Broken Bangles: Putting Together Life and the World

  Lebanon: A Reminder Israel has begun to send missiles, bombs, and foot soldiers to Lebanon in the name of destroying Hezbollah. The US is also expected to step in if the conflict worsens. One would wonder why America has been obsessed with the Middle East. The answers are complex and related to how economically powerful countries thrive for world dominance. Lebanon has a unique place in history as the first country in the Middle East to experience a US military action.  This is the story of how the Middle East became a battleground for America. The first step was taken in Lebanon. The year was 1958. The Beginning of the US Military Action in Lebanon and the Eisenhower Doctrine A summer in Lebanon half a century back, the beachgoers of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, saw a curious sight. Boats after boats of US Marines began to arrive on the shores of Beirut. Bruce Riedel, the author of the book, ‘Beirut 1958: How America’s Wars in the Middle East Began’ (2019), writes that t...

  Revisiting history is how we understand the present and keep alive the memories of the mistakes of the past. Those memories are our precious heritage that encourages us to become better people.  Today, I am reading about the Spanish colonists' conquering of the Aztecs. What an eye-opening tale with equal doses of human greed and innocence, but it is not fictional! We, humanity, did it to ourselves. We are the victims and perpetrators.  It does not matter to us which category we belonged to if we lived in that era because, on both sides, there were people like us who wanted to live in peace and people like us who wanted to conquer the world's riches.   It begins to matter when we put the past against the present and introspect. Then we realise that we are the perpetrators, or we are the ones who must feel the survivor’s guilt and act upon it before it is too late. Or we will go down in history as one of the cruellest people to ever inhabit Earth.  How the ...

  Is Iran a Full-fledged Nuclear State? Iran is a nuclear threshold state. It has in its possession enough enriched uranium to make several atomic bombs. The US intelligence has warned that if Iran wants to build a nuclear bomb, it can do it at some point in the future. Iran has always maintained that its nuclear programme was aimed at peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The world, especially the US-led western countries, however, generally disagrees and tends to portend all kinds of worst-case scenarios about Iran becoming a full-fledged nuclear power.    According to a 2024 US Congressional Research Service report, Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons programme and did not have all the technologies necessary to develop nuclear weapons. Iran’s uranium enrichment programme has been running since 2000. These facilities, in theory, could generate highly enriched uranium used in nuclear weapons. In nuclear reactors used for generating energy, low-enriched uranium is used, and I...

  Hezbollah is an intriguing phenomenon, a nation inside a nation that is volatile and out of control beyond the reach of Lebanese state machinery. Still, it has a huge presence socially, politically, and militarily.   Hezbollah is basically a Shiʿah Muslim political party and a militant group. The role of Hezbollah in Lebanon is one legitimate yet without responsibility. Curiously, Hezbollah is assessed as having the military prowess to take over Lebanon if it wants to. Yet, the organisation seems not inclined to do so. However, it commands its own armed force.  Hezbollah operates inside and outside Lebanon and is not accountable to the Lebanese government. The Lebanese democratic system has many cracks, which Hezbollah takes advantage of and grows roots in. The group also has informal agreements with the country's elite groups. Yet, it is not as if this organisation is holding hostage the Lebanese government with military might. The reality is much more complex....

Omari Mosque and the Philistine Temple Omari Mosque was the oldest mosque in Gaza and the largest. On December 9, 2023, news came out of Gaza that the mosque was destroyed in the Israeli bombing. As a place of worship, this mosque and the land on which it stands have a deep and layered history. This mosque symbolises change and the transitory nature of all belief systems. It reminds us that what we believe as absolute truth could change with the ebb and flow of time. The story of this place dates back to the Iron Age, the 2nd millennium BCE, and to the people, the Philistines, who lived on this land. The Philistines are one of the first aliens in written human history. In the Old Testament, they are the outsiders who were unlike and hated by the Semitic people, the Canaanites, Hebrews, Aramaeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians. They were the enemies of the “children of light”, the Israelites. Dagon was a Philistine god, or rather, the head god of the Philistines. Dagon had a temple in the ...