How Did I End Up Living in Donald Trump’s Suicidal America? By Tom Engelhardt As 2026 begins, what a strange planet we find ourselves on. The two great empires of my youth, the Soviet Union (now Russia) and my own country, are clearly experiencing some version of imperial decline, even if Vladimir Putin is acting otherwise… Read More What Planet Are We On?
A new film by Nan Goldin: WATCH THE VIDEO: Gaza → For over five decades, the photographer Nan Goldin has been creating unforgettable images that traffic in the poetics of the personal. Friends, lovers and ambiguous others star in her intimate and yet operatic diaries of love, loss and longing. More than any other artist of her stature,… Read More Gaza: Scenes from the destruction of a people
The kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife solidifies America’s role as a gangster state. Violence does not generate peace. It generates violence. The immolation of international and humanitarian law, as the U.S. and Israel have done in Gaza, and as took place in Caracas, generates a world without laws, a world of… Read More ‘Naked imperialism’: how Trump intervention in Venezuela is a return to form for the US
Ending the American Dream by 2029? For writers, the future has long been a tricky terrain. While the past can prove unsettling and the present uncomfortable, the future seems to free the mind from reality’s restraints and let the imagination soar. Yet it has also proven full of political pitfalls. The ‘Putinization’ of US foreign… Read More Alfred McCoy: The Future According to Trump / Julian Borger: The Putinization of US foreign policy has arrived in Venezuela
NB: This heinous incident is one of many such, that have been visible in India and the countries of South Asia for many years. It indicates nothing less than the blatant encouragement and deployment of mob rule by the ruling classes of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. Pakistan is now not just a… Read More Nawada lynching mocks ‘The rule of law’ / Bangladesh Lynching Condemned
Attack brings total number of Palestinians killed by Israel to 401 since October ceasefire took effect William Christou The Israeli military killed six Palestinians, including a baby, who were in a school that sheltered displaced people in Gaza City on Friday, hospital officials have said. The attack brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israel to 401 since… Read More Israeli troops kill six Palestinians sheltering in Gaza school, say hospital chiefs
++++++Readers outside of India can donate hereto support Mainstream Weeklyhttps://tinyurl.com/2rsy4ss6++++++ In this issue: DOCUMENTS IMAGE & SOUND Editor’s Picks: * (Coverpage artwork: Stuff, Photo by Harsh Kapoor Dec 25, 2025) https://mainstreamweekly.net/article16441.html
NB: A blurb for a book of philosophical essays asks if ours is the era of ‘faint-hearted’ philosophy, because we were/are not ‘able to bear the greatness, the immensity of the claims made by the human spirit.’ The ongoing ideological assault on the mind and the very soul of humanity point to the widespread failures… Read More Natalia Ginzburg: Our Monstrous Ideas
NB: The idea of collective guilt or collective punishment is sheer poison. Everyone, especially the ruling establishments of various countries I need not name, should be aware of the inhumanity of this idea. You cannot defeat darkness with more darkness; violence with more violwence. For all its technological progress, global society seems not to have… Read More ‘We are all human beings first’: Jews and Muslims embrace at vigils for those killed in Bondi beach terror attack
This article was authored in June 2024. It appears in our fifth print issue, Contra Temps, available here Buber had written that for “political Zionism,” “the State is the goal and Zion a ‘myth’ that inflames the masses.” That propaganda employed to shore up nationalist militarism and settler-colonialism could leverage European guilt to “distort and exploit respectable… Read More Zionism Breaks
After the truth-shower 