First, a brief history of Kashmir. After almost two centuries of imperial occupation, the British Empire left the hitherto united South Asian subcontinent divided into two countries: old India and new Pakistan carved out of the latter. The new Pakistan was broken up further in 1971 with the bloody birth of Bangladesh. After 78 post-colonial years, some issues remain unresolved. Kashmir, for instance. An overwhelmingly Muslim province, it should have become part of Pakistan by rights, but India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, outmanoeuvred Pakistan’s first Governor-General, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, to prevent this outcome. In 1948, the sage of non-violence himself, Mahatma Gandhi, was called upon to approve India’s use of military force to maintain control of Kashmir. Gandhi heeded the call.

The Pakistan Army was in 1947 under the command of the British General Gracey. The Indian Army by another Englishman. They vetoed any direct conflict. Pakistan set-up an irregular army under the command of General Tariq (a pseudonym taken by General Akbar Khan, one of the few radical nationalist officers in the Army). Akbar organised Pushtun tribesman and came close to taking Kashmir by force. But the unruly tribals were too busy looting shops and nuns en route to the airport that was not defended. The delay enabled the Indian government to occupy the airport and land troops. A cease-fire line was agreed that divided Kashmir. India retained the bulk of the province, Pakistan got the leftovers.

Kashmir remained occupied. It is a sad and bitter tale. The two countries have fought four wars to resolve the problem, but without success. Both are now nuclear powers. Narendra Modi the far-right Indian Prime Minister has gobbled up Kashmir and declared it to be a permanent part of India, going so far as to revoke its semi-autonomous status in August 2019. The Pakistan Army has all but pledged not to use force, but earlier this year a terrorist attack in Baluchistan, which Pakistan attributed to India and itself instigated a tit-for-tat response with a counter-terrorist attack in Kashmir. 22 security personnel and 36 civilians were killed in the initial attacks, while counter-operations claimed the lives of 216 militants. This was followed by a short air war in which Pakistan, flying Chinese fighter jets, got the better of India, equipped with the latest French fighter planes. The Chinese company’s shares shot up dramatically. Both sides claimed victory and nothing much changed.

Six months after the Baluchistan episode, in June of this year, something unexpected happened. Azad Jammu and Kashmir (the Pakistani controlled section of Kashmir) imploded. The Kashmiri people, with women playing a major part, took to the streets demanding subsidised flour, sugar, cheap electricity and a government accountable to them, its composition not determined by the uniformed puppet-masters in Islamabad. A few chanted ‘Azadi’ (Freedom) as their counterparts often do in Indian-held Kashmir. A shaken Pakistan government responded with accusations of ‘treason’. This was an absurd response since Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control can’t be treasonable to themselves. Pakistan responded with arrests, baton charges led by the police, and threats of firmer action unless the Kashmiris came to heel. The media was put under censorship and social networks temporarily closed down. Six weeks later the Joint People’s Action Committee is still mobilising the masses. As Junaid S. Ahmad wrote in the Kashmir Times just days ago:

The Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) did not descend from fantasy, Delhi, Tel Aviv, or the fever swamp of state propaganda. It rose from the ground: from inflated electricity bills, food and fuel prices, unemployment, elite privilege, broken promises, manipulated representation, and a political structure designed to make Kashmiri agency ornamental while real power remains elsewhere.

Yet the same state that lectures the world about Kashmiri self-determination cannot tolerate Kashmiris practicing it in Rawalakot, Kotli, Barnala, Mirpur, Dadyal, or Muzaffarabad.

A Kashmiri who protests against India is useful. He is placed on posters, invited to conferences, wrapped in flags, and supplied with adjectives. A Kashmiri who protests Islamabad becomes suspicious, manipulated, seditious, dangerous. There are good Kashmiris and bad Kashmiris. The good ones bleed in the right direction. The bad ones ask questions at home.

These developments are of importance and offer both the Indian and Pakistani governments a way out. Neither government looks at the problem in a constructive light. For decades now, both India and Pakistan have effectively ignored the views of the Kashmiri people, but the problem refuses to go away. The solution lies in accepting the existence of an Autonomous Kashmir, re-unified, democratic and peaceful, its defence and stability guaranteed by both India and Pakistan and, hopefully, China. It seems utopian given the hostile relations between the two countries, but a solution of the type I am suggesting could bring the hostility to a close. I think the Kashmiris would favour such a solution and the two countries could resume trading and visa-free travel. And Bollywood could be relieved of its duty to make appalling, ‘patriotic films’ in which characters say ‘jai Hind’ (long Live India) every two minutes except when they’re urinating.

Such a solution would undoubtedly benefit Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control as well as the two countries and their citizens. Till then let’s carry on singing Faiz’s great poem ‘We shall See’:

We will see,

we will surely witness

The day that has been promised

carved in stone at the beginning of time

we will witness the day

when the mighty mountain of oppression and cruelty

will be blown away like so much cotton

when beneath the feet of us, the oppressed

The earth will move, will throb and shake

When over the heads of those that rule

Thunder and lightning will flash and roar

And only the name of God will remain

who is all around us and hidden from us

Who is both the spectacle and the audience

And the slogan will rise, ‘I am the truth’ ³

And that means me, and that means you

And God’s own people will rule at last

And that means me, and that means you

We will surely see that day …

I hope so too.

Meanwhile, the pretender’s leadership is facing mounting criticism after her government’s response to the earthquakes was so slow that residents in affected areas were reduced to attempting to rescue victims trapped under the rubble with their bare hands. With anger and discontent rising amongst Venezuelan Telecom workers mobilising throughout the country for a restoration of bonuses and rice growers protesting pre-emptively against talk of abandoning the grain’s national production, the siblings and their military backers should be nervous. Venezuela has a history of extra-parliamentary uprisings, such as the caracazo that propelled Chavez to electoral triumphs in the last decade of the previous century, and the emergence of modern Bolivarianism (now little more than a soiled shirt whose stains are being whitewashed by CIA cleaners). The elected President of the country, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife remain locked up in a New York prison after being kidnapped by the Fort Bragg cartel and others. The only people who died attempting to defend him were his Cuban bodyguards. The much vaunted Venezuelan army stood by and watched. What a humiliation.

In his 1935 novel, Canaima, Romula Gallegos (later elected President of the country) wrote:

And Manuel Ladera explained why he had said that there was no need to say any more: ‘There you have the history of Venezuela: a fierce bull, its eyes covered and ringed through the nose, led to the slaughterhouse by a cunning little donkey.’ To which Marcos replied, ‘There you see. That’s what I call customfitting the shoe. In the school in Ciudad Bolivar they wanted to stick in my head what was written about Venezuela’s history, and I was never able to understand it, and now I understand it completely.

Which of the two cunning little donkeys will take the Chavista bull to the slaughterhouse? The one put in power by Trump, Little Delcy? Or her rival, Maria Corina Machado, who was promised the Miraflores Palace by the Trumpies back when they were flirting with total regime change. That romance was swiftly dispensed with when the scoundrels of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo awarded Machado the Prize to avoid giving it to Trump who had been demanding it non-stop in public. A complete joke. She made the faux pas of dedicating it to Trump, rather than immediately offering it to him. After Maduro’s midnight kidnapping, she attempted to redeem herself and brought the sovereign his desired object, but it was too late. Another joke. Of the two donkeys available, the US has chosen Delcy. Machado was snubbed by Rubio when she demanded in June this year that the US get her back to Caracas to ‘help with the relief efforts.’ The reply was ‘No.’ The New York Times, which had been backing Machado and regime change, was crestfallen:

But the Trump administration has repeatedly rejected her requests and told the opposition leader that she has become a distraction, turning months of simmering tensions into an open breach with Venezuela’s most popular politician, according to seven people familiar with the discussions. Some officials now say it is unclear whether Ms. Machado will be able to repair her relationship with the Trump administration.

This would indicate that the Trump administration is perfectly pleased with the Rodríguez siblings, which makes one wonder for how long that relationship has been developing. We’ve known for a while, of course, that the US had already had its eye on Delcy for some time when Trump and his cronies finally anointed her. What is ironic is that when Chavez was alive and Delcy was working for him, she attempted to cultivate a ‘far-left’ position, saying in private to many people that she thought Chavez was not being hard enough on the US. It’s true that conditions had changed considerably under Maduro, but total capitulation to US pressure is unconscionable by any metric.

Oligarchic rule, backed by Washington, has long been a regular feature of Venezuelan politics. The only systematic attempt to reverse this trajectory came with the resounding electoral victories of the late Hugo Chavez. What he referred to as 21^st Century Socialism was a combination of mass mobilizations and left social-democracy. By 2006, over a million children from shantytowns and villages were provided with a free education; 1.2 million illiterate adults were taught how to read and write; secondary education was made available to 250,000 children excluded from schools because of their social status and nine new university campuses were completed. Not a bad achievement for a government under constant attack by the Wild West governments. The sanctions imposed on the country by the Wild West combined with the absence of a sound economic policy wrecked Maduro after the untimely death of Chavez. The magnitude of the economic crisis dented support for the Bolivarian project. Many economic refugees fled to neighbouring countries. The US deported 146 of them back to Venezuela the week of the earthquake. All of them are reported dead.

The US and Iran’s MoU sits in tatters after the United States began attacking Iran once again, compelling the Iranians to respond by bombing US bases in the Gulf states. Iran has closed the straits of Hormuz once more and made it clear that no further attempts by the US to determine Iranian policies on the sea would be tolerated. The two countries have reached a new stalemate but for how long is difficult to predict. The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, flew to Baghdad over the weekend to report on the latest situation to the Iraqi government. Close to the airport the Iranian FM paused to lay wreaths on the tomb of the slain Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, assassinated by the CIA in 2020. The symbolism could not have been clearer. Iran is not going to give up.

At home this war has made Trump extremely unpopular. An increasing number of US citizens are raising awkward questions regarding US-Israel relations. The Economist’s Editor-in-Chief, while interviewing Tucker Carlson was rendered speechless after Carlson suggested that Israel had dragged the US into a totally irrational war and questioned Israel’s influence on US foreign policy. Millions of Americans struggling to pay their gas bills are wondering the same thing. The effects of the war on the global economy should not be underestimated, nor should the financial costs the imperial hegemon has incurred itself. Operation Epic Fury has failed. Blaming the Europeans doesn’t cut much ice at home. In fact, most NATO Europeans permitted their air bases to be used without which the US would have suffered even more damage. The exception was Spain, which refused to allow US warplanes on Moron Air Base at Moron de Frontera to be used for the moron’s war against Iran.

Meanwhile in Gaza and the West Bank the Israelis carry on with their genocidal campaign. Just today, Israeli bombs killed eight Palestinians in the West Bank, three of whom were children. This brings the number of Palestinian children killed in the West Bank since October 7 to 241 and nearly 1100 people in total. The Israelis continue to insist they’re showing restraint. The land-grabs and killings in the West Bank are ignored by the Wild West and its institutions. The late General de Gaulle once referred to states as ‘cold monsters’. It is an apt definition of the states that have supported, armed and backed Israel unconditionally, unmoved by the tragedies that are devastating thousands and thousands of Palestinian families. In other words, Western civilization is in full bloom yet again, dripping with blood. Its politicians with mask-like countenances lie endlessly while the Palestinian people grimace in pain and despair.

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On the European front where NATO is fighting a war against Russia, the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, a mediocre, visionless politician, has taken to boasting again. He’s delighted that Trump is back on board the NATO warship and has resumed his usual servile and tributary (buying more US weapons) displays with shameless delight. Merz imagines that Putin will now retreat. He and his colleagues in the EU show no interest in serious negotiations. To defend the mess that they have got into in Ukraine, more than a few of them are encouraging fantasies of a Russian invasion of other European states. Firing drones inside Russia is not going to help too much either. They should have realised that when it became obvious that Putin’s droning of Ukraine did not defeat the regime. The Russian Army is moving forward slowly. Choices are limited. A serious, negotiated end to the war and both sides will require concessions be made on both sides or a dangerous escalation is inevitable. There is a growing hawkish section in Russia’s military-political establishment that is arguing for Putin to attack NATO bases involved in supporting Ukraine. Were the Germans to respond with US missiles, then Russia could use nuclear missiles. The Pentagon is aware of all this and will have to insist on a settlement sooner or later. Inside Germany the far-right AfD is growing in strength, as a result partially of the country’s policies vis-a-vis Russia. The party’s leader, Alice Weidel, is arguing that Germany is destroying itself economically because of this obsession with Russia and is demanding a change of course. This demand is popular and Merz and allies can only respond with weak lies and cover-ups of one sort or another. The degree of corruption in the upper echelons of Ukraine is undeniable as is the strong influence of the Ukrainian Nazis. Rumours are circulating that the Germans want to remove Zelensky from office. But the Nazi influence within Ukraine’s ruling elite runs deep. They will insist they play a part in selecting his replacement. Zelensky’s removal therefore might not do the trick.

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Public opinion in all of Europe is opposed to the open support given by the EU (barring Spain) and the extreme centre parties in Britain to Israel and its policies. Labour Britain, in full authoritarian mode, has banned demonstrations and declared a non-violent direct action group as terrorists. Over 3000 of their supporters (average age 55) have been charged under this draconian and crazed law. Taking the madness even further, a particularly unpleasant judge is targeting one of the most brilliant civil rights barristers in England, Rajiv Menon, accusing him of contempt of court for informing jury members of their rights – apparently an unforgivable crime in the UK for which one can be stripped of the right to practice law. Police in Germany and France have brutalised demonstrators marching for Palestine and both in the US and Europe, lecturers opposed to the Israeli genocide are being fired (and Doctors too in Britain). Students are being expelled and deported. The solidarity movement with Palestine has no precedent in world history and has split the Democrats in the US where the Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, has helped to propel young DSA members to victory in the recent primaries. They were elected demanding freedom for Palestine and denouncing AIPAC as a ‘monster’. This is the first time that the Israel Lobby in the US has been dealt such a heavy blow. In the UK, a Prime Minster is being discarded after two years of unwavering fealty to Israel’s genocide tanked his popularity to historic lows. And yet the media and the Party dumping hin will not even whisper the main cause of his spectacular collapse. In France, LFI Presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, is drawing huge crowds and the defence of Palestine is one of his key slogans at impressive mass meetings. The French Zionist outfit, CRIFF, has accused him of anti-semitism. Ironically, as I once warned at a Jewish literary Festival in London a decade or so ago, if the wild and base employees of Israeli embassies carried on denouncing opponents as anti-semites, the charge would lose its effect. This has happened all over Europe and North America. Meanwhile, Jewish support for Palestine continues to grow.