#Muslim caste elite

[timetravellingkitty]

I saw something on Twitter about how vegetarian (and specifically UC I think) condemning non-vegetarians for eating meat is casteist but I don't see how? I'm genuinely confused, please explain if possible 😭

because upper caste elites have attached moral purity to consuming only vegetarian food and shaming dalit communities for eating meat (especially beef) cause it makes them impure/dirty. dalits and muslims (who also eat beef) are regularly lynched on the mere SUSPICION of eating or handling beef

[blueiscoool]

1,600-Year-Old Tombs Found in Crimea With Gold and Silver Jewelry From 'Rich Women'

Researchers say the finds are from aristocratic burials between the fourth and sixth centuries.

Archaeologists have unearthed gold and silver jewelry at an early-medieval burial ground near the city of Sevastopol in Crimea.

The new finds indicate that the burial ground — the Almalyk-dere necropolis on the Mangup plateau, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) east of Sevastopol — was for elite members of a society that spread across southwestern Crimea from the late fourth century until the sixth century.

Archaeologists first excavated parts of the Mangup plateau in the 19th century, and it has been systematically investigated since the 20th century. "As usual, this burial ground brought surprises," Valery Naumenko, an archaeologist at V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University, said in a translated statement. "Despite the severe robbery of these complexes, there are things that are of independent scientific interest."

According to the statement, Naumenko and his colleagues are excavating the site along with archaeologists from the Russian Academy of Sciences. (Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, but Ukraine contends that the territory still belongs to them.)

The sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea wrote that the Mangup region at that time was part of the Christian principality of Gothia, which had been established in southwestern Crimea by Goths who had refused to follow Theodoric the Great during his invasion of Italy in 488.

Related: Elite Bronze Age tombs laden with gold and precious stones are 'among the richest ever found in the Mediterranean'

Elite jewelry

The new finds are from two crypts dating from between the fourth and sixth centuries, and the jewelry seems to have been worn by women, according to the statement. The stash included fibulas (brooches), gold earrings, pieces of belts and shoe buckles, and appliqué jewelry made from gold foil that would have been sewn on the collars of garments.

The researchers said these artifacts were evidence of aristocratic burials at the site.

"Most likely, rich women were buried in both crypts where the items were found," Artur Nabokov, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology of Crimea at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the statement, adding that the earrings were probably imported, while the fibulas were made in Crimea.

The earrings are especially ornate and are made from gold with inlays of red semiprecious stones, either garnet or carnelian; while one pair of the fibulas was cast in silver and then covered with gold leaf and inlays of the red stone.

One of the crypts also held a decorated "pyxis" — a container that was made from an animal horn and was used to store cosmetic powders, like blush, the statement said.

The craggy Mangup plateau is dominated by the Mangup Kale fortress, the earliest parts of which date to the sixth century, although it was still in use in the 15th century; and there is archaeological evidence of prehistoric settlements there going back 5,000 years.

The researchers on the latest expedition to the area also explored a Christian "cave monastery" from the 15th century and a Muslim burial ground that was used between the 16th and 19th centuries, after the Ottoman Turks had seized control of the area, according to the statement.

By Tom Metcalfe.

[hussyknee]

hi, i hope i am not crossing a line, please ignore if this is bad question. i am just curious

in one of your posts u said your caste is karava. this is the first time i am hearing a sinhalese talk about caste (i speak tamil and never really felt confident in my sinhala to make sinhalese friends)

can you explain about the castes or tell me where find information about it

Caste is a fucked up concept across the board, obviously, but Sinhalese castes are different from Tamil Hindu in that they involve the cultural and socio-political organisation of the Sinhalese community, and has no connection to religious scripture.

There are thirteen castes that still exist today. We used to be a chiefly agrarian society, so the majority of Sinhalese are Govigama ("Govi" means farming) and they're the kind of "bourgeoisie" of the social order in that few are above them and anyone else is below them. Those that rank below them are castes like Bathgama and Kinnara (who are meant to be agricultural labourers) Vahampura (something to do with making cinnamon or treacle) Navadanna (artisans, especially makers of jewelry) and Rada (launderers). Radala is the caste of the nobility, and afaik the only one above Govigama. They're all from highlands of Kandy, the last Sinhalese holdout against the Europeans for about 200 years. There's no nobility among the lowlanders (between the Portuguese, Dutch and British, they were either killed, assimilated or fled to Kandy) so the Govigama caste is the highest one everywhere else. This means Govigama used to be the only one that was qualified to join the Theravada Buddhist priesthood* and also receive education and job opportunities as government servants—right up until the mid-20th century, when the karava gentry turned into robber barons under the British Empire's demand for cash crops.

Karava people are the majority inhabitants in the Southern coastal lands, which are predominantly Sinhalese Buddhist, as opposed to the Tamil lands of the Northern coast (Eelam really) and the proliferation of sparsely-populated Muslim communities in the rest of the coastal belt. Karava is called the fisherfolk caste by the rest of country, despite their own strong objections. Caste is reckoned patrilineally. I'm Karava through my Dad and I married into a Karava family. Nearly every Karava person I know insists that we're actually the warrior caste and were given the coastal lands as reward for our service to the king. I'm sure there's a legitimate case to be made for this, (this site keeps being referred to me) but I don't care enough to find out because the Karava insistence that being called fisherfolk is a Govigama conspiracy is incredibly funny. I mean, it could be true, what do I know, but so much of the cope and seethe stem from our lingering inferiority complex and resentment at having been treated as inferior until a few decades ago. After being ground under the Radala and Govigama feet along with the rest for ages beyond record, suddenly us lowlanders were rolling in money from our toddy, coconut and rubber plantations, matching or surpassing the wealth of the nobility. We were chasing off Tamil and Muslim minorities to establish our own lost cultural capitals in Anuradhapura and Pollonnaruwa that predated the Kandyan kingdom and making our own sect of the Buddhist priesthood (Amarapura Nikaya) that would ordain Karava people. The robber baron types also got very chummy with the British colonial administration and were awarded cushy jobs in government over the Govigama, who still disdained industrialization and commerce. (To this day my mother's family looks down on business people no matter how rich. Merchants are considered grasping and untrustworthy.) By the time of Sri Lanka's independence from the British in 1948, we had two varieties of equally rich, snooty, virulently ethnonationalist Sinhalese elites who had gotten ahead by selling us out to the British, but with the highland Radala still believing they were too pure-blooded to mix with the hoi polloi and the lowland Karava resentful at being considered the polloi no matter how hoi they'd become. Post-independence, Sri Lanka's adoption of free education and free state universities saw masses of lowlanders, Karava, Durava and Salagama all, sending their kids to university to attain upwardly mobile careers in engineering, medicine and teaching. "If the boy is Karava he's probably in engineering" is a common joke. It's a clear shift away from our rural agrarian roots into urban sprawl and high socio-economic competition in place of social stratification.

We also have a caste of Untouchables called the Rodiya. In ancient times, you and all your family being stripped of their lands and titles and banished into the Rodi Rahaya was one of the punishments reserved for the noble houses that ran afoul of the monarchy. It condemned your entire lineage forever. This was such a dire fate that some would have favoured execution.

Rodiyas were not permitted to cross a ferry, to draw water at a well, to enter a village, to till land, or learn a trade, as no recognised caste could deal or hold intercourse with a Rodiya [...] They were forced to subsist on alms or such gifts as they might receive for protecting the fields from wild beasts or burying the carcasses of dead cattle; but they were not allowed to come within a fenced field even to beg [...] They were prohibited from wearing a cloth on their heads, and neither men nor women were allowed to cover their bodies above the waist or below the knee. If benighted they dare not lie down in a shed appropriated to other travellers, but hid themselves in caves or deserted watch-huts. Though nominally Buddhists, they were not allowed to go into a temple, and could only pray "standing afar off"

(Source)

Allegations of witchcraft and cannibalism aside, the Rodiyas themselves were known to be a proud folk that considered themselves the pure-blooded descendants of the royalty that were punished this way. Here's a Reddit post that expounds on them more, along with photographs. It seems that the strictures against covering up had fallen away between the turn of the 20th century and the '70s. Not much is known about their current living conditions, but I believe that, like India's own Untouchables and the low caste of Eelam's Tamil Hindus, they must have converted to Christianity to escape the stigma.

Casteism is still somewhat of a problem in the Sinhalese community, but it's lessening every generation. My maternal grandparents weren't entirely happy about my mother marrying my Karava father but conceded because he was an engineer with a stable career. My older cousin had to fight his Karava family to marry his school sweetheart because she was both poor and Bathgama caste (I think "Padu" might be a derogatory name for it). The fact that he succeeded is noteworthy because it would have been a huge scandal in my parents' time. The Radalas are still a bunch of insular dipshits who try to keel over and die if one of them tries to marry out. But many of them are also migrating abroad so Idk if it's too much to hope that they leave the caste shit behind when they assimilate into Western society. It certainly hasn't worked for the Brahmin Indians. But the outlook is better for the rest of us.

*There is no caste system in Buddhism. The Buddha in fact was an egalitarian social reformer who advocated against the Vedic caste system and ordained Untouchables as well as women. So obviously the Theravadin priesthood of Sri Lanka, that bastion of the Buddha's Word, would make sure that only high caste men could ever be ordained. Love the fact that the Karava social revolution just made sure they had their own sect instead of, y'know, pushing for anything more equitable. I always say that if we really want to protect Buddhism we have to abolish the Sinhalese.

[readingthenight]

The worst cities in India poll really made me think about Ahmedabad, where I spent a decade of my life, went to school, turned 18, and why it's the worst city in India.

1. It is genuinely the most communally and economically segregated city in India. Muslim residents are forced into ghettoes and all economic opportunities and real estate is seized by upper caste Hindus and Jains. I went to a school in the Hindu part of Ahmedabad and had one Muslim classmate the whole time. There was no Eid holiday.

2. Ahmedabad has a truly vile history of Anti-Muslim pogroms. The 2002 genocide was so horrific beyond words that I don't think there's been that kind of mass destruction in the country except for the Partition.

3. Ahmedabad and its residents facilitate and support Modi, Shah, and the BJP - much of their power came from Ahmedabad, and they are now trying to make UP what Gujarat is.

4. Alcohol is prohibited because Gandhi was born there. This has led to an underground bootlegging culture which disproportionately affects economically disadvantaged populations and leads to many deaths due to spurious alcohol. Also makes for one hell of a boring city.

5. Speaking of Gandhi, the whole city is obsessed with him, and there's a whole tourism economy dedicated to him with no reflection on his racism, casteism, and r*pe.

6. Speaking of tourism, there is absolutely nothing to do or see in the city. It truly has erased whatever culture it had to begin with.

7. This is because the culture is dominated by UC Hindus and Jains and caters to their preferences. Of course it's boring. While they drink alcohol at house parties, the working class folks have to follow rules which of course don't apply to the rich. Restaurants in other cities have alcohol menus, Ahmedabad restaurants have no onion no garlic menus.

8. Unless you study commerce or medicine, there is absolutely nothing for you here in terms of career prospects. Forget trying to stay in Ahmedabad if you studied humanities, because the city has killed the prospect of communities around the arts.

9. There is a very hostile attitude towards non-vegetarian food - I've been told my house smells like fish, I probably eat anything etc etc. Housing communities are illegally "pure veg". Also for everything that gets said about it being safe....try wearing a dress and going out. There is no non veg street food. Food courts don't serve non veg food. This is not normal.

10. Even the "liberal" circuit is painfully elite and gatekeepy.

[eretzyisrael]

by Phyllis Chesler

Every Jew, both inside and outside of Israel, has been held hostage for 40 days. In the Holy Land, Israelis—Jews, Christians, Muslims and Druze—have been bombed, kidnapped, tortured, murdered, forced into bomb shelters and cast into internal exile.

Because Israel has dared to fight back, Jews around the world are being “punished” for Israel’s alleged “crimes.” Jews everywhere are being verbally harassed, demonized, threatened, physically attacked and sometimes murdered. Visibly Jewish students no longer feel safe in their classrooms, at gatherings or on the street in Europe, the United States, Canada and beyond.

The Jewish state was created to protect Jews from their 2,000-year-old vulnerability to pogroms and genocide while in exile. The existence of that very state is now being used as the excuse for a monstrous “intifada” against all Jews in the West. It is driven by the lethal propaganda against Israel that has been disseminated for at least 60 years. It may take that long to drain this swamp of lies.

But, as ever, this is far bigger than the Jews.

Right now, more than one billion Westerners are being surrounded on their streets and in the media by the war cries of “Allahu Akbar.” Everyone, everywhere has been held psychologically and often physically hostage by the “globalized jihad.”

Traffic has been stalled. Visible Jews have been physically attacked. Anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian rallies, marchers and random ranting individuals have frightened or attacked passengers on buses and trains with their aggressive propaganda.

When will the West wake up to the fact that we and our way of life are under siege?

From both a jihadist and Western leftist point of view, killing the Jews will redeem the West’s sins of racism, imperialism, colonialism and slavery. Indoctrinated Westerners refuse to acknowledge that the West is not the only or even the major sinner in world history.

Muslim countries have a very long history of gender and religious apartheid, anti-black racism and black slavery, imperialism, colonialism, conversion via the sword and more. I doubt that destroying the only democracy in the Middle East—Israel—will liberate Muslim women from being forcibly veiled or honor-killed.

Western “useful idiots” refuse to understand that all the crimes attributed only to Israel are actually crimes that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have alone and continuously committed.

Psychologically speaking, the media, college professors, the United Nations and the surging swarms in the streets have projected the atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists onto Jews and the Jewish state.

For decades, decent people, Jews and non-Jews, have been bombarded with slogans like “Death to the Jews,” “Nazi Israel,” “Hitler did not get the job done,” “Zionists are criminals” and every other hideous libel one can imagine. We have been subjected to non-stop lies in the elite media. Whatever Hamas terrorists tell journalists is reported as fact. Whatever instantly verifiable footage the IDF shows is reported as “Israel says.”

Imagine the psychological and traumatizing effect that such non-stop hatred has on all Westerners.

What must we do? In the short run, President Joe Biden must stop appeasing and funding Iran—the main supporter and financier of global jihad.

If we don’t act, they will come for all of us sooner rather than later. Israel alone cannot be expected to fight the battle for Western civilization.

[richincolor]

We've got five different books on our radar this week! Which ones have caught your eye?

Kindling by Traci Chee HarperCollins

Once, the war was fought with kindlings—elite, magic-wielding warriors whose devastating power comes at the cost of their own young lives. Now, the war is over, and kindlings have been cast adrift—their magic outlawed, their skills outdated, their formidable balar weapons prized only as relics and souvenirs. Violence still plagues the countryside, and memories haunt those who remain. When a village comes under threat of siege, it offers an opportunity for seven kindlings to fight one last time. But war changed these warriors. And to reclaim who they once were, they will have to battle their pasts, their trauma, and their grim fates to come together again—or none of them will make it out alive.

Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School by Tiffany Jewell Versify

From preschool to higher education and everything in between, Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School focuses on the experiences Black and Brown students face as a direct result of the racism built into schools across the United States. The overarching nonfiction narrative follows author Tiffany Jewell from early elementary school through her time at college, unpacking the history of systemic racism in the American educational system along the way. Throughout the book, other writers of the global majority share a wide variety of personal narratives and stories based on their own school experiences. Contributors include New York Times bestseller Joanna Ho; award winners Minh Lê, Randy Ribay, and Torrey Maldonado; authors James Bird and Rebekah Borucki; author-educators Amelia A. Sherwood, Roberto Germán, Liz Kleinrock, Gary R. Gray Jr., Lorena Germán, Patrick Harris II, shea wesley martin, David Ryan Barcega Castro-Harris, Ozy Aloziem, Gayatri Sethi, and Dulce-Marie Flecha; and even a couple of teen writers! Everything I Learned About Racism I Learned in School provides young folks with the context to think critically about and chart their own course through their current schooling—and any future schooling they may pursue.

Snowglobe by Soyoung Park & translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort Delacorte Press

In a world of constant winter, only the citizens of the climate-controlled city of Snowglobe can escape the bitter cold—but this perfect society is hiding dark and dangerous secrets within its frozen heart. Enclosed under a vast dome, Snowglobe is the last place on Earth that’s warm. Outside Snowglobe is a frozen wasteland, and every day, citizens face the icy world to get to their jobs at the power plant, where they produce the energy Snowglobe needs. Their only solace comes in the form of twenty-four-hour television programming streamed directly from the domed city. The residents of Snowglobe have fame, fortune, and above all, safety from the desolation outside their walls. In exchange, their lives are broadcast to the less fortunate outside, who watch eagerly, hoping for the chance to one day become actors themselves. Chobahm lives for the time she spends watching the shows produced inside Snowglobe. Her favorite? Goh Around, starring Goh Haeri, Snowglobe’s biggest star—and, it turns out, the key to getting Chobahm her dream life. Because Haeri is dead, and Chobahm has been chosen to take her place. Only, life inside Snowglobe is nothing like what you see on television. Reality is a lie, and truth seems to be forever out of reach. Translated for the first time into English from the original Korean.

Hope Ablaze by Sarah Mughal Rana Wednesday Books

All My Rage meets The Poet X in this electric debut that explores a Muslim teen finding her voice in a post-9/11 America. Nida has always been known as Mamou Abdul-Hafeedh’s niece - the poet that will fill her uncle’s shoes after he was wrongfully incarcerated during the war on terror. But for Nida, her poetry letters are her heart and sharing so much of herself with a world that stereotypes her faith and her hijab is not an option. When Nida is illegally frisked at a Democratic Senatorial candidate’s political rally, she writes a scathing poem about the politician, never expecting the letter to go viral weeks before Election Day. Nida discovers her poem has won first place in a national contest, a contest she never entered, and her quiet life is toppled. But worst of all, Nida loses her ability to write poetry. In the aftermath of her win, Nida struggles to balance the expectations of her mother, her uncle, and her vibrant Muslim community with the person she truly wants to be. With a touch of magic and poetry sprinkled throughout, Sarah Mughal Rana's Hope Ablaze is heartbreaking, often funny, and ultimately uplifting, not only celebrating the Islamic faith and Pakistani culture, but simultaneously confronting racism and Islamophobia with unflinching bravery.

Tender Beasts by Liselle Sambury Margaret K. McElderry Books

Sunny Behre has four siblings, but only one is a murderer. With the death of Sunny’s mother, matriarch of the wealthy Behre family, Sunny’s once picture-perfect life is thrown into turmoil. Her mother had groomed her to be the family’s next leader, so Sunny is confused when the only instructions her mother leaves is a mysterious “Take care of Dom.” The problem is, her youngest brother, Dom, has always been a near-stranger to Sunny…and seemingly a dangerous one, if found guilty of his second-degree murder charge. Still, Sunny is determined to fulfill her mother’s dying wish. But when a classmate is gruesomely murdered, and Sunny finds her brother with blood on his hands, her mother’s simple request becomes a lot more complicated. Dom swears he’s innocent, and although Sunny isn’t sure she believes him, she takes it upon herself to look into the murder—made all the more urgent by the discovery of another body. And another. As Sunny and Dom work together to track down the culprit, Sunny realizes her other siblings have their own dark secrets. Soon she may have to preserve the family she’s always loved or protect the brother she barely knows—and risk losing everything her mother worked so hard to build.

[the-queerview]

Churails (2020)

by Asim Abbasi

Churails is a pakistani drama web series directed by Asim Abbasi for the indian entertainment channel Zindagi.

The series deals with four maincharacters, Zubaida, who is a college student and a secret boxer, who lives with her muslim, conservative family.Sara, who is a rich housewife of a politcian and an ex lawyer, Jugnu, an elite wedding planner and Batool, who just currently was released out of prison for killing her husband with an iron. Those four women connect trough different circumstances after Sara finds out her husband Jamil was cheating on her. She starts a burka store called halal designs, which runs undercover a cheating husband exposing bizniz. They find a time of other women for their bizniz and together they deal with their intense cases, one including a cannibal housewife. Together they are Churails, which means witches in urdu. چڑیل

The pace of the series is very fast. Many unexpected and expected stories happen under the churails. I haven't seen a show in a while with such intense story telling. Within short time as an audience you develop a good base of the character development. There is trans representation within the show and even LESBIANS.

Besides the complex society and class rules within their life and the personal dramas intertwined, the series is also dealing with colonial past, lgbtqia* issues, misogyny and racism within pakistani society ( I assume? I never been to Pakistan, so I can't tell actually, but within this show all those struggles are addressed) Abbasi said about including baby doll : "The fact that she’s transgender is not addressed on the show and that is deliberate. It’s not that I was overlooking her identity or ashamed of it. It was to show the women coming to the agency were all equal.” The title of the show literally translates to mean witches, but is more commonly used as an insult for rebellious women. “The associations of women who don’t conform with witchcraft is a global phenomenon, but in Pakistan specifically, any woman who is sexually and emotionally liberated, who has the ability to be aggressive when threatened is called a churail. We are taking it as a badge of honour.”

I love this show a lot, since besides those awful and heartbreaking stories, the main reason to watch this show are the amazing female characters, the friendship between those women and their will to fight injustice. They are kind of superheros I would say. Also I was very surprised by a positive depicition of men, who are part of the churails and help them to solve their cases, to do something right. I think it's important to show solidarity between gender depictions within a tv show for a possible utopia? Like call me out if I'm wrong but usually its women* playing supportive roles in a all men cast, we saw it many many times. But here the guys are the enemies, but as well there are supportive characters? So show a different path to follow.

Unfortunately the show was banned in Pakistan and many celebrities voices their anger about the canceling of the show.

Considering writing about this show, since it's not made by a queer of female director I had my issues. After researching deeper into the revolutionary cloud of this show, i find out its the first lesbian on screen show ever in Pakistan. in an interview with the guardian Abbasi said: “While we aren’t where we should be in terms of diversity, we have to start somewhere and adaptations are culturally rich,” said Abbasi. “You could say that Churails should have been made by a woman, but those opportunities aren’t there for women in Pakistan yet so I want to be an ally so their stories can be told.”

So I hope you guys forgive me, but I feel like it's worth to see all those actresses and this amazing story and yeah we are all in this together. <3 Cuz at the end of the day, i love the power of image making. I learn trough visual language about language ( literally speaking three languages daily I need to see a picture in my head if you talk to me).

Also I promise for my next review to write about a kazakhstani film, since i feel like many things in the show I couldn't understand out of lack of cultural knowledge, so it's time to write about something that I might be able to understand. And still I think it's very important to show my chapeau for this show. What a ride. Literally i was crying like many times. The actresses and actors were out of league. Like I was actually waiting daily from my moneyjobs to come home to see what the churails are fighting next.

ok by

cheery,

the queeeerview heheheh

[disruptiveempathy]

For international readers: Indian politics is often portrayed as a simple picture of ‘Hindu majority thinking’ against ‘religious minorities’, especially Muslims. The BJP portrays itself as representing the ‘Hindu majority’ while accusing the opposition of representing only Muslims. This image is deceptive for several reasons. The simple opposition between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ has served Western media and academics well in the face of their own political investment in Islamophobia. Islamophobia is not only a domestic strategy—it has also allowed Modi to forge closer ties with Israel and successive U.S. administrations. While the majority of the Indian population belongs to the lower castes and comes from all religions, the upper caste minority controls the judiciary, the police, the army, the bureaucracy, the media, and the academic institutions. The existence of the upper-caste minority is often treated as a harmless cultural idiosyncrasy by international academics and media. One gets a sense that elite Western voices assume for themselves a default upper-caste identity when they try their hand at interpreting Indian society and politics. There are upper-class solidarities that resonate across international borders—Western journalists and academics mentally transpose themselves from their own elite positions to the upper castes (whether Hindu, Muslim or Sikh) of India. Therefore, as is the case with those domestic Indian elites whose positionality they assume, the international set rarely interacts with or troubles themselves with the concerns of the lower castes of India. As is so often the case across world discourse and media, it is the lives and concerns of the ruling classes that dominate. Consequently, international commentators fail to understand the underlying dynamics of Indian elections.

—Reghu Janardhanan, from "Elections in India: Caste, Islamophobia and Social Revolution," in Protean Magazine

[nicklloydnow]

“Today there is a state that, with a bit of challenging hyperbole, offers some interesting analogies to ancient Sparta. This state is Israel. Let's see what these analogies are, trying to present them in a parallel chronological order.

Just as post-Mycenaean Sparta was created by a massive Dorian migration, the new Israel came into being as a result of some fifty years of Jewish relocation there. Both displacements of peoples were the effect of two immense geopolitical upheavals: the Hellenic Middle Ages and World War II. Both the Dorians and the Jews had to fight, the former to conquer the new settlements, the latter to take back their ancestral homeland.

Once the situation was stabilized, the Spartiates created their own system divided into castes, while the Israelis guaranteed equal rights to the Muslim population, preventing at the same time the return of the Arabs who had fled in 1948: this because such a mass return would mean, sic et simpliciter, the end of Israel through its demographic destruction.

Surrounded by enemies and with a fragile internal balance, Sparta transformed the ruling caste into a collective warrior elite. Similarly, Israel was born and developed as a nation in arms, capable of mass mobilization in a very short time. In both peoples the brotherhood of arms has helped to cement equality and internal democracy (internal to the supreme caste the Spartan one, more collective the Israeli one).

Last but not least, both the ancient and the modern nation have found themselves having to be one of the spearheads in the eternal conflict between Western Civilization and the autocratic Eastern masses. The fact that these masses before identified themselves with an absolute God-King and today with a religion that claims world domination and rejects the very concepts of freedom and democracy changes little: geopolitics is the daughter of both geography and anthropology, therefore the enemies of the West remain essentially the same, just as the content of a bottle does not change even if the label is changed.

In this brief historical-geopolitical journey of ours, we have analyzed some curious similarities between two state realities that apparently could not seem more different: ancient Sparta and contemporary Israel. Many will find this parallel academic, if not opportunistic. However, it remains undeniable that, in its own way, today's Jewish state has similarities with the homeland that was once Leonidas'.

All the more reason for any Westerner to defend it to the hilt.” - Fabio Bozzo, ‘Israel: a new Sparta?’

“Brooks Adams prefaced his classic study of civilization and decay with the observation that conscious thought plays an exceedingly small part in molding the fate of men. “At the moment of action the human being almost invariably obeys an instinct, like an animal; only after action has ceased does he reflect.” For Israel the moment of action is now, the instinct is self‐preservation, and the time for reflection is yet to come.

When Israelis speak of the future, they generally mean what will happen tomorrow, next week next month. This is true of statesmen and publicists, as it is of the general public. There is no lack of forecasts, but little that rises to the level vision. Political leaders deal in ad hoc solutions to today's (and often, yesterday's) issues. The future will have to wait its turn.

(…)

Ben Gurion was, as events have shown, a premature Cassandra. True to the prophetic tradition, he was giving answers to questions which had not yet been asked. His June, 1967, warnings became relevant only in October, 1973, with the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath. Today, the nearly total diplomatic isolation of Israel, the resurrection of Arab claims to national rights in the entire area of mandatory Palestine, and the readiness of many in the West to bargain away interests of vital importance to Israel have raised, for the first time since the darkest days of Israel's war of independence, the very question of the future of Israel as an independent state.

Certain basic facts of national life obviously need to be reassessed. The increase in strength the Arab world, combining economic muscle with national‐religious fanaticism, and backed by the logistic capacity of the Soviet arsenal, has already affected the global balance of power, let alone the regional one. Perhaps its most significant immediate influence on Israel's military posture in terms of the morale of its foe: Israel today faces an enemy that enjoys a degree of self‐confidence that it never knew before, combined with the motivation that comes with a belief in its cause and in the inevitability of its victory. Loss of life irrelevant, as is loss of equipment, as long as the Soviet Union is prepared to make good the needs in matériel created by renewed hostilities. The major change in Israeli thinking has been with regard to the estimate of the enemy's potential.

There has been no change with regard to the estimate of the enemy's intentions: It is assumed that those intentions remain, as they have since Israel's creation, the destruction of the Jewish State. For this the address of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian terrorist leader, before the U.N. General Assembly, provides ample confirmation.

A realistic awareness of the growth of the power of the Arab world has not shaken confidence Israel's military superiority. Another war, in whose inevitability there seems to be general agreement, will bring another Israeli victory, costlier perhaps than its predecessors, but no less (and no more) conclusive. On this subject there is no end of reassurance from those who should be in a position to know, both in Israel and abroad. The unanswered question is, what happens then?

Some see this as the pattern of the future for as long in time as it is worth speculating. There will be an endless series of wars, the lag between them determined by the time required for the Arabs to re‐equip and prepare for the coming round. A small minority accepts the possibility of defeat, to which there are two answers.

One is summed up in the word Masada, a suicidal last stand that would satisfy national honor and redeem the memory of the millions of European Jews who were led to slaughter in the Nazi Holocaust. The other answer assumes that in an extremity the means would be available that would be adequate to the circumstances. On the basis of information in the public domain, the possibility of an atomic Armageddon would seem to he a real one, thus forcing the Arabs to reassess the cost that they would be prepared to pay for the privilege of destroying Israel. There is some indication that such a reassessment may have indeed been undertaken in certain of Sadat's (…)

As answers to the possibility of defeat, Masada and Armageddon are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they have a great deal in common. Desperation, however, is a luxury Israel cannot afford, nor can it serve as a guide to the determination of national policy. Nevertheless, there is some small corner of the mind in which such visions of the Apocalypse are lodged, blocked out from consciousness by their very unthinkability.

Jewish tradition tells us that problems can have a natural or a miraculous solution. To the never‐ending Arab‐Israeli wars, Masada and Armageddon are natural solutions. The miraculous solution is peace. Israel's acceptance by its neighbors remains the cardinal national objective, but its realization would appear to require time of Messianic dimensions. Still, it is sometimes an imperative of realism to seek the impossible.

War and another inconclusive victory are the immediate prospects. Masada, Armaeddon, peace— these define the limits of historical time. Israel lives in that broad range of possible futures that stretch from the here and now to the end of days. And all press into the present at one and the same time.

(…)

It is to be expected that in any garrison‐state society the army will have a dominating political role. In Israel, however, this is apt to be less than might he anticipated. First of all, Israel has been in a virtual state of siege since its independence, and the change as a result of the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath is one of degree rather than of kind. Second, in a state in which the army impinges to such a great extent over such an extended period of time on every facet of society, the society is affected, but so is the army. The Israel defense forces have never constituted a professional elite, divorced from a distinct caste, removed from other decision‐making and opinion‐farming elites. Israel is a nation in arms more than any other in modern history. The Jeffersonian ideal of every citizen a soldier and every soldier a citizen, realized in Israel to a much greater extent than it ever was in Jeffersonian America, makes of military participation in politics something very different than it has been in, say, France or Germany—or even contemporary America.

Nor is there reason to anticipate a breakdown of parliamentary democracy in a Spartan Israel. A continued period of tension is likely to cement further the basic national consensus. Its Achilles' heel has always been the necessity to make decisions on matters on which consensus does not exist and in which any decision is unacceptable to substantial segments of the population (such as territorial concessions, for example). Under siege conditions, decisions need not he made, as options are closed. The result is, on the one hand, immobility and, on the other, a high degree of stability in government, both of which have been characteristic of Israel in the past and will continue in the foreseeable future. A Government of national unity seems a distinct possibility, representing both a response to the demand for a heightened solidarity and the absence of significant issues demanding decision in matters over which the political parties differ fundamentally.

The importance of solidarity and the passage of time itself may help to close the social gap separating Israelis of European and non‐Europe origin, the most significant cleavage in contemporary Israeli society. Generally, it may he safe to assume that equality and fraternity will do better in a Spartan society than liberty. In Israel, however, basic freedoms do not appear to be in any significant danger, beyond those limitations imposed, as Holmes observed, “as long as men fight.” The pluralistic nature of Israeli society inhibits the denial of the right of political dissent, at least for those within the national body which in Israel is virtually coterminous with the society itself. However, tolerance for fringe groups beyond the pale is likely to diminish.

Israeli policy in the occupied areas of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may be severely tested by future developments. This has been, in many respects, the most liberal military occupation in contemporary history. It has been based on keeping the peace by making it to the advantage of the local Arab population. Economic prosperity and the lack of reasonable expectation of political change have been far more important in the preservation of order and the prevention of hostile activities against the occupation forces than has the direct application of military force.

The creation of Israeli settlements in the occupied areas has been part of the general conception underlying official policy. The settlements, located along the Jordan and south of Gaza, protect basic strategic interests, without seriously intruding into Arab populated areas. (The one major exception, Kiryat Arha, near Hebron, was not the result of official initiative but rather a concession to the political pressures of coalition politics.) By blocking off possible invasion routes, the settlements make the annexation of areas densely populated by Arabs unnecessary. Wildcat settlement attempts by Jewish nationalist groups within Arab‐populated areas have been dealt with sternly and decisively.

Thus, both occupation and settlement policy have been designed to preserve security interests while keeping open options for a compromise solution. Possible economic difficulties and a fluid political situation could seriously threaten to encourage an increase in opposition to the occupation on the part of the local population, while Rabat and its aftermath appear to have barred, at least for the immediate future, the way to a political settlement. Major assumptions of present policy in the occupied areas may, therefore, cease to be valid. A breakdown of public order in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip would severely tax limited Israeli manpower reserves and might require a drastic change of policy. In this event, Arab propaganda claims with regard to alleged Israeli repression in the occupied areas and the displacement of the indigenous population could prove to he self‐fulfilling prophecies.

(…)

Yet fundamental change in Israel's prospects depends on a basic change within the West. There are other areas of the world besides the Middle East in which the Western powers have not acted in unity. However, there is no other area in which they have so frequently worked at cross‐purposes or to no visible purpose at all. In no other area has the policy of Western governments so frequently subordinated national ideals to putative national interests and in the end resulted in the loss or abandonment both of principles and of interests.

Winston Churchill once said that democracy was not harlot that could be picked up on a street corner by a young man with a tommy gun. He was wrong. It happens all the time, with the most prim and proper, the most matronly democracies, including his own. Instead, a tommy gun is not indispensable; hard cash and the control of oil resources will do just as well. Witness the spectacle of French diplomatic emissaries hustling the Middle Eastern turf, turning their tricks with sheik and terrorist. The sale of arms, encouraged by balance of payments difficulties, has become an aim, rather than an instrument, of national policy: and all fat cats are gray in the night.

Today, the fate of much of the industrialized world, with its masses of workers and consumers, has come to depend on decisions made by minuscule coterie of absolute potentates, their feet firmly rooted in the Middle Ages and their hands at the throat of the industrial civilization of the West. Never before in history has the fate of so many been at the mercy of so few. Oddly, there are still those who persist in seeing this as a victory of anticolonialism and anti‐imperialism, those most durable verbal relics of the long‐lost world of liberal innocence. Surely there must come a point at which the act in unity if its own survival is to be safeguarded. When that day comes, Israel's future will take a new direction.

(…)

Earlier, in the fall of 1962, Henry Kissinger visited this communal village and its regional school. In those days the threat came from the Syrian artillery on the Golan Heights, which dominated the area. Kissinger, then security adviser to Nelson Rockefeller and on a special mission fo. Kennedy, was especially intrigued by the attention devoted to gardening and to the atmosphere of tranquillity. juxtaposed against the network of shelters under the shadow of the commanding Syrian positions, visible even to the naked eye. What he founded in the Jordan Valley tended to disprove the contention of Rockefeller's adversaries that extensive civil‐defense measures would disrupt normal life and create panic.

Today, the children of the Jordan Valley communes play and study in close proximity to armed guards. The massacre at Ma'alot proved that children enjoy a privileged position as a priority target for Palestinian liberation fighters. The danger has become less anonymous and less indiscriminate. Life, however, remains normal in every critical sense, and there is no panic.

November 28 was the anniversary of the 1947 U.N. decision in favor of the creation of a Jewish State. The sixth‐grade pupils in the Jordan Valley elementary school wrote compositions on “What Israel Will Be Like When I Am Grown Up.” One theme is dominant: peace. Many express it by predicting that they will visit the Pyramids in Egypt and travel by train to Damascus. Moran Palmoni, a 12‐year‐old fourth‐generation sabra, concluded his composition in verse:

“I hope that peace will come

I believe that it will come

That we will not have to sit in the shelter

That tranquillity will fall also on us

Every child and every flower will he happy when it comes

Only may it come, only may it come!””

“Buried deep inside a Times report last weekend about Hadar Goldin, the Israeli soldier who was reported captured by Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip, and then declared dead, was the following paragraph:

The circumstances surrounding his death remained cloudy. A military spokeswoman declined to say whether Lieutenant Goldin had been killed along with two comrades by a suicide bomb one of the militants exploded, or later by Israel’s assault on the area to hunt for him; she also refused to answer whether his remains had been recovered.

Just what those circumstances were began to filter out early this week, and they attest to deep contradictions in the Israeli military—and in Israeli culture at large.

A temporary ceasefire went into effect last Friday morning at eight. At nine-fifteen, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces headed toward a house, in the city of Rafah, that served as an entry point to a tunnel reportedly leading into Israel. As the I.D.F. troops advanced, a Hamas militant emerged from the tunnel and opened fire. Two soldiers were killed. A third, Goldin, was captured—whether dead or alive is unclear—and taken into the tunnel. What is clear is that after Goldin was reported missing, the I.D.F. enacted a highly controversial measure known as the Hannibal Directive, firing at the area where Goldin was last seen in order to stop Hamas from taking him captive. As a result, according to Palestinian sources, seventy Palestinians were killed. By Sunday, Goldin, too, had been declared dead.

Opinions differ over how this protocol, which remained a military secret until 2003, came to be known as Hannibal. There are indications that it was named for the Carthaginian general, who chose to poison himself rather than fall captive to the Romans, but I.D.F. officials insist that a computer generated the name at random. Whatever its provenance, the moniker seems chillingly apt. Developed by three senior I.D.F. commanders, in 1986, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah, the directive established the steps the military must take in the event of a soldier’s abduction. Its stated goal is to prevent Israeli troops from falling into enemy hands, “even at the cost of hurting or wounding our soldiers.” While normal I.D.F. procedures forbid soldiers from firing in the general direction of their fellow-troops, including attacking a getaway vehicle, such procedures, according to the Hannibal Directive, are to be waived in the case of an abduction: “Everything must be done to stop the vehicle and prevent it from escaping.”

Although the order specifies that only selective light-arms fire should be used in such cases, the message behind it is resounding. When a soldier has been abducted, not only are all targets legitimate—including, as we saw over the weekend, ambulances—but it’s permissible, and even implicitly advisable, for soldiers to fire on their own. For more than a decade, military censors blocked journalists from reporting on the protocol, apparently because they feared it would demoralize the Israeli public. In 2003, an Israeli doctor who had heard of the directive while serving as a reservist, in Lebanon, began advocating for its annulment, leading to its declassification. That year, a Haaretz investigation of the directive concluded that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

(…)

To be clear, there is no evidence that Goldin was killed by friendly fire. But military officials did confirm that commanders on the ground had activated the Hannibal Directive and ordered “massive fire”—not for the first time since Operation Protective Edge began, on July 8th. (One week into the ground offensive, in the central Gaza Strip, forces reportedly** **enacted the protocol when another soldier, Guy Levy, was believed missing.) Since the directive’s inception, the I.D.F. is known to have used it only a handful of times, including in the case of Gilad Shalit. The order came too late for Shalit and did not prevent his abduction—or his eventual release, in 2011, in exchange for a thousand and twenty-seven Palestinian prisoners. That year, as part of the military’s inquiry into the circumstances leading to Shalit’s capture, the I.D.F.’s Chief of Staff, Benny Gantz, modified the directive. It now allows field commanders to act without awaiting confirmation from their superiors; at the same time, the directive’s language was tempered to make clear that it does not call for the willful killing of captured soldiers. In changing the wording of the protocol, Gantz introduced an ethical principle known as the “double-effect doctrine,” which states that a bad result (the killing of a captive soldier) is morally permissible only as a side effect of promoting a good action (stopping his captors).

Whether soldiers have heeded this change in language, and how they now choose to interpret the directive, is difficult to assess. If past experience is any indication, the military hierarchy’s interpretation remains unequivocal. During Israel’s last operation in Gaza, in 2011, one Golani commander was caught on tape telling his unit: “No soldier in the 51st Battalion will be kidnapped, at any price or under any condition. Even if it means that he has to detonate his own grenade along with those who try to capture him. Even if it means that his unit will now have to fire at the getaway car.”

On Sunday, a decade after its initial investigation of the Hannibal Directive, Haaretz revisited the subject with a piece by Anshel Pfeffer that tried to explain why, despite the procedure’s morally questionable nature, there hasn’t been significant opposition to it. Pfeffer wrote:

Perhaps the most deeply engrained reason that Israelis innately understand the needs for the Hannibal Directive is the military ethos of never leaving wounded men on the battlefield, which became the spirit following the War of Independence, when hideously mutilated bodies of Israeli soldiers were recovered. So Hannibal has stayed a fact of military life and the directive activated more than once during this current campaign.

Ronen Bergman, author of the book “By Any Means Necessary,” which examines Israel’s history of dealing with captive soldiers, further explained this rationale in a recent radio interview: “There is a disproportionate sensitivity among Israelis [on the issue of captive soldiers] that is hard to describe to foreigners.” Bergman traced this sensitivity back to Maimonides, the medieval Torah scholar, who wrote: “There is no greater Mitzvah than redeeming captives.”

This line of argument, while historically true, is worth pausing over—if only to unpack the moral paradox within it. In essence, what this “military ethos” means is that Israel sanctifies the lives of its soldiers so much, and would be willing to pay such an exorbitant price for their release, that it will do everything in its power to prevent such a scenario—including putting those same soldiers’ lives at risk (not to mention wreaking havoc on the surrounding population). This is the dubious situation that Israel finds itself in: signalling to the military that a dead soldier is preferable to a captive one, while at the same time signalling to the Israeli public that no cost will be spared to secure a captured soldier’s release. (It’s worth recalling that, three years after Shalit was traded for more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, the captive U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was traded for five Taliban prisoners. This isn’t to suggest that Israel cares more about its troops than the United States does, but rather that no crime is greater, in the eyes of Israelis, than the kidnapping of “our boys.”)

(…)

Sharon added that the mixed consequences of the directive are typical of the behavior that now characterizes the Israeli public at large. “On the one hand, we are willing to risk soldiers’ lives recklessly and without need, but on the other hand we have zero tolerance for the price that this might entail.”

[anotheraldin]

Was chatting to a yemeni brother and he was telling me that women who work as maids or cleaners aren't "wife material" as they are going into other men's homes. He told me that in his culture it's "3eyb" for women to do such work. Do you think there is some Islamic truth to this or is it just another case of arab/Brown muslims projecting their own cultural supremacist view onto this ummah?

Salaam!

This reeks of first generation son who never had a real job tbh. I’m assuming you and him are under 25 with the reference used here as “wife material” is a strange way to look at a potential spouse.

My mom is a housekeeper, most of her coworkers are either Somali, Mexican or African American women.

People like the Yemeni brother are generally just covering their disdain for working class people with those comments tbh.

You probably don’t know it but in Yemen, there’s a bit of a caste system where you have the Al-Muhamashīn, who are people generally outcast and work jobs such as cleaning homes for those better off. So his disdain may come from his culture just generally holding that belief of those jobs being associated with that caste.

It’s no different than the Indians, Pakistanis and Bengalis who have brown maids, Arabs who have African or South Asian maids, and so on.

It’s just general elitism.

[timetravellingkitty]

reva bestie more tumblr comedy for youu

https://www.tumblr.com/latent-thoughts/752371688403025920/pura-desiblr-hatred-se-bhara-hua-h-its-just-your?source=share

most tragic that dalits and muslims don't want modi. next time we should have an election only for the elite upper caste hindus

[genderjeopardy]

the hindutva fascist regime has picked up a considerable amount of steam since jan 22, the date of the consecration of the ayodhya ram mandir (which stands on the site of the now-illegitimately-demolished babri masjid; watch the events leading upto the demolition here).

Media, politicians, actors, influencers, and the common hindu upper-caste public has been emboldened, with most mainstream discourse basically sounding indistinguishable to what zionists have been preaching (or what nazis had been preaching); how Muslims are outsiders, betrayers, traitors hatching an evil, treacherous plan to enslave the Hindu majority and interrupt their "renaissance", how Muslim religious associations control the "deep state", how the "Indian" (read; hindu) has been tortured and oppressed by the Muslim kings (mainly referring to the mughal dynasty and the sultanate) and how great the previous Hindu kings were (they weren't; oppression and subjugation based on caste was rife during the gupta dynasty, along with slavery). How Islam is intrinsically a "wrong" faith to follow, with its misogyny and extremism (which is prevalent in like, literally every religion), how central education which teaches about the historical existence of casteism and misogyny perpetrated under/by the upper caste-elite hegemony is part of the "islamist agenda", etc etc, the usual islamophobic points

As if that wasnt enough, the govt has also flagrantly broke the rules regarding the awarding of national honours (theres a limit of three), by awarding the Bharat Ratna (highest civilian honour) to politicians who facilitated the babri masjid demolition in 1992

Even now, the events of haldwani are obvs being spinned by the state (and the mainstream media obvs relays it like its gospel), with baseless accusations of the usage of petrol bombs and arson of a police station being thrown at the muslim protestors. both legacy and social media are being filled with pictures and videos of injured police officers as a way to garner sympathy, but most importantly, to vilify an already hated community in muslims. the thing is, if you dig a little deeper, there are already reports surfacing on twitter that one of the 6 who died was a 16-year old boy, and there are also videos where the police are pelting stones at muslims, manhandling and thrashing muslim women, and shooting at their doors at night. oh and btw the hindutva mobs didnt just appear out of thin air, they were helped and supported by the police, who for some very weird reason spared them from the "shoot-on-sight" orders as they vandalized the muslim neighbourhood, pelted stones, and threatened to r*pe muslim women, while occasionally also invoking the name of hindu deities.

The act of pelting stones becomes even more egregious as the act has generally been associated to muslim communities by the right wing (and thus by all of mainstream media). The act is not just seen as "oh look at these violent muslim protestors", its basically seen as an act of anti-national treason, the definitive "proof" that a social group doesnt deserve to live in this country, is "undesirable", and is thus "plotting" against the Hindu ethnostate (which is smtg that cannot be questioned). Any event which harms muslims either physically (via pogroms like in 2002 gujarat) or symbolically (demolition of mosques and other "muslim" structures, including even "muslim" sounding names of cities and streets), the fascist media mill starts churning out "henious" acts of "treachery" committed by muslim "anti-nationals", which range from stone-pelting to sexual abuse to perceived persecution of "innocent hindus".

while videos of police brutality exacted upon Haldwani muslims are making rounds on twitter, the atmosphere is definitely tilted against the victims, and in favor of the oppressors. the chief minister of the state, Pushkar Singh Dhami, has already given his justifications on the police's actions as "cracking down on riotous elements", with most of the indian public equally supportive in all of their savage, barbaric fascist glee, with open calls of "painting the nation saffron (dogwhistle for a pogrom, if you didnt get it)" if Dhami called upon the Hindutva forces. Heres a senior journalist from our state-owned news outlet, DD News, using disgusting language to portray all Muslims living in uttarakhand as "m*lecch" (means parasitic outsiders, generally regarded as an ethnic/casteist slur)

another thing of note is that if you use the reasoning of "illegality" to demolish Muslim institutions, the structures most in (theoretical) risk are HINDU temples, which ofc can be (and have been) erected almost anywhere without any prior legal greenlight. infact, the hindutva right had erected a makeshift temple right beside the charminar in hyderabad, in order to stoke suspicion that yet another structure made by a muslim ruler was infact, made upon the demolished ruins of a hindu temple. the far-right had already made their modus operandi v clear when the ram temple campaign began in 1992, but now the world can see it take place in front of their eyes. and before you ask, yes, the gyanlakshmi temple had already been deemed illegitimate by the Archaeological Survey of India as per a Right to Information petition.

To conclude, things are really, reallly, really getting terrible here. Yes, indian muslims are not facing a collective opposition of the Great Western Powers in US, UK, France, Germany, etc., but indian muslims make one of the largest muslim communities in the world, despite being a minority. And this fascist project endangers them ALL, not just the poor, the isolated, the "bigoted", the extremists, the "undesirables". and also it has its crosshairs away from muslim communities as well, including the oppressed castes, indigenous tribes, christians, buddhists, women (incl. upper caste women ofc), queer people, and almost anyone who dare opposes (or could potentially oppose) the Hindu ethnostate, which includes the political opposition, academics, journalists, writers, influencers (incl. actors and sportpersons), etc. As a matter of fact, a recent Supreme Court ruling has tweaked the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevent Act), (which has been much abused over the past 10-15 years to illegitimately throw "anti-national/seditious" protestors of the regime into prison with little to no investigation or justice), so now jail has become the "rule", while "bail" has become the "exception"; basically meaning that an already draconian, repressive, undemocratic and brutal law has become even more repressive.

The entire nation, including the oppressed and the oppressor classes are bracing for a descend into pure fascistic totalitarianism, and i dont need to tell you how much innocent blood would be shed, how the very identity and culture of muslims and other minorities in india is dangling on a tightrope. i am again begging anyone who comes across this post to spread it as far as they can; friends, family, relatives, school/college/work mates, journalists, political representatives, influencers, whoever you can grab. an entire state preparing to brutally subordinate Indian muslims (which alone amount to a population of around a 100 million) and other minorities is newsworthy, worthy of international attention and concern. ofc it wont be easy, as the hindutva right not only has spread its poisonous wings overseas, but the money they earn there is sent back to Hindutva organisations in India (there was actually a big kerfuffle in the late 90s-early 00s abt legitimacy of such "donations"; the bureaucrat standing in opposition to those orgs was then institutionally boycotted and booted out of the Indian Tax department). as such they have gained considerable social capital there as well (vivek ramaswamy running as a GOP candidate, Sunak is a sitting UK PM, etc). still, i request you all to show the same energy and effort that you have given rightfully to palestine, to indian muslims as well. they have already suffered a lot, but we are all afraid that worse is yet to come 🙏🙏🙏

so far, nearly 3 weeks on from the inauguration of ram mandir, indian authorities have demolished as many masjids and/or madrasas.

30.01.24 - akhoonji masjid & madrasa in delhi, also destroying a cemetery, shrine and all the students’ belongings in the process.

01.02.24 - a madrasa in maharashtra despite facing opposition from local muslims and one day before its scheduled court appeal.

08.02.24 - a masjid & madrasa in uttarakhand. this comes one day after uttarakhand became the first state to pass the uniform civil code (x, x) which aims to apply a ‘hindu code’ to all indians, infringing on the rights of dalits, adivasis, sikhs, christians, buddhists and muslims (i.e. anybody non-hindu) to practice their religion/lifestyle. muslim women protesting the demolition were lathi-charged (beaten with sticks) by police, a shoot-on-sight order was given resulting in 6 muslims killed and 300+ injured in the riots that followed, a curfew was put in place during which hindutva mobs burned down muslim homes and businesses while shouting abuse at muslims.

as always, no prior notice was given and bjp used it’s gold-standard excuse for each demolition, citing ‘illegal encroachment’.

in addition to these masjid demolitions, indian authorities bulldozed 2 neighbourhoods (ghettos, really) in the same timeframe and also without prior notice:

01.02.24 - jasola slum, which, having been around for at least 16 years, should not have been demolished without providing alternative housing, as the delhi slum policy states for slums which came up before 2015. obviously, housing hasn’t been provided.

06.02.24 - panchsheel nagar in mumbai which, having been around since 2011, entitled residents to paid rehabilitation, which has also not been given. this has left over 110 families homeless.

the demographic of both neighbourhoods, surprise surprise, is overwhelmingly muslim, buddhist and dalit.

bjp is enjoying the cover it is receiving from israel’s genocide in palestine to do whatever it wants and is getting bolder by the day. this ‘bulldozer justice’ has been happening for years, but not at such a rapid rate as it is now.

[kspp]

Inequality in the booming Indian economy

After the introduction of the economic reforms during the 90s, the Indian economy has seen an upsurge in its growth, making itself an important player in the world economy. Although it is still a relatively poor country, its rapid economic growth has led to a significant fall in the number of people living below the poverty line, improving their living standards. However, despite a burgeoning economy and reduction in poverty, the inequality in terms of distribution of income and wealth tends to be on the rise. It should be a matter of concern for academicians and the government to reduce poverty and economic inequality; nevertheless, many economists suggest that economic growth is collateral. But to what extent are these inequalities fair and just?

The United Nations 2015 adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals as a universal call to end poverty and reduce income inequalities; however, dominance by the affluent in market economies does not allow for such measures to take place effectively, and such policies are not pursued to a much greater extent by governments is a sad reality.

Historically, inequality has existed across marginalized communities of SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities living in an absolute deprivation of economic resources. It is noted that inequalities across religious and caste groups are far worse. Hindu Forward castes are much better than the national average; however, Muslims are worse off than the urban Dalits and Adivasis.

Speaking of gender inequalities, as discussed, women being more prone to precarious employment puts them a risk of oppression by men due to increasing inequalities.

The gap in income and consumption expenditure inequalities has been greater in urban areas than rural; nonetheless, in the post-reform period, it has widened in most Indian states and in India. As India’s single most important asset, the land is more unequally distributed than other economic resources.

It is also vital to note that consumption plays an important role in calculating inequality.

Consumption represents typical income and is considered more stable than measured income, which is subject to seasonal fluctuations. This usually happens as people try to balance out their spending overtime when their income changes by borrowing or saving.

The Indian government, in order to alleviate poverty, has stressed rapid economic growth, for growth has generated employment to alleviate poverty but has failed to address growing relative deprivation among individuals, which has pushed the downtrodden further down the road. According to the latest World Inequality Report 2022, India appears as a poor and economically unequal country with widening differences between the rich and the poor with an affluent elite with the top 10% of the population owning 57% of the total national income and the bottom 50% owning only 13%. These figures represent how focusing on absolute deprivation than relative deprivation of the poor leads to poor economic growth.

Therefore, a reduction in relative income inequality can help boost the economy. Focusing on economic growth to alleviate poverty and also stressing government intervention in reducing economic disparity can help achieve overall gains for the country.

To provide the economic benefits to all, progressive taxation of individual income and wealth of the rich and providing cash transfers and subsidies to the poor will expand the economic gains of the poor. Moreover, an increase in minimum wage during an increase in inflation can help boost the economy. The recent spread of COVID-19 disease has further exacerbated the trend of economic inequality by making the poor jobless. Many had to suffer severely because of poor public health conditions. Government expenditure on education and health care and social welfare is said to reduce inequality. Investing in health care for the poor and improving quality education for them can help boost the economy as it will open the door to opportunities which will have a positive impact on eliminating group based negative discrimination and promoting societal cohesion. Furthermore, providing equal opportunities for growth to the poor will help boost the economy and help limit the role of money in politics as the powerful often tend to influence policy-making and will help strengthen their trust in the legitimacy of the political system.

How income inequality in India can be narrowed. (2022, February 16). The Hindu BusinessLine: Business Financial, Economy, Market, Stock – News & Updates. How income inequality in India can be narrowed

When it comes to inequality, consumption is what matters.(2016, April 7). Economics21. When It Comes to Inequality, Consumption Is What Matters

How economic inequality is widening in today’s India.(2015, August 5).Down To Earth | Latest news, opinion, analysis on environment & science issues | India, South Asia. How economic inequality is widening in today’s India

WEISSKOPF, T. E. (2011). Why Worry about Inequality in the Booming Indian Economy? Economic and Political Weekly, 46(47), 41–51. Why Worry about Inequality in the Booming Indian Economy?

[xtruss]

George Galloway Is Not A Threat To Democracy – Only To The Elite Hypocrites Running The UK

The Returning Politician’s Recent Electoral Win on the Back of the Gaza-Israel Debate is Rightfully Alarming For Both Labour and Tories

— Graham Hryce is an Australian Journalist and Former Media Lawyer, Whose Work Has Been Published in The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age, the Sunday Mail, the Spectator and Quadrant.

The new Workers Party MP for Rochdale, George Galloway, outside his campaign HQ in Rochdale, England, March 1, 2024. © Oli SCARFF/AFP

Last week’s exchange of insults between newly elected MP George Galloway and Unelected Prime Minister Rishi Sunak highlighted the festering political divisions that have recently emerged in Western democracies over the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

Their vituperative exchange also made clear that rational debate over Gaza is virtually impossible in those Western nations in which both major political parties uncritically support America’s pro-Israel foreign policy in Gaza.

Debates over domestic culture war issues in the West have for decades been characterized by irrationality, demonization of opponents, the abolition of history, and the refusal to acknowledge the right to express a view contrary to dominant woke ideologies.

Within such a neo-totalitarian intellectual culture, it would be foolish to expect that a debate over a historically contentious issue like Gaza could be conducted rationally.

Nevertheless, last week, Galloway won a by-election in Rochdale, a poor Midlands electorate in the UK formerly held by the Labour Party.

It was an astounding and comprehensive victory. Galloway Received 12,335 Votes – over 40% of the votes cast – while the Conservatives gained 3,731 Votes, and Labour, 2,402.

Galloway labeled his win as “A Thumping Victory” over both major parties – and he described Keir Starmer and Sunak, in characteristically provocative fashion, as “Two Cheeks Of The Same Backside” that he had just “Spanked.”

Galloway is a controversial and charismatic political figure. He is a former Labour and Independent MP who courageously opposed Tony Blair and George Bush’s war against Iraq, and he has been a trenchant defender of the Palestinian cause for decades.

In the Rochdale by-election – an electorate with a Muslim Population of Around 30% – Galloway focused his campaign on calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

In the UK, the Gaza conflict has become a deeply divisive political issue over the past six months. During that time, more than 30,000 people have been killed by the Israeli military, most of them civilians and many of them women and children.

Many citizens in the West – to their credit – have refused to turn a blind eye to the Distinction between Terrorists and Civilians, and the humanitarian crisis that America’s continuing support for the Terrorist & Genocidal Satan-Yahu Government has created in Gaza.

It cannot be disputed that America’s persistent refusal to support a ceasefire in Gaza has resulted in the Deaths of Thousands of Innocent Palestinian Civilians.

In the UK and Australia, the governments and major opposition parties have, up until now, resolutely supported America’s stance and refused to call for an immediate ceasefire. In these countries, it has fallen to minor left-wing parties to oppose America’s position – in the UK, it has been Galloway’ Workers Party, and in Australia, it has been the Greens.

But principled opposition to America’s Gaza policy does not end there.

Deep-seated divisions have emerged within the Democratic Party in America, the Labour Party in the UK, and the Labor government in Australia – as a result of significant segments of these parties strongly opposing the stance on Gaza taken by US President Joe Biden, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The British parliament recently descended into complete chaos when Starmer pressured the speaker of the House of Commons to breach parliamentary convention and prevent debate over a Scottish National Party (SNP) motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

If the SNP motion had been permitted to proceed, at least 60 Labour MPs would have voted in favor of it – thereby provoking a serious political crisis for Starmer and his Labour Party.

Recent polls in the UK suggest that 65% of voters are in favor of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It is this popular sentiment – together with the large number of Muslim voters in the electorate – that enabled George Galloway to achieve his stunning victory in Rochdale last week.

In his victory speech, Galloway said, “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza. You will pay a high price for the role that you have played in enabling the catastrophe presently going on in Gaza.”

He went on to say that “The Misnamed Labour Party” has “Lost the Confidence of Millions of Their Voters,” and that “The Plates Have Shifted Tonight.”

Galloway took pride in the fact that both major parties had been “Well and Truly Spanked” and “Thoroughly and Soundly Beaten” on the issue of Gaza.

He vowed to get rid of the Rochdale Labour Council in the council elections next month, and foreshadowed standing candidates in the upcoming general election with the aim of defeating Labour candidates.

Whether Galloway will be able to win other seats in the general election is doubtful – Rochdale is an atypical electorate, which is why he ran there – but he has certainly tapped into widespread popular discontent with the major parties’ position on Gaza.

Galloway also won over traditional Labour voters disenchanted with Starmer’s elite, woke-oriented Labour party – which has spent the last few years driving old-style working-class leaders like Jeremy Corbyn out of the party.

In an interview with Sky News after his victory, Galloway turned his attention to Sunak, who he described as “a rather diminutive, diminished and degraded politician” who is “in the fag end of his Prime Ministership.”

He said bluntly, “I despise the Prime Minister… as do millions of people in this country.”

Galloway reiterated that he had “a democratic mandate” and that he looked forward to taking his place in the House of Commons.

The following day, in an extraordinary address to the nation delivered outside 10 Downing Street, Sunak responded to Galloway’s electoral victory.

He began by describing Galloway’s win as “beyond alarming” – an odd comment from an unelected prime minister who is supposedly committed to democracy.

Sunak painted a picture of pro-Palestinian protesters engaging in “extremist disruption and criminality.” These people, according to Sunak, were “spreading a poison” and “trying to tear us apart.” Democracy itself is apparently “under threat” from extremists who “want to destroy our confidence and hope.”

He claimed that “MPs do not feel safe in their homes” and vowed to order the police to clamp down on extremism. “The time has now come for us all to stand together to combat the forces of division,” he urged. The hypocrisy and cynicism are simply breathtaking.

For decades, the Conservative Party has promoted cultural diversity as a positive good, in order to win over ethnic groups to the Conservative cause, and stave off much needed economic and political reform.

But acceptance by the Tories was never absolute – it was always conditional upon ethnic groups uncritically adopting the values and world view of the elites that govern the UK, many of whom have been sitting on the Tory benches for the past decade or so.

Benefits and privileges were showered on talented individuals from ethnic groups who acquiesced in this sordid arrangement. The Conservative Party today is full of such people – Sunak himself is a classic example, as is former Home Secretary Suella Bitch Braverman.

Those ethnic groups, however, who oppose elite ideologies – even by dint of exercising their democratic right to vote in elections – soon find themselves demonized and cast out of what Sunak calls Britain’s “multi-ethnic and multi-faith democracy.”

Sunak and his Conservative supporters have now cynically decided that it is time to cast British Muslims out of the fold – for daring to protest over what is happening in Gaza.

Yesterday, Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg criticized the Muslim voters of Rochdale for “allowing religion to determine votes in UK politics.”

Is the Church of England no longer the established church in the UK? Do 26 of its bishops no longer sit by appointment – rather than election – in the House of Lords? Don’t Rees-Mogg and other Conservative politicians bang on about Judeo-Christian values in political argument on a regular basis?

Conservative politicians also bemoaned the fact that a foreign policy issue has now seemingly defiled domestic politics for the first time in British history. Did the Crimean War not become a domestic political issue? The Boer War? World Wars I and II? Suez? Vietnam? Kosovo? Iraq? Afghanistan? It appears not.

And are we to seriously believe that, up until the recent Pro-Palestinian protests, Political Protests in Britain have never attracted some extremist elements.

A former Conservative politician yesterday quite correctly described the Conservative Party’s response to Galloway’s electoral victory as “A Toxification of Political Culture.”

Not surprisingly, more Pro-Palestinian Protests have been scheduled for this weekend.

Sunak’s belated and cynical embrace of the politics of division will not save him. Committed right-wing members of his own party who have nothing but contempt for him, the most notable being Bitch Braverman, as well as minor parties further to the right of the Conservatives, have already condemned him for his hypocrisy and for not going far enough. Sunak does, however, have a staunch supporter in Starmer, who said that he was “right to advocate unity.”

Sunak’s ill-advised and pathetic speech can only create further division and social unrest within the UK. Precisely how Demonizing British Muslims and spreading rank prejudice will promote ‘Unity’ is not readily apparent.

Weak governments and political parties that uncritically support flawed American foreign policies very often pay a heavy price for doing so.

Sunak’s Conservative Party has been slowly cannibalizing itself for over a decade, and Gaza has just sped up the process of its self-destruction. As for Starmer’s Labour Party, it remains to be seen what price it will pay for cravenly supporting the collapsing American Empire and one of its proxy states.

Galloway has resurrected his political career by opposing America’s policy on Gaza on a principled basis.

Whether he will be able to engender a rational debate in the House of Commons over Gaza – and bring about a change in UK policy – are open questions at the moment. One thing is certain however – George Galloway will definitely give it his best shot.

[mariacallous]

Immured in his prison cell, Pakistani politician Imran Khan could scarcely have hoped for a better result. Just days before the country’s Feb. 8 election, the cricket legend-turned-populist politician was sentenced to more than a decade behind bars in three trumped-up cases. His party was stripped of its signature cricket bat symbol by the Election Commission, denying voters the chance to identify the party on ballot papers—a critical aspect of voting in a country where 40 percent of people are illiterate—and forcing its candidates to run as independents. Its members were beaten, imprisoned, and driven into rival parties or out of politics altogether.

On polling day, cell phone signals vanished, and internet access was choked. After the votes were cast, there were widespread allegations that many were stolen overnight, reversing unassailable leads. And yet, despite every effort to thwart them, Khan’s supporters recorded the highest number of votes and clinched the largest number of seats.

Independent candidates affiliated with Khan’s party, who took 93 out of a total of 295 national seats and won one province outright, were denied the majority that they insist they won and may be excluded from government, but the vote represents a momentous development. A new generation of voters has emerged—concentrated in Pakistan’s heaving towns and cities—who now demand a break with history. These voters want to have the power to choose their own leaders, not leave the country in the hands of the powerful military that has maintained a granitic grip on politics for most of its history.

When Khan fell out with the generals that brought him to power and was ousted from office in April 2022, his young supporters mounted vast, sometimes violent protests. Despite a vicious crackdown over the next two years, they persevered and demonstrated their defiance in the only way left to them: through a peaceful, democratic vote.

The determination of young voters to decide their own futures may become a trend this year in the global south as billions go to the polls in at least 64 countries. Pakistan has an increasingly young and growing population. With the fifth-largest population in the world, nearly half of all eligible voters are age 35 and younger. Since the last election, in 2018, 21 million new voters have been registered. That trend will inexorably continue over the next couple of decades— Pakistan is home to about 100 million people under the age of 18.

This is a generation of Pakistanis who have grown up with the sense of being a nation long denied its promise: mired in economic difficulty, scarred by years of terrorism, ravaged by climate change, dismayed by how their country is perceived in the world, and angry at the feckless and venal elites that have reduced them to this ruin.

For many of these voters, Khan represented something new. In the lead-up to the 2018 election, he stirred rare feelings of national pride, something that he has proved effective at ever since lifting Pakistan’s only Cricket World Cup trophy in 1992. They liked his charisma, his religious fervor, his charity work, and his celebrity. Khan skillfully tapped this mood for change, casting himself as a man of destiny who would single-handedly sweep away the country’s many problems and suddenly lift Pakistan to the glory it deserved.

There was little scrutiny of the plausibility of his promises. It was enough that someone was making them.

At the time, Khan’s popularity was significant but not decisive. The military had grown weary of the two political dynasties that had dominated the fitful periods of civilian rule in the country, the center-right Sharifs of the Muslim League and the center-left Bhutto-Zardaris of the People’s Party. In Khan, the military saw someone who, with his confident English and Oxford University education, could provide a useful civilian veneer as it clung to the main levers of power.

The 2018 election that thrust Khan into the prime minister’s house was marred by many of the “irregularities” that his supporters now complain of: a former prime minister in prison, a tilted electoral playing field, intimidation of candidates, and a late-night burst of creative arithmetic.

During his three and a half years in government, Khan proved a disappointment to his supporters and a danger to his critics and opponents. His cabinet was full of familiar, shop-worn faces, including his foreign minister and interior minister, plucked from the same ruling elite that he had railed against. None of the dreams that he promised materialized. The economy shambled on modestly, with a few new welfarist schemes rolled out.

What did change was the repression. Working closely with the military, the opposition was hurled behind bars, the raucous media was tamed, civil society was stifled, and ethnicity-based social movements were crushed. Khan turned his campaign rhetoric into vicious demagogy, taunting his jailed opponents, blaming rape victims for “wearing very few clothes” and hailing the Taliban in Afghanistan for “breaking the shackles of slavery.”

Yet his exit from power changed everything—and gave him a chance to play the national hero again. By late 2021, Khan’s relationship with the powerful generals he relied upon had grown strained. He had gotten close to the then-intelligence chief, Lieut. Gen. Faiz Hameed, and refused to replace him. There were fears among the military high command that the two men were furtively colluding to entrench each other in power for the next decade.

Pakistan’s military prides itself on its unity, and it will not abide civilian meddling with its upper ranks. In April 2022, then-army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa pulled his support from Khan, leaving him vulnerable to a parliamentary vote of no-confidence.

In scenes that some observers likened to a revolutionary moment, Khan’s supporters took to the streets to protest his ouster. The generals made a fatal miscalculation: Unpopularity in government doesn’t mean unpopularity in opposition. Khan became a magnet for sympathy, even for those who detest his politics. He has been implicated in roughly 200 cases, each as preposterous as the other, including accusations of so-called blasphemy, terrorism, sedition, and even illegal marriage.

At one point, an Orwellian order was issued to ensure that his name could not be mentioned on television. With every trumped-up charge raised, every protest crushed, and every Khan supporter detained or harassed, the sense of injustice deepened. This is no longer about Khan or his divisive politics, but whether Pakistan’s weak and battered democracy can survive.

Last week’s vote shows that it can. For one thing, the old tactics to suppress people’s voices no longer work. Khan’s tech-savvy supporters spurned every obstacle thrown in their path. They replaced videos of Khan himself with artificial intelligence-generated images of him reading speeches written from prison. They defied bans of public gatherings with digital rallies. The attempts to confuse voters with a bewildering array of independent candidates and symbols were demystified through constituency-customized WhatsApp groups. And the suspicious shift in election results may yet be challenged in the courts with the evidence that Khan’s supporters have assiduously gathered.

When it comes to future elections, the demographics are unstoppable: Pakistan’s population of 240 million people is set to grow to more than 400 million by 2050, according to the U.N. Population Fund. There are good reasons to fear another Khan government. He appears to only value democracy to the extent that it provides a procedural path to power. If he ever returns to office, he may seek to build a one-man state around him.

But that’s no reason to deny his supporters their constitutional right. Nor are they about to stop claiming it. The repression has only hardened their resolve. Even if they’re denied a government of their choice this time, what about next time, when there are even more young voters? At some point, something will have to give.

Pakistan’s voters are no longer prepared to act out roles in a play written for them. The only sustainable way forward is to build a democracy that is both responsive to their needs and strong enough to protect its institutions and hold governments accountable—a democracy that matters between votes and offers more than a mirage on election day.

[kisameti]

WIP Intro: Phoenix 13

General Information

Genre: Superhero/Action Age Rating: Young Adult POV: First Person Setting: Washington DC, 2023, alternate reality where superhumans exist Content Warnings: Violence, injury, death, severe manipulation, minor gore Current Stage: Drafting Projected Word Count: ~100,000 Words

Tag: #phoenix13

Synopsis, features, and characters below the cut!

Synopsis

In a world protected by superheroes, Elliot is an ordinary sixteen-year-old who's spent his whole life in foster care. A year into his stay with the president of the Elite Watcher's Agency of America, or EWAA for short, an infamous villain kidnaps him, and he discovers he might not be as normal as he once thought.

Navigating a life of new powers, new appendages, and new friends, he trains to become as great a hero as his foster father and brother, but a so-called friend's betrayal and a revelation about his birth show him that being a hero doesn't always mean being good.

Features

Trans main character

Found family

So many superpowers. So many.

Wings! Several winged characters!

Cool weapons

Gods that affect the story but aren't really present

Morally gray characters

Characters

Elliot Sims

Alias: Phoenix

Powers: Elemenal—fire

Wings: Feathered—red and orange

Elliot is the foster—and later adoptive—son of the Gray Ghost and Reaper, and brother of Cyber and Siren. He becomes a hero with the training class of 2023, at the age of 17, after learning of his powers only months prior. He is one of the first trans heroes in America, and people say he bears a shocking resemblance to his late mother, the villain Firebird.

Cyrus Raynor

Alias: Cyber

Powers: Enhancement—all; Other—tech manipulation

Wings: N/A

Cyrus is the adoptive son of the Gray Ghost and Reaper. He's the oldest of three and is closer with his youngest brother, Elliot, despite having known Dorian since he was four. They became a hero with the training class of 2018 at the age of 16, and have since become the head of the Renegade division of elite heroes. Despite being relatively famous as Cyber, his true identity is not publicly known.

John Bennett

Alias: The Gray Ghost

Powers: Other—vocal control

Wings: Membrane—gray

John is the president of the Elite Watcher's Agency of America, aka EWAA, America's hero agency. He has held this position for many years with his wife, Reaper, as the vice president. The couple has one biological and two adoptive sons, all of whom are heroes. John is often compared to his predecessor, the late Phantom, who is often described as one of the greatest heroes of all time.

Azima Ebeid

Alias: Mystic

Powers: Enhancement—speed, agility, reflexes, senses

Wings: N/A

Azima has been Elliot's best friend since he was placed with his current family. When he learned about his powers, she was the first to offer to train him. She becomes a hero with the training class of 2023 at the age of 17, joining the 19 other Muslim supers to be accepted into EWAA and among those the 4 other women.

Aaron "AJ" Winters

Alias: Shadow

Powers: Other—shadow manipulation, shadow travel

Wings: N/A

AJ is the first hero to arrive to the scene when Elliot is kidnapped and subsequently held captive in a burning building, though the fire prevents him from reaching and rescuing him. He is also a member of the Renegades, having become a hero with the training class of 2022 at the age of 16. Despite his abilities and alias, he is easily the brightest character in the main cast, in both his clothing style and his personality.

Glitch

Identity: [REDACTED]

Powers: Other—tech/reality transmission; Enhanced—all

Wings: N/A

After Firebird's death, the official organization of villains disbanded, seemingly forever, until Glitch appeared in early 2017 and became the first major threat to EWAA in nearly 11 years. Since then, they have amassed a small army of fellow supers with grievances against EWAA, who now form the new, unofficial organization of villains.

And others! These are just the main ones