• (Consider the despair felt by a commentator who  has historically been BRICS-ebullient, Pepe Escobar:
• at the  moment, BRICS is in a coma. It’s very painful to admit it, but  we have to be realists. It’s in deep, deep coma blown up by one  of its founding members. And obviously, don’t expect anything  coming from Brazil or South Africa... Modi and his gang, they  don’t represent India. They happen to be in power at the moment.  And you know, all that play with the Hinduta fanatics or  courting the Hinduta fanatic, this is not India. This is not  deep India.
• So we have a  founding BRICS member completely aligned with Israel, which for  the other BRICS practically all the other ones and the partners  as well, this is unthinkable."
• But no, it’s not  ‘unthinkable,’ because since the outset of the  bloc in the late 2000s, leading BRICS capitalists and state  agencies have been  deeply committed to increased profiteering from Israel’s apartheid  economy, and  since 2023 from the genocide, which needs: 
• South  African coal sent from mines owned by Glencore and Patrice  Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals (by late 2025, the sole  supplier for 15% of genocide-fueling grid electricity, after  Colombia dropped out), with the National Union of Metalworkers  of SA and SA Transport and Allied Workers Union facilitating the  deal in spite of their – and rhetorical Hague Group – opposition  to fuelling the Israeli military; 
• Russia's  nearly two million emigres (still citizens) who provide the IDF  with tens of thousands of lads to carry out genocide, plus  Russian oil transfers to the Haifa refinery originating from  (BRICS partner) Kazakhstan; 
• Chinese  drones (tens of thousands by now) buzzing Gaza and the West  Bank, and Chinese management/ownership of the Haifa Bayport plus  $32 bn in trade last year; 
• Brazilian  Petrobras oil (9% of Israeli needs); 
• A  half-dozen  BRICS members and partners – Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, UAE,  Uzbekistan  and Vietnam – are with Trump. And India was also a formal observer  to the Board  of Peace session in February, whereas – unlike European countries  which turned  down BoP membership – three other BRICS – Brazil, China and Russia  – were  invited by Trump and didn't turn down the invitation. (South  Africa, Ethiopia and  Iran did not receive invitations.)
• There are occasional anti-imperial outbursts  from the BRICS – such as the current Iranian fight-back, China's  brief threat  to ban rare-earth minerals from sale to the U.S., the South  African case  against Israeli genocide at The Hague, and Russia's invasion of  Ukraine  starting in 2014 – but these are located more generally within  overarching  support for the daily-grind mechanics of Empire.
• ... India betrayed two top BRICS  sequentially, Russia and Iran. That’s extremely serious.  This would be grounds for expulsion of India from BRICS.
• But of course the facts are there and  the facts are horrible. The facts are absolutely  disgusting. Everything in terms of inviting the Iranians  to that maritime show in India and after the ship leaves,  it’s an enormous controversy in India. And a lot of people  very well informed said, ‘yes they gave the coordinates of  the ship to the Americans and that’s why the ship was  torpedoed.’ Maybe, maybe not.
• But they didn’t do anything about it  afterwards as well.
• And of course India did not condemn the  assassination of Khamenei. It took them three or four days  to actually send somebody to the Iranian consulate to sign  a book. The other BRICS condemned immediately. The other  four founding BRICS members Brazil, Russia, China, South  Africa, they condemned it immediately. India not a word  only four days later and sort of, you know.

• So what Russia is doing - which is  beautiful, very very Russian - now it’s only business.  ‘You need our oil. Okay, we sell it, but you’re going to  have to pay the spot market price. No discounts for you.  Forget it. What we had before is dead. Now, you pay you  know, if the oil goes up every day, you’re going to have  to pay. That’s it.’

   

  So, that’s it. It’s a lesson for the  Iranians or for the Indians. Sorry. Let’s see if they  learn it.

   

  But the problem is what’s going to  happen to BRICS this year considering that India is the  BRICS chair in this year when they betrayed two BRICS.  They’re going to hold the BRICS presidency and the summit  in New Delhi in November.

• You know, at the moment, BRICS is in a  coma. It’s very painful to admit it, but we have to be  realists. It’s in deep, deep coma blown up by one of its  founding members.

   

  And obviously, don’t expect anything  coming from Brazil or South Africa. You know, they’re not  saying anything about Russia and China. They’re looking at  it. They said, ‘Oh my god, we’re going to have to restart  this whole thing. And it’s up to us once again.’ Once  again it’s going to be up to Russia and China to put BRICS  back together, right?

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• Immersive Navigation has a new 3D view that Google says will more accurately reflect what you’ll see in real life. There’s a Gemini tie-in here because Google can’t develop anything new that doesn’t at least touch on AI anymore. You’ll see accurate overpasses, crosswalks, landmarks, and signage in the new navigation experience, which is all courtesy of Gemini models that glean data from Street View and aerial photography. Google says this is just how it’s building 3D maps now; Gemini isn’t making live changes to your navigation experience.

   

   

   

• • Explain cryptocurrency like I’m 10
• • What causes gas prices to rise?
  • Summarize the basics of investing for beginners
  • What is rocket science and how does it work?
• • Recommend 10 learning resources for information technology

• You may have noticed that ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all include a “+” button next to the prompt bar. Clicking it lets you upload photos or files, which the AI can then analyze.

• This is especially useful when you want a quick summary of a document. Simply upload the file and use a prompt asking the AI to break the information down into a clear, easy-to-follow format.

  You don’t even have to upload a file if you don’t want to. You can also copy and paste text directly into the prompt or include a link to an article you want summarized.

• One simple method is to start with a prompt like the ones below. Then press Shift + Enter to move to the next line without sending the message and paste the text or link you want the chatbot to review.
• • Summarize this in five bullet points
  • Explain all of this in plain English
  • Give me the five key takeaways
• • Rewrite this email to sound more professional
• • Fix any grammar mistakes you come across and improve clarity in this cover letter
• • Make this paragraph more concise
• • Help me improve this resume
• • What are the cheapest airline options for a trip to Jamaica?
• such as “Make it shorter,” “explain it more simply,” “give me more examples" and “rewrite this in a friendlier tone,” can help your AI partner produce better results.

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• Second, and even more importantly, Kurds faced a dominant Arab nationalist politics throughout the region that refused to recognize their rights. That intensified their determination to form parties of their own. In Syria, both the United Arab Republic, between 1958 and 1961, as well as the Ba’ath Party state after 1963 scapegoated the country’s Kurdish population. They portrayed Kurds as agents working for foreign powers, particularly U.S. imperialism and Israel. Kurdish officers were notably dismissed from their posts in the Syrian army, while the Ba’ath Party arrested members of Kurdish political organizations.

• Hafez al-Assad, who seized power and set up his regime in 1970, continued such discriminatory policies, setting up a system of institutionalized racism against Kurds. Between 1972 and 1977, Assad implemented a policy of settlement in predominantly Kurdish regions of Syria. His regime resettled approximately 25,000 Arab peasants, whose lands had been flooded by the construction of the Tabqa Dam, in the Upper Jazirah. There, the regime built “modern villages” adjacent to Kurdish villages.

• In 1986, the regime cracked down on public celebrations of Nawruz, the springtime new year festival observed by Kurds, Iranians, and other peoples. It did so because it had become an occasion for the Kurdish community and political groups to demand their national, cultural, and democratic rights in Syria. Celebrations of Nawruz were seen as an act of resistance and affirmation of national rights, in a country whose state was actively oppressing its Kurdish population. The regime forbade any signs of Nawruz celebrations in two Damascus suburbs. When people defied the ban, security forces attacked participants to the celebration, killing one young Kurdish man and injuring many others.

• At the same time, Assad co-opted certain segments of Kurdish society, particularly the elites in the growing Kurdish opposition in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in order to serve his regime’s foreign policy objectives. The Assad regime incorporated religious leaders like Muhammad Sa’id Ramadan al-Buti and Ahmad Kuftaro, the Grand Mufti of the Republic between 1964 and 2004. It also appointed several Kurdish figures to high-ranking positions, such as Mahmud Ayyubi, who was Prime Minister from 1972 to 1976, and Hikmat Shikaki, who was head of military intelligence from 1970 to 1974 and Chief of Staff from 1974 to 1998. However, it made these appointments on the condition that these officials refrain from displaying any Kurdish ethnic identity or advocating Kurdish rights.

• Assad extended this policy of co-optation to Kurdish political parties. It established a kind of alliance with the Turkish-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, became an official guest of the regime in the early 1980s as Syrian and Turkish tensions escalated. The PKK was permitted to recruit members and fighters, reaching between 5,000 and 10,000 members in the 1990s. It was allowed to launch military operations from Syria against the Turkish army. The PKK had offices in Damascus and several northern cities, as well as in Lebanon when it was under Syrian influence. There some PKK fighters fought against Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. During this period, PKK militants seized control of small portions of Syrian territory, particularly in Afrin.

• Other Kurdish political parties also collaborated with the Syrian regime. Among these were Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which had been in Syria since 1972. In 1979, Masoud Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) also operated in Syria and collaborated with Assad’s regime. Both were focused on using their base in Syria to organize Kurds in Iraq.

• The regime allowed these parties to operate in Syria on the condition that they did not organize and mobilize Kurds within Syria. The Syrian state instrumentalized these parties as a tool of its foreign policy in pursuit of its regional ambitions. Inside the country, it used them to displace the Kurdish question onto other countries, especially Iraq and Turkey. The Kurdish parties that accepted this bargain rejected struggles waged by Kurdish organizations in Syria against Damascus, which they considered a diversion from what they considered the “real struggle” for the “real” Kurdistan in Iraq and Turkey.

• Relations between Kurdish political parties and the Syrian regime began to deteriorate in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As relations between Turkey and Syria improved, the regime abandoned its alliance with the PKK. It expelled PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s in 1998. He was soon imprisoned in Turkey, where he has languished in jail ever since. The regime repressed the party’s militants inside the country.

• Once it ended its policy of cooptation, the regime began to brutally repress the Kurds in Syria. In 2004, it crushed a Kurdish popular uprising that had erupted in the city of Qamishli and spread to predominantly Kurdish areas of the country like Jazirah, Afrin, and also neighborhoods in Aleppo and Damascus. The protests were rooted among working class youth who had broken free from the control of Kurdish political parties, which had traditionally favored peaceful struggle. The protestors attacked symbols of the regime and public buildings. The security forces responded by killing several dozens of demonstrators and arresting 2,000.

• In the face of this repression and betrayal, Kurds joined the Syrian revolution in 2011 along with the majority of the country’s population. Like everyone else, Kurdish protesters organized themselves into Local Coordination Committees . However, collaboration between Arab and Kurdish coordination committees gradually weakened before ceasing altogether because of growing divisions between them and within the movement as a whole.

• Two factors led to this. First, profound disagreements over strategy and politics divided Kurdish and Arab opposition groups. Second, ethnic tensions developed between Arabs and Kurds, dividing the initially united national uprising. These factors split the Arab forces, who were increasingly led by Islamic fundamentalists armed forces, and the Kurdish resistance, mainly led by the PYD. Both separately adopted a military strategy against the regime.

• The PYD established these, in part, by building strong relationships with the U.S. and to a lesser extent Russia. Washington cultivated ties with the PYD in its fight against ISIS in Syria. The U.S. provided military support to the SDF starting in October 2015. In its founding document, the SDF committed to combating “terrorism represented by ISIS, its sister organizations, and the criminal Ba’ath regime.”

• The YPG controlled the SDF, while other groups like Syriac and the Army of Revolutionaries (Jaysh al-Thuwar) played an auxiliary role in it. The SDF became the Pentagon’s primary partner in its war against ISIS. The U.S. supported SDF units in expelling ISIS from Raqqa and its surroundings in 2017, destroying more than 80 percent of the city and causing a humanitarian crisis.

• At the same time, the PYD developed close relations with Russia. In September 2015, it collaborated with Russian military intervention in support of Assad’s regime. In 2016, it secured support from the Russian air force for its attack on Arab opposition groups in the Afrin region. In that campaign, it seized a number of Arab-majority towns in northern Aleppo, including Tal Rifaat.

• From 2015 on, the U.S. and Russia put enormous pressure on the PYD to conform to their priorities. Moscow demanded that the PYD collaborate with Assad’s forces against ISIS. The U.S. limited its support for the YPG and SDF to the fight against ISIS. It maintained the PYD’s sister group, the PKK, on its terrorist list and expressed strong support for Turkey’s fight against it. It also avoided providing significant economic support to PYD-controlled areas, which would have angered Turkey. It restricted aid it did provide to a relatively modest stabilization program.

• The U.S. and Turkey clearly backed this offensive. It took place just two days after a meeting in Damascus between the STG and SDF in the presence of U.S. military personnel. With the talks stalled, it’s clear that Washington and Ankara gave the greenlight to the STG to attack. Already, in the midst of these negotiations, the government was developing a plan to launch a military operation first in Aleppo and then to extend it to other SDF controlled areas. They rallied various Arab tribes in Deir Ez-Zor and Raqqa , which have been in contact with interim President al-Sharaa for some time now, in order to prepare the attack on the SDF.

• Washington’s cynical use of Kurds for their own purposes has a long history. It along with other western and regional states opposed the Kurdish referendum in 2017 in Iraq. They did so despite the fact that it was initiated by Massoud Barzani, historically an ally of the U.S., the West and Turkey. They feared it would lead to the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, destabilizing the region and weakening their war against ISIS.

• Finally, the PYD and SDF’s reliance on the U.S. and Russia also made them vulnerable. Once bereft of an imperial sponsor, without a mass base beyond the Kurdish population, and with no alliance with Arab progressive and democratic forces, the SDF found itself isolated and relatively easily defeated.

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