STATE CAPITAL$M

Titan Mining, US Army advance strategic graphite processing plant in Alabama

Staff Writer | October 7, 2026 | 

Titan Mining workers at the company’s Kilbourne project. Credit: Titan Mining.

Titan Mining (NYSE-A:TII, TSX:TI) announced Wednesday that its wholly owned subsidiary, Empire State Mines, LLC (ESM), and the U.S. Army have executed a term sheet establishing the principal commercial terms to develop a critical minerals processing facility on U.S. Army property.  

Titan Mining’s subsidiary, Empire State Mines, has agreed to terms on a framework to lease roughly 97 acres at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama for up to 100 years, to build a facility that turns raw graphite into higher-value materials used in batteries, defense equipment, and industrial products.   

The term sheet contemplates providing Titan with a pathway to establish downstream graphite processing capacity within an existing strategic U.S. defense installation. Development would leverage established infrastructure, site access and coordinated utilities planning to support the fast-track construction of the facility. 

In January, Titan commenced graphite concentrate production at its Kilbourne demonstration facility in New York state, marking the first US production of the material in decades. The pilot plant is located at the company’s Empire State Mine infrastructure in St. Lawrence County.   

In July, the company entered into a supply agreement with a U.S. manufacturer serving the aerospace, defense and advanced industrial sectors for the supply of natural graphite products from Titan’s planned commercial graphite facility in New York.   

Army right of first offer 

Under the terms of the US Army deal, ESM would develop, finance, build, own and operate a commercial-scale graphite processing facility designed to produce value-added natural graphite products, including Purified Micronized Graphite (PMG) in phase I and Coated Spherical Purified Graphite (CSPG) following customer qualifications, supporting U.S. defense, industrial and energy supply chains.  

The proposed framework provides the Army with a right of first offer to purchase certain uncommitted PMG and CSPG produced at the facility, subject to applicable federal procurement requirements. The right is limited to a maximum of 10% of annual facility production and does not apply to product committed under qualifying offtake, supply or project-financing arrangements. 

The proposed facility would extend Titan’s domestic graphite platform downstream into purified and coated graphite products critical to U.S. defense, advanced manufacturing and energy applications. 

“Agreeing to this commercial framework with the U.S. Army is a significant milestone in Titan’s strategy to build a fully integrated American graphite supply chain,” Titan CEO Rita Adiani said in a news release. “Developing within an existing Army installation provides important infrastructure and strategic advantages and creates a pathway to establish large-scale domestic graphite processing without having to develop an entirely new industrial site from the ground up.” 

Adani said the framework combines long-duration site control, strategic U.S. defense infrastructure and financing flexibility with Kilbourne’s domestic natural flake graphite resource,  existing operating infrastructure and expertise in New York.  

“The ability to process critical minerals on U.S. soil is a national-defense priority required for munitions, missiles, sensors, batteries, and the platforms our Soldiers depend on,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment Dr. Jeff Waksman said. 

“Leveraging our legal authorities and land, the U.S. Army is able to help nurture and expedite the growth of critical minerals industrial base which equips and sustains America’s Soldiers without putting any taxpayer dollars at risk.” 

By market close on Wednesday, Titan’s stock was down 6% on the NYSE American. The company has a $228 million market capitalization.  

 

Digital protests in India come amid media upheaval

05.10.2026, DPA

Photo: Dirk Godder/dpa

The Cockroach Movement in India is a remarkable example of how media and its consumption are going through a transformation. The trend also shows just how quickly political communication is changing.

By Dirk Godder, dpa

The Cockroach Movement caught the Indian government by surprise, and within weeks, what began as a satirical online campaign grew into one of the largest extra-parliamentary protest movements in recent years.

Millions of people followed it on social media, and prominent activists and opposition politicians jumped on board. What began as online mockery eventually spilt onto the streets of New Delhi.

From the very outset, social media was its most important tool. On X and Instagram, the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) found its followers, shared memes and videos, and organized protests. To this day, there is no party headquarters.

“They were entirely dependent for their mobilization on social media, on X and Instagram, and, and I'm sure WhatsApp also must have played a role there,” said Indian journalist and author Sukumar Murlidharan. The “mainstream media,” particularly TV stations, were initially hostile toward the CJP, he said.

Millions of followers

The CJP was founded in May by Boston-based communications strategist Abhijeet Dipke. The catalyst was a derogatory remark by a chief justice who allegedly compared unemployed youths to “cockroaches.” The reaction was swift. Within a few days, the CJP gained more than 21 million followers on Instagram.

At first, the protest remained online: memes, videos and sarcastic comments dominated. But soon, mockery was no longer enough. Supporters took to the streets in New Delhi and other major cities. Their main demand was the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. He was held responsible for a scandal in the education system and eventually resigned.

But the protest soon targeted more than just one minister. It also revealed the deep mistrust many young Indians feel toward parts of the mainstream media.

“All media houses owned by Ambani and Adani shall have their licences cancelled to make way for truly independent media. Bank accounts of Godi media anchors shall be investigated," demanded the Internet Party, referring to the influential business leaders Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani.

Godi media - translates roughly to lapdog media - is a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s last name. The term refers to segments of the mainstream media that critics accuse of being too close to the government and no longer fulfilling their role as an independent press.

A giant media market with many facets

However, one must be cautious when discussing India’s media. The country has one of the largest and most diverse media markets in the world.

What an English-speaking Indian reads or watches on television can differ significantly from the news consumed by a Hindi, Bengali, or Tamil speaker, according to journalists in New Delhi.

According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), there are nearly 900 private television stations in India, about half of which focus on news. The public broadcaster Doordarshan broadcasts in 23 languages.

In addition, there are some 140,000 publications in more than 20 languages, including about 20,000 daily newspapers. Their combined circulation exceeds 390 million copies.

Digital Expansion

This vast traditional media system is not simply being displaced by digitalization. Rather, it is expanding to include a new dimension.

"We don’t see a kind of a clean break either from newspapers to online or from linear broadcasting to online. Unlike in many European countries, what is happening in India is digital expansion rather than digital migration,” said media expert Vibodh Parthasarathi of Jamia Milia University in Delhi.

So it seems people are not simply giving up on television and newspapers. They are using YouTube, news portals, Instagram, and other social networks as well. Especially in small towns and rural areas, the proliferation of affordable smartphones and mobile data has dramatically changed access to the Internet.

Boost through 4G

The launch of the affordable 4G service Reliance Jio in September 2016 provided a major boost. According to The India Forum, the number of Internet users rose by 65% to 500 million within two years, by the end of 2018.

Social media has since become central to news consumption as well. According to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2026, 58% of Indians get their news from YouTube, compared to 44% who prefer traditional television.

This shift is particularly pronounced among younger people. However, the survey is not representative, as it primarily surveyed English-speaking online news users.

Market concentration

Digitalization has not resolved an old problem: Who owns the media? Reporters Without Borders points to the growing influence of large corporate groups and, among other examples, the Adani Group’s acquisition of the news channel NDTV in late 2022.

Political ties, concentrated ownership, and dependence on government advertising are said to limit editorial independence.

In the latest RSF press freedom ranking, India ranks 157th out of 180 countries - six places lower than the previous year.

For Parthasarathi, however, the issue of press freedom is more complicated than international rankings suggest. The pressure on journalists does not come exclusively from the government. Economic power and the concentration of ownership also play a decisive role.

This is particularly evident in television, but also in newspapers. Politically affiliated media can represent different interests depending on the region and changes in government. Freedom of the press must therefore also be assessed based on the extent to which ownership and economic power are concentrated in the media sector.

“If there is a higher concentration of media ownership—regardless of the type of content being disseminated—one could argue, and studies elsewhere have shown, that this poses a risk to democracy,” Parthasarathi says.

Existential crisis

At the same time, many Indians are losing trust in the traditional media system. Social networks offer new perspectives and provide access to a wide range of sources. However, they are also a gateway for disinformation and misinformation.

Television continues to have an enormous reach because of its low cost. Yet it is precisely there that trust has declined particularly sharply. The combination of broad reach, low costs, and growing mistrust is therefore particularly significant for society, Parthasarathi says.

Among the younger generation, attention is increasingly shifting to the internet. For many, online news and social media are more appealing than print newspapers. Murlidharan believes print journalism in particular is facing an existential crisis. “I think print media, just like in other countries, is going through a crisis of profitability and identity,” he says. No one knows what the future holds for them.

The Cockroach Movement is a remarkable example of this. It shows how quickly political communication is changing in India: A derogatory term becomes the hallmark of a movement, memes turn into demonstrations, and millions of clicks generate political pressure.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

HINDUTVA

World’s Largest Far Right Paramilitary Rallied in NYC. It Should Alarm Everyone.

Five thousand people attended a rally in New York City led by the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

By Samantha Agarwal ,

Truthout

September 1, 2026

New Yorkers rally outside of Madison Square Garden to condemn Mohan Bhagwat and the RSS on August 29, 2026.Samantha Agarwal

On February 20, 1939, the Madison Square Garden arena in New York City hosted a chilling spectacle. A portrait of George Washington hung at the center of the arena, flanked by U.S. flags and swastikas. Over 20,000 people packed the stands to hear Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German American Bund — one of the most prominent U.S.-based organizations aligned with the Third Reich — project his vision of a “white, Gentile-ruled United States.” Outside, 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters clashed with police on Eighth Avenue, determined to stop the legitimization of European fascism on U.S. soil.

Eighty-seven years later, global leaders in ethno-fascism and their sympathizers returned to Madison Square Garden.

On August 29, 2026, 5,000 people gathered at Madison Square Garden to hear Mohan Bhagwat, the sarsanghchalak (Supreme Leader) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). As the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the RSS is the world’s largest far right paramilitary organization, with an estimated 4 million members spread over 73,117 branches across India. Just as the Bund attempted to leverage the image of George Washington to legitimize Nazism in their rally of 1939, the RSS used this invite-only event — apparently attended by 180 religious leaders from 30 countries — to sanitize a century-old project of Hindu fascism. Obscuring its extremist agenda, the RSS cloaked the gathering in the rhetoric of liberal multiculturalism, branding it with the theme “Universal Oneness.”

In his 42-minute keynote, the septuagenarian Bhagwat played the part of a playful but discerning uncle, dispensing meandering aphorisms about an “innate, eternal oneness” that connects humanity and nature. Rooting these concepts in the Atman (soul) and India’s civilizational values, Bhagwat painted a picture of a nation that champions “unity in diversity.” In a jarring contrast to his movement’s actual record, he claimed that India chooses to tolerate its enemies rather than subjugate them — elevating the country as a global exemplar of enlightened governance.

While Bhagwat spoke inside, an interfaith and anti-caste coalition protested outside. It consisted of groups like SALAM (South Asian Left), Hindus for Human Rights, and the Indian American Muslim Council, along with members of some of the 66 organizations that signed on to a statement earlier this week condemning Bhagwat’s visit. Their speeches exposed the hypocrisy of Bhagwat’s claim to “unity in diversity,” demonstrating how the RSS and its massive network of Hindu supremacist partners — including nearly a thousand nonprofit organizations, cultural organizations, paramilitary groups, unions, and political parties, collectively known as the Sangh Parivar (or the Family of the Sangh) — routinely practice the exact opposite of what Bhagwat preaches.

Here’s How the Hindu Supremacist Movement Is Infiltrating US Politics
As the 100-year-old movement in India celebrates a key victory, a new report reveals its ties with the US far right. By Samantha Agarwal , Truthout February 2, 2024

Speakers pointed out how the RSS’s notion of unity is, in fact, exclusively reserved for Hindus — and only for those who are wealthy and upper-caste. Shree Baphna from SALAM talked about how Hindutva (or the Hindu supremacist movement) attempts to divert mass anger “away from those in power and towards those communities who are exploited and oppressed.”

Baphna added:


When a Dalit [lower caste person] demands land, dignity and the annihilation of caste, Hindutva says, ‘forget caste – you are Hindu. When an Adivasi [Indigenous person] defends jal, jungle, zameen [water, forests and land] against mines, dams and corporations – Hindutva says, ‘forget your history – you are a vanvasi – a child of the Hindu nation.’ Shame!

Ritu Gupta from the nonprofit Hindus for Human Rights, noted that Mohan Bhagwat is here “pretending to spread the message of oneness.” But this is not the message Bhagwat’s supporters spread in India, Gupta retorted. “In India they say, ‘Hindus only – everybody else, get out!’ These Hindus who support the message of purging India of its minorities do not represent all Hindus. There could be no bigger hypocrisy than this!”

Demonstrators display signs reading, “RSS Out of NYC.”

646onrecord

Others, including a spokesperson for the Palestinian organization Pal Awda, extended the critique of Bhagwat’s rhetorical “oneness” to India’s role as a regional colonizer in Kashmir and partner to genocidal Israel. “We have a responsibility to stand against genocide whenever, and wherever,” the Pal Awda representative, who requested anonymity, said. “The RSS has deep ties to Zionism and has worked to create an Israel-like vision for India based on [an] ethnonationalist state and subjugation of minorities.” Moreover, the “Hindutva-Zionism relationship is not merely ideological,” the spokesperson added, explaining that the relationship is constructed through diplomatic links, military cooperation, and corporate capital flows.

As one striking example of this strategic alliance, in 2022 the Adani Group owned by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, a personal friend to Modi, purchased 70 percent of the Haifa port. Today, the Indian flag flies next to the Israeli flag in Israel’s second largest port. The Indian and Israeli governments also cooperate heavily on military equipment, counterterrorism, and surveillance technology, including software partnerships. Another speaker on August 29 added, “The Hindutva politics that normalizes repression in Kashmir is a mirror image of the Zionist state — carrying out the same occupation and dispossession in Palestine.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a number of New York City council members have also publicly opposed the RSS rally. Additionally, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the U.S. government to sanction the RSS due to its violent attacks on religious minorities.
Hindu Supremacy’s Enduring Ties to European Fascism

To fully understand the significance of Bhagwat holding court at Madison Square Garden — and the intensity of the counter-protests — one must grasp the bloodline that binds his organization to the very regime the German American Bund was celebrating in 1939. The founders of the RSS, which was created in 1925, met with and drew direct lessons from the European fascists.

In 1931 BS Moonje, a Hindu nationalist and mentor to the first Supreme Leader of the RSS, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, traveled to Italy to meet with Benito Mussolini and tour various military academies and militant youth organizations such as the Opera Nazionale Balilla and the Avanguardisti. Moonje wrote in his diary that he was inspired by these fascist organizations and intended to reshape the RSS along these organizational lines. It is said that under Hedgewar the RSS adopted many of their core features — such as their targeted recruitment of young boys (beginning at age 5), use of paramilitary training, and the total subordination of the organization to a supreme, lifetime leader — from Moonje’s accounts of the Italian Balilla.

Further, in 1939 M.S. Golwalkar — the RSS’s second Supreme Leader, whose portrait Bhagwat still routinely garlands — wrote in his manifesto, We, or Our Nationhood Defined, that Germany’s ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people was a model for India “to learn and profit by.” In that same text, he characterizes Muslims as historical “despoilers” and “murdering hordes” who destroyed Hindu kingdoms, arguing that they should either be forced to assimilate to Hinduism. If they refuse, he argues, they should be “wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges.”

Today, under Bhagwat’s leadership and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 12-year reign, Golwarkar’s 1939 blueprint has become de facto state policy. In 2019, the RSS-backed Modi regime passed a slate of controversial laws effectively dismantling what was left of India’s secularism, tying citizenship to religion, explicitly excluding Muslims. This legal subordination works in tandem with extralegal vigilante violence committed by partners of the RSS like the Bajrang Dal.

Lynchings and mob attacks on individuals or small groups of people constitute a kind of slow-burning structural violence that has led Brown University political scientists Ashutosh Varshney and Connor Staggs to compare Hindu nationalism to America’s Jim Crow South. There has been a steady rise in such incidents since 2014, disproportionately in BJP-ruled states. In just the first year of Modi’s third term (2024-2025), the Association for Protection of Civil Rights recorded 602 such hate crimes. Of these, 173 involved physical violence against minorities, resulting in 25 deaths — every one of them Muslim.

Punitive home demolitions and evictions are also surging. According to the Housing and Land Rights Network, evictions across India climbed from 107,625 in 2019 to 222,686 in 2022, before reaching 515,752 in 2023 — a 379 percent increase over five years. The network’s data also reveals that Muslims are vastly overrepresented among those whose homes are destroyed.

Waging sustained opposition to the regime on any of these counts has become nearly impossible. Critics — including peaceful activists, academics, media, and dissident politicians — are routinely persecuted under draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, which eliminate standard burdens of proof to permit the indefinite pretrial detention of political opponents. This systematic criminalization of dissent has led the prestigious V-Dem Institute to classify India as an electoral autocracy, dropping the country’s democratic freedom ranking from 65th in 2016 to 106th in 2026 — the bottom 20 percent globally. Even more alarming, Genocide Watch has repeatedly warned of an impending genocide against India’s 250 million Muslims, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ranks India at the “second-highest risk of a new mass killing.”

Yet, despite this grim record, the highest leader of this fascistic movement was handed one of the world’s most coveted stages — welcomed to preach and court donors in the heart of the U.S.’s financial capital.
Bhagwat’s Event Was the Culmination of a Decades-Long Strategy to Influence U.S. Politics

Just as the German American Bund sought to build a fifth column in the U.S., the RSS has for five decades worked to build material power in the diaspora. To organize its Madison Square Garden rally, the RSS drew on sophisticated, multi-layered clandestine networks, the mechanics of which were exposed in a new, multi-part investigative series on the RSS’s “Vishwa Vibhag” or “Overseas Department” by Savera, a U.S.-based coalition against supremacy.

In this series Savera tracked the shell organizations facilitating the RSS’s U.S. activities. Bhagwat’s event was formally hosted by the innocuous-sounding American Hindus for Engagement and Dialogue (also known as “AHEAD Forum”), which poses as an independent diaspora group.

The Savera series shows that this is a bald-faced lie. AHEAD Forum was, in fact, incorporated in California in May 2025 by Khanderao Kand, a long-time RSS operative and founder-president of the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies. Kand’s deep ties to the RSS and the BJP were exposed when the Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies was implicated in a potentially illegal lobbying effort to influence the U.S. Congress. When Kand became a public relations liability, his name was quietly scrubbed from AHEAD Forum’s paperwork and replaced by a colleague. AHEAD Forum’s other directors are similarly embedded in the “American Sangh,” the network of U.S.-based RSS affiliates.

At the top of this hierarchy sits Saumitra Gokhale. Gokhale is listed on tax forms for the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh — the U.S. wing of the RSS — as a yoga instructor earning $36,000 a year, according to Savera. But researchers found no record of Gokhale teaching yoga. In reality he is a senior RSS pracharak (full-time missionary) and the global coordinator of the Vishwa Vibhag.

The Savera series reveal how the Vishwa Vibhag — or the “largest far right network in the world”— operates across 1,600 branches in 55 countries, utilizing organizations like the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America to weave a dense web of “transnational entanglements.” Contrary to claims that they operate independently of the RSS, the series shows how they in fact are so closely intertwined that Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh leaders are made to attend regular RSS training camps in India. They employ the same terminology (“shakhas”) to refer to branches, borrow from RSS’s prayers and paraphernalia, and pay obeisance to portraits of RSS leaders, including none other than Golwalkar himself. Sewa International is the main fundraising arm of the Vishwa Vibhag — and rakes in millions of dollars of revenue each year.

Ideologically, the American Sangh appropriates the language of Western multiculturalism, global peace, and even decolonizationto shield its majoritarian, proto-fascist project. This was on full display at the Madison Square Garden event. At the same time, it openly allies itself with white nationalists and Zionists — as seen in Trump’s 2019 “Howdy Modi” mega rally in Houston or in the Republican Hindu Coalition formerly chaired by Steve Bannon.

These two faces of the Sangh are not solely fixated on India; they actively intervene in U.S. politics. For example, they have waged aggressive, well-funded campaigns to rewrite California school textbooks to reflect right-wing nationalist histories. They recently spearheaded a successful push to kill a civil rights bills aimed at banning caste-based discrimination — culminating in an infamous veto by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom). Taking a page from the Zionist Anti-Defamation League’s playbook, they weaponize U.S. civil rights rhetoric framing any criticism of the RSS or the BJP’s human rights record as “Hinduphobia” to intimidate lawmakers and silence academics.

The Hindu right wields this outsized political and lobbying muscle despite the fact that only a minority of Indian Americans actually support the BJP. Affiliates like the Hindu American Political Action Committee and Hindu American Foundation have spent years embedding themselves within Washington and local municipalities. Federal Election Commission reports show them donating handsomely across the aisle to Democrats such as Raja Krishnamoorthi and Shri Thanedar alongside Republicans such as Tulsi Gabbard, Vivek Ramaswamy, and many more.

Typically, the use of front organizations has worked to hedge against accusations of operating on behalf of a foreign agent. However, recently, for reasons that are still unclear, the RSS has also sought to deepen its directinfluence over U.S. politicians. In late 2025, an investigation by the U.S.-based news outlet Prism revealed that the RSS had hired Squire Patton Boggs — one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying firms — to influence U.S. lawmakers. The firm was paid $330,000 during the first three quarters of 2025.

Bringing RSS on as a domestic client rather than registering it under FARA was likely in violation of federal transparency norms. After the Prism report was published, thus, Squire Patton Boggs hastily amended its congressional disclosures, scrubbing the RSS from the paperwork and claiming that its “ultimate client” was actually Vivek Sharma, a Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical executive.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the RSS’s shadowy lobbying initiative and Bhagwat’s visit come at a moment when the Modi regime is facing an unprecedented crisis. Economic stagnation, recurring labor unrest, Hindu temple scandals, and mass student protests have mired Modi’s third term and substantially weakened his domestic standing. Bhagwat’s liberal-sounding message thus appears aimed at restoring a more palatable “brand” for the Sangh Parivar, laying the groundwork for global cooperation under a future leader. This is also a stark reminder of who, in fact, controls the levers of power — the parent RSS — no matter the ultimate fate of Modi or even the BJP.

But if the RSS believes it can quietly secure its legacy, the communities resisting it tell a very different story. Outside the venue, Safa Ahmed of the Indian American Muslim Council spoke directly to Bhagwat’s underlying anxiety, saying:


Islam and Muslims have been in India for 1,400 years, and they will [remain] here after another 1,400 years and even beyond that. So long as we exist, we will never be erased from India. But you — Mohan Bhagwat, and your fascist … fan pals — the masks are off for you. You are being mocked by the youth of India. You are being mocked by New York City. You are afraid of losing it all … And it’s you who will be remembered as a sad, insecure group of people who could only take pride in your identity via the erasure of another — that is, if you are remembered at all

!

Protesters hang garlands of shoes around effigies of Narendra Modi (left) and
Mohan Bhagwat (right)Samantha Agarwal

Ahmed’s prophecy will ultimately bear out, but we cannot afford to passively wait for it. We cannot leave our Muslim, Adivasi, Dalit, and left comrades on the front lines in India to fight this battle alone. Rallies, social media mockery, and the construction of broad, intersectional coalitions like we saw on Saturday are a strong start. But sooner than later we need to go beyond symbolic protest to challenge the Sangh at its root.

This will require disrupting Hindutva diasporic organizations wherever they operate, ruthlessly exposing these “cultural organizations” as fronts for the spread of fascism. It means cautioning the public about the bad-faith weaponization of “Hinduphobia” — which the Hindu right uses to shield itself from criticism — and impeding the Sangh’s ties to global right-wing players like MAGA and Israel. It means educating the nascent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) movement on the violent reality of the Sangh, so it compels DSA-elected officials to act. Finally, just as global movements boycotted the Nazis, the apartheid-era Afrikaners, and now Israel — the left needs to develop creative strategies to choke off the Sangh from its financial lifelines in the U.S. A first step would be to scrutinize its various alliances with big capital, including in the tech and defense sectors, and examine how these partnerships enable funds to flow into India via charitable fronts like Sewa International, IDRF, and Ekal Vidyalaya.

The 1939 Bund rally is remembered today as a sinister moment in U.S. history — a time when New York allowed the most violent political current in the globe to claim a major stage in our financial capital. Mohan Bhagwat’s 2026 visit must be recognized as its modern equivalent. To avoid repeating the horrors of interwar fascism, we must urgently build a transnational, intersectional bloc capable of defeating the American Sangh.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
, and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Samantha Agarwal
Samantha Agarwal is an Assistant Professor at School of Labor and Urban Studies at City University of New York. Her writing and research focus on neoliberalism, social movements in India, and the rise of authoritarian ethnonationalism globally.

CU

 

Lloyds Metals allowed to ready restart of giant Papua New Guinea copper mine

Bloomberg News | August 12, 2026 | 

Lihir mine in Papua New Guinea. (Image courtesy of Newcrest Mining)

An Indian iron ore producer was authorized to work toward restarting a giant Papua New Guinea copper mine that’s been closed for almost 40 years and was once a flash point in a brutal civil war.

Lloyds Metals & Energy Ltd. was given permission on Aug. 7 to carry out “an approved programme of preparatory works and feasibility activities” to “properly assess and plan the future redevelopment of the Panguna mine,” the Autonomous Bougainville Government said in a statement. 

While the mining lease containing the shuttered mine belongs to a government-owned firm called Bougainville Minerals Ltd., Lloyds is the “approved development partner” of that company, according to the statement.

The project is part of a global dash for copper as the trend toward electrification is expected to boost demand for the wiring metal in the years ahead. The efforts to revive the dormant asset also reflect the desire for economic development in Bougainville – impoverished islands that are currently an autonomous region within Papua New Guinea but seeking independence.

Lloyds has a fast-growing iron ore business in India and recently invested in two copper mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The firm, which is little-known outside its home country, managed to beat off competition from one of the world’s largest copper producers, China’s CMOC Group Ltd., to emerge as the Bougainville government’s favored partner for the ambitious — and likely costly — venture.

Panguna’s remaining reserves are estimated at 5.3 million tons of copper and 19.3 million ounces of gold, which would be worth about $160 billion at today’s prices. However, the mine was closed down in 1989 under the ownership of Rio Tinto Group due to local protests over environmental damage and revenue distribution, which degenerated into a civil conflict that killed as many as 20,000 people. A decade ago, Rio gave away its majority interest in the firm which then held the license.

Lloyds intends to revalidate the resource base, according to a presentation published by the company on Aug. 10.

Bougainville Minerals – via Lloyds – isn’t yet permitted to begin construction or production, according to the statement. Those phases will require separate approvals and the “redevelopment of Panguna will proceed one step at a time,” it said.

The Panguna project represents a “very positive moment for the company” but is “still under study,” Lloyds Managing Director Rajesh Gupta said on an earnings call on Tuesday. Providing forecasts about probable time frames and expenditure “at this stage is impossible,” he said.

Lloyds didn’t respond to a request for further comment.  

The 25-year mining lease was granted to Bougainville Minerals in June after the government revoked an exploration license covering the same area from Australia-listed Bougainville Copper Ltd. The government already controlled almost 74% of Bougainville Copper, with half of that stake held by Bougainville Minerals.

(By William Clowes and Paul-Alain Hunt)

 

Sweden gives go-ahead to Boliden copper mine project

Reuters | August 12, 2026 | 

Credit: Boliden | LinkedIn

The Swedish government said on Wednesday it has given Boliden BOL.ST the green light to proceed with the company’s copper mine project in Laver, northern Sweden.

Project still needs approval from Sweden’s Land and Environment Court.

Extraction of the Laver deposit could double Sweden’s production of copper and increase the EU’s total production by 10%, the government said in a statement.

Project will reduce a dangerous import dependence in Europe, it added.

Located near an old mine, the new mineralisations were discovered by Boliden in 2007. Boliden applied in 2014 for a mining concession but this was initially rejected. The group applied again in 2024.

The Mining Inspectorate had given the go-ahead last year, but the decision was appealed and went to the government for a ruling.

(Reporting by Simon Johnson, writing by Terje Solsvik, editing by Louise Rasmussen)

Codelco’s stalled project in El Teniente to start production in 2029

Reuters | August 12, 2026 | 

El Teniente mine. Credit: Codelco | Flickr, under licence CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Chilean state miner Codelco expects to begin production at an expansion project within its flagship El Teniente copper mine in 2029, the mine’s general director Gustavo Reyes said on Wednesday.

Codelco said on August 4 that it had paused the project, which aims to develop the Andes Norte section of the sprawling underground complex, after recent studies showed the mine is under greater seismic risk than initially estimated.

Speaking during a Mining Committee session in the lower house of Congress, Reyes said Codelco is evaluating an expansion of El Teniente’s mining pit to help make up for the delayed production at the site.

Codelco’s Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, Gabriel Mendez, also said during the committee session that the company is no longer expected to reach its previously projected annual production target of 1.7 million metric tons by the end of the decade.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by Fabiola Arámburo, Editing by Daina Beth Solomon)

 

India’s Hindustan Copper plans to sell copper concentrate sourced from Chile to Hindalco, Adani, sources say

Reuters | August 10, 2026 

Chuquicamata smelter. (Image courtesy of Codelco | Flickr.)

India’s Hindustan Copper plans to sell copper concentrate sourced from Chile to Hindalco, Adani, sources say

State-run Hindustan Copper HCPR.NS plans to sell copper concentrate produced by mines it is acquiring from Chile’s Codelco to Hindalco HALC.NS and Adani, aiming to meet India’s growing appetite for the red metal, two sources familiar with the matter said.

It is also in talks to form a joint venture with state-run Codelco to mine and sell copper, three sources said, declining to be identified as the deliberations were confidential.

Hindustan Copper, Coal India COAL.NS and NTPC Mining are in discussions to secure four copper mining blocks from Codelco, India’s mines secretary said in April.

Last year, Hindustan Copper signed a preliminary agreement with Codelco about looking at mutually beneficial opportunities in exploration and mining. In May this year, it signed a non-disclosure agreement with Codelco and appointed a deal advisor.

It did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. It has previously denied that it is in talks about a joint venture.

Codelco, NTPC Mining and Coal India also did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

India, the world’s second-biggest refined copper importer, may have to import 91% to 97% of its copper concentrates by 2047, the government has said.

Hindalco, an Aditya Birla Group-owned firm, is one of India’s biggest aluminium and copper producers. The Adani conglomerate runs Kutch Copper, a $1.2 billion smelter in the western state of Gujarat that it says is the world’s biggest single-location plant of its type.

According to two of the sources, due diligence is ongoing and Hindustan Copper is open to having partners for the JV such as Coal India and NTPC Mining.

Early this year, a technical team from Hindustan Copper and executives from NTPC Mining and Coal India visited Chile, the sources said, adding that it would still take a decade before mining could begin and concentrate is produced.

India plans to include a chapter on copper in free trade pact talks with Chile to secure a fixed quantity of copper concentrate, the government said last year.

India produces an estimated 573,000 metric tons of refined copper annually but demand is much greater at around 1.8 million tons.

(Reporting by Neha Arora; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

 

Why is India Supplying Arms to a Genocidal Regime?

Prabhat Patnaik | 10 Aug 2026

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Between October 7, 2023 and November 30, 2025, India made at least 2,596 shipments of small arms, ammunition and military vehicle components to Israel for such aggressive purposes, as per Amnesty’s report.

Amnesty International has just published an investigative report titled, Made in India: The Supply of Weapons and Ammunition to Israel, in which it details India’s arms supplies to Israel at a time when that country was perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International carefully excluded from its purview all shipments carrying items for civilian use; likewise, it even excluded weapons and ammunition that are likely to be used as part of anti-missile defence technology that defends civilians from indiscriminate attacks. In other words, it was careful to focus exclusively on arms shipments from India that would be used for aggressive ends by Israel.

According to this report, between October 7, 2023 and November 30, 2025, India made at least 2,596 shipments of small arms, ammunition and military vehicle components to Israel for such aggressive purposes. Among the articles supplied were 564,970 parts of explosive ordnance (such as 155 mm high explosive artillery shells and drone warheads), 390, 516 military grade small arms parts, and 298 military vehicle components.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that these weapons and ammunition were actually used by Israel in Gaza. In fact, missile fragments labelled “Made in India” were found in a UN-run school in Nuseirat in Gaza sheltering displaced Palestinians, after an Israeli raid on it that killed 33 persons. By supplying arms to Israel which many advanced countries like Spain and Canada have refused to supply, when it is engaged in carrying out genocide, India is becoming complicit in genocide. Spain, in fact, had even denied entry in May 2024 into the Spanish port of Cartagena, to a vessel named Marianne Danica that was carrying 27 tonnes of explosives from Chennai to Israel.

Among the arms suppliers from India are not just private sector firms, including, above all, Adani Defence and Aerospace that has joint ventures with Israeli arms manufacturers like Elbit Systems and Israel Weapon Industries, but also several government-owned firms.

It is significant that the government of India has not responded to the report by Amnesty International. A Ministry of External affairs spokesman was quizzed about it while he was briefing presspersons about something else, and he just breezily asserted, without going into any details, that India’s trade relations with Israel were in total conformity with international law.

Now, this is an absurd assertion for two obvious reasons. First, even if this was correct, it does not absolve India from the moral responsibility of being complicit in the mass slaughter of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza strip. After all countries, like Spain or Canada, have not ceased supplying arms to Israel only because they fear that doing so would be an illegal act. So, legality cannot be, and has never been, the sole determining factor in a country’s decision-making when the matter concerns the lives of thousands of innocent civilians. This point is specifically pertinent in the case of India which has been always until recent years, a beacon against inhuman acts of oppression against the people of the Third World, and which has always been in the forefront of opposition to such acts.

Second, India is also culpable even in legal terms, for the mass slaughter of Palestinians that Israel has carried out and is still in the process of carrying out, can be legally called genocide; and under the Genocide Convention, complicity with genocide by any state that is a signatory to it is a punishable act.

The Genocide Convention came into being on December 9, 1948, through a decision of the UN General Assembly. India signed the Genocide Convention on November 29, 1949, and formally ratified it on August 27, 1959. Not only is complicity in genocide punishable under it, but signatory countries are enjoined that they “must prevent and punish acts of genocide in both peace and war time”.

Of course, the government of India would hide behind the fig-leaf that Israeli actions in Gaza have not yet been legally declared as genocide; but this excuse simply would not do. South Africa had approached the International Court of Justice in December 29, 2023, with the plea that Israel’s actions in Gaza be declared as a genocide, for which the South African foreign minister and her family had received threats and online intimidation at the time. Subsequently, nearly 20 other countries, including Brazil, Spain and Mexico, intervened in support of South Africa, while only three countries, the United States, Hungary (under the neo-fascist Victor Orban who has since been defeated in elections) and Fiji have publicly opposed South Africa.

The ICJ has not given its final ruling (which in any case takes years) but has ordered legally-binding provisional measures to prevent genocidal acts and to allow humanitarian aid. The fact that Indian arms were used by Israel in the massacre of 33 Palestinians taking refuge in a school at Nuseirat, which constitutes a genocidal act in violation of the ICJ’s provisional directive, would make India legally culpable for complicity in genocide. The Indian government’s stand, therefore, is not just morally reprehensible; it cannot even stand legal scrutiny.

But that is not all. Two UN bodies, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices which submitted its report in November 2024, and the International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territories set up by the UN, which submitted its report on September 16, 2025, have come to the conclusion that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza.

The Special Committee accused Israel of using deliberate starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinian population of Gaza, which, incidentally would violate the ICJ’s provisional directive on allowing humanitarian aid to the besieged population. The International Commission not only listed mass killings which amounted to genocidal acts, but concluded that the top Israeli leadership had been engaged in incitement to commit genocide.

Since these UN bodies had eminent jurists among their members, their verdicts have a juridical status that is of great significance and cannot be brushed aside.

Exactly the same can be said of the resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which consists of 500 of the world’s top experts specialising in the study of genocide. This Association whose membership includes lawyers, historians, political scientists and human rights activists, passed a resolution which stated that the government of Israel had committed systematic and widespread acts constituting crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

In view of this overwhelming evidence, including weighty legal opinion, supporting the conclusion that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza, signatory countries to the Genocide Convention like India should be acting to “prevent and punish” Israel; to supply arms to it instead so that it can continue with its genocidal acts against the Palestinians, constitutes a moral and legal affront to humanity.

By acting thus in a manner that constitutes an affront to humanity, the Narendra Modi government has brought shame to the country. Not only is there a moral hollowness at the heart of this government’s domestic policies, there is also a moral hollowness at the heart of its foreign policy.

What is more, supplying arms to Israel when it is engaged in a genocidal offensive against the Palestinian people, is not even logically consistent with this government’s own stand on the Palestinian issue. Prime Minister Modi has time and again reiterated his government’s support for a “two-state” solution to resolve this issue. Israel today rejects this “two-state solution”. In this respect it has gone back on its own position at the time of the Oslo Accords, which had recognised a Palestinian Authority with limited powers. Today, it wants the whole of Gaza under its own control, and the purpose of its aggression is to achieve that end. To aid and abet that aggression, therefore, directly contradicts India’s own vision of what should be happening in Gaza.

Supplying arms to the Israeli genocidal regime, it follows, quite apart from being morally reprehensible and legally culpable, goes against the Modi government’s own explicitly articulated stand on the Palestinian issue; but that is of little concern to this government.

As far as the Modi government is concerned,  cosying up to Donald Trump, and promoting the interests of cronies like the Adanis, who profit hugely from arms sales to Israel, takes precedence over the country’s legal obligations, its moral responsibility, and even its credibility among nations.  

 

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

US judge ends graft case against India's Adani

New York (AFP) – A US judge threw out a case against Indian billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani on Monday after the Trump administration decided to drop the fraud and bribery allegations against him.


Issued on: 11/08/2026 - RFI

The Adani Group is one of India's largest business empires, operating businesses ranging from ports and power plants to cement factories and media houses © Punit PARANJPE / 

Court filings showed Brooklyn federal judge Nicholas Garaufis formally rubber-stamped a May request by prosecutors to throw out the 2024 allegations that Adani participated in a $265 million scheme to bribe Indian officials for lucrative solar energy supply contracts.

US media had reported that Adani's attorney Robert Giuffra, who is also Donald Trump's personal lawyer, told Justice Department officials in April that if charges were dropped, the magnate would be willing to invest $10 billion in the American economy.

The judge in the case had previously asked if the reported investment pledge was a factor in the US government's decision to drop the case, a rare move in the federal legal system, but ultimately concluded it was not part of prosecutorial decision-making.

Garaufis was, however, scornful of the way in which Trump-appointed Deputy Associate Attorney General Trent McCotter went about having the case dismissed.

"The fact that McCotter came to this decision largely in collaboration with defense counsel, and seemingly without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the alleged misconduct, or (prosecutors) who brought the case, appears to be highly unusual," he wrote.

The Adani Group is one of India's largest business empires, operating businesses ranging from ports and power plants to cement factories and media houses.

Adani, one of India's richest men and a vocal backer of Trump on social media, has been rocked in recent years by corporate fraud allegations and a stock crash.

Adani is a close ally of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hails from the leader's home state of Gujarat.

"I welcome the US court's decision with humility and deep respect for the judicial process," Adani wrote on social media.

"Throughout this challenging period, our faith in truth, fairness and the rule of law remained unwavering."

© 2026 AFP