It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, July 03, 2025
Faramarz Farbod in Conversation with Yves Engler on Canada, the US, and Imperialism
by Faramarz Farbod / July 2nd, 2025
Faramarz Farbod speaks with Yves Engler, a Canadian activist and author of 13 books, including most recently Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy and Stand on Guard for Whom? (A People’s History of Canadian Military). The conversation explores Canada’s role in the world, its relationship with US capitalism and imperialism, Canada’s policies toward Iran and Cuba, misperceptions of Canada in the US, and the concept of Canadianism.
Faramarz Farbod, a native of Iran, teaches politics at Moravian College. He is the founder of Beyond Capitalism a working group of the Alliance for Sustainable Communities-Lehigh Valley PA and the editor of its publication Left Turn. He can be reach
The Perfect Islamophobic Storm
by Kaveh Najafi / July 3rd, 2025
A familiar violence is brewing in the heart of Europe. The numbers reveal only what has surfaced so far. A quarter of the voting population now openly support the AfD, a party classified by the security services as ‘right-wing extremist’ due to their Islamophobic rhetoric and white-supremacist affiliations. Boosted by the mainstream press and the endorsement from the Nazi-saluting billionaire, the xenophobic message is broadcast across Germany once more.
Traditional conservative parties, the CDU and CSU, while reluctantly distancing themselves from the AfD, have adopted the same Islamophobic stance wrapped in a more ‘respectable’ language. In complete disregard for the lessons etched into their own Grundgesetz, the CSU have declared that Islam has no place in Germany. The CDU, having finally shed their liberal skin, publicly declared any calls for a ‘Free Palestine’ as terrorist sympathies. Their violence is sanitised and bureaucratic as they push legislation to strip dual nationals of citizenship based on their political views. So effortless is their rejection of civil rights that it would send their oligarch friends in the White-house into a jealous frenzy.
A more unexpected xenophobic turn came from the centre-left alliance under former chancellor Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD). After a stabbing incident in Solingen, afraid to lose votes to the anti-immigrant wave sweeping the country, Scholz promised Germany mass deportations. This concession gave the racists all the proof they needed for the otherwiseunfounded narrative of ‘the violent immigrant’. Riding this wave into right-wing populism, he promised to strengthen the borders of the fortress Europe – borders which already claim the lives of 8 000 migrants every year. And as if reading from the Trump script, the SPD oversaw the deportation orders for several EU citizens for participating in peaceful demonstrations – no charges, no trial and no global outrage.
Across the German political spectrum, in a mixture of performative Holocaust guilt and opportunism, parties have embraced the settler colonial hierarchy on which Israel was founded, with Arabs and Muslims at the bottom of their order. With revisionist logic and wishful thinking, the Bundestag passed a resolution that frames anti-Semitism as an imported middle-eastern issue. By adopting the fictional IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which includes all criticism of the state of Israel, they got the outcome they were looking for. The resolution was sharply criticised by human rights monitors as antagonistic to Arabs and Muslims and simultaneously anti-Semitic for conflating Judaism with the state of Israel. The resolution was passed with over 95% of votes.
In Germany, to wear a keffiyeh is to risk arrest and deportation. To publicly mourn the Nakba is illegal and yet when the AfD march through immigrant neighbourhoods to intimidate they call it freedom of speech. The message to the Arabs and Muslims of Germany is clear – you are at the bottom of our racial order, our human rights do not apply to you. Germany now records 5 Islamophobic incidents every day.
This perfect storm of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment has thrown Europes largest economy back on a path of institutional racism. The wider fallout from alienating 5 million Muslims in Germany from their civil rights will undoubtedly be felt in the coming decades.
But the selective repentance, this weaponisation of Holocaust memory, serves not only to justify the suspension of civil liberties at home. It conveniently forms a theatre of morality to mask ongoing imperialist projects and to evade historical responsibilities. True atonement for the horrors of the Holocaust would include taking responsibility for the over 300 000 Europeans that moved to Palestine after World War Two and the Nakba that followed, displacing 750 000 Palestinians from their land. The victims of German genocides in Africa know not to hold their breath waiting for justice.
Colonial Amnesia
In Namibia, the German legacy of genocide is not forgotten. In a blueprint for the Gaza genocide, the pretext for this genocide was an anti-colonial uprising that killed 100 German settlers. The mass murder that followed wiped out 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama people, over 70 000 killed, for daring to resist colonial rule. Germany’s recognition of these atrocities, more than a century later, was embarrassingly absent of any formal reparations or land redistribution. To this day, Namibia remains in an apartheid-like inequality with 48% of Namibia’s land in the hands of just 5000 white settlers – 0.3% of the population.
The suppression of the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania reeks of a similar stench. Deliberate starvation was weaponised against the Muslim communities that rebelled against the colonisers. Captain Wangenheim’s words—“Only hunger and want can bring about final submission”—echo in the blockade of Gaza and in Germany’s vetoes in contempt of international law. 300 000 murdered, no reparations on the horizon, no memorial in Berlin.
When Elon Musk, the settler son of apartheid capital, fans the flames of European fascism and demands that Germany “move beyond its past guilt”, what he means is this: that Germany must stop pretending, and embrace its role in the white empire once again. And the disenfranchised Germans are listening.
In defence of genocide
In April 2025, the ICJ announced an extension of Israel’s deadline to submit a defence against the allegations of genocide brought by South Africa and supported by the majority of the world’s countries. Germany as one of the passionate defenders of Israel has been proudly diluting, stalling and vetoing calls for immediate ceasefire and sanctions on Israel. While the ruling is inevitably not going to be in Israels favour, with German sponsorship the killing can continue for another year.
At home, repression became policy and civil rights monitors took note. Palestinian flags are banned, solidarity groups outlawed, Jewish activists arrested, Arab youth surveilled. These tactics are not new to us in the Kurdish liberation struggle. The banning of Kurdish resistance symbols and closing of book publishers, what should have triggered a constitutional crisis, was casually gifted by the German state to their friend in Türkiye. Add it to the list of ethnic cleansing campaigns sponsored by Germany.
Germany’s Islamophobic turn cannot be divorced from its colonial past or its present-day imperial commitments. The AfD’s rise, the CDU’s xenophobic mimicry, and the SPD’s repressive populism are symptoms of a deeper pathology: a state apparatus that has never abandoned the hierarchies of race and empire. While the world’s gaze is fixed on the Trump administration, it is time to recognise Germany once again as a powerful xenophobic and authoritarian force in Europe.
Kaveh Najafi is Kurdish from Iran, but he grew up in Sweden. He got his PhD in Basel, Switzerland where he was active in anti-fascist and environmental groups and that's where he was exposed to German politics. He spent a few months in Namibia where he got to see German apartheid still thriving so this article is close to his heart. Read other articles by Kaveh.
Research reveals Arctic region was permafrost-free when global temperatures were 4.5˚ C higher than today
Scientists have found evidence that the Asian continent was free of permafrost when Earth’s average temperature was 4.5˚ C warmer than today
Scientists have found evidence that the Asian continent was free of permafrost all the way to its northerly coast with the Arctic Ocean when Earth’s average temperature was 4.5˚C warmer than today, suggesting that the whole Northern Hemisphere would have also been free of permafrost at the time.
The stark findings indicate that if average global temperatures were to rise by this amount in the future, permafrost found in the Northern Hemisphere today would thaw.
Such a temperature increase would release up to 130 billion tonnes of carbon currently frozen in the ground over the coming decades.
The international team of researchers, which included experts from Northumbria and Oxford universities in the UK, Bern University in Switzerland, Geological Surveys of Israel and of the United States, came to this conclusion after studying more than 60 mineral deposits obtained from caves in the Lena River delta region of north-eastern Siberia.
Cave mineral deposits such as stalagmites and stalactites can only form when rain and snow meltwater seep through soil and rocks, slowly forming deposits in caves below the ground. These deposits cannot form when the ground above the caves is frozen, as it is today across large areas of Siberia and other regions bordering the Arctic Ocean.
The study relied on a high-precision technique which uses the radioactive decay of naturally occurring uranium in the deposits to form lead, known as uranium-lead dating.
By measuring the tiny amounts of uranium and lead found in deposits obtained from caves in the Taba-Ba’astakh cliffs in the far north of Siberia in a specialist laboratory at the University of Oxford, the authors of the study were able to determine that the minerals formed 8.7 million years ago during the late Miocene period.
The presence of water to form the cave deposits indicates that the ground temperature was above 0˚C meaning that the permafrost currently found in the region was absent 8.7 million years ago.
Existing records from other regions demonstrate that, at that time in the past, average global temperatures were 4.5˚C higher than those experienced today.
This indicates that warming of 4.5˚C is sufficient to melt the vast majority of permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere, with permafrost-free conditions extending all the way to the northerly coast between Asia and the Arctic Ocean.
Today’s permafrost contains vast amounts of carbon, captured as dead plant material is frozen into the soil layer. Thawing of the permafrost would release this carbon back to the atmosphere and would further increase warming.
Dr Sebastian Breitenbach, Head of the Environmental Monitoring and Reconstruction research group at Northumbria University, explained: “Our findings provide direct quantitative evidence that if our climate warms by 4.5˚C, the permafrost currently covering Canada, Siberia, Mongolia, America – in fact much of the Northern Hemisphere – would thaw. Only permafrost in high mountains and deep underground would survive.
“This thaw would release billions of tonnes of carbon from the ground into the atmosphere, enhancing further warming. This finding is a real warning to us all. It shows how sensitive our climate system is and where we might be headed if we don't act to limit our climate emissions now.”
Dr Anton Vaks, lead author of the new paper and a Research Scientist from Geological Survey of Israel, explained: “After much searching, we were fortunate to find well-preserved datable cave deposits in the heart of today’s Siberian permafrost. We can see that this present-day tundra region experienced a warmer climate, with mean annual global temperatures above 0°C and with permafrost-free conditions. This indicates that most of the Siberian landmass and likely similar regions in the Northern Hemisphere were permafrost-free when the deposits formed at Taba-Ba’astakh.”
Professor Gideon Henderson of the University of Oxford, an author of the study, added: “Caves can be our time machines. They capture a history of the climate and environment for millions of years of Earth history, which we can now read accurately using precise chemical analyses. By doing so, we can predict the future, using past conditions as an analogue for the future to understand the impact of the warmer world we are heading into.
“This new study provides valuable new constraints on the magnitude of warming required to completely destroy permafrost in the northern hemisphere and remove one of the biggest continental stores of carbon.”
The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust.
The Wells Fargo financial scandal in 2016 diminished consumer trust in traditional banks while driving homebuyers to fintech lendersfor mortgages, a University of California, Davis, study suggests.
The paper, “Trust as an entry barrier: Evidence from FinTech adoption,” was published online in the Journal of Financial Economics. The paper was written by Keer Yang, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management specializing in finance and financial technology.
“I document that geographic areas with larger exposures to the Wells Fargo scandal increased the probability of consumers choosing fintech for their mortgage lender,” Yang said.
Short for financial technology, fintech refers to products and services designed to let consumers and businesses conduct banking and other financial services digitally.
The difference in interest rates and other fees for comparable 30-year, fixed-rate loans on single-family homes between banks and fintech lenders did not change after the 2016 scandal.
“Therefore it is trust, not the interest rate, that affects the borrower’s probability of choosing a fintech lender,” Yang wrote.
Financial scandal erupts
In one of the most prominent bank scandals since the global financial crisis of 2008, Wells Fargo was fined $3 billion by the federal government over allegations that bank employees, under pressure to meet unrealistic sales goals, had opened millions of accounts and saddled customers with fees “under false pretenses and without consent” between 2002 and 2016. While a Los Angeles Times story documented the alleged practices in 2013, the scandal did not erupt until 2016, when Wells Fargo initially was fined $185 million by federal regulators, capturing national attention.
Data analysis
Yang analyzed Gallup poll answers regarding trust in banks, internet searches on “Google Trends” on bank scandals, newspaper articles about the Wells Fargo fines and scandal, and deposits and mortgage loan data sets in traditional banks and in fintech lenders. The period examined was 2012 to 2021.
Use of financial services increased from 2% of the market in 2010, before any knowledge of the Wells Fargo scandal, to 8% in 2016, according to the research paper. Furthermore, in areas with Wells Fargo banks — where exposure to the scandal was more pronounced — customers were on average 4% more likely to use non-bank lenders than any banks after 2016.
The scandal had a minimal effect on bank deposits, probably because of protections afforded by deposit insurance, Yang said.
Credit: Laboratory of Molecular Pathogenesis at The Rockefeller University
The COVID pandemic illustrated how urgently we need antiviral medications capable of treating coronavirus infections. To aid this effort, researchers quickly homed in on part of SARS-Cov-2’s molecular structure known as the NiRAN domain—an enzyme region essential to viral replication that’s common to many coronaviruses. A drug targeting the NiRAN domain would likely work broadly to shut down a range of these pathogens, potentially treating known diseases like COVID as well as helping to head off future pandemics caused by related viruses,
In 2022, scientists in China (Yan et al.) published a structural model describing exactly how this domain works. It should have been a tremendous boon for drug developers.
But the model was wrong.
“Their work contains critical errors,” says Gabriel Small, a graduate fellow in the laboratories of Seth A. Darst and Elizabeth Campbell at Rockefeller. “The data does not support their conclusions.”
Now, in a new study published in Cell, Small and colleagues demonstrate exactly why scientists still don’t know how the NiRAN domain works. The findings could have sweeping implications for drug developers already working to design antivirals based on flawed assumptions, and underscore the importance of rigorous validation.
“It is absolutely important that structures be accurate for medicinal chemistry, especially when we’re talking about a critical target for antivirals that is the subject of such intense interest in industry,” says Campbell, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Pathogenesis. “We hope that our work will prevent developers from futilely trying to optimize a drug around an incorrect structure.”
A promising lead
By the time the original paper was published in Cell, the Campbell and Darst labs were already quite familiar with the NiRAN domain and its importance as a therapeutic target. Both laboratories study gene expression in pathogens, and their work on SARS-CoV-2 focuses in part on characterizing the molecular interactions that coordinate viral replication.
The NiRAN domain is essential for helping SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses cap their RNA, a step that allows these viruses to replicate and survive. In one version of this process, the NiRAN domain uses a molecule called GDP to attach a protective cap to the beginning of the virus’s RNA. Small previously described that process in detail, and its structure is considered solved. But the NiRAN domain can also use a related molecule, GTP, to form a protective cap. Determined to develop antivirals that comprehensively shut down the NiRAN domain, scientists were keen to discover the particulars of the latter GTP-related mechanism.
In the 2022 paper, researchers described a chain of chemical steps, beginning with a water molecule breaking a bond to release the RNA’s 5′ phosphate end. That end then attaches to the beta-phosphate end of the GTP molecule, which removes another phosphate and, with the help of a magnesium ion, transfers the remaining portion of the GTP molecule to the RNA, forming a protective cap that allows the virus to replicate and thrive.
The team’s evidence? A cryo-electron microscopy image that showed the process caught in action. To freeze this catalytic intermediate, the team used a GTP mimic called GMPPNP.
Small read the paper with interest. “As soon as they published, I went to download their data,” he says. It wasn’t there. This raised a red flag—data is generally available upon release of a structural biology paper. Months later, however, when Small was finally able to access the data, he began to uncover significant flaws. “I tried to make a figure using their data, and realized that there were serious issues,” he says. Small brought his concerns to Campbell and Darst.
They agreed. “Something was clearly wrong,” Campbell says. “But we decided to give the other team the benefit of the doubt, and reprocess all of their data ourselves.”
An uphill battle
It was painstaking work, with Small leading the charge. Working frame by frame, he compared the published atomic model to the actual cryo-EM map and found something striking: the key molecules that Yan and colleagues claimed to have seen—specifically, the GTP mimic GMPPNP and a magnesium ion in the NiRAN domain’s active site—simply were not there.
Not only was there no supporting image data, but the placement of these molecules in the original model also violated basic rules of chemistry, causing severe atomic clashes and unrealistic charge interactions. Small ran additional tests, but even advanced methods designed to pick out rare particles turned up empty. He could find no evidence to support the model previously produced by Yan and colleagues.
Once the Rockefeller researchers validated their results, they submitted their findings to Cell. “It was very important that we publish our corrective manuscript in the same journal that published the original model,” Campbell says, noting that corrections to high-profile papers are often overlooked when published in lower tier journals.
Otherwise, this confusion in the field could cause problems that reach far beyond the lab bench, Campbell adds—a costly reminder that rigorous basic biomedical research is not just academic, but essential to real-world progress. “Companies keep their cards close to their chests, but we know that several industry groups are studying this,” she says. “Efforts based on a flawed structural model could result in years of wasted time and resources.”
