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By Ashish Singh

Dear Mr. Rahul Gandhi,

As a citizen of Rae Bareli, I write to you with deep respect for your position and an even deeper concern for the condition of our constituency. Rae Bareli has been entrusted to your family for generations. It has been both a political bastion and a symbol of enduring trust between elected representatives and the people they serve. That trust is precious, but it is not permanent. It must be renewed, not by speeches or ceremonies, but by time, by presence, and by the hard, often unglamorous work of solving the problems that shape people’s daily lives.

Today Rae Bareli stands at a crossroads. It struggles with problems that cannot be resolved through token visits or routine inaugurations. The district hospitals, once a source of pride, now carry a reputation scarred by reports of corruption, inadequate facilities and a shortage of specialists. Villages are still waiting for proper chakbandi, a process that could modernise agriculture and reduce disputes but remains trapped in outdated bureaucracy. Roads are not just deteriorating, many of them are dangerous, unlit at night, uneven in construction and often blocked by unchecked encroachments. The electricity supply remains unreliable; frequent power cuts disrupt homes, businesses, schools and health services. Drainage and sanitation are in disrepair, leaving neighbourhoods flooded even after mild rains, spreading both inconvenience and disease.

Law and order too demands urgent attention. The quiet spread of criminal elements has created an undercurrent of fear. It affects businesses, discourages investment, and erodes civic confidence. Extortion, intimidation and petty violence may not always reach headlines, but they eat into the foundation of public safety. Women and the elderly in particular feel vulnerable, not just on isolated roads at night but even in busy markets.

Our city’s young people, full of ambition, are forced to leave for better education and opportunities elsewhere. Rae Bareli still lacks a modern university that could anchor talent, attract industries, foster innovation and create pride in staying and building here. Without such an institution, the best minds are trained elsewhere and rarely return. The absence of skilled employment opportunities compounds this drain of human capital.

Basic civic amenities remain uneven. Clean drinking water is still a challenge in several wards. Parks and community spaces, which give cities their social heart, are neglected or overcrowded. Waste management is erratic, with garbage piling up near schools and hospitals, undermining both dignity and health. Adding to this is an almost invisible network of civil society organisations. Where active civic groups thrive, they bring energy, accountability and hope to even the most neglected corners of society. Their absence here leaves the needy without a voice, the marginalised without a partner, and public life without the gentle but vital pressure of citizen-driven change. Encouraging such organisations would not only improve service delivery but also create a healthier atmosphere of shared responsibility.

One may argue that many of these matters belong to state authorities. But leadership is not only about statutory power. It is about using one’s voice, influence and authority to make the people’s concerns impossible to ignore. An MP is not expected to single-handedly build roads, clean drains or fill hospital vacancies, but he is expected to demand them, to follow up, to expose delays, to pressure bureaucracies and to turn local frustrations into national priorities. Silence or distance, even if unintended, begins to feel like abandonment.

Rae Bareli can and should aspire to be a model city and district. It has history, political attention and human talent. What it needs now is vision matched with relentless action. Imagine a Rae Bareli where clean streets, safe public spaces, functioning hospitals, reliable electricity, modern schools, digital infrastructure, strong agriculture, active civic groups and thriving local industries stand together as proof that political loyalty can be rewarded not with nostalgia but with progress.

This is not a plea born of impatience. It is a reminder of responsibility. You have been entrusted not merely with a seat in Parliament but with the future of a constituency that has stood by your family through India’s political storms. It deserves more than periodic visits and symbolic gestures. It deserves your time, your listening, your advocacy and your courage to turn promises into reality. Legacy, no matter how deep, cannot carry a city into the future unless it is matched with daily, deliberate, visible care.

Respectfully,
A concerned citizen of Rae Bareli

Ashish Singh has finished his Ph.D. coursework in political science from the NRU-HSE, Moscow, Russia. 

11 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Palestine updates

For the very first time in history, the United Nations has officially declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Not “possible genocide.” Not “plausible genocide.” Genocide.

The UN’s words are not symbolic. They are binding. Under the Genocide Convention, every signatory state —including America — now has a legal duty to prevent, to punish, and to stop their complicity. That is why this moment matters so much.

For nearly two years, the world has danced around the world. The International Court of Justice said genocide was “plausible.” The leading human rights groups in the world already said this. Scholars of genocide raised alarms. But governments — especially the United States and its allies — refused to admit the obvious. Now the Commission of Inquiry of the United Nations Human Rights Council has issued a declarative report that removes all doubt. Their words are chilling in their clarity:

“The Commission concludes that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, establishing both the underlying acts and the specific intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part.”

This is not rhetoric. It is not a metaphor. It is a legal determination, backed by exhaustive data. The Commission looked at every category under the Genocide Convention — killings, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about destruction, and preventing births — and found them all satisfied. For decades, “never again” has been the UN’s mantra. Yesterday, the mask slipped: “again” is here. And it is happening in Gaza.

The report lays out the evidence in devastating detail. Between October 7, 2023, and July 31, 2025, Israel killed at least 60,199 Palestinians. The Commission says the numbers alone are enough to demonstrate a pattern, but the methods prove intent.

·       The siege of Gaza created famine conditions. Mothers unable to feed infants. Children wasting away from hunger.

·       Israel destroyed Gaza’s health system, striking hospitals, medics, and ambulances, while denying medical evacuations.

·       Israel demolished homes, schools, mosques, universities — entire neighborhoods levelled with wide-area explosive weapons.

·       They even destroyed Gaza’s largest IVF clinic, wiping out the embryos of parents hoping for children.

The UN’s language is precise: “Israel has deliberately imposed conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, including starvation, destruction of healthcare, and deprivation of essential services.”

And the Commission didn’t stop with deaths. It also documented thousands who lost limbs, children burned beyond recognition, families displaced into endless cycles of bombardment. In the report’s words, “serious bodily and mental harm has been inflicted on a scale consistent with genocidal acts. ”The horror is not just in numbers, but in intent. When you blockade food, bomb bakeries, and bulldoze farmland, starvation is not a byproduct — it is the point.

The Voices of Incitement

The report goes further, documenting not just acts but incitement to genocide at the highest levels of the Israeli government. It names President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. It recalls Gallant’s infamous line calling Palestinians “human animals.” It quotes Netanyahu invoking the Biblical command to “remember Amalek” — the ancient call to wipe out an entire people. It highlights Herzog saying there were no civilians in Gaza, only enemies.

The Commission concluded: “Senior Israeli officials engaged in direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and the State of Israel failed to prevent or punish such incitement.”

State Responsibility, Not Just Individuals
Here is why this UN finding is different from any trial of a soldier or commander: it places responsibility on the state of Israel itself.

The report states plainly: “Israel bears State responsibility for committing genocide, for failing to prevent it, and for failing to punish incitement to genocide.” That means reparations. That means accountability at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. That means Israel as a state has crossed the red line into the gravest crime known to law.

And legally, state responsibility is heavier than individual criminal liability. An individual conviction sends one man to prison. A state determination delegitimizes an entire government, its alliances, and its standing in the world. That is what just happened.

What Other States Must Do Now
And here is the part the United States and Europe will try hardest to ignore. The Commission says genocide does not only implicate the perpetrator state. Every other state now has obligations under the Genocide Convention.

The report makes it clear:
–       Stop arms transfers —weapons, ammunition, jet fuel, spare parts.
– Cease any material support that contributes to genocidal acts
– Do not recognize Israel’s unlawful acts or territorial gains.
– Cooperate with ICC prosecutions.
– Use all reasonably available means to prevent genocide.

The UN’s words are not a suggestion. They are law: “States parties have an obligation not only to refrain from aiding or assisting genocide, but to employ all reasonably available means to prevent its continuation.”

If the Genocide Convention means anything, it means American taxpayers are no longer innocent bystanders. We are financiers.

The United Nations may have the loudest megaphone, but it is not the first voice to call this a genocide. The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the leading academic body in the world on the subject, declared it genocide.

Over 50 UN Special Rapporteurs and human rights experts signed a statement in late 2023warning of “a genocide in the making.” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestine, has said repeatedly that Israel’s actions meet the definition of genocide. Craig Mokhiber, director of the UN human rights office in New York, resigned in protest in October 2023, writing: “This is a textbook case of genocide.”

Governments — South Africa, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and others — brought genocide charges to the ICJ. Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow have shouted it from the streets. Palestinian organizations like Al-Haq and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights have documented it daily. But now the UN has said it officially. And that changes everything.

The UN has taken away plausible deniability. The next time the Trump administration or anyone else sends weapons to Israel, they cannot say they did not know. They know. We all know.

The Children of Gaza

Nothing in the report is moresearing than its section on children. The Commission documents thousands of child deaths, sniper fire at evacuation routes, starvation, and trauma. Itdescribes how an entire generation has been targeted for destruction.

“At least 18,430 children were killed. Many more suffered amputations, severe burns, and life-long disabilities. The deliberate targeting of children and the conditions imposedon them amount to acts of genocide.” Family, children are the measure of asociety’s soul. And in Gaza, children have been crushed beneath the weight of siege, starvation, and bombs. This is why the report is unflinching: the destruction of children is not incidental — it is central.

And history will remember this. Just as we remember the children of Armenia, of the Holocaust, of Rwanda, of Bosnia — we will remember Gaza’s children. The only question is whether we will remember them as victims we failed to save, or as survivors of a genocide we stopped in time.

The Machinery of Starvation and Disease
The Commission’s report describes how Gaza was turned into a laboratory of starvation. Israel imposed a “complete siege” — cutting off food, water, fuel, and electricity. Convoys of humanitarian aid were blocked, bombed, or turned back. “Israel has employed starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, resulting in widespread hunger, malnutrition, and preventable deaths.”

Famine is not a natural disaster. It is engineered. Gaza’s children wasted away, not because of drought or crop failure, but because trucks full of food were held at the border until the food rotted. Mothers stood in lines for hours, only to return empty-handed. Doctors performed surgery by flashlight, without anesthesia, because fuel was cut off. And the Commission says plainly: these acts were “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians.” Starvation and disease were not accidents of war — they were weapons.

The report includes eyewitness testimony: infants crying from hunger, parents feeding children weeds and animal feed, bodies weakened by malnutrition until they could not survive even small injuries. These are not conditions of war. They are conditions of extermination.

Preventing Births
One of the most chilling parts of the report is its finding that Israel took “measures intended to prevent births” among Palestinians in Gaza. The destruction of Gaza’s largest IVF clinic wiped out thousands of frozen embryos ,erasing the hopes of families already battered by war. Hospitals that provided reproductive care were deliberately targeted. Pregnant women were denied safe deliveries. Thousands miscarried after being displaced again and again under bombardment.

The Commission’s conclusion is stark: “The destruction of reproductive healthcare, coupled with the denial of medical access, constitutes measures intended to prevent births within the group, as prohibited under the Genocide Convention.” And this connects directly to international law: the Genocide Convention, Article II(d), lists “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” as one of the five genocidal acts. The UN Commission is saying Israel has crossed that threshold, deliberately targeting the future of Palestinians.

Why Words Like Genocide Matter
Some will say: isn’t it just semantics? Mass killing, war crimes, ethnic cleansing — does the word“ “genocide” really change anything? Yes. It changes everything. Genocide is the crime of crimes. It triggers obligations under international law that no state can ignore. It removes the fig leaf of plausible deniability. It places Gaza in the lineage of the Holocaust, Rwanda, Srebrenica, Armenia.

The Commission wrote:
“The crime of genocide carries obligations erga omnes — owed to theinternational community as a whole — to prevent, to punish, and to ceasecomplicity.” And this is why Israel, the U.S., and much of the Western media have resisted the word so fiercely. Because once the word is said, the law is triggered. Once the word is said, complicity can no longer hide in ambiguity.The UN has now said the word. And the world can never unsay it.

America’s Fingerprints
The report is unambiguous: states that aid or assist genocide violate the Genocide Convention.    That means the United States. Billions of dollars in weapons, jet fuel, and ammunition flow from Washington to Tel Aviv. Every bomb dropped on a Gaza school has fragments stamped “Made in USA.” Every tank shell that collapses a hospital wing is funded by your tax dollars.

The Commission warns: “States must immediately cease arms transfers and other forms of support that could contribute to genocidal acts. “Since October 2023, the U.S. has approved over $20 billion in weapons transfers to Israel, including precision-guided bombs, artillery shells, and spare parts for F-35 fighter jets. Shipments of jet fuel kept Israel’s air force flying missions over Gaza. U.S. contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics have directly profited from the war machine.

When we pay taxes, when our leaders sign weapons packages, we are not bystanders. We are financiers of genocide. That is the unbearable truth. And history will judge us by whether the west stopped it or ignored it.

Why Silence Is Complicity
Here is what cuts deepest. If any other state were found guilty of genocide by the United Nations, the world would erupt. Sanctions. Emergency sessions. Arrest warrants. Front-page headlines. But because it is Israel, the silence is deafening. Western governments issue platitudes. Media outlets bury the word “genocide” deep in their stories, or avoid it altogether. Politicians dodge, deflect, or change the subject.

The Commission itself anticipated this cowardice. It warned: “The failure to name genocide when it is found to exist contributes to its continuation and emboldens perpetrators.” irresponsibility is to break that silence. And that means you and I saying the word out loud, everywhere, until the silence cracks.

The Weight of History
The UN’s finding places Gaza alongside the darkest chapters of human history. Armenia. The Holocaust. Rwanda. Bosnia. Darfur. “The destruction in Gaza, in scale and severity, constitutes acts of genocide comparable to the gravest crimes adjudicated in international law.” And when our grandchildren ask, “What did you do?” we will not be able to say we did not know. Because now the UN has told us. We know.

And let’s be clear: every genocide is remembered not only for its perpetrators but for the bystanders. History remembers the Turks who denied Armenia, the Europeans who ignored Rwanda, the Serbs who mocked Bosnia. Gaza will be remembered the same way — and America, Europe, and Israel will all bear the stain.

What We Must Do
The UN’s finding is not the end. It is a beginning. It is a demand. Every person, every community, every nation now faces a choice: complicity or resistance.

That means:

·       Boycott institutions complicit in genocide, from weapons manufacturers to cultural whitewashers.

·       Demand sanctions, arms embargoes, and prosecutions.

·       Share the truth — embed the UN’s own words in every conversation, every classroom, every pulpit.

·       Refuse silence.

And it also tells us we have power. Power in what we consume. Power in what we share. Power in who we pressure. Power in how loudly we say the word genocide when others whisper it. If millions of us act, history will remember us as the ones who refused to stay silent in the face of extermination.

16 September 2025

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

The holocaust/genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza strip continues [1]. Calculations show that excess mortality has been much higher than the reported 64,000 violent deaths (71% women and children) [2].

And now the largest push for ethnic cleansing is happening with methodical destruction of any remaining buildings in North Gaza and Gaza city. But my friends there tell me since there is no safe place and death is the same whether in north or south, that they are staying (including the Palestinian Christian community).

But the carnage is not merely in the Gaza strip. Israel also bombed the West Bank (creating tens of thousands of homeless Palestinians) and bombed seven other countries (latest being Qatar, a supposed ally). Israel even wanted to punish a Palestinian village so it destroyed 10,000 of its olive trees [3]. Western Zionist controlled media talk endlessly about the 20 Israeli soldiers still captive in Gaza (calling them hostages). They do not talk about the 12,000-15,000 political prisoners kidnapped [4] and held by Israeli army and being tortured (75 already perished under torture).

The ephemeral Zionist regime added to its long list of international law violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity by attacking yet another country (Qatar, seventh country attacked in the last two years). Somehow US and Qatar “successfully defended” the US military base in Qatar against the Iranian missiles after the US attacked Iran but did not move a finger to defend Qatar against Israeli missiles.

But the primary sponsor of our people’s genocide is the US government which continues to fund, help, and shield the Israeli apartheid regime as it commits the most heinus crimess known in history. All while claiming to want to mediate while giving Israel a green light to kill any negotiations (and negotiators as happened in Qatar). Trump’s 100 word “deal” for the resistance to please his Zionist (Epstein video holders) masters [5].

This US current administration like the previous one is genocidal but the crudity and vulgar arrogance that is exhibited now is beyond belief. The Zionist lobby is using blackmail and bribes to destroy not only Palestine but also US interest for the sake of Zionist fantasies to build a new 21st century colonial power between the Nile and Euphrates.

In the past two years, the world has changed and clearly supporting the genocide is not a winning card so the US “leaders” who succumbed to the lobby are on the wrong side of history. Things are changing. Zionists now try all sorts of tactics. This did not start now but they are pulling all the dirty tools from their history. From false flag operations to labeling human rights activists as “anti-semites” to using legal and financial leverage to crush free speech (e.g. showing support for Palestine Action is considered “supporting terrorism” in the UK) to outright blackmail [6].

None of this seems to make a difference as poll after poll show increase in public support for Palestine even in traditionally well controlled Western Countries [7].

Ordinary US citizens have begged for gun control for decades. At least 20,000 Americans are senselessly killed each year. Ironically, right wing MAGA republican spokesmen Charlie Kirk was killed by a sniper while he was advocating for NO gun control! [8]. While he wrote to fame supporting the genocide and dehumanization of our people [9], he was also beginning to change and challenge the Zionist stranglehold of the US politics and thus we would not discount this being a Mossad hit to 1) silence him, and 2) provde yet another false-flag operation (there are many). The shooter was a highly professional sniper who conveniently disappeared (maybe already back in Tel Aviv).

But times as indicated above are changing. The crime syndicate otherwise known as he Zionist project is unraveling. The signs are everywhere and the US cannot even prevent its own collapse to help stop the collapse of Zionism [10]. There is even “Death of the Holocaust Industry” [11].

Western elites reinvented their ugly racist system of control and sold it as a ‘moral’ cause packaged in Zionist propaganda [12]. But the game is up and even among the elites, things are starting to change. Peter Mandelson Jewish Zionist (Israel first) is now sacked as a British ambassador to the USA following revealed connection to Jeffrey Epstein (Mossad agent who obtained videos to blackmail politicians and business people) [13].

We continue to be inspired by the millions on the streets who are making a difference. We are inspired by by both individual actions like confronting Trump [14] and by collective action like the Hind Rajab Foundation pursuing the perpetrators of genocide [15] and the flotilla of boats headed to Gaza [16].

We continue to be inspired by conferences like the People’s Conference for Palestine 2025 [17] and the Second Palestine Health Alliance Symposium, titled “The Gaza Strip in the Grip of Genocide: Death, Starvation and Trauma”. The symposium will take place remotely via Zoom and is scheduled on Tuesday September 30, 2-4 PM, 2025 Palestine/Lebanon time [18].

We continue to be inspired by the BDS movement [bdsmovement.net].

We continue to be inspired by the activities at our Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability ranging from children programs to volunteer work to the seedbank to field work to publications and community service [19].

[1] https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/east-mediterranean-mena/israelpalestine/worlds-shame-gaza

[2] Perhaps as much as 600,000 casualties so far inthe genocide not 65,000
https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/the-right-to-exist

[3] https://mondoweiss.net/2025/08/israel-wanted-to-punish-a-palestinian-village-so-it-destroyed-10000-of-its-olive-trees/

[4] https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-controls-bodies-minds-palestinian-prisoners-how

[5] https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/exclusive-gaza-ceasefire-proposal-trump-hamas-israel

[6] How Israel blackmails Washington
https://www.youtube.com/live/lGroog6ewJ4

[7] Example
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/29/new-poll-shows-plunging-us-public-support-for-israels-war-on-gaza

[8] Here he is being sniped. https://youtu.be/Cz6tIR-k0k8

[9] https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=758071726851015

[10] See Losing support https://youtu.be/ww3B0u99IAM

Why the American Dream is DEAD. It’s not possible, no matter what you do.
https://youtu.be/2-obt64AI08?si=7JcxIh1iE-xdzQT6

[11] https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/1966118623136854131

[12] https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-truth-about-western-colonialism-unmasked

[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson

[14] https://youtu.be/KHv9G6Bl3-g

[15] https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/perpetrators

bit.ly/3VAF6K1

[17] https://www.youtube.com/live/8yAwocJxas8

[18] To register for the symposium, please use the link below no later than Friday, September 26, 2025:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1tY5J-VbACstkDQklA8az9Dt_Y5RAJDf2nZVouL6fzAM/preview

[19] See our facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/PIBS.PMNH

and do DONATE here https://www.palestinenature.org/donations/

and or volunteer here https://www.palestinenature.org/volunteer/

Stay Humane, act, and keep hope and Palestine alive

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
Professor, Founder, and (volunteer) Director
Palestine Museum of Natural History
Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability
Bethlehem University
Occupied Palestine

12 September 2025

Source: popular-resistance.blogspot.com

By Dr Maung Zarni

On September 1, the International Association of Genocide Scholars adopted a resolution that told the world what it already knows: Israel is committing genocide in Palestine.

The association declared that Israel is engaged in all the crimes encoded in post-Holocaust international law, specifically, breaching the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, to which Tel Aviv is also a signatory (or “state party”).

The UN adopted the convention the same year Israel was established as an independent state, ironically, by perpetrating a Holocaust of its own, the Nakba, as Palestinians call it.

That the association of scholars finding Israel’s acts – the policy of annihilating Palestinians in Gaza – to meet the legal definition of “genocide” comes as no surprise. But what surprises me is the fact that it took nearly two years for this professional society to belabour this obvious conclusion.

Others had done it 24 years before.

As early as September 3, 2001, representatives of international non-governmental organisations and other civil society groups gathered in South Africa’s Durban had called out Israel for its “acts of genocide”.

Five years later, in 2006, Ilan Pape, a world-renowned German Jewish Israeli historian, had begun calling Israel’s actions against Palestinians “an incremental genocide”, not dissimilar to the criminal policy adopted by my native Myanmar against the Rohingya, which my scholar colleague Natalie Brinham and I call “the slow-burning genocide”.

Irrefutable proof

Since October 2023, Israel has capitalised on the Hamas attack to engage in a combination of Hitlerite liquidation of a primarily civilian population and Stalinist-induced famine in the then-USSR, known as Holodomor (extermination via induced famine).

From a scholarly perspective known as “path dependence”, Israel’s policies and actions against the Palestinian people in Gaza were wholly predictable.

On October 7, 2023, upon waking up to the news of Hamas’s violent jailbreak – similar to Jewish inmates’ violent revolt at the Nazi-run Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on October 7, 1944 – I chatted via email with my friend, Professor Penny Green, Director of the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London.

She responded instantly: “It is going to be an apocalypse (in Gaza).” Her expertly projection has proved prophetic.

This January, the Palestinian liberation theologian Rev. Dr Munther Isaac told a visiting delegation of international scholars that “Israel is a terrorist entity built on the Palestinian land by ethnic cleansing of the indigenous populations”.

According to Zochrot, the Jaffa-based organisation that promotes educational tours about Al-Nakba of 1948, the Nakba is “an ongoing process of disfranchisement of the Palestinian people from their land and assets for the exclusive Jewish usage.”

In founding Israel as an ethno-nationalist state, marauding gangs of so-called “liberation fighters” of the embryonic state demolished over 500 native Palestinian villages, 11 cities and roughly 1,000 mosques and churches. These Zionist militia groups, which subsequently became the Israeli Defence Force, perpetrated a series of genocidal rapes and mass killings of unarmed Palestinians in various locations. Deir Yassin near the land-locked Jerusalem and Tantura on the coast are the two most infamous cases.

They slaughtered an estimated 15,000 in the several weeks leading up to the founding of Israel on 14 May 1948. That’s twice the number of Bosnian Muslims (7,000+) mass-executed in Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb troops in mid-July 1995, something which the International Court of Justice ruled as “acts of genocide”.

If anything, the genocide scholars’ official resolution is an attempt to redeem the morally paralysed professional society, reflecting the decisive shift against Israel among the world’s moral majority, including, importantly, in the United States, where 60 percent of Gen Z Americans openly support Hamas over Israel.

On the profoundly moral crisis of the influential Western organisations, the silence of what has been described as the Holocaust industry is most deafening and profoundly troubling.

On July 30, Amos Goldberg, a professor of Holocaust History at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, directed his scathing criticism at a global web of highly connected and influential institutions, including Holocaust museums and scholarly organisations with a specific focus on the study of the Shoah.

He wrote, “Holocaust memory not only failed to generate any criticism of Israel, but it also actively served to justify the genocide in Gaza and blocked any effective critique of it.”

Professor Goldberg’s piece is definitely worth a read for questioning why these Holocaust memorial museums even exist if they are not prepared to embrace the universal fellowship of humans and, perversely, serve as a “discursive iron dome” of Israel.

Here the Hollywood, which has long effectively globalized the Holocaust memory via such box office hit as Schindler’s List, an Oscar winner, is largely complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide. Beyond making box-office hits on the Shoah and Israel (e.g., Munich), Stephen Speilberg has generously patronized the study of genocides, in the form of the USC Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California. But since Israel has unfurled its own Final Solution in Gaza, with unconcealed intent, since 8 October 2023, the critically acclaimed director has gone completely missing. It is as though Never again! excludes Israel’s principal victims of genocide, apartheid and colonial occupation.

And all the while, the Jewish state and its society behave in the same way Nazi Germany did between 1935, when the Nuremberg race laws were adopted and 1945, when the SS were forcing Jewish and other victims on death marches.

It is no longer perverse – let alone antisemitic – to compare Israel and Nazi Germany. Only three days ago, Katie Halper, the American Jewish talk-show host and journalist, released her 12-minutes video-documentary wherein she pointed out the common features of Nazi genocide 80 years ago and Israel’s ongoing genocide in its 23rd month. In the YouTube which has received nearly a quarter million views, Ms Halper showed a videoclip of ex-General Moshe Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of IDF and ex-Defence Minister, openly stating, in Hebrew, that his Israel is pursuing “Mein Kempf in reverse” against Palestinians.

Milking the Holocaust

I remember how quick the iconic institution of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland was in joining other Holocaust remembrance institutions – such as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum – in condemning the Hamas attack on Israel two years ago.

Aren’t they designed to keep alive the painful Holocaust memory while promoting “Never Again!” as a guiding moral light to prevent the repeat of the Nazi genocide anywhere in the world?

I visited Auschwitz four times since I travelled there in March 2017 to make a two-minute video, appealing to Europe to help stop my own native country’s genocide against the Rohingya people.

During the Covid lockdown several years ago, I spoke on the closing panel on genocides – including Rohingya, Bosniak, and Roma – at a conference organised and hosted by the Auschwitz museum and presided over by its director and Polish scholar Piotr Cywinski.

During our pre-conference meeting, the director assured me that Auschwitz is not merely about the past but also seeks to be a force for good in the future.

In other words, Auschwitz was meant to serve as a reminder about the harm that could befall human populations when an ethnonationalist state and Pavlovian public turn genocidal against a vulnerable population.

Alas, Auschwitz and all other holocaust memorial museums worldwide are complete and utter failures in serving as preventive institutions. For they too are anchored in the Jewish supremacy and the Holocaust exceptionalism.

Milan Kundera once observed that “forgetting (of past atrocities and repression) is a crime”.

But he did not live long enough to see that Israel and its appendage of the Holocaust industry have turned an act of remembering into a political ideology, a discursive defence, a (presumed) license to perpetrate exactly the same type of group destruction one has suffered, all in the name of “self-defence” and against the weaker and vulnerable ethnic, racial, religious or national group.

That’s not remembrance, but milking one’s past sufferings while inflicting the same atrocities on a different group.

Dr Maung Zarni is a scholar, educator and human rights activist with 30-years of involvement in Burmese political affairs, Zarni has been denounced as an “enemy of the State” for his opposition to the Myanmar genocide.

10 September 2025

Source: forsea.co

The following statement has been released by the Schiller Institute for immediate circulation internationally. It was written as a rallying call during this period of change and tumult, and individuals are encouraged to endorse it.

At the summit of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) in Tianjin—representing around 42 percent of the world’s population—a new world order has emerged, independent of the West, founded on the principles of sovereignty, non-interference, mutually-beneficial economic cooperation, and peaceful collaboration. It is an event of global historical significance that China and India—the two most populous nations, already representing 35 percent of the world’s population—have now begun to cooperate closely with each other and with Russia. The countries gathered at the SCO, along with the various interconnected organizations such as the BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), ASEAN, CELAC, and the African Union (AU), collectively represent 85 percent of humanity.

The emergence of this new world order is a response to the collective West’s attempt, after the end of the Cold War, to establish a unipolar world under Anglo-American dominance—marked by endless interventionist wars, sanctions, and regime-change efforts—which has ultimately backfired completely. The nations of the Global Majority are now overcoming an era of 500 years of colonialism and asserting their right to independent economic development. This is made possible above all by China’s unprecedented rise, which offers countries of the Global South a model and the cooperation that the West denied them for centuries.

Thus, the world has reached an absolute turning point. We can either continue the geopolitical confrontation against Russia and China, risking a third—and this time final—world war, or we can choose to cooperate with this emerging new economic system. President Xi Jinping has proposed the vision of a “Community with a Shared Future for Mankind,” which he emphasized in his Sep. 3 speech commemorating the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat: “Humanity will either sink together, or rise together!”

It is in the fundamental self-interest of the nations of the Collective West—no longer truly united—to cooperate with the states of the Global Majority and to jointly address the great challenges facing humankind: overcoming poverty and underdevelopment, ensuring lasting world peace, and securing the right of every person on this planet to fulfill their potential.

For the realization of a shared community for the future of humanity!

Sign the petition here

12 September 2025

By Haider Abbas

The much-hyped recent meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump has, by now, seemingly ended in a damp squib. The Russia–Ukraine war (ongoing since 2023) continues unabated, with renewed acceleration. Russia reportedly launched more than 800 drones into Ukraine on September 7, shortly after Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China (September 1). North Korean President Kim Jong Un—an anathema to Europe and the US—was also closely aligned.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi was present too, in what seemed like a somersault in response to US tariffs and penalties over India’s purchase of Russian oil at heavily subsidized rates, effectively making India a “laundromat” for the Russian economy, as described by US trade advisor Peter Navarro. India did not attend the victory parade in China, whereas Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir did. India and Pakistan had previously been locked in conflict until a ceasefire was brokered by Donald Trump—a fact Modi continues to deny. A growing rift is evident between Modi and Trump. Modi reportedly ignored four phone calls from Trump, after which Trump canceled the QUAD meeting in India. In turn, Modi canceled his UNGA visit, where a rendezvous with Trump had been possible. Modi has also remained silent on Trump’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize—a move supported by Pakistan.

Currently, three wars appear closely aligned: India vs. Pakistan, Israel vs. Iran, and China over Taiwan, all taking place amid the raging Russia–Ukraine war. Since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has continued its genocidal war on Palestine, with around 65,000 people killed so far. The US has stood firmly with Israel, while the US, NATO, and European nations continue to support Ukraine militarily. Russia, on the other hand, is strongly backed by Iran and China. India has momentarily distanced itself from the US but cannot afford to break ties entirely, as Washington and Tel Aviv are deeply intertwined. Meanwhile, Turkey and the 22 Arab states have long abandoned Palestine, aligning instead with the US (and by extension, Israel).

These current and looming conflicts must be understood against the backdrop of earlier flashpoints. The 44-day war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2020 saw Turkey and Israel backing Azerbaijan, while Iran and Russia supported Armenia. The war ended only after Russia brokered a ceasefire. Soon after, in May 2021, a 12-day war between Israel and Hamas broke out, which ended in a truce after Putin warned Israel’s ambassador to Moscow, Alexander Ben Zvi, to stop hostilities. Iran supported Hamas, and Russia played a key role in halting the conflict. The common thread: Russia and Iran. This alignment pushed global powers to entangle Russia, setting the stage for the February 2022 Russia–Ukraine war, triggered by Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership—which would have brought NATO to Russia’s doorstep. Azerbaijan remains hostile toward Iran and is almost certain to side with Israel, along with Arab states and Turkey, if an Israel–Iran war breaks out—a scenario that now appears imminent.

The SCO meeting has strengthened Russia–China ties. Both had already agreed during the Beijing Winter Olympics (2023) to support each other’s wars. Over the past two years, the US and NATO have pumped billions of dollars in military aid into Ukraine, though Trump has attempted to place some brakes on this. The US now wants NATO to fund long-range missiles for Ukraine. If President Volodymyr Zelenskyy deploys these against Russia, it could trigger a direct escalation—potentially leading to nuclear war. These ominous signs are increasingly visible on the world stage.

Following the first phase of the Israel–Iran conflict, the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. In response, Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev expressed willingness to supply nuclear warheads to Iran. China, too, has reportedly extended its security umbrella over Iran. Meanwhile, European powers England and France have moved to strengthen their nuclear deterrence by agreeing to coordinate operational aspects of their nuclear arsenals. This step reflects widespread speculation that Russia may retaliate with nuclear strikes if Ukraine deploys long-range missiles.

In its latest offensive, Russia targeted the Ukrainian government headquarters—a major escalation signaling the failure of US and European defense systems. Precision strikes on Ukrainian leadership may follow. Putin is well aware that targeting Zelenskyy could provoke NATO’s direct intervention. Conversely, Zelenskyy may not hesitate to escalate if the opportunity arises.

England has already begun preparing for a possible war with Russia, conducting emergency tests of alert messages across tens of millions of phones. As part of public sensitization, citizens have been advised to stock essential medicines and prepare “go bags” containing torches, phone chargers, warm clothing, blankets, high-visibility gear, jump leads, food, water, snow shovels, and first-aid kits. France has issued similar preparations, instructing hospitals to prepare for treating thousands of soldiers within 10 to 180 days. Medical centers are also being set up at transport hubs to facilitate the rerouting of foreign soldiers back to their home countries.

Another major concern for Europe comes from satellite imagery reportedly showing a fresh Russian military buildup near the borders of the Baltic states and Finland, according to Polskie Radio. The data indicates thousands of Russian troops, aircraft, and naval units stationed roughly 250 km east of Helsinki. If Russia attacks the strategic Suwałki Gap—akin to the “Chicken Neck” corridor on India’s northeast border—it could seize control of the only land route linking Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the rest of Europe. This is NATO’s most vulnerable land corridor. In response, NATO has drawn up a new defense strategy, including a rapid-reaction force of 300,000 troops ready to deploy within 30 days.

Never since World War II have Europe and the US found themselves in such a precarious situation. The question now looms large: Will this spiral into a Third World War?

The writer is a former UP State Information Commissioner and writes on international issues.

References:

1-https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/d01160/

2-https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7784/artykul/3494829,russia-reportedly-eyes-suwalki-gap-satellite-images-show-military-buildup

9 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Atul Chandra

At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin on 1 September 2025, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met and publicly framed the relationship as “partners, not rivals.” Their readouts stressed dialogue on differences and cooperation on development—language that marks the clearest thaw since the 2020 Ladakh crisis.

Two moves gave the reset substance, not just optics. First, India and China re-activated the Special Representatives (SR) dialogue on the boundary question in New Delhi on 19 August 2025, and second, they agreed to restart direct flights and expand people-to-people and business links, after a five-year freeze. These are communications channels that reduce miscalculation and restore some weight to a battered relationship.

This reset unfolded as Xi used the Tianjin summit to push a more assertive Global South agenda—including accelerating an SCO Development Bank—explicitly challenging single-power dominance and sanction-driven globalization. For India, which has long sought strategic autonomy, a functional India–China channel inside the SCO is not a capitulation; it is leverage.

After the 2020 Galwan clash, New Delhi tightened tech and investment restrictions on China, while both sides forward-deployed troops and cut normal political contact. Through late 2024, however, working-level mechanisms (WMCC) and diplomatic engagements recovered modest momentum, including an October 2024 patrolling/disengagement understanding that lowered the temperature in parts of eastern Ladakh. Those steps—and Doval–Wang talks since—made a top-level political meeting viable in 2025.

No one should romanticize the moment: structural problems remain—an $99.2 billion trade imbalance, different readings of the LAC, concerns over water projects in Tibet, and third-country entanglements. But the policy choice before India and China is no longer escalation by default. In Tianjin, both sides re-committed to managing the border without letting it define the whole relationship, and to grow economic ties more deliberately (including flights, visas, and religious travel). That is an ideological and practical pivot from the 2020-2022 freeze.

SCO As a Platform for Global South Coordination

The SCO is no longer a narrow security club. By Beijing’s own data, China–SCO trade reached $512.4 billion in 2024, and the grouping now represents nearly half of humanity and roughly a quarter of global GDP—a scale impossible to ignore. A proposed SCO Development Bank would add an instrument for infrastructure connectivity that is not indexed to IMF/ADB conditionalities and could complement the BRICS New Development Bank—precisely the kind of multipolar finance the Global South has argued for.

For India, this matters beyond symbolism. South Asia’s intra-regional trade is chronically low; regional capital for rail, energy, and border trade infrastructure in the eastern subcontinent (India–Nepal–Bangladesh) and Himalayan corridors can raise productivity for Indian manufacturers and farmers alike. The SCO platform makes it easier for New Delhi and Beijing to co-fund “small and beautiful” cross-border projects that de-risk supply chains without securitizing every kilometre of road.

Context matters. Washington’s new 50 percent tariff rates on most Indian imports—a punitive response to India’s discounted Russian oil purchases—arrived days before Tianjin. That move, accompanied by contradictory rhetoric (from threats to boasts that India might cut tariffs to zero), underlines a familiar imperial privilege: partners are expected to align with U.S. strategic preferences while absorbing trade shocks that undermine their own policy autonomy.

From New Delhi’s vantage point, this is not how collaboration looks; it resembles coercive policy conditionality. India and the U.S. will keep negotiating—Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has said as much—but the tariff episode reinforces a structural lesson: hedging is rational, and over-reliance on any single bloc—Western or otherwise—exposes India’s industrial policy to external vetoes. The SCO/BRICS lane gives India bargaining power it simply wouldn’t possess as a junior partner.

From a developmentalist perspective, India–China cooperation is not an ideological indulgence; it’s a growth strategy. Consider three concrete channels:

Industrial upgrading: India’s path to moving up value chains in electronics, EVs, and capital goods cannot be built on asset-light assembly alone. Selective, rules-of-origin-tight Chinese FDI/tech partnerships, when paired with local content and standards, can accelerate domestic supplier ecosystems—exactly the value-addition challenge India has struggled with under production linked Incentive (PLI). Pragmatic engagement, not blanket bans, delivered East Asia’s manufacturing rise. (This is a policy logic; the Tianjin mood makes it politically easier to execute.)

Trade facilitation and logistics: A serious reset—backed by SCO connectivity finance—can unclog border trading points, standardize phytosanitary rules, and reduce freight times on Bay of Bengal–Himalayan corridors. That pays dividends to Indian MSMEs as surely as it helps Chinese exporters.

Knowledge and people flows: Direct flights and eased visas revive university, think-tank, and business exchanges that feed innovation (AI, biotech, green tech). After years of demonization—and mutual ignorance—structured contact is the cheapest confidence-building measure available.

Managing differences, not denying them

The LAC remains sensitive. That is precisely why redundant communications channels—corps-commander talks, WMCC, and SR-level dialogue—must keep running on schedule, insulated from media theatrics. The October 2024 patrolling/disengagement understanding did not “solve” the boundary, but it showed sequenced technical fixes are possible when politicians keep lines open. The Tianjin meeting reaffirmed that border issues should not define the totality of the relationship.

On trade, Modi reportedly pressed to narrow the deficit and expand market access; Xi emphasized de-securitizing commerce and focusing on development. Neither side will get everything it wants, but both now acknowledge that managed interdependence is better than brittle decoupling that hurts growth and jobs.

The Tianjin SCO was bookended by China’s 80th-anniversary anti-fascist commemorations in Beijing on 3 September, with many world leaders attending. Whatever one thinks of Beijing’s historical narrative, the symbolism is clear: regional security should be regionalized, and Asia will not cede agenda-setting to trans-Atlantic alliances. Donald Trump did not attend this commemoration, despite earlier speculation, which underscores how Eurasian coordination increasingly proceeds on its own timetable.

For India, the peace dividend is internal: relief for the exchequer, oxygen for industrial policy, and room to address agrarian distress, urban employment, and climate adaptation at home. For China, it is external: a less securitized periphery that allows a focus on high-quality growth and technology goals. For South Asia, easing India–China rivalry reduces coercive hedging pressures on Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, and opens space for trade-led poverty reduction. This is how Global South multilateralism becomes material—through cheaper credit, faster logistics, and predictable rules—rather than a slogan.

Indian and international media often swing between alarmist “China threat” frames and rosy “reset” headlines. A class-conscious reading avoids both. It recognizes how border nationalism can be used domestically to obscure distributional conflicts; it also recognizes how corporate media ownership can amplify Western talking points that press India toward security-heavy alignments inimical to industrial deepening. In this view, dialogue with Beijing is not about sentimentality; it is about bargaining power for workers and producers in the Indian economy.

Strategic autonomy in practice

Tianjin does not end competition. It disciplines it. India will—must—modernize and diversify supply chains, and press on market access. China will protect its core interests and its ties with its neighbouring countries. But between structured rivalry and unstructured hostility, only the former keeps peace, stability, and development within reach.

The U.S. tariff shock is a reminder that alignment is not insurance. The SCO/BRICS lane—with a potential SCO bank, revived border trade, and flight links—offers India and China a way to institutionalize predictability while each pursues national priorities. That is multilateralism with teeth, not performative non-alignment.

To paraphrase an old metaphor, it is better for the elephant to dance with the dragon—warily, on rules the elephant helps set—than to serve as a junior partner in someone else’s orchestra. The Tianjin summit and the Modi–Xi meeting reopened channels that can cool the border, restart the arteries of commerce, and anchor multipolar institutions that the Global South has demanded for decades. The task ahead is to turn those headlines into hard-edged policy: time-bound SR meetings, transparent aviation and visa timelines, a concrete SCO banking workplan, and a measurable road-map on trade and investment that raises Indian value-addition while normalizing ties.

Peace is not sentimental; it is planned. The elephant and the dragon have finally agreed to plan it together.

Atul Chandra is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

9 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Andre Damon

Israel carried out an airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha Tuesday in an effort to kill the Hamas negotiators with whom it is nominally carrying out “ceasefire” talks. While the Hamas negotiators survived, the attack killed six people, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, as well as civilian bystanders.

All factions of the Israeli political establishment endorsed the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted about it, saying, “At the beginning of the war, I promised that Israel would reach those who perpetrated that horror. Today that was done.”

The attack on Qatar is the second major act of international perfidy carried out by Israel in recent months. In June, Israel and the United States used negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program as cover to assassinate large portions of Iran’s military and civilian leadership.

The attempt to murder Hamas negotiators exposes, once again, the complete fraud of US and Israeli claims that they are seeking a negotiated settlement of the genocide they refer to as a “war.” In reality, the negotiations are a fiction, invoked by the US media to cover up the fact that the “war” being waged by the US and Israel is merely a pretext to conquer the entirety of Gaza and kill or expel the Palestinian population.

On Sunday, Trump said he was giving Hamas a “final warning” to accept the US-Israeli terms of surrender. “I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!” Trump said. The Hamas negotiators were holding a meeting to discuss the terms laid down by Trump.

The strikes targeted the Qatari capital of Doha and occurred near schools and embassies. Qatar is a key regional ally of the United States, and thousands of American soldiers are stationed at the country’s Al Udeid Air Base.

Doha has served as the location of “ceasefire” negotiations throughout the course of the genocide.

The Times of Israel, citing Israeli officials who spoke to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, reported that “US President Donald Trump gave the green light for the Israeli strike in Qatar.”

Trump confirmed receiving advanced warning of the attack and said that the US had informed the Qatari government that “Israel was attacking Hamas” in the capital. Trump claimed, “This was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu,” adding, “It was not a decision made by me.”

While Trump said the strike “does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” he stopped short of condemning it outright, declaring, “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

A week ago, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said that Israel would seek to murder Hamas members throughout the Middle East. “We are operating across the entire Middle East,” he told reserve soldiers. “Hamas will have no place to hide from us. Wherever we locate them, whether they are senior or junior figures—we strike them all, all the time.”

In May, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya.

In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to distance the United States from the attack on Qatar, saying, “Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.”

In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the strike as a “flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.”

“What happened today is state terrorism and an attempt to destabilize regional security and stability, and Netanyahu is leading the region to an irreversible level,” said Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in a televised address. He added, “These missiles were used to attack the negotiating delegation of the other party. By what moral standards is this acceptable?”

In a statement, Turkey said the attack on Qatar marked the “embrace of terrorism as a state policy,” amid media speculation that Israel could carry out attacks in other countries, including Turkey.

Just hours before the strike on Qatar, the Israel Defense Forces ordered the evacuation of the entirety of Gaza City as it accelerates its campaign to fully occupy the city. Approximately one million people remain in Gaza City, and Israel hopes to drive them to the south, where they will be interned in concentration camps near Rafah in preparation for their forcible expulsion from Palestine.

“I say to the residents of Gaza, take this opportunity and listen to me carefully: you have been warned—get out of there!” Netanyahu said Tuesday.

Last month, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) hunger monitor officially pronounced a famine in Gaza. To date, hundreds of people have already died of starvation and malnutrition, and the number is only expected to climb higher.

Meanwhile, representatives of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and deliver food, said its ships were struck by two separate drone attacks over the past 24 hours, although no injuries were reported. Among the participants in the flotilla is climate activist Greta Thunberg.

10 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja

Western Political Wickedness and Authoritarian Arab Leaders

Evil and insanity are not imaginary but real and happening across Gaza -Palestine and  must be stopped to protect innocent human lives. The Israeli attack on Doha, Qatar with American blessing exposes the mockery of Arab leadership friendly relationships with the US and Israel. Peace was never an agenda item for the Israeli leadership but conquest of the Arab world would bring a “Greater Israel” plan closer to reality. Sinisterism obsessed with unacknowledged motives propels allusion and distortion if the Arab-Muslim leaders knew the impulse of time and history to defend themselves. Shamefully Arab-Muslim leaders failed to protect their people and culture from Western instigated aggression. Comparative analysis often unfolds hidden truths about human nature and its wickedness. The 26 EU countries at Paris (9/6/25), meeting offered security guarantees to Ukraine prospective peace deal but none could ever publicly offer words of wisdom to entrenched helpless innocent people of Gaza, daily bombed, planned victims of genocide, starved and forcibly displaced millions by Israel. Are there any global leaders of human conscience to extend security and protection of life to the masses of Gaza? There is a vital issue of ethnicity and Arabs were and remain colonized by the Western world. Are there any international organizations to help avert the catastrophic bloodbath in progress across Gaza? Were the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Laws just paper-based , dry inked narratives without any power to serve the cause of humanity? How come the Arab-Muslim leaders are nowhere to be seen on this planet to defend the cause of Faith and protect Palestinians from Israeli-American sponsored war of extermination?

The Earth (A LIVING ENTITY) being bombed is the earth given to mankind by God as a “TRUST.” DO YOU NOT SEE IT FLOATING IN SPACE JUST BY THE COMMAND OF GOD? WHEREVER THERE IS A TRUST, THERE MUST BE ACCOUNTABILITY. When evil-mongers and wrong-doers violate the sanctity of the Laws of God, they are held accountable – history tells without any prejudice. This author has walked through the ancient graveyards of so many nations used to claim being the “most powerful” on this earth – dead bones and silent forever and nothing else.  The succeeding generations CURSE them for their crimes against humanity.  THE GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS APPEAR BROKEN AND DYSFUNCTIONAL TO STOP THE INSANITY. The US-Israel have dropped equal to “THREE Hiroshima-Nagasaki” nuclear arsenals on the innocent people of Gaza- Palestine. If you don’t believe in the encompassing truth, just view the real “genocide pictures” presented by Editor Rosa on Transcend Media, September 8, 2025:

[https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/09/genocide-in-pictures-worth-a-trillion-words-66/]

Mike Adams (“Dystopian Nightmare: Ten Unbelievable Things that Will Happen Soon if We Don’t Stop the March of Tyranny and the Enslavement of Humanity.” (Transcend Media), warns of dire consequences to mankind.(https://www.transcend.org/tms/2023/06/dystopian-nightmare-10-unbelievable-things-that-will-happen-soon-if-we-dont-stop-the-march-of-tyranny-and-the-enslavement-of Humanity now faces a critical choice: We either choose the path of total enslavement under an authoritarian, techno-fascist dictatorship, or we choose to instead embrace decentralized finance, free speech, rationality and the rule of law.

Are the Israeli -US Leaders above International Laws and Accountability?

The besieged 2.5 million people of Gaza by Israeli forces blocking food, fuel, water, medicine and bombed hospitals portray clear pictures of tormenting pains, horrors and massive devastation planned and carried out as the global community witnesses in deaf silence as if the masses of Gaza are not normal human beings. The world is not infinite but subject to time and destiny. God, The All Knowing and Merciful has defined the roles and responsibilities of its creations. Would the Western nations hold Israeli PM Netanyahu and President Trump accountable for their insanity against the people of Palestine? The women and children of Gaza cry loud asking for humanitarian help if there are any Arab, Muslim or Western leaders to rescue them from extreme deprivation, starvation and planned extermination. Their cries end-up in deaf silence as no Western, Arab or Muslim leaders respond to their pains and horrors inflicted daily by the Israeli forces. Remember! those challenging the Laws of God are chastised by the Laws of God without exception. Are they waiting to meet the same end as did Pharaoh at the Red Sea? The Egyptians, Qataris, the UAE’s and Saudis and others carry no strength or political value in global context and appear morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt as a scum floating on a torrent of naive puppets and discredited leaders. Please see more:https://realovi.wordpress.com/2025/03/14/howarab-muslim-leaders-betrayed-the-people-by-mahboob-a-khawaja-phd/

Western Leaders Ignore the Consequences of Wrong Thinking and Actions

The former European imperialists sucked out the oil resources from the Arab world and now intend on dismantling the Arab-Muslim world- narrates Dr. Jan Oberg, a peace researcher from Sweden, and former British Diplomat Ian Proud: “The “West” Is Imploding Faster after This”TRANSCEND Media Service: 4/8/25: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/04/the-west-is-imploding-faster-after-this/ The signs are not just on the wall but written in the skies and the oceans too. The entire “western” narrative, its repressive dominance, and its hubris are about to collapse and take many of its established institutions down with it. And the kakistrocratic (aka imbecile) leadership doesn’t even realise it. If they did, they wouldn’t be driving Europe into that giant iceberg.

Watching dreadful apparatus of fire and brimstone, We, the People are horrified by the crimes against humanity and genocide happening across Palestine. PM Netanyahu and President Trump, both leaders lack the moral, intellectual and legal capacity to understand the consequences of their wrong thinking and actions against the people of Palestine. Leadership is an art and it could be improved and changed for the good of humanity. Do intelligent leaders listen to voices of reason and make a navigational change when facts of life warrant an urgent change in attitudes, policies and behavior? The Divine Revelations (the Quran: 40: 21) offer a stern warning to conscientious leaders and nations:

Do they not travel through the earth and see

What was the End of those before them. They were even superior to them in strength

And in the traces they have left on the earth. But God did call them to account for their sins

And none had they to defend them against God.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution and has spent several academic years across the Russian-Ukrainian and Central Asian regions knowing the people, diverse cultures of thinking and political governance and a keen interest in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including:Global Humanity and Remaking of Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution for the 21st Century and Beyond, Barnes and Noble Press, USA, 2025

10 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Atul Chandra and Pramesh Pokharel

Kathmandu is on edge not because of “apps,” but because a generation raised on the promise of democracy and mobility has collided with an economy and political order that keep shutting every door. The proximate trigger was regulatory: the government ordered 26 major social-media platforms to register locally and began blocking those deemed non-compliant, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, X and others. Crowds surged toward Parliament; police deployed tear gas, rubber bullets and, in several places, live fire. By late 9 September, at least 19 people were killed and well over 300 injured. Under pressure, the government lifted the social-media ban and Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli resigned.

The Spark Was the Ban. The Fuel Was Political Economy

It is tempting—especially from afar—to narrate this as a clash over digital freedoms. That would be analytically thin. For Gen-Z Nepalis, platforms are not just entertainment; they are job boards, news wires, organizing tools, and social lifelines. Shutting them off—after years of economic drift—felt like collective punishment. But the deeper story is structural: Nepal’s growth has been stabilized by remittances rather than transformed by domestic investment capable of producing dignified work. In FY 2024/25, the Department of Foreign Employment issued 839,266 labor permits—staggering out-migration for a country of ~30 million. Remittances hovered around 33 percent of GDP in 2024, among the highest ratios worldwide. These numbers speak to survival, not social progress; they are a referendum on a model that exports its youth to low-wage contracts while importing basics, and that depends on patronage rather than productivity.

That is why the ban detonated so quickly. With youth under- and unemployment already high at 20.82 percent as seen in 2024, ministerial churn the norm, and corruption scandals ambient, attempts to police the digital commons looked less like “order” and more like humiliation. The movement’s form—fast, horizontal, cross-class—echoed Bangladesh’s student-led mobilizations and Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya: school and college students in uniform, unemployed graduates, gig and informal workers, and a broader, disillusioned public converged around a shared verdict on misrule.

Facts on the Ground: Casualties, Curfews, and Climb-Down

The event’s sequence is unambiguous. An expansive registration order and blocking decision ignited protests; security forces responded with escalating force; by Monday night 19 were dead and hundreds injured; curfews and assembly bans spread; the Home Minister quit; an emergency cabinet huddle withdrew the ban; by Tuesday, Oli resigned.
Importantly, the grievance was never only digital. Protest signs and chants centered on corruption, elite impunity, and the absence of a credible development horizon. Amnesty International demanded an independent probe into possible unlawful use of lethal force—another reason the uprising hardened from a platform quarrel into a legitimacy crisis.

Migration as the Silent Plebiscite

If one metric explains the generational mood, it is Exits. The 839,266 labor permits issued in FY 2024/25 (up sharply from the previous year) translate into thousands leaving every day at the peak. These are not tourists; they are the very cohort now on the streets. Their remittances—~33 percent of GDP—keep households afloat and the import bill paid, but they also mask a lack of structural transformation in the domestic economy. In a system that cannot absorb its educated youth into stable, value-adding work, the public square—online and offline—becomes the one place where dignity can be asserted. Trying to close that square amid scarcity was bound to provoke an explosion.

A Self-Inflicted Wound for Nepal’s Left

Following Nepal’s four-year IMF Extended Credit Facility (ECF) program, the government faced pressure to boost domestic revenue. This led to a new Digital Services Tax and stricter VAT rules for foreign e-service providers, but when major platforms refused to register, the state escalated by blocking them. This move, which began as a tax enforcement effort, quickly became a tool of digital control, and it occurred as the public was already dealing with rising fuel costs and economic hardships driven by the program’s push for fiscal consolidation. The government’s platform ban became the final trigger for widespread protests against corruption, joblessness, and a lack of opportunities, highlighting that the unrest was less about a “color revolution” and more about material grievances fueled by austerity measures.

That the crackdown and its political denouement unfolded under a CPN (UML) prime minister makes this a strategic calamity for Nepal’s left. Years of factional splits, opportunistic coalitions, and policy drift had already eroded credibility among the young. When a left-branded government narrows civic space instead of widening material opportunity, it cedes the moral terrain to actors who thrive on anti-party cynicism—individual-cult politics and a resurgent monarchist right. The latter has mobilized visibly this year; with Oli’s resignation, it will seek to portray itself as the guarantor of “order,” even as its economic vision remains thin and regressive. This is the danger: the very forces most hostile to egalitarian transformation can capitalize on left misgovernance to expand their footprint.

From an anti-imperialist vantage—one that opposes Northern privilege yet insists on unsentimental analysis—the crisis is textbook dependency without development. Remittances smooth consumption but entrench external dependence; donor-driven governance tweaks rarely become employment-first industrial policy; and procurement-heavy public spending feeds rent circuits more than productive capacity. In such an order, the state is tempted to police visibility rather than transform conditions. That is why an attempt to regulate platforms by switching them off—rather than by ensuring due process and narrow tailoring—was read as an effort to manage dissent, not to solve problems.

What Opposition Signals Tell Us (and What They Don’t) 

Opposition statements recognized the larger canvas sooner than the government did. Pushpa Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) expressed condolences, urged action on anti-corruption demands, and called for removing “sanctions on social networks.” The CPN (Unified Socialist) and CPN (Maoist Centre) statements condemned the repression, demanded an impartial investigation, and linked digital curbs to failures on jobs and governance. These reactions matter analytically because they show that even within mainstream politics there is acknowledgment that the crisis is about livelihoods and legitimacy, not merely law-and-order.

But these signals also reveal the predicament of the left: if its leading figures can only react to a youth uprising rather than prefigure the development horizon that would have prevented it, then the arena will be dominated by anti-establishment and royalist currents claiming to deliver order faster—even at the cost of democratic space.

The bottom line

These protests in Nepal began because a government tried to regulate by switching off the public square. They exploded because that square is where a precarious generation looks for work, community and voice in the absence of opportunity at home. A complete accounting must therefore record both the human toll—19 dead and hundreds injured—and the structural toll: hundreds of thousands compelled to leave each year and remittances that prop up consumption while postponing transformation. With Oli’s resignation and the ban withdrawn, the immediate confrontation may ebb, but the verdict delivered by Gen-Z will not. Until Nepal replaces remittance complacency and coalition arithmetic with an employment-first development model, the streets will remain the most credible arena of accountability.

Atul Chandra is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Pramesh Pokharel is a political analyst and part time lecturer of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University. 

10 September 2025

Source: countercurrents.org