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Daily Maverick
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Spare us from Big Men with big wallets, bigger lies and biggest egos
Ah, Chief Dwasaho. I was not going to write this letter today. I have exhausted my mental strength with human beings, the lies, deception, broken promises, rape, murder, genocide, missiles, bombs, drones, crime, corruption and obfuscation. There is not even a single statistic to confuse those with secondary education. While contemplating lying in bed and telling my editor I was unwell, I chanced upon the last letter from the founding Editor-in-Chief of this publication, Branko Brkic, who retired in 2024 after 15 years of service. Somehow, his resilience and sense of purpose made me rise from my slumber. I went to my family and told them I was despondent. With concern in her voice, my wife asked about what. I replied: 'Everything.' Thus, my leader, there is nothing intellectual about this week's letter, no links, no pleas for anything and no academic reflections, just despair and despondency. My readers should know that I aim to entertain as I inform. Not this week. The faces of despair I cannot unsee the images of Palestinian children's bodies I saw this week. Their faces already covered after meeting their fate at the hands of Israeli bombs, because Israel has a 'right to defend itself'. I saw aid seekers running frantically after the bombing rain, and yet when they spoke to journalists, there was no defiance in their faces. In their voices, there was no thirst for revenge, only despair. I witnessed a newsreader from the Iranian State broadcaster on Al Jazeera reading the news live while sirens wailed in advance of a missile attack; it all went black – no area is safe, not a media house, church, mosque, hospital, school, road or building. Just breathing alone is an invitation for untold suffering at the hands of Big Men with Bigger Lies, Biggest Egos and even the Thickest Wallets. At the receiving end are women and children, who have yet to start a single war in the history of Menkind – without humanity, but evil masked as the defence of sovereignty. Sadly, the children who watched the videos of Ukrainian women and children being bombed this week, like those of Gaza and Iran, are tomorrow's suicide bombers. The children who will survive the mayhem, which Al Jazeera calls by its first name, genocide, are tomorrow's members of Hamas, Isis, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hezbollah, the Lord's Resistance Army, among others. Arms or bread? But who arms these so-called extremist groups? Where do they acquire the mortars, the bombs, the deadly rifles, uniforms and the satellite phones? Who profits from the continuous flow of weapons into Israel, Gaza, Syria, the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and beyond? How on Earth does a rebel group in Eastern DRC, such as M23, have the resources, the mortar bombs, to fight for decades on end while children starve and women perish? Who benefits from the minerals smuggled out, and who guarantees the weapons keep coming in? These are the questions that never get answered, as the cycle of violence creates only more despair. Men in occupied Gaza told Al Jazeera this week that 'all we want is flour to feed our children'. Flour to feed your children when you no longer have a house, a town, a friend or a neighbour, and you're stateless. I do not wish to overwhelm sensitive readers with the numbers of those killed in occupied Gaza and the West Bank since 1948. In Syria, Chechnya, Iran, Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, Lebanon, Kosovo, Crimea and Donbas, as well as Kuwait, blood has flowed. The West's weaponry is always deployed, and bodies (what bodies? Body parts) were not even buried; they perished in the rubble. Tomorrow, it will be us. And no one will be left to defend us. The fate of rebels and the cost of proxy wars My leader, for how long are men, yes, men, going to feed their egos using taxpayers' money and substituting evidence with bogeymen like 'Iraq' with 'weapons of mass destruction'. The next minute, it's Iran with 'atomic bombs'. Not so long ago it was in Libya where the UN was used as a ruse for regime change. A man with an ego, according to my daughter, the size of Russia, who had been propped up for years by the West, outlived his usefulness. He was killed like a dog on live television. Proxy governments and puppet regimes fare no better. Their end is written in tears, betrayal and exile. Yet, while these games of power play out, women and children never know peace. Big Men with swollen bellies and even bigger egos crisscross the globe, claiming to end wars but only deepening the wounds. They demand 'unconditional surrender' from those under fire, or worse, urge besieged nations to cede territory to aggressors in exchange for foreign powers expropriating their minerals under the guise of protection. What word describes these Big Men? Extortionists? Bloody thieves. Heartless murderers, heavily disguised as human beings, their hands dripping with the blood of children and women from Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, there's always Gaza, and who knows who is next? Not to mention the giants of Africa's independence struggle: Patrice Lumumba (Congo) and Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso), all assassinated, and Samora Machel of Mozambique, allegedly dying innocently in an air crash on our soil. How convenient? But the list of African leaders assassinated since independence is longer and more tragic. Félix-Roland Moumié (Cameroon), Sylvanus Olympio (Togo), Eduardo Mondlane (Mozambique), Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), Marien Ngouabi (Congo-Brazzaville), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), Melchior Ndadaye (Burundi), Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda) Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara (Niger)… the list is endless. The assassinations delayed Africa's freedom and plunged the continent into endless civil wars. Coincidence? Today, despair is all that remains, if not puppets. The machinery of suffering Sadly, it is those with melanin-rich skin who bear the brunt of modern warfare, even though we can hardly assemble a hand grenade, let alone manufacture the weapons that rain down upon us. Our former colonisers control the global armaments industry, producing everything from atomic bombs to mortar shells, and now, the latest horrors: kamikaze drones – loitering munitions designed to explode on impact, acting as the weapon itself – and reusable combat or surveillance drones, which drop bombs or fire missiles before returning to base. The world's leading arms exporters, nations that once carved up Africa and Asia, continue to profit from the endless cycle of violence, flooding conflict zones with weapons while preaching peace from raised podiums. Yet, my leader, for every so-called 'success' in these remote wars, a drone operator or pilot sits in a distant room, pressing a button that ends 100 lives here, a dozen there and 300 somewhere else. Somehow, in between the killing, they pause, give each other high-fives, and their countries honour them with medals dripping with blood. Careers are built and the orgy of rape, murder and mayhem continues. I wonder what these men tell their children when the end comes. Do they speak of honour, dignity and duty to country, or do they whisper of nightmares, regret and blood-soaked hands? Who will answer for the suffering of women and children in Lebanon, Gaza, Iran, Mozambique, Kenya, Nigeria and the next place marked for destruction? The world's top five arms exporters by value The five largest arms exporters in the world by value between 2020 and 2024 are the US, France, Russia, China and Germany. The US leads by a wide margin, accounting for 43% of global arms exports, followed by France (9.6%), Russia (7.8%), China (5.9%) and Germany (5.6%). Except for Germany, the world's leading exporters of deadly weaponry that kill and maim people mostly with melanin-rich skin, crude oil reserves and critical group minerals, so happened by accident of 'history' to own nuclear weapons. Coincidence? Till next week, my man – send me nowhere near Big Men with Biggest Lies, Egos and Thickest Wallets. DM
NDTV
4 days ago
- Politics
- NDTV
As Israeli Air Strikes Intensify, Iran State TV Studio Hit During Live Bulletin
Missiles have been raining from the skies across most of Iran, especially its capital, Tehran, as Israel has claimed "total air superiority" over the gulf nation as hostilities grow exponentially between the two arch rivals. In one such attack, an Israeli missile hit an Iranian State news broadcast station. Dramatic visuals have emerged online, showing a missile strike hitting the compound of the Iran State TV studio. The anchor, Sahar Imami, who was midway through the bulletin, had to get up and leave as the entire studio shook with the impact of the missile. Chants of "Allah-hu-Akbar" can be heard in the background as she manages to escape. Israel has said that it is well on track to achieve its objectives as the conflict escalates and civilians in both countries run for cover. There are traffic snarls on highways leaving Iran's capital Tehran. Vehicles can be seen bumper-to-bumper for miles as residents abandon their homes and head to smaller towns to shield themselves from an Israeli onslaught, which Israel's defence ministry has cautioned about following Iran's ballistic missile attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a statement today in which he said, "While there is no intention to physically harm the residents of Tehran as the murderous dictator does against the residents of Israel, the residents of Tehran will be forced to pay the price of dictatorship and evacuate their homes from areas where it will be necessary to attack regime targets and security infrastructure in Tehran. We will continue to protect the residents of Israel."
The Hindu
27-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Iran's President visits those injured in port explosion that killed at least 28 people
Iran's President visited those injured on Sunday (April 27, 2025) in a huge explosion that rocked one of the Islamic Republic's main ports, a facility purportedly linked to an earlier delivery of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant. The visit by President Masoud Pezeshkian came as the toll from Saturday's blast at the Shahid Rajaei port outside of Bandar Abbas in southern Iran's Hormozgan province rose to 28 killed and about 1,000 others injured. While Iran's military sought to deny the delivery of ammonium perchlorate from China, new videos emerged showing an apocalyptic scene at the still-smoldering port. A crater that appeared metres deep sat surrounded by burning smoke so dangerous that authorities closed schools and businesses in the area. Iranian State television described the fire as being under control, saying emergency workers hoped that it would be fully extinguished later Sunday. Overnight, helicopters and heavy cargo aircraft flew repeated sorties over the burning port, dumping seawater on the site. Pir Hossein Kolivand, head of Iran's Red Crescent society offered the death toll and number of injured in a statement carried by an Iranian government website, saying that only 190 of the injured remained hospitalised on Sunday. The provincial governor declared three days of mourning. Private security firm Ambrey says the port received missile fuel chemical in March. It was part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran, first reported in January by the Financial Times. The chemical used to make solid propellant for rockets was going to be used to replenish Iran's missile stocks, which had been depleted by its direct attacks on Israel during the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Ship-tracking data analysed by The Associated Press put one of the vessels believed to be carrying the chemical in the vicinity in March, as Ambrey said. "The fire was reportedly the result of improper handling of a shipment of solid fuel intended for use in Iranian ballistic missiles," Ambrey said. In a first reaction on Sunday, Iranian Defense Ministry spokesman General Reza Talaeinik denied that missile fuel had been imported through the port. "No sort of imported and exporting consignment for fuel or military application was (or) is in the site of the port," he told state television by telephone. He called foreign reports on the missile fuel baseless — but offered no explanation for what material detonated with such incredible force at the site. Talaeinik promised authorities would offer more information later. It's unclear why Iran wouldn't have moved the chemicals from the port, particularly after the Beirut port blast in 2020. That explosion, caused by the ignition of hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate, killed more than 200 people and injured more than 6,000 others. However, Israel did target Iranian missile sites where Tehran uses industrial mixers to create solid fuel — meaning potentially that it had no place to process the chemical. Social media footage of the explosion on Saturday at Shahid Rajaei saw reddish-hued smoke rising from the fire just before the detonation. That suggests a chemical compound being involved in the blast, like in the Beirut explosion. Meanwhile on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin deployed several emergency aircraft to Bandar Abbas to provide assistance, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.
