibi, and some PTI members are entangled in this vicious cycle.

After more than a year in various prisons all over Pakistan, Sanam Javed of PTI was released on July 10, 2024 by the Lahore High Court (in Punjab province) but soon after the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested her and took her to Islamabad. On July 14, she was let go but was re-arrested by the police of Balochistan. She was freed on July 15 by the Islamabad High Court which restrained police from arresting her till July 18. The IHC justice asked her to “avoid unnecessary rhetoric” or else the court would reverse its order. In other words, keep your mouth shut. Her lawyer guaranteed that she would refrain from such language. On June 18, IHC considered her arrest as illegal and was set free. Immediately, the Punjab government challanged IHC verdict.

While in power, Khan had visited Russia the day it had invaded Ukraine. Khan was also critical of the US. US is never too busy not to interfere in other countries’ affairs. David Lu, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, asked Pakistan’s then ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, to get rid of Khan.

The army’s open hostility and its tactics to break up Khan’s party PTI by levying various charges and arresting and re-arresting PTI members, including Khan, saw Khan’s supporters out on the streets on May 9, 2023; they did some damage to military installations. The army in response, came up with an event called Youm-e-Takreem Shuhada-e-Pakistan or Martyrs’ Reverence Day to be celebrated on May 25 every year to remember the soldiers who lose their lives while serving.

Seven and a half months after Khan was ousted, in November 2022, the retiring army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa conceded the army’s meddling in politics.

“… our army which day and night remains busy in serving the nation, is often made the subject of criticism.” “A major reason for this is the army’s interference in politics for the last 70 years which is unconstitutional.

“This is why in February last year [2021] the army, after great deliberation, decided that it would never interfere in any political matter. I assure you we are strictly adamant on this and will remain so.”

One wonders why leaders accept their lies and mistakes, or talk peace and the danger of military-industrial complex, etc. only when they’re leaving or have left. Bajwa was lying.

Today, the army is still omnipresent. The current army Chief Asim Munir meets business community, invites winning athletes, issues regular statements, and so on. The current Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) took over power after military approval. His older brother and former three-incomplete-term prime minister Nawaz Sharif came back from exile with military’s approval.

Disappearing Critics

The intelligence agencies in Pakistan such as MI (Military Intelligence), IB (Intelligence Bureau), ISI (Inter Services Intelligence), etc. take care of the critics — journalists and common people — who write, speak, or protest against the military interference in government affairs.

Sometimes they are abducted, tortured, and then released, Other times they are killed too with no clues left.

In 2011, the Islamabad Bureau Chief of Asia Times Syed Saleem Shahzad was tortured and murdered. News anchor and journalist Arshad Sharif, a critic of military, was shot dead in 2022, by police in Nairobi, Kenya. In May 2024, four journalists were murdered. Since 1992, more than 60 journalists have lost their lives. Then there are those who have disappeared and never reappeared. In many instances, the victims are harassed and blackmailed, their phones are tapped, and they are detained illegally. The agencies never issue any kind of statement because that would be tantamount to accepting guilt.

Thousands of people are missing in Pakistan, without any clue as to where they are. The number of enforced disappearances in 2023 was 51. Then there is the Pakistani province of Balochistan — a vast land mass with the least population but is underdeveloped and is ignored by governments. This has caused resentment among the Balochis that has resulted in insurgency. The first six months of 2024 saw 197 persons missing — most of them Balochis. On July 28, three persons died and eight were injured during a clash between Balochistan Yakjehti Committee (BYC) and security forces. People from the province overcame roadblocks set up by the authorities and met at Gwader’s Marine Drive for the Baloch Rajee Muchi (Baloch National Gathering). BYC leader Dr Mahrang Baloch asked security officials to free the apprehended protestors. She proclaimed:

“Until the release of our people, the sit-in will continue at Marine Drive.”

More than 5,000 Balochis are missing. Families of missing and/or killed Balochis demonstrate holding photos of victims every now and then but to no avail. In protests, Baloch women are in the forefront. They live in a tortured state of mind not knowing whether their sons, husbands, fathers are alive or not. In January 2024, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar, got mad at Baloch protestors and called supporters and “relatives of those fighting against the state” as “advocates of terrorists in Balochistan.” Kakar himself hails from Balochistan.

On the night of May 14, 2024, the Kashmiri poet, journalist Ahmed Farhad Shah was kidnapped by four men outside his home while returning from a dinner. A petition from his family was filed with Islamabad High Court (IHC) saying that Shah was abducted for his criticism of ISI. According to his wife, Syeda Urooj Zainab, the agencies felt that Shah was a PTI and Imran Khan supporter and so they were after him. Zainab refutes that impression and says he has also supported PML-N when it was under pressure by the Pakistan’s military. One of the judges at IHC, Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, initiated an enquiry and ordered that Shah be found and produced before the court. Two weeks later, it was reported that he was in police custody. but then the federal government asked IHC on June 1 to close the case. On June 4, his bail was rejected by an anti-terrorism court in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Critics are treated as terrorists! Since then, there has been no news on Shah, it is doubtful if they’ve found him.

(The Advocate Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir, a Baloch, who is Shah’s counsel, has herself been harassed, threatened, arrested, re-arrested, for calling the Pakistan army “terrorists” and for supporting the protesting Baloch students.)

Ahmed Farhad Shah is a poet whose poems are critical of the army. Here is the translation of one of his poems originally written in Hindi/Urdu.

he thinks of his own freewill

he thinks of his own freewill, pick him up

he’s somewhat different than our henchmen, pick him up

the arrogant ones we abducted before him, he’s is enquiring about them, pick him up

he was clearly ordered what to speak and what not to, but he speaks his own mind, pick him up

the minions whom we honored with positions and rewards, he’s laughing at those clever souls, pick him up

he questions why there’s peace and security problem, he is the peace and security problem, pick him up*

he was told to see only what we show him, but he uses his own discretion, pick him up

this lunatic is questioning extent of our power, he has crossed the line, pick him up

Original version:

ye apni marzi se sochtA hai

ye apni marzi se sochtA hai, ise uthA lo

uthAne waloN se kuchh judA hai, ise uthA lo

woh be’adab, iis se pehle jinko uthA liyA thA, yeh unke bAre meiN puchhtA hai, ise uthA lo

ise batAyA bhi thA ke kiyA bolnA hai kiyA nahiN, magar ye marzi se boltA hai, ise uthA lo

jinheiN uthA ne pe hamne bakshe maqAm-o-khilat, ye oon siAnoN pe haNs rahA hai, ise uthA lo

ye poochhtA hai, ke aman-e-AmAN ka maslA kiyooN, yeh aman-e-AmAN ka maslAh hai, ise uthA lo*

ise kahA thA, jo hum dikhA’eN bus utnA dekho, magar yeh marzi se dekhtA hai, ise uthA lo

sawAl kartA hai yeh diwAnA hamAri had par, yeh apni had se guzar gayA hai, ise uthA lo

*(Farhad reminds his audience that just for raising the question of peace and security, fifty people were imprisoned.)

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

by BERTRAND RUSSELL

The Lecture that is here reproduced was delivered at the Battersea Town Hall on Sunday March 6, 1927, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society. It is issued in booklet form at the request of many friends. It should be added that the author alone is responsible for the political and other opinions expressed.

As your Chairman has told you, the subject about which I am going to speak to you tonight is ‘Why I am not a Christian’. Perhaps it would be as well, first of all, to try to make out what one means by the word ‘Christian’. It is used these days in a very loose sense by a great many people. Some people mean no more by it than a person who attempts to live a good life. In that sense I suppose there would be Christians in all sects and creeds; but I do not think that that is the proper sense of the word, if only because it would imply that all the people who are not Christians—all the Buddhists, Confucians, Mohammedans, and so on—are not trying to live a good life. I do not mean by a Christian any person who tries to live decently according to his lights. I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions.

What is a Christian?

Nowadays it is not quite that. We have to be a little more vague in our meaning of Christianity. I think, however, that there are two different items which are quite essential to anybody calling himself a Christian. The first is one of a dogmatic nature—namely, that you must believe in God and immortality. If you do not believe in those two things, I do not think that you can properly call yourself a Christian. Then, further than that, as the name implies, you must have some kind of belief about Christ. The Mohammedans, for instance, also believe in God and in immortality, and yet they would not call themselves Christians. I think you must have at the very lowest the belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ, I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian. Of course there is another sense which you find in Whitaker’s Almanack and in geography books, where the population of the world is said to be divided into Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish worshippers, and so on; and in that sense we are all Christians. The geography books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian I have to tell you two different things; first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant Him a very high degree of moral goodness.

Drew University for more

by PRABHAT PATNAIK

Poverty is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty.

In fact, however, poverty under capitalism is entirely different from poverty in pre-capitalist times. Even if for statistical purposes poverty is defined as lack of access to a set of use-values that are essential for living irrespective of the mode of production, the fact remains that this lack is enmeshed under capitalism within a set of social relationships that are sui generis and different from earlier. Poverty under capitalism thus takes a specific form associated with insecurity and indignity that makes it particularly unbearable.

There are roughly four proximate features of capitalist poverty. The first arises from the inviolability of contracts, which means that irrespective of their conditions, the poor have to pay whatever they are contracted to pay; this leads to a loss of assets or destitution.

In pre-capitalist times, for instance in Mughal India, revenue demand was a proportion of the produce; this meant that in years of poor harvest, the revenue claims on the peasants got automatically scaled down. Put differently, the burden of the poor harvest got shared among the producers and the overlord.

But, in colonial India, reflecting its capitalist ethos, the tax got levied on land; the contract between the producer and the overlord changed: the producer would be allowed to cultivate a plot of land provided he paid a certain amount of revenue to the State. This meant that in a poor harvest year, the burden of the poor harvest was not shared and fell exclusively on the producer. The contract, in other words, was for a fixed amount of money payment, not for a variable amount of payment, as a share of the produce or its equivalent in money form. The destitution of the peasantry, that is, the transfer of peasants’ assets to money lenders followed from this. Poverty, in short, was associated with destitution which, therefore, tended to have a cumulative impact on the producers.

Put differently, the “flow” lack of access to use-values on the part of the producers was accompanied by a process of their “stock” deprivation of assets, which meant an increase in their vulnerability over time. There was thus a dynamic introduced into poverty.

The second feature of capitalist poverty is that it is experienced by individuals, whether individual persons or households. In a pre-capitalist society where people lived in communities, other members of the community, whether belonging to the same caste-group or simply to the same village, came to the help of the poor in particular years of bad harvests or natural calamities. Privations, in other, words were not suffered in isolation.

Under capitalism, however, when the communities are broken up because of the inexorable logic of the system, and the individual emerges as the primary economic category, this individual also suffers privations in isolation.

Insaf Bulletin for more

by FAISAL MAHMUD & SHAQUIB AHMED

Within the sterile walls of the National Institute of Ophthalmology and Hospital (NIOH) in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, a sombre scene unfolds.

Dozens of young men, their faces etched with worry and uncertainty, sit in silent anticipation. Some shield their injured eyes behind dark sunglasses. Others wear white bandages on one or both eyes.

One question hangs in the air: Will these men ever see the world clearly again?

They are victims of pellet injuries — both survivors and reminders of the deadly clashes between protesters seeking job quota reforms and the security forces of Bangladesh that engulfed the nation of 170 million people for nearly two weeks this month.

Among them is Mohammad Anik, a 24-year-old salesperson from Madaripur – a central district some 150km (93 miles) away from Dhaka. “There is a less than 50 percent chance that he [Anik] will get his eyesight back,” said a duty doctor at NIOH who requested anonymity. “There were several injuries in his two eyes and we had tried our best.”

Last Monday, Anik was heading home from work when he got caught in a street clash between protesters and police. Before he could figure out what was happening, a pellet struck his face. He fell to the ground, unconscious and exposed, until bystanders intervened and took him to the hospital.

Now, he finds himself amid the dozens of young men at NIOH, their futures shrouded in darkness.

Hundreds of patients of pellet guns injury

The NIOH has treated nearly 500 patients in the last few days, hailing from various districts including Dhaka, all grappling with severe eye injuries. Hospital records reveal that at least 278 of these individuals also sustained wounds to other parts of their bodies.

Mohammad Shamim, a 10-year-old who worked at a motorcycle workshop, sustained pellet injuries to both eyes during a clash between police and protesters last Friday in the Mirpur area of the capital. Doctors have said he will never fully recover his vision. “My son’s future looks grim. What am I going to do with him?” lamented his father, Mohammad Idris.

NIOH’s director, Golam Mostafa, confirmed that shotgun pellets used during the anti-quota protests were the primary cause of the injuries.

“In cases where the pellet embeds itself in the retina’s centre or is forcefully ejected upon impact, partial blindness becomes the tragic outcome,” he said.

Researchers who looked at pellet injuries to protesters in Indian-administered Kashmir have previously found [PDF] that when fired at close range, the pellets lack sufficient time to disperse, resulting in a concentrated cluster that moves at incredibly high speeds. This concentrated force transforms the pellets into projectiles akin to handgun bullets, capable of piercing deep into soft tissues, particularly the eyes, causing extensive and irreversible damage.

The devastating impact of pellet guns on eyesight hinges on the velocity and distance at which the pellets are fired, the study explained. The severity of these injuries has prompted international condemnation, with Amnesty International calling for a ban on their use for crowd control in Indian-administered Kashmir a few years ago.

Violation of UN-issued guidance

The United Nations has warned against using metal pellets, like those expelled from shotguns, in law enforcement, arguing that they are inherently inaccurate and often violate the principles of necessity and proportionality.

Bangladeshi police and security forces however have resorted to using 12-gauge pump-action shotguns loaded with cartridges containing these very metal pellets, a number of security analysts told Al Jazeera after analysing several photos and footage.

Al Jazeera telephoned and sent text messages to Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan and several top officials from the police forces but received no response. Salim Mahmud, secretary of information and research of the ruling Awami League party, told Al Jazeera that he had to “check with the police and paramilitary forces” whether “any lethal weapon” was used against the protesters.

Meanwhile, the US-based Human Rights Watch has accused Bangladesh’s security forces of using excessive force during the protests. Their findings reveal the use of live ammunition, tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, and shotgun pellets to disperse demonstrators. Amnesty International has also raised similar concerns.

Those who sustained eye injuries during the recent anti-quota protests, along with their families, claim that the police used indiscriminate force, firing at them without restraint.

Al Jazeera for more

by SPENGLER

US envisions India as democratic counterweight to China but Asian powers are moving toward more economic cooperation and less strategic conflict

India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 25 endorsed her economic advisor’s proposal to open the country to direct investment from China, effectively frozen since the Sino-Indian border clashes of 2020.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported, “India’s Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran said…that to boost its global exports New Delhi can either integrate into China’s supply chain or promote foreign direct investment (FDI) from China.

“Among these choices, focusing on FDI from China seems more promising for boosting India’s exports to the US, similar to how East Asian economies did in the past,’” Nageswaran said according to Reuters.

The proposed opening to China—a rebuke to American diplomacy in the region—followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi earlier this month.

Asia Times’ newsletter Global Risk-Reward Monitor reported exclusively July 11, “Modi asked Putin to help India resolve its longstanding border dispute with China. This is the most important military conflict in Asia, limited as it is, because it puts the region’s two largest countries at odds. Russian mediation, however informal, would entail a diplomatic revolution, and make a mockery of America’s hope of rallying Asian countries against China.”

In 2022, I argued that a demographic imperative—the declining population of non-Muslim parts of Asia versus the growth of Muslim populations—would push India, Russia and China toward a strategic rapprochement.

The Ukraine war has driven these prospective rivals together. India’s bottomless appetite for discounted Russian oil propelled its imports from Russia to US$67 billion in 2023 from only $8.7 billion in 2022. India, moreover, acts as Russia’s distribution agent, re-selling Russian oil and distillates to third countries.

It is noteworthy that although India and China have an ongoing border dispute, India has never joined the US and its allies in condemning China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim population. The United States meanwhile has accused India of human rights abuses against its Muslim minority.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken declared in 2022, “We regularly engage with our Indian partners on these shared values (of human rights) and, to that end, we are monitoring some recent concerning developments in India including a rise in human rights abuses by some government, police and prison officials.”

India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar responded that India could say some things about human rights abuses in the United States.

China’s mushrooming trade with the Global South, notably including India, has advanced the prospects for rapprochement between the world’s two largest countries.

India depends on Chinese supply chains to support its export industry. It imports components and capital goods from China and assembles finished products for developed markets, as do Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia and other Chinese trading partners.

India’s imports from China have more than doubled since the Covid epidemic, as the bulk of China’s export trade shifted away from the US and Europe toward the Global South.

Asia Times for more

by MARK ENGLER & PAUL ENGLER

A new documentary explains how, 40 years ago, Chicago’s first Black mayor shattered status-quo politics in his city, offering insights that remain relevant for grassroots movements today.

Four decades ago, at the start of 1984, Harold Washington was finishing his historic opening year in office as Chicago’s first Black mayor. An outsider candidate who had been persuaded to run by the city’s social movements, Washington represented a major break from the past, and his 1983 victory served as an important milestone in the efforts of Civil Rights activists to gain footholds in electoral politics. Today, as social movements increasingly take interest in running insurgent candidates for office, Washington provides a vital model for how grassroots forces can bring new constituencies into the electoral realm and upend the established practices of insider politics.

Once in office, the mayor—widely known in the city simply as “Harold”—faced entrenched opposition. And yet he was able to take significant strides in dismantling the city machine. Run for decades by Richard J. Daley, this machine long maintained a racist and inequitable system of distributing municipal resources.

Tragically, Washington died of a heart attack just months into his second term, in 1987. His sudden passing created a lasting trauma for progressive forces in the city and raised questions about what more he might have been able to accomplish had he lived. More recently, the 2023 election of a new progressive mayor in Chicago, Brandon Johnson, has both generated fresh hope and created revived interest in the lessons that might be drawn from Washington’s example in taking on Chicago’s old guard some forty years ago.

As a filmmaker, Joe Winston has tackled topics ranging from conservative organizing in America’s heartland (as director of 2009’s What’s the Matter with Kansas) to the influence of the ultra-rich on our political system (as producer of 2013’s Citizen Koch). His latest film, Punch 9 For Harold Washington, is showing in coming months in cities including Denver, Atlanta, Nashville, and Chicago, and it has just been made available for both educational use and community screenings.

We spoke to Winston to discuss insights that Washington’ story can provide for social movements looking to bring new voices into electoral politics today. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Mark Engler: Tell us about your background and how you got involved in this story.

Joe Winston: My film, Punch 9 for Harold Washington, is about Chicago’s first African American mayor. When he was elected in 1983, I was a junior in a high school that was located just three or four blocks from Harold’s apartment. He was a huge figure in Chicago, and the turbulent times of his election, governance, and untimely death are something that no one who lived through it can ever forget.

As a documentary filmmaker, I realized years later that the story of Harold Washington has universal significance. As a trailblazing Black mayor in a city which was undergoing rapid demographic change, the kinds of coalitions that Harold had to build in order to win an election—and then subsequently to govern—had tremendous resonance. That was particularly true in the Obama era. Barack Obama came to Chicago as a community organizer partly because Harold Washington had taken office. And, subsequently, the white backlash to Obama’s presidency mirrored almost exactly what Harold Washington had to navigate as mayor of Chicago.

ME: Before he decided to run for mayor in 1983, Harold almost had to be drafted by social movements. He made a number of demands that local organizers had to meet in order for him to run, including the demand that they register 50,000 new voters—which seemed like an impossibly huge number.

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