Habib Siddiqui

  While the world’s attention has been hijacked by the new American, made-for-Israel war against Iran, a quieter act of resistance is gathering on the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. An act of defiance determined to remind the international community that there is no pause in Gaza’s genocide, and there will be none for those fighting to end it. The  Global Sumud Flotilla , ( sumud  means “steadfast” in Arabic), is now on its 2026 spring mission. International activists boarding close to 100 boats, with  Greenpeace’ s Arctic Sunrise providing technical and operational support, are  sailing  to Gaza under the slogan:  We sail until Palestine is free . The goal is clear, and against all odds, to establish a direct maritime corridor to Gaza’s shores, delivering what Israel’s blockade has long denied the more than 2.2 million human beings. The 1,000 multinational seafarers carry something harder to quantify: the accumulated moral weight of a worl...

  One month after the start of the joint U.S.-Israeli military aggression against Iran, in the midst of negotiations, and with Trump’s words still ringing in our ears—that it would be “a short excursion”—Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Group of 7 (G7), the world’s wealthiest nations, that  expects the war against   Iran to end “in weeks, not months.” Iranian resistance has thrown the Epstein alliance off balance. Although Trump has repeatedly claimed that Iran’s ”, that they will have to use  rowboats,   that the country has been left “leaderless,” and that most of its missile platforms have been destroyed, the Persian nation continues to launch them—as well as drones—toward Israel and U.S. bases stationed in neighboring Persian Gulf countries. While Trump says the war is “practically over,”  the Pentagon confirmed  that it is evaluating the deployment of 10,000 additional troops to expand the president’s military options, which would be in add...

  Nations are judged not only by what they do, but also by what they make us see, and what they force us to feel. Nations are not merely political or economic constructs. They are aesthetic phenomena that leave lasting visual and emotional imprints. We evaluate nations by their constitutions, laws, religions, morality, and wealth. Yet their aesthetic dimension is often overlooked: nations can also be judged by the beauty or ugliness they project. In Afghanistan, the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas, monumental statues that had stood for nearly 1,500 years, reduced carved stone to  empty cavities , illustrating how authority can deliberately extinguish beauty in the name of belief. In contrast, the Pharaohs’ laws and customs have faded, while their  pyramids  endure as wonders, confirming John Keats’ ambitious observation that “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” What does  power  look and feel like when stripped of its narratives? Raw power prowls behind ...