The Great Calcutta Riots: Challenging Communal Narratives of 1946 By Habib Siddiqui

The Great Kolkata Riots of August 1946 remain one of the most contested and emotionally charged episodes in the modern history of Bengal. For Bengali-speaking people on both sides of today’s border, the events of Direct Action Day (August 14, 1946) have long constituted a historical puzzle: how a day announced as a peaceful political demonstration by minority Muslims in Calcutta — intended to express their desire for Pakistan and their fear of becoming second‑ or third‑class citizens in a Hindu-majority India — could so quickly descend into one of the bloodiest communal riots of late colonial India.

On August 4, 1946, a conference of Muslim League representatives was held at Zakaria Street, Calcutta, to consider the program for Direct Action Day. It was later elaborated and circulated through local newspapers, pamphlets, and posters. The League President gave orders to observe the day in a peaceful manner to show support for the League’s decisions, regarding the withdrawal of acceptance of Cabinet Mission proposals and the policy of attaining Pakistan.10 The Calcutta District Muslim League called for a “complete hartal and general strike in all spheres of civic, commercial and industrial life,” except in emergency services.

Non-Muslims were also called upon to join hands with Muslims in their fight for Pakistan. A mass procession and a meeting were organized at the Ochterlony Monument and H.S. Suhrawardy, the then Prime Minister of Bengal, was scheduled to preside over it. Muslims were asked to congregate in Maidan to display their solidarity and united strength.

A recent Facebook post attributed a partisan account of the riots to Jyoti Basu, the long-serving Communist leader of West Bengal. Yet, as I noted after listening to the audio version read by Ashim Kumar Pal, such narratives often present only one side of the story, omitting the Muslim experience entirely. This omission is not trivial. As Lt. General Sir Francis Tuker, General Officer Commanding Eastern Command, an eyewitness to the sad event, observed in While Memory Serves, “One great reality of Indian politics has for years been communalism. But unfortunately, the Congress Party hid it from the world, with the inevitable result that India today is decisively parted into at least two nations.”

Tuker’s memoir is indispensable for anyone seeking a balanced understanding of the riots. He describes how, in the days leading up to Direct Action Day, “biased, perverted and inflammatory” articles appeared in both Hindu and Muslim newspapers, while political leaders on all sides indulged in irresponsible rhetoric. His assessment is blunt: goondas — Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim — were responsible for much of the mayhem, but certain political leaders helped create the conditions for violence. He singles out Congress leader Kiran Shankar Roy, who on 14 August 1946 urged Hindus to defy the government-declared holiday and keep their shops open, dismissing the Muslim League’s call for a peaceful hartal. Roy’s speech, Tuker argues, “provoked trouble” rather than defusing tensions.

Hindu public opinion at the time was mobilized around slogans such as Akhand Hindustan and Bande Mataram, which reinforced a hardened sense of Hindu identity. Many Hindu extremists interpreted Direct Action Day as an opportunity to “teach the Muslims in Calcutta a lesson,” resulting in widespread attacks on Muslim neighborhoods. As Tuker records, by 7:30 a.m. on 16 August, Hindus had already erected barricades at the Tala and Belgachia bridges to prevent Muslims from entering the city and proceeding toward the Ochterlony Monument, where a mammoth assembly was scheduled to be addressed at 3 p.m. by H. S. Suhrawardy, the Prime Minister of undivided Bengal. Tuker wrote: “Hindus had erected barricades at the Tala and Belgachia bridges to prevent Muslims from entering the city and taking their processions to the middle of the town to the Ochterlony Monument where a mammoth Muslim assembly was to be addressed at 3 p.m. by Mr. H. S. Suhrawardy.”

The peaceful Muslim marchers were assaulted with deadly weapons, triggering riots that soon engulfed Calcutta and later spread to Bihar, U.P., and East Punjab. Tuker’s description is chilling: “Buses and taxis were charging about loaded with Sikhs and Hindus armed with swords, iron bars and firearms.” Many Sikhs employed by Marwari businessmen acted as enforcers, targeting Muslims with impunity.

Even Muslims who were members of the Congress Party were not spared. The killing of Dr. Jamal Mohammed, an eye specialist of Bhowanipore, illustrates the ferocity of the communal frenzy. As reported in Morning News (2 September 1946), Dr. Mohammed pleaded, “Why are you killing me… I am a Congressman and have served the Congress all my life.” The mob responded, “We don’t care… You are a Muslim and that is enough.” His murder was part of a broader pattern aimed at erasing Muslim presence from Hindu-majority localities.The Kazipara bustee, a Muslim pocket on Debendra Ghosh Road in Bhowanipore, was completely wiped off, which killed around one hundred Muslims. Muslim residents of Bhowanipore suffered enormous losses, as every Muslim house in the area was destroyed.

Abul Hashim, General Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, offers further insight in In Retrospection, underscoring the climate of fear and the breakdown of trust between communities. He writes, “On the 13th of August I issued a statement to the press in which I stated that Muslim League would observe the Direct Action Day to demonstrate their grievances against British Imperialism. I made it clear that our target was British Imperialism alone.” He continues:

“I appealed to all sections of the people to make'Direct Action Day' peaceful and not to degenerate itinto a strife between people and people despite provocation from elements that might play the game of theimperial power whose purpose was to suppress popularupsurge in the country.

The Muslim League had no knowledge, no apprehension and no anticipation as to the unprecedented violencethat started in the morning and continued in the afternoon of the 16th of August when we were all in the midstof the meeting held at the foot of the Octerlony Monument. The Muslims were unarmed and unprepared tomeet the situation. Men may lie but circumstancesnever lie. I brought from Burdwan with me my twosons, Badruddin Mohammad Umar, a boy of 15, andShahabuddin Mohammad Ali, a boy of 8 to showthem the great gathering that was expected on the occasion at Calcutta. I took my sons to the Maidan and LalMiah of Faridpur took his grandson aged six or seven. Ifwe apprehended any danger we would not have takenour sons and grandsons to the Maidan.”

Abul Hashim recalls that the meeting had barely begun when he reminded the audience that their struggle was directed against Fort William, not the people of India. However, word quickly arrived from all sides that violent communal riots had erupted across Calcutta. Upon hearing the news, he immediately rushed back with his sons to his residence on Ripon Street.

He recalls:

“Mr. Suhrawardy declared August 16th a public holiday, a decision described as a major blunder. While peace-loving citizens were largely uninvolved, subsequent events suggested the riots were organized by British imperialist agent provocateurs. The violence lasted for five days, from August 16th to the 20th. Although Mr. Suhrawardy requested army assistance and relocated to the Lal Bazar Police Headquarters control room to manage the crisis round the clock, the army did not deploy, local police were overmatched, and dispatched armed reinforcements failed to reach their destinations, leaving the city unprotected. Order was eventually restored after the Punjab government sent a large contingent of armed constables at Mr. Suhrawardy's request, during which time he also risked his life by driving through the city during the dayand by night. Central Calcutta was the centre of the great killing.

A friend informed me that he saw Moulana Azad Subhani walking along Bowbazar Street. I immediately sent volunteers with armed police to Bowbazar to find the Moulana. Fortunately enough they saw the Moulana in Bowbazar Street. They picked him up and brought him to my place. Monnujan Girls Hostel, a hostel for post-graduate women students, was situated at Vivekananda Road in Central Calcutta. The hostel was attacked and the life and honour of the women students were threatened. The hooligans attempted to pull down the Muslim League flag from the hostel but the students gallantly resisted. As soon as news came to me I sent a truck with volunteers and armed constables to rescue the inmates of the hostel. They were brought to my residence at 37 Ripon Street. Immediately through a Press statement I informed the parents and guardians of the women students that they were safe at my residence. When the riot subsided Mr. Suhrawardy provided funds for sending them some.”

To this archival record must be added the testimony of ordinary Muslim residents whose experiences rarely appear in mainstream accounts.An extract from the confidential reports of the Intelligence Branch described how an old resident from KatuaKhoti Lane, Md. Rafuquddin, left his para (neighborhood) on August 16, 1946:

“From the morning of 16/8/46 the people of our own mohalla was preparing for a procession of ML [Muslim League] to attend the meeting at Esplanade. That being a Ramzan day I went to bazar at about 1:30 pm. On the way to bazar I saw some people gather in our locality for procession. At around 2 p.m. I heard slogan “Allah Akbar” mixed with great noise from Bazar and saw the procession of our mohalla (KatuaKhoti Lane) proceeding towards Esplanade. As soon the procession reached Jagu Babu’s Bazar brickbats, stones was (sic) thrown at it from both sides of the road. As the procession was disorganized the Hindus and Sikhs were attacking it from both sides with lathi and daggers. After midnight we heard slogans of Bande Mataram and Jai Hind gradually approaching our locality to attack the locality. The Police Patrol party came after repeated phone calls from our locality. In the morning we set up peace committee with Hindus of our locality but failed. At about noon we left our house, leaving everything to the mercy of the Hindus and took shelter in Presidency jail. I went to see my house after 2 days and saw it along with other houses were broken and all our household property were looted. I have lost everything except the lives of my family members.” [Extracts from “Reports of the IB Officials and Assistants Regarding the Incidents Witnessed during the Direct Action Day Declared by AIML Office of DIG, IB,” Intelligence Branch Records, File No. 717/46(6), West Bengal State Archives, Kolkata.]

Similar was the fate of Sharfuddin Ahmad. He lived in Chetla, a predominantly Hindu area. He left his house after Muslim families in his locality were attacked by some Revolutionary Socialist Party goons.

He describes:

“My house at 6 Mahesh Chandra Datta Lane is the only Muslim house situated in a backward area in Chetla, P.O. Alipore. The first report that we heard of riot was from a RSP fellow recently came to my locality living at 7 Mahesh Datta Lane. He began to gather crowds around him and said Muslims gave such exciting statement in front of gurudwara that the Sikhs could not keep their heads cool and that Muslims forcibly entered Kalighat gurudwara. I found he was spreading mischievous lies in my locality fomenting trouble that would victimize my family and relatives. So I asked him what slogans excited Sikh and he said fumbly ‘Congress Party Dhangsa Hok’ and denied that he said Muslims entered Gurudwara. So I told my neighbor that he is spreading false rumours. I saw later that the RSP fellow had gathered a number of lathis and dozen low class people in a room 100 yards from my house and so I rang to Khan Bahadur Abdur Rahman, Minister of Bengal who telephoned Alipore P.O. to arrest these men. In the same building one Police magistrate was living who could not find the room of these men. Soon after 50 young men began to tour the area with baton, knives, rocks in Mahesh Chandra Datta Lane alone. All Friday nights conch shells were blown creating false panic and alarm. At 12 I toured my area in a peace squad, which met hostile elements among the Bhadralok class in front of a mosque at 12 Moyerpara Road. On the same day at 2:30 four Sikh with 200 Hindus of mixed elements attacked the above mosque and murdered the Imam and another Moulavi. The whole of Saturday night we passed a house where 6 Muslim families have been living for nearly half a century. On Sunday morning on receipt of information from friendly neighbours all the families left the house, leaving everything and fled on foot to house of Khan Bahadur Abdur Rahman, Minister. After this we heard of stray stabbing cases on Muslim in Chetla area and the same RSP fellow responsible for the murder of Ghulam Muhammed Mustafa Chaudhuri who was kidnapped and murdered near our house and thrown into Tolly Nala fromDurgapur Bridge. No Police or Military came. I am staying in a safe Muslim place with my own family. I would not venture to return to my house in a predominantly Hindu area.” [“Reports of the IB Officials and Assistants Regarding the Incidents Witnessed during the Direct Action Day,” Intelligence Branch Records, File No. 717/46(6).]

A particularly harrowing account comes from Abdul Mannan, who lived near the Bowbazar area of Calcutta, where only three Muslim families resided in the neighborhood. Abdul Mannan was just fourteen years old during the riots, yet the scenes he witnessed from the road‑facing window of his grandfather’s second‑floor home remained etched in his memory for the rest of his life. From that vantage point, he saw Hindu goondas corner Muslim passersby and kill them with curved knives, slashing open their stomachs until their intestines spilled onto the street. These were not isolated incidents; Mannan recalled watching such killings, each one imprinting itself with traumatic clarity.

When the mob eventually approached his family’s home, it was the Chinese tenants on the ground floor — owners of a small shoe shop — who intervened. They confronted the attackers and managed to drive them away, saving the Muslim family from certain death. Abdul Mannan’s maternal uncle, Mr. Noor, a Police Magistrate at the time, was able to move the family to the local police station for safety, where they remained sheltered for a week before returning home. During their absence, the Chinese tenants again protected the house, preventing Hindu goondas from attacking or destroying it. Abdul Mannan, who later became Assistant Regional Director of Radio Pakistan in Chittagong in the 1960s, would recount these memories to his children after the family migrated to East Pakistan, describing how the terror he witnessed as a fourteen‑year‑old boy never faded, even decades later. His recollections underscore both the brutality of the violence and the unexpected solidarities that emerged amid the chaos.

My own parents — then teenagers and unmarried students in Calcutta— experienced the riots firsthand. Their recollections, which I recorded in my books, align closely with Tuker’s account. As I wrote in Bangladesh: A Polarized and Divided Nation?, my father survived an attack on Baker Hostel by armed Hindu goondas. Along with other Muslim students, he resisted the attackers before taking refuge inside empty water tanks on the hostel roof. “For days, afraid of being killed, no Muslim dared to come out of his/her hiding place.” These experiences convinced many that partition — of India, Bengal, and Punjab — had become the only viable option.

Despite the wealth of eyewitness testimony, the Muslim perspective on the Great Kolkata Riots remains underrepresented in mainstream historiography. Very few Muslim historians have taken up the task of challenging fabricated or one-sided narratives propagated by communal Hindu writers who place the entire blame on Muslims. As a lifelong student of South Asian history, my research indicates that while H. S. Suhrawardy’s decision to declare a government holiday for Direct Action Day has been criticized, he cannot and should not be held responsible for the riots. He repeatedly requested military deployment to maintain order, but the British Raj refused to cooperate — allowing the violence to escalate. The demographic toll speaks for itself: eyewitness accounts suggest that perhaps four out of every five victims were Muslims, many killed by knife- and dagger‑wielding Hindu and Sikh mobs.

Recent scholarship reinforces this picture of asymmetrical suffering. As Sohini Majumdar notes, many Muslim residents — regardless of political affiliation — were attacked, displaced, or forced to abandon homes in mixed neighborhoods. Muslim girls’ hostels were raided, students were assaulted, and entire bustees such as Saheb Bagan were wiped out by organized Hindu mobs. These incidents reveal how communal violence reshaped Calcutta’s urban geography, transforming previously mixed localities into sharply segregated “safe” and “unsafe” zones.

Such evidence complicates simplistic narratives of Muslim aggression and highlights the diversity of Muslim experiences — ranging from trauma and displacement to moments of protection by Hindu neighbors who resisted the communal tide.

The Great Kolkata Riots of 1946 were not inevitable. They were the product of communal polarization, political irresponsibility, and administrative failure. But they were also a moment of profound historical rupture — one that shaped the destinies of millions and continues to haunt the collective memory of Bengalis today. Understanding this event requires acknowledging all perspectives, especially those long marginalized or deliberately erased.

A more nuanced engagement with the Great Kolkata Riots is overdue. By confronting the distortions and omissions that have shaped its memory, we move closer to a history that does justice to all who lived through it.

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Dr Siddiqui is an author of several books, including Bangladesh: A Polarized and Divided Nation?(Amazon, 2021) and 'Modi-Fied' India: The Transformation of A Nation (Peter Lang, 2026).

The convenient immigrant …Parisian student by Thanos Kalamidas

What is profoundly dishonest about the far right's gaze upon a young person in the streets of France? It sees a hood. It hears an accent it does not like. It finds a foreign surname somewhere in the family tree and suddenly imagines it has explained an entire political movement. The American vice-president does it. Donald Trump does it. Greek Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis does it. Different countries, different politicians, same lazy recipe, when young people protest against the conditions of their lives, blame immigrants.

And in doing so they achieve two things at once. They expose their xenophobia and they erase the students. That second part deserves considerably more attention. France's student movement did not begin because somebody woke up one morning and decided that immigration was an exciting new political hobby. It began with students protesting school conditions, teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate facilities and the increasingly frightening prospect of entering adulthood with fewer opportunities and greater insecurity. The movement spread rapidly and developed into something much broader, with tens and then hundreds of thousands taking to the streets.

That is a youth movement. It belongs to them. But the far right cannot resist stealing it.

Suddenly, the discussion is no longer about classrooms, teachers, housing, living costs, inequality, employment or what kind of future today's young people are being handed. Suddenly, the student standing in the street becomes an immigrant. His politics disappear. Her anger disappears. Their demands disappear.

Their ethnicity becomes the story. It is an extraordinarily convenient trick. Trump has explicitly attempted to frame the French unrest as a consequence of mass migration and Islam rather than as a movement centred on schools and the future of French youth. JD Vance has similarly blamed immigration for the violence surrounding the demonstrations. Georgiadis, meanwhile, described the French unrest as the product of a mixture of immigrants from different generations and the far left, portraying the country's turmoil through the same immigration-centred lens.

The political convenience is almost obscene. If students are angry because their schools are failing, governments have to answer questions. If students are angry because they cannot see a secure future, governments have to answer questions. If young people believe public institutions have failed them, politicians have to answer questions.

But if the problem can simply be called "immigration", the questions disappear. Brilliant. The student becomes the immigrant. The grievance becomes the invasion. The protest becomes the riot. The political argument becomes a security problem.

And suddenly nobody has to discuss why an entire generation is angry. Of course, violence must be condemned. Burning buildings, attacking police officers, looting businesses and destroying public property are not somehow transformed into legitimate political expression because the perpetrators are young or angry. The violence that erupted in parts of France was real, serious and destructive, and those responsible should face the consequences of their actions. Hundreds of thousands, however, marched peacefully, while the government's own figures and reporting from the demonstrations distinguish the enormous peaceful mobilisation from the violent fringe.

That distinction is precisely what political opportunists do not want. Because once you separate the rioter from the student, you have to listen to the student. And that is much more uncomfortable. The young people marching are not props in somebody else's immigration debate. They are not disposable extras in a culture-war campaign manufactured by politicians thousands of kilometres away. They are citizens. They are the people who will inherit the consequences of today's political decisions long after today's ministers have retired, today's presidents have left office and today's social-media warriors have found another country to lecture.

They are asking a brutally simple question: What kind of country are you leaving us? And the answer from the far right seems to be: Stop complaining. Blame your neighbour.

It is intellectually pathetic. It also reveals something darker. The far right increasingly treats second-generation immigrants as permanently foreign. Born in France? Still an immigrant. Raised in France? Still an immigrant. French citizen? Still somehow an outsider. Protest against the government? Evidence of failed integration. Protest alongside others? Proof of an immigrant conspiracy.

At what point does a person finally become French? Apparently, never. This is the poison hidden inside the rhetoric. Second-generation immigrants are simultaneously told that they must integrate and then informed, whenever convenient, that they will never quite belong. Their Frenchness is conditional. Their citizenship is questioned culturally even when it is unquestionable legally.

And then politicians wonder why alienation grows. The students of France deserve better than this intellectual fraud. They deserve to have their arguments heard, even when those arguments are uncomfortable. They deserve classrooms that work, teachers who are there, institutions that listen and a future that does not feel like a punishment for being born at the wrong economic moment.

Most importantly, they deserve to own their movement. Not Trump. Not Vance. Not Georgiadis. Not Le Pen. Not Macron. Not the far left either. The students. Because the easiest way to defeat a young generation is not necessarily to silence it. Sometimes it is simply to convince everybody that nobody should listen to what it is saying.

The jungle has no rulebook by Robert Perez

The most dangerous phrase in Washington's new war on drugs may be the simplest one: “on land.” For decades, the United States has treated Latin America's narcotics trade primarily as a law-enforcement, intelligence and interdiction problem. Now the Trump administration is pushing the military deeper into the region, with hundreds of U.S. troops deployed for training and joint exercises and a stated ambition to take the fight against designated criminal organisations from the sea onto the jungle floor.

That is not merely an expansion of an operation. It is a change of category. And categories matter when people start dying. The argument from Washington is seductive in its simplicity: cartels are dangerous, drugs kill Americans, therefore the military should hunt the people responsible. It sounds tough. It sounds decisive. It sounds like the kind of policy that fits comfortably into a presidential speech about restoring order.

But the drug trade is not an invading army. Criminal organisations are brutal, heavily armed and capable of controlling territory. That does not automatically transform every suspected trafficker, logistics operator, boat crewman or warehouse worker into a lawful military target. The mere fact that soldiers are carrying the weapons does not magically transform a policing operation into a war.

That distinction has already been badly blurred by the administration's maritime campaign. More than 200 people have reportedly been killed in strikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels, while serious questions remain about the evidence supporting individual targets and the legal basis for using lethal military force.

Now Washington wants to take that model ashore. That should make every democratic government in the Americas nervous. Because the jungle is not an ocean. On a boat intercepted hundreds of kilometres from shore, the Pentagon can create an image of a clean battlefield: target, missile, explosion, mission accomplished. On land, reality becomes considerably messier. Villages exist. Families exist. Informants lie. Intelligence is incomplete. Criminal groups deliberately operate among civilians. Governments have different laws, different courts and different ideas about sovereignty.

There are no neat red circles around the “bad guys.” And once the United States begins conducting lethal operations inside another country's territory, the legal questions multiply violently. Who authorised the strike? Who identified the target? What evidence was available? Was arrest possible? What happens when the intelligence is wrong? Who investigates a civilian death? Which country's courts have jurisdiction? And, perhaps most importantly, what happens when the definition of “terrorist organisation” becomes a convenient replacement for evidence?

This is where the counter-narcotics mission risks becoming something much larger than counter-narcotics. The administration has designated numerous Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organisations and increasingly describes the confrontation in military language. But changing the label does not automatically create an international armed conflict or grant unlimited authority to kill. Human-rights lawyers and international institutions have already challenged the legal theory underpinning the maritime strikes, arguing that suspected criminals cannot simply be converted into military targets by presidential declaration.

Washington may disagree. It is entitled to make that argument. But Latin America has heard this music before. The hemisphere remembers military dictatorships, covert operations, interventions, disappearances and governments claiming that extraordinary threats required extraordinary powers. The United States cannot seriously expect Latin American societies to forget that history simply because today's targets are called cartels instead of communists.

And there is an additional stupidity here: killing people is not the same thing as dismantling a criminal economy. Cartels are businesses. Kill one commander and another appears. Destroy one route and another opens. Bomb a warehouse and the supply chain adapts. Organised crime survives because it has money, corruption networks, political protection, weapons and enormous consumer demand.

A missile cannot arrest corruption. A drone cannot prosecute a banker laundering cartel money. A soldier cannot bomb away the American appetite for cocaine. Yet military power is politically addictive precisely because it creates immediate images of action. Governments can announce strikes. Generals can display maps. Presidents can promise that the enemy is being destroyed.

Meanwhile, the harder work, investigation, prosecution, financial intelligence, anti-corruption operations, border cooperation, judicial reform and reducing demand, looks painfully boring. Democracy has always had this problem: the spectacular solution is often easier to sell than the effective one.

The United States has every legitimate interest in fighting drug trafficking. Latin American governments have every right to seek American intelligence, equipment and training. Joint operations can be lawful and useful when they respect sovereignty, human rights and clear rules of engagement.

But once counter-narcotics becomes a battlefield without a clearly defined war, the distinction between policing and warfare begins to disappear. And when that distinction disappears, so does accountability. The jungle should not become the place where the rules go to die. Because if Washington can redefine criminal suspects as wartime enemies today, another government can copy the formula tomorrow. And once that precedent spreads across the Americas, nobody should be surprised when the next jungle contains not fewer bodies, but fewer rules.

Berserk Alert! #126 by Tony Zuvela

 

Tony Zuvela and his view of the world around us in a constant berserk alert!
For more Berserk Alert! HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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AntySaurus Prick #139 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Dino is a vegetarian virgin dinosaur and his best friend is Anty,
a carnivorous nymphomaniac ant.
They call themselves the AntySaurus Prick and they are still here
waiting for the comet to come!

For more AntySaurus Prick, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The bomb and the excuse by Howard Morton

There is something profoundly disturbing about a government preparing plans to strike another country with the “Mother of All Bombs” while the president keeps the world guessing about whether the war will resume. It is the language of deterrence dressed in the clothes of intimidation, with an enormous explosive device hovering somewhere between military strategy and political theatre. And the most dangerous question is not merely what Washington intends to bomb, but what happens if Tehran decides that waiting is more dangerous than acting.

Because wars do not always begin when somebody officially declares them. Sometimes they begin when two governments convince themselves that the other is preparing to strike, and each decides that moving first is the only way to avoid catastrophe.

The American military reportedly has developed new strike plans targeting Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites, with Donald Trump retaining the decision to resume combat operations. The existence of contingency plans is hardly unusual for a military power. The disturbing element is the political atmosphere surrounding them: public threats, strategic ambiguity and the prospect that a spectacular attack could become an instrument of presidential messaging.

Trump likes the language of overwhelming power. It is theatrical, muscular and wonderfully uncomplicated for an audience that will never have to shelter beneath the explosions. The “Mother of All Bombs” sounds like a weapon designed by a marketing department that believes subtlety is for cowards. But this is not a Hollywood trailer, and Iran is not a prop waiting for its cue.

The destruction of energy infrastructure would have consequences extending far beyond military installations. Electricity, fuel, transport and industrial production are not abstract strategic assets. They are part of the machinery sustaining civilian life. An attack on them risks imposing suffering on millions of people who have neither chosen their government's policies nor volunteered to become instruments in somebody else's geopolitical demonstration.

Nuclear sites introduce another layer of danger. Bombing facilities associated with a nuclear programme does not automatically eliminate the knowledge, materials or political determination behind that programme. Depending on the targets and circumstances, military action could create contamination risks, intensify regional instability and strengthen the argument among Iranian hardliners that only a nuclear deterrent can protect the country from future attacks.

That is the strategic absurdity of preventive war: the operation intended to eliminate a threat can make the threat more attractive to those who survive it. But there is an equally disturbing possibility surrounding the public presentation of these plans. What if Tehran interprets the threats as evidence that an American attack is approaching and decides to strike American forces or regional allies first? Washington could then point to Iranian aggression as justification for a vastly expanded campaign.

There is no established evidence that the United States is deliberately trying to provoke such a response. Yet responsible leaders should understand that their actions can create precisely the conditions in which an adversary feels compelled to act pre-emptively. When military threats become public spectacles, every movement acquires a political meaning, every precaution resembles preparation for attack, and every miscalculation becomes potentially irreversible.

The danger is a security dilemma in which both sides claim to be preventing war while taking steps that make war increasingly likely. Iran's government is not innocent of responsibility. Its regional activities, threats and military decisions deserve scrutiny, and no government should be permitted to endanger others without consequences. But condemning Tehran's conduct does not give Washington a blank cheque to escalate indefinitely. International law does not disappear because a president believes that overwhelming force will produce a more satisfying negotiating position.

Nor should the American public be expected to accept another war simply because the administration has already prepared the bombs. If Trump wants diplomacy, he must leave credible room for diplomacy. That means communicating clear limits, avoiding threats that make retreat politically humiliating, pursuing verifiable agreements and ensuring that military readiness does not become a substitute for political strategy.

The world has seen enough leaders confuse the ability to destroy with the ability to resolve. The real test of American power is not whether Washington can unleash the largest conventional bomb in its arsenal. It is whether its president can resist the temptation to turn military superiority into a performance of personal authority.

Because the most frightening possibility is not that the Mother of All Bombs will be dropped. It is that somebody, somewhere, will make one reckless decision, and then another government will use the consequences to explain why it had no choice.

That is how a provocation becomes a justification, a justification becomes a war, and a war becomes a catastrophe that nobody supposedly wanted. The bomb may have a monstrous name. The excuse, when it arrives, will probably sound perfectly reasonable.

The Ascent #Poem & #Painting by Nikos Laios

He was the
Grand architect
Of his own misery,
Alone and undone,
He wallowed in
Failure and held
It up as a revolutionary
Banner and as he drank
A bottle of Malbec
And listened to an
Old record of U2’s
‘New Year’s Day’
With the muffled
Sounds of traffic
Outside and he
Smoked a joint to
Numb the sorrow
Of his descent,
For he had
Become
A monster,
And wondered
Whether he too
Like Dante would
Experience an ascent,
And who will be his
Virgil?

The execution show by Markus Gibbons

There was a time when governments tried to convince the world that civilisation meant something. Apparently, that time was becoming optional, replaced by a political entertainment industry in which the Pentagon could seriously propose livestreaming a man being executed by firing squad, as though death were another sporting event and the American public had purchased season tickets.

Nidal Hasan committed a horrific crime at Fort Hood in 2009, murdering 13 people and injuring 32 others. He was convicted and sentenced to death. The victims and their families deserve justice, remembrance and dignity. None of that, however, explains why the United States government should turn his execution into a public broadcast.

On October 8, the Pentagon announced plans to livestream Hasan's scheduled December 3 execution. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth presented public visibility as a way of demonstrating the consequences of such crimes. And suddenly America found itself staring into a rather ugly mirror. Because there is a profound difference between administering justice and putting death on display.

The reaction that followed was not merely another predictable political argument. By October 15, the idea had generated international horror and widespread condemnation. What had apparently been conceived as a demonstration of American resolve instead became a demonstration of something much more disturbing: how easily a democratic government can flirt with the language and imagery of authoritarian punishment.

And then Donald Trump cancelled it. Good. That decision matters, because sometimes stopping something terrible before it happens is the only sensible victory available. But cancelling the livestream does not erase the fact that the Pentagon thought broadcasting an execution was an acceptable proposition in the first place.

That is the real scandal. The Taliban has staged public executions and punishments. Iran has used public executions as instruments of state authority and intimidation. ISIS turned murder into propaganda, deliberately producing spectacles of cruelty to terrorise populations and advertise its power. These organisations differ enormously from the United States in their ideology, institutions and political systems. But the imagery of public punishment carries a universal danger: the state deliberately transforms human suffering into a demonstration of power.

America should know better. Nobody needs to pretend that Hasan was innocent or that the Fort Hood massacre was anything other than monstrous. The victims deserved justice. Their families deserved recognition. Hasan's conviction and sentence followed a judicial process.

But a civilised legal system is not measured by how enthusiastically it kills the people it condemns. It is measured by whether it can administer justice without turning punishment into revenge or spectacle.

A courtroom establishes guilt through evidence, law and due process. A livestreamed execution offers something else: an image of the state exercising ultimate power over a helpless prisoner while millions watch.

What exactly was the educational purpose? Would a terrorist suddenly discover morality because he watched a firing squad? Would an extremist contemplating murder be deterred by the knowledge that the government might eventually broadcast his own death? There is little evidence for such fantasies.

There is, however, an obvious danger in normalising violence as political theatre. And what about the soldiers ordered to participate? They serve a military institution whose traditions include discipline, duty and honour. Asking them to become performers in a government broadcast would have dragged a solemn legal responsibility into the swamp of political spectacle.

The victims' families deserved better too. Their loved ones should be remembered for their lives, their service and the futures stolen from them, not used as supporting characters in a televised demonstration of state power. America has spent decades condemning authoritarian governments for using fear, violence and public humiliation to demonstrate authority. It has criticised regimes that turn punishment into propaganda and insisted that democratic institutions must operate according to higher standards.

That is precisely why the proposed livestream was so grotesque. The United States is not the Taliban. It is not ISIS. It is not Iran. Its constitutional system, courts and political freedoms are fundamentally different. But democracy does not receive permanent immunity from barbarism simply because it calls itself democratic.

Democratic erosion rarely arrives carrying a sign announcing its intentions. Sometimes it arrives as a supposedly tough policy. Sometimes as a patriotic spectacle. Sometimes as a government official saying the public needs to see consequences. And sometimes it arrives as a camera pointed at a firing squad.

Trump's cancellation was therefore welcome, not because Hasan's crime should be forgotten, and certainly not because punishment should disappear, but because the state does not need an audience for every exercise of its power. Justice does not require applause. Justice does not require ratings.

And justice certainly does not require a livestream. The world reacted with horror, and the White House eventually stepped back. Perhaps that is the small piece of good news in this ugly episode: the democratic instinct against turning execution into entertainment still exists.

But the question remains. Why did anybody in the American government think it was a good idea in the first place? That question deserves an answer.

Ma-Siri & Co #132 #Cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

 

Ma-Siri is a mother, a grandmother and a very active social life,
searching for the meaning of life among other things and her glasses.

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Lettuce is national security by Sabine Fischer

For decades, governments have treated food as a commodity, agriculture as an economic sector and supermarkets as temples of endless abundance. We became so comfortable with the miracle of global distribution that we forgot a rather embarrassing detail: food does not grow on supermarket shelves, and a nation cannot eat a shipping forecast.

Now extreme weather is disrupting harvests, geopolitical conflicts are shaking trade routes, and global supply chains are demonstrating their extraordinary capacity to collapse at precisely the moment we need them most. Yet the political establishment continues to behave as though food security means negotiating another trade agreement, signing another import contract and crossing its fingers that somewhere on the planet the rain will arrive on time.

This is not food security. It is national dependence wearing a business suit. The local food revolution must therefore stop being marketed as a fashionable ecological hobby for urban middle classes who enjoy expensive organic tomatoes and photographs of community gardens. It is becoming a matter of national resilience, economic survival and, ultimately, defence. A country that cannot feed its population when international distribution breaks down is not strategically independent. It is simply lucky until its luck runs out.

Consider the absurdity of our present arrangements. Food may travel thousands of kilometres, cross several borders, pass through centralised warehouses and depend on fuel, refrigeration, digital logistics and political stability before reaching a family’s kitchen. The system is efficient when everything works. But efficiency without resilience is an invitation to disaster. A blocked shipping route, a fuel crisis, a cyberattack, a prolonged drought or a regional war can turn apparent abundance into an expensive shortage remarkably quickly.

And when that happens, people do not eat efficiency reports. The pandemic offered a warning. Conflicts have reinforced it. Extreme weather is making the warning harder to ignore. Droughts, floods, heatwaves and shifting growing seasons threaten agricultural production across regions that the global market has come to treat as interchangeable suppliers. They are not interchangeable when several major producers suffer simultaneous crop failures or when exports are restricted to protect domestic populations.

A global food system built around concentration and maximum short-term profitability can become dangerously fragile. The answer is not to abandon international trade or pretend every country can grow every crop. That would be economic nonsense. The answer is to stop confusing global cooperation with total dependence on distant suppliers.

Food resilience begins at the municipal level. Cities and towns should identify what they can produce locally, which surrounding farms can supply them, what storage capacity they possess and how food would reach vulnerable residents during a prolonged emergency. Municipal authorities should protect agricultural land from speculative development, support local farmers, encourage cooperatives, invest in regional processing facilities and create distribution networks that do not collapse when a single warehouse or transport corridor fails.

Schools, hospitals, public kitchens and care homes can become dependable customers for regional producers. Rooftops, vacant plots, community gardens and suitable urban spaces can supplement production, although nobody should pretend that a few lettuce beds will feed a metropolis. Serious local food policy requires serious agriculture, infrastructure, land management and investment.

And yes, it requires governments to pay farmers properly rather than treating them as disposable suppliers whose livelihoods can be sacrificed whenever supermarket chains demand lower prices.

Here lies the political scandal: governments spend enormous sums discussing national security while leaving a fundamental element of it exposed to market concentration, environmental disruption and logistical failure. We protect borders, discuss military readiness and worry about hostile powers, yet frequently neglect the agricultural foundations that allow a society to function in the first place.

What exactly are soldiers defending if the population cannot reliably obtain food? National defence must expand its understanding of security. It should include seed diversity, soil health, water management, agricultural knowledge, regional storage, resilient electricity supplies and the survival of small and medium-sized farms. These are not sentimental rural concerns. They are strategic assets.

There is also a democratic dimension. Communities with stronger regional food networks possess more choices when international markets become unstable. They can keep more economic value circulating locally, strengthen relationships between producers and consumers, and reduce the distance between a shortage and a practical response. Local production will not eliminate food inflation or protect every harvest from climate disasters, but diversified systems can provide alternatives when one part of the chain fails.

The transition will not be cheap. Building storage, supporting farmers, improving irrigation and establishing processing facilities requires public money and long-term planning. But resilience always costs something before a crisis. Dependence costs considerably more during one. The real revolution is not about replacing every imported banana with a patriotic apple. It is about designing a food system in which international trade provides opportunity rather than holding entire populations hostage to its uninterrupted operation.

The next great security crisis may not begin with tanks crossing a border. It may begin with empty warehouses, failed harvests, interrupted deliveries and governments discovering that their supposedly sophisticated food systems have no adequate backup. A nation cannot eat its stock market. It cannot digest a trade agreement. And it certainly cannot survive on political speeches about strategic autonomy. The defence of a country begins long before the first shot is fired. Sometimes, it begins with the farmer down the road.

#eBook: DEATH & ECSTACY by David Sparenberg

A Noir-Drama written for performance in the tradition of German Expressionist Theatre and Cabaret Voltaire.

German Expressionist Theatre developed during a time of crisis, of intensifying extremity. A time of pandemic, of war, economic instability, political chaos and ideological conflict, periodically resulting in street violence and death. The movement was nurtured by small groups of artists who thought of themselves as revolutionaries. both of culture and society.

The goal of their work was to introduce a condition which they called The New Man – a human type freed from the limitations of lifeless, death administering traditions, political betrayals and increasing insecurity of public dysfunction and despair.

So much has happened in the theatre since the heyday of German Expressionism—there has been Artaud and Brecht, Samuel Beckett and Grotowski, the Living Theatre—and in history: the rise of Fascism, Communistic Totalitarianism, a traumatic Second World War, and now on the brink of World War Three and catastrophic climate change: Earth Crisis is evident as Human Crisis. The pressure is felt.

David Sparenberg is a humanitarian and eco poet, essayist, storyteller, a World Citizen and advocate for democracy, who lives in Seattle, WA in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

Ovi eBook Publishing 2026

DEATH & ECSTACY

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