by TABISH KHAIR

Mohammed Hanif’s hilarious page-turner is a witch’s cauldron of bubbling satire in which no one is spared.

I would call it “westsplaining”, if Putin supporters had not already appropriated that term, but then how else can you describe the tendency among Western critics to bundle Mohammed Hanif together with Salman Rushdie? True, there is this nebulous Pakistani-British connection, and both the novelists tend to be caustic about state power and established religion. But Rushdie belongs in the ranks of magic realism, whether or not he accepts the designation, and Hanif is a satirist whose novels can more accurately be placed within the long lineage that is epitomised by Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

Essentially, such novels do not present an admixture of the fantastic and the realistic, as magic realism does, but something different: an exaggerated, slightly warped version of realistic characters and historical situations. This enables them to say things about “the world out there” that would be difficult otherwise, and to do so at a brisk and captivating pace of narration. Hanif’s new novel Rebel English Academy is an excellent example of this novelistic tradition. Maybe one should call it warp realism?

The novel starts with the hanging of Pakistan’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and an intelligence officer, Captain Gul, sent to organise photos of the dead man’s private parts in order to prove that he was not circumcised. Gul’s failure to produce any such evidence gets him banished to OK Town, a provincial outback where the dashing and ambitious officer doesn’t easily get the whiskey and the women he is used to.

In OK Town, we meet the owner of the Rebel English Academy, known as Sir Baghi, a reluctant queer whose old socialist aspirations have transformed—after a brutal encounter with the Bhutto regime—into the infusion of English literature, with its hopefully subversive potential, into local boys and girls competing solely for petty government jobs.

One of his students who has actually made it is the local police officer, A.D. Malang, whose dramatised respect for his ex-tutor would warm the cockles of the hearts of all adherents of the powerful guru-sishya brigade in India as well. Sir Baghi’s “academy”, which is also his living quarters, is situated in a commercial complex built around the local mosque, which is run by his cousin, known to him as Molly. Molly is a devout Muslim; he is also a man who believes that God tempts those he really loves.

Molly’s temptation is Sabiha Banu, the athletic daughter of a trade unionist whose locally renowned photograph with Bhutto has, in these post-Bhutto times, resulted in his incarceration and disappearance. When Sabiha is brought by Molly for refuge in Sir Baghi’s academy, the cauldron is set boiling. Add to it Captain Gul’s affair with his commanding officer’s imperious daughter, who claims pregnancy without having sex with him, and his infatuation with the doughty Sabiha, and a few other believable but often larger-than-life characters, such as the beedi-smoking lawyer-palmist Noor Nabi, throw in the mystery of rumours that Bhutto is alive and coming any day to OK Town, and we have a witch’s cauldron of bubbling, captivating, hilarious satire in which no one, not even Sir Baghi, is finally spared.

The characters of OK Town

Hanif has an eye for situations and characters, and he warps them just a bit to bring out those aspects that defenders of “real life” often want us to overlook: the hypocrisy, the contradictions, the cant, and the injustice of it all. All of it is given to us with a combination of dark humour and occasional slapstick, and in a language that contains various registers but never loses its essentially satiric bite.

Here is one of Captain Gul’s women finally giving him the true report on his much-vaunted prowess as a lover: “What was I supposed to say? You gave me statistics about the Bengal famine to divert attention from the fact that you couldn’t get it up. You called my vagina the Bermuda Triangle and then spent all our time together lecturing me about the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle. When you did finally get an erection in the morning, you couldn’t find the Bermuda Triangle.” The novel maintains this brisk and slightly risqué pace throughout its 315 pages.

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by TAAPSEE PANNU

Taapsee Pannu reveals that OTT platforms only want to pick up films that are box office success

Actor Taapsee Pannu believes women-led and unconventional films are on the verge of becoming “extinct” as there is a lack of support from audiences for such stories.

Pannu, who has seamlessly balanced both mainstream and offbeat cinema, has built a reputation as a dependable performer and featured in a series of hard-hitting dramas such as “Thappad”, “Mulk” and “Pink”.

According to the actor, the battle to bring unconventional stories to the big screen has become harder.

“We are on the verge of becoming an extinct species, we mean films like ‘Assi’. There is a certain template that our so-called commercial cinema abides by and we don’t conventionally fall in that template of sorts,” Pannu told PTI in an interview.

“Assi” is Pannu’s new movie with acclaimed filmmaker Anubhav Sinha and marks their third collaboration after 2018’s “Mulk” and “Thappad” in 2020.

The actor debunked the notion that such films will always find a home on digital platforms, saying that the streamers have shifted their focus to luring “massy” audiences.

“The reality is people think that these kinds of films will keep coming on OTT and we will keep watching it. But no, OTT’s don’t want these kinds of films either. They have clear mandates, that only the films that are working in theatres are the films that they want to pick.

“They want to take that theatre audience to their platform. They are like, ‘We already have this kind of audience, we want those massy pot boilers audiences of our country to subscribe to the platform’, That’s why I say we are on the verge of becoming extinct unless people realise that we need to watch it. Sometimes it’s good to watch reality as well,” Pannu added.

Comparing cinema to a range of cuisines, the 38-year-old actor said that while “Mughlai”, which is the commercial cinema, has its appeal, the industry also needs its “dal chawal”: stories rooted in everyday reality.

She also believes that the habit of waiting for a digital release of a film is “suicidal” for the future of meaningful cinema.

“We should subscribe to all kinds of cinema. Only the audience can help us by going to theatres and watching (all kinds of) films. I hope they realise this before we lose this. Then we won’t have the right to crib that our cinema cannot compete with world cinema, we only make a particular kind of film.

“We have a lot of people saying we don’t make good and rooted stories. But when did you support rooted stories? By sitting at home and watching it on OTT is not how you support good cinema. If you like the film, spread the word, let more people come into theatres.” Reflecting on her journey, Pannu said leading a film to release today feels like a “daily pain” and a constant “battle”.

She believes the scenario changed post COVID-19 pandemic.

Tribune for more

by MICHAEL FOX

Donald Trump has his sights set on Mexico. But his actions harken back to a much older era of the U.S. empire.

Increasingly, Trump has his sights set on Mexico—promising to send in US troops in the name of fighting cartels and advancing a so-called drug war policy. But Trump’s actions harken back to an era of US empire much, much older.

See, Mexico has withstood a long history of foreign intervention by the Spanish, French, and multiple times by the United States. 

In 1848, Mexico lost more than half its territory to the United States. The US states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more used to be part of Mexico. 

Today, host Michael Fox visits Mexico’s National Museum of Interventions in Mexico City, and we look back at the devastating history of foreign intervention in Mexico amid Trump’s threats against Mexico and elsewhere in the region today.

This is Episode 9 of Under the Shadow, Season 2.

NACLA for more

by SADAF SHABBIR

Within the logic of settler-colonial warfare, the womb is a site of resistance and persistence.

In the landscape of modern warfare, the traditional image of the front line is a trench or a barricaded street. In Gaza, however, the front line has been moved into the delivery room and the neonatal ward.

Over the last two years, the Israeli military has executed a systematic campaign against the biological capacity of the Palestinian people. This is not a byproduct of urban combat or the unfortunate result of “collateral damage.” It is a calculated, gendered strategy of erasure.

By targeting maternal health infrastructure, destroying cryopreserved embryos, and inducing a state of permanent physical trauma in pregnant women, Israel is practicing what scholars now define as reproductive genocide.

The infrastructure of death in Gaza

The most chilling evidence of this campaign lies in the rubble of the Al-Basma IVF Centre in Gaza City. In December 2023, an Israeli shell struck the facility, shattering five liquid nitrogen tanks. Inside those tanks were 4,000 embryos, alongside 1,000 specimens of sperm and unfertilised eggs. For the thousands of Palestinians, these were not just biological samples; they were the last remaining hope for a future generation in a land where the present is being systematically destroyed.

The destruction of Al-Basma was not an isolated incident. By early 2025, nine out of ten fertility clinics in the Gaza Strip had been levelled. There is no military logic that justifies the shelling of a cryogenic lab located deep within a residential block, far from any alleged command centres. As the UN Commission of Inquiry noted in its 2025 report, these attacks were carried out with full knowledge of the facilities’ functions. This is the mechanics of the genocidal campaign: the cold, calculated destruction of the seeds of future life.

Beyond the labs, the physical infrastructure of birth has been dismantled. At the height of the bombardment, Israeli forces targeted the maternity wards of Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser hospitals. Oxygen supplies to incubators were cut, leading to the decomposed remains of premature babies being discovered weeks later in abandoned NICUs.

When the infrastructure of care is replaced by the infrastructure of death, the act of giving birth becomes a death sentence.

Demography as doctrine — The colonial fear of birth

To understand why Israel is doing this, one must look at the demographic anxieties that have defined Zionist colonial logic since 1948. In the eyes of a settler-colonial state, the Palestinian womb is viewed as a demographic threat. If the goal is the total control of land, then the biological reproduction of the indigenous population must be curtailed.

Scholars such as Nahla Abdo and Suad Joseph have long situated women at the centre of colonial and nationalist struggles, not merely as victims but as critical bearers of social and political continuity.

Abdo’s work on Palestinian resistance reveals how colonial violence penetrates the intimate sphere; regulating, disciplining, and punishing women’s bodies as part of a broader strategy of control. Similarly, Joseph’s analysis of gender and citizenship in the Middle East demonstrates how women’s roles within kinship and family structures are foundational to the reproduction of the nation itself.

Together, their scholarship reveals a central dynamic. In settler-colonial contexts, violence against women is not incidental but strategic, aimed at disrupting the social and biological conditions that sustain communities across generations. In this way, women’s bodies become key sites through which power seeks to fracture continuity and undermine collective survival.

By ensuring that 50,000 pregnant women at any given time are denied anesthesia, clean water, and basic nutrition, the state is not just killing individuals; it is attempting to break the biological chain of the Palestinian people.

A global history of sterilisation as strategy

This pattern is nothing new. Settler-colonial powers have long turned to forced sterilisation as a quiet, surgical strike against the wombs of the colonised.

Dawn for more

by SANTOSH MEHROTRA

Strategic autonomy and ‘India first’ – both principles that should be driving India’s foreign policy – require India to pivot to BRICS to safeguard our economic interests.

If we are to understand the salience of the aggression on Iran (as well as Venezuela) that the US-Israel combine has wreaked upon the global economy, India’s economic foreign policy makers need to understand the context of the emergence of the Petrodollar System that started functioning in the early 1970s. 

This understanding is essential to India’s ability to respond appropriately today, and protect the interests of India and the global south, of which we claim to be a leader. In fact, if we still take our chairmanship of BRICS in 2026 seriously, this becomes even more important.

The petrodollar system emerges

The dollar emerged after the Second World War as a dominant currency, as it was the only major economy that was left unscathed by war. But by the early 1960s, both Europe and Japan had restored their industrial power, and the US’s old industry could not stand up to their newer factory competition. 

American industrial decline was accompanied by rising trade deficits, and the US began to print more dollars to pay for them. But the Bretton Woods system – created by the Allied Powers after their victory – had also ensured that dollar reserves were convertible into gold (held by the US Federal Reserve). 

However, the US’s industrial decline, combined with imperial military overreach (e.g. Vietnam war), led to further deepening of the trade deficits. By 1971, the convertibility to gold was abandoned by the  US President Richard Nixon. The availability of the US dollar had made it an international currency by then.  

The collapse of the dollar’s convertibility to gold could have threatened its dominance. However, a clever diplomatic  ploy by the US with Saudi Arabia, and later OPEC, only revealed recently, ensured that the Saudis would only accept the payment for oil sales in dollars. The US would offer security protection in return; thus bringing US bases to the Gulf (as in East Asia/Europe). That has sustained global demand for the US dollar as almost all countries import oil, and hence need the American currency. This also enabled the US to maintain huge budget deficits, low domestic savings and massive import surplus – supported by global demand for dollars (which the US could print) as well for US Treasuries – thus, financing US budget and current account deficits.

Economic sanctions: misuse of the petrodollar

Trump opposes de-dollarisation, as this exorbitant privilege enjoyed by the US enables it to maintain imperial power, and impose economic sanctions and freezing of assets on countries across the globe ever since then. 

The US has imposed economic sanctions since the Cold War for a variety of reasons: ideological grounds (Cuba, Vietnam, Libya); counter-terrorism and security concerns post-2001 (Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan); great power competition post-2014 (Russia, China); and increasingly through the 2010s–2020s as a tool of financial warfare (Venezuela, Iran via banking isolation, and Russia under the largest sanctions regime ever imposed). By 2025 the most heavily sanctioned countries were Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela. 

Even India could not escape this as ‘secondary sanctions on third parties’ prevented India from buying Iranian oil from 2019-2026 and forced India to backtrack from its investment in Chabahar port and route to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia. The recent additional 25% tariff on India for buying Russian oil in 2025 is in the same category, however short-lived and narrow in scope.

Damaging Effects of sanctions

A study in Lancet (2025) estimated a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. The study used a panel dataset of age-specific mortality rates and sanctions episodes for 152 countries between 1971 and 2021.They found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic and US sanctions, (but no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions). 

It estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564,258 deaths, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict over that 50 year period. 

That means around 28 million excess deaths, mostly of children and elderly, over that period only on account of US economic sanctions. That alone should be treated as a war crime. This has nothing to do with wars of aggression or regime changes that the US (and West) has together engineered over the years.

India and the BRICS: What should be our priorities?

India is risking global and BRICS isolation by siding with US/Israel (not just on aggression on Iran). India’s economic diplomacy is at the crossroads, because of the foreign policy decisions we are taking without  regard to India’s development imperative and our commitment to strategic autonomy principle, which is the essential plank of our foreign policy. The principle of “India First” requires that we pivot towards the BRICS. We have shown some foresight by reviving the IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa) idea in the last BRICS summit. 

Why India must reassert its strategic autonomy:

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PROGRESSIVE INTERNATIONAL

A 1979 editorial from Palestine Perspectives argues that the Iranian Revolution was a direct response to decades of U.S. imperialism, specifically the CIA-MI6 coup in 1953 that overthrew a democracy to install the brutal, Western-backed dictatorship of the Shah.

Editorial note: More than four decades ago, the journal Palestine Perspectives documented US complicity in the Shah’s atrocities in Iran. Today, the Trump administration reproduces this imperial logic, deployed once again to erase the right to self-determination in the ‘Third World.’ On the eve of ‘Operation Epic Fury,’ the Progressive International republishes the 1979 article from Palestine Perspectives as a reflection on the enduring logic of US intervention across the world.

On August 19, 1953, the CIA and MI6 staged a coup d’état in Iran that led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mossadegh, a popular, modernizing figure, had nationalized Iran’s oil industry, angering US and British oil interests in the region. After the coup, the CIA installed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — the pro-western “Shah of Iran” — who promptly invited the foreign oil companies back into the country. The Pahlavi dynasty was excessively oppressive and used the SAVAK intelligence agency, which was created with help from the CIA and Mossad, to control the population and suppress dissent. The Pahlavi dynasty also existed as a neo-colony of the West, especially the US and Britain. In fact, while propping up the Shah’s dictatorship, Britain exported most of its arms to Iran. Iran’s national resources were used primarily to enrich the Shah’s court and for foreign interests to exploit. 

In 1979, the Shah was deposed following a popular uprising that came to be known as the Iranian Revolution. The Revolution abolished the monarchy and ended the Pahlavi dynasty. The pro-Western Imperial State of Iran was replaced by the Islamic Republic of Iran, with cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini assuming its leadership. The Iranian Revolution reconfigured the politics of West Asia, posing an alternative to the Gulf monarchs installed by the West, and continuing the long struggle in the region for decolonization. Iran’s revolution also meant full support for Palestine and other oppressed peoples in the region and beyond. The founding and continued existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, then, has meant a continuous challenge to US (and Western) imperialism, especially as it is represented by its proxy, the Zionist entity.

These are the reasons the US and its rabid proxy in the region have been trying to destroy Iran since 1979.

Soon after the success of the Iranian Revolution, Palestine Perspectives, the journal of the PLO’s Palestine Information Office in Washington, DC, published a succinct and incisive editorial on the Revolution’s origins, causes, and meanings. Titled “Iran, Third World People and U.S. Foreign Policy,” the editorial comments on the North American surprise, bewilderment, and anger at the events in Iran, arguing that racism and Islamophobia have blinded most people in the US to the root cause of the Revolution – and the deep source of the profound anger many Iranians felt towards the United States. That cause, and that source, was US imperialism and its role in repeatedly and brutally crushing the national aspirations and the desires for autonomy of the Iranian people, as well as all people across the Third World.

As the latest unprovoked and violent joint US imperialist-Zionist attack on Iran suggests, little has changed since 1979. US and Western imperialism continues its monstrous attacks on people fighting for self-determination. But resistance, including Iran’s resistance, also continues. 

As the editors of Palestine Perspective pointed out in 1979, “The lesson of Iran… is that the destiny of Third World peoples can not be manipulated. Not indefinitely.” 

Progressive International for more

by MARIO OSORIO & PEDRO LABAYEN HERRERA

Ecuador is a nation that has weathered years of economic storms and political upheaval. Its struggles are perhaps best illustrated by its rapid descent from an “island of peace” in the 2010s to having the region’s second-highest homicide rate in 2025, behind only Haiti. Yet, for a time, Ecuador represented a successful social democratic project, prioritizing citizens’ welfare over foreign creditors. Today, like much of Latin America, it remains trapped in a geopolitical paradox, needing investment in education, science, and technology to escape the “middle-income trap.” Instead, a succession of myopic leaders has chosen the path of least resistance: maximizing short-term rents through the extraction of oil and minerals.

In a deeply misguided effort to facilitate this extraction, such leaders bind their countries to the obscure investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, either through neocolonial agreements known as bilateral investment treaties (BITs) or through clauses hidden in “free trade” agreements (FTAs). We are told these treaties promote “reciprocal protection.” In reality, they are profoundly asymmetrical, granting transnational corporations privileges that no domestic company or citizen enjoys. Under ISDS, foreign corporations can sue sovereign states, while states have no comparable right to do the same. The result is a clear pattern: both investment flows and the legal claims they generate move overwhelmingly toward the benefit of corporations at the expense of sovereignty.

These lawsuits do not happen in national courts, but in opaque international tribunals generally under the auspices of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an arm of the World Bank. The president of the United States always appoints the World Bank president, who also chairs ICSID’s Administrative Council, the governing body that appoints ICSID’s head. In this rigged casino, arbitrators (often corporate lawyers who cycle through a “revolving door,” acting as judges in one case and counsel in the next) decide the fate of public budgets. Corporations regularly invoke the bespoke construct of “indirect expropriation,” a legal fiction that rebrands legitimate public interest regulation — be it environmental protection or health laws — as a violation of a company’s expected future cash flow. Such lawsuits are not only extremely costly in legal fees and awards, they also produce “regulatory chill,” deterring governments from implementing necessary reforms, including climate measures.

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by CHRIS HEDGES

Gideon Levy believes Israel’s rampant militarism has infected the minds of its entire population. Without an impossible reversal, the Jewish state’s destructive warpath will rage on.

As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran intensifies, the justifications for its outbreak grow increasingly murky, shifting between nuclear fears, regime change, and regional security concerns. In this interview, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy joins Chris Hedges to cut through the official narratives and examine the deeper ideological forces driving Israel’s long-standing push toward confrontation with Iran under Benjamin Netanyahu.

Levy argues that the war cannot be understood purely through strategy or geopolitics, but instead through a deeply embedded national mindset. “War is always the first option, not the last one in Israel,” he explains, pointing to a political culture that consistently defaults to military solutions while sidelining diplomacy. This helps explain why lessons from past conflicts—from Gaza to Lebanon—have failed to meaningfully alter Israeli policy, even when those campaigns produced questionable results.

At the same time, the human consequences have been dire. As the region destabilizes further, Levy emphasizes the sheer scale of displacement caused by Israeli military actions, noting that “six million human beings…were expelled, uprooted, displaced from their homes.” In other words, the war’s impact extends far beyond its stated objectives, raising urgent moral and strategic questions.

Levy goes on to discuss Israeli society itself. He delivers a scathing critique of the country’s media landscape, arguing that self-censorship have infected Israeli “open” society. Levy says the press voluntarily “made Israel totally ignorant about what’s going on on our behalf in Gaza,” insulating the public from the realities of its own military actions.

As the conflict with Iran threatens to spiral into a wider regional war, Levy remains deeply pessimistic. Without a fundamental shift away from militarism, he suggests, Israel risks entrenching itself in an endless cycle of violence—one whose consequences will ultimately extend far beyond the Middle East.

Chris Hedges for more

by SADAF SHABBIR

Suppression of critical voices through the instrumentalisation of religious fanaticism in university systems remains a powerful tool for maintaining the status quo, writes Sadaf Shabbir.

Throughout my four-year bachelor’s program, International Relations was taught predominantly through the lens of Realism or realpolitik, reinforcing hypermasculinity in both theory and pedagogy. Alternative theories were dismissed as inadequate, while religious ideologies were deeply embedded in classroom discussions. Criticism of radicalisation and extremism in Pakistan was often silenced, creating an environment where dissent was not just discouraged but dangerous. As a female student in a male-dominated space, expressing opinions that challenged theocratic narratives or questioned the weaponisation of religion against minorities and women often led to hostility, fear, and personal risk.

During a class discussion, a debate arose regarding the nature of the nation-state—specifically, whether it should be secular or theocratic. As Pakistan is a theocratic state, I expressed my opinion that the state should separate itself from religious affairs, considering how religion has historically been weaponised against gender and religious minority groups in the country. My opinion was met with disgust, and the atmosphere in the room turned hostile. With the class composed predominantly of male students (only 8% were female, who were seldom seen or heard in discussions), I was directly questioned about my religious beliefs. The question was loud enough to draw the attention of the entire class. This was not an ordinary situation; in Pakistan, such false portrayal can be life-threatening.

In 2021, Priyantha Kumara, a migrant, Sri Lankan factory manager working in Sialkot, a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan, was set ablaze by a mob after being accused of removing a poster with religious content from a wall. Most of the men responsible for his murder were staunch supporters of the notorious Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, a militant group that exemplifies the growing infestation of religious parasites in the country. Such incidents cannot be viewed in isolation. Blasphemy in Pakistan operates as an institution, where each heinous act serves as a warning to the rest of society. This vicious cycle of fear politics continues with impunity, often tacitly endorsed by the state. What makes it even more repulsive is how it is now infiltrating higher education institutions in Pakistan.

Two crimes during my undergraduate years left me both petrified and resilient. The first was the lynching of Mashaal Khan, a student accused of blasphemy. The second was the killing of Hayat Baloch, who was a victim of military aggression. The uproar following these killings ignited a sense of unity and hope but also revealed how the suppression of critical voices through the instrumentalisation of religious fanaticism remains a powerful tool for maintaining the status quo.

Not only does a mob mentality exist among the masses, but law enforcement institutions are also complicit in such crimes. Dr. Shahnawaz Kunbhar, a doctor from Umerkot, was falsely accused of blasphemy and killed in a staged encounter by the police in September, 2024. This crime lays bare the fact that religious extremism in Pakistan is not only shielded by law enforcement but also operates structurally within such institutions.

John Mendue for more