Ira Mathur

Sunday offering 🙏🏾

Sunday Offering T&T Guardian

Sunday offering 🙏🏾T&T Guardian Asha Bhosle

Easter Sunday offering 🌼🙏🏾 T&T Guardian

Sunday Offering 🙏🏾 T&T Guardian
“I learned very early on that neutrality and objectivity are not the same thing. You can’t be neutral about war crimes.”— Christiane Amanpour.
“But Iran in not Gaza. The theatre of this new war could expand to consume the whole world. We are on the brink of nuclear calamity and economic collapse. The same country that bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be readying itself to bomb one of the most ancient civilizations in the world. There will be other occasions to speak of this in detail, so here, let me simply say that I stand with Iran. Unequivocally. Any regimes that need changing, including the US, Israel and ours, need to be changed by the people, not by some bloated, lying, cheating, greedy, resource-grabbing, bomb-dropping imperial power and its allies who are trying to bully the whole world into submission. - Arundhati Roy
Any account of the present war must point to the long history of American interference abroad. The United States has intervened militarily in conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, wars that together have caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and displaced millions. In Afghanistan alone more than 176,000 people were killed during the two-decade war following the 2001 invasion. Washington remains Israel’s principal arms supplier in the war in Gaza, where Palestinian authorities report more than 72,000 people killed since October 2023, with women and children forming a large share of the casualties. Fi****ms are now the leading cause of death among American children. Over the past decade, gun violence has killed roughly 25,000 children and teenagers in the United States (source: CDC). Not forgetting that the US was built on centuries of slavery and a current state of near institutionalised racism.

Any account of the war must also acknowledge the record of the Iranian state. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran’s clerical government has imposed strict controls on women through compulsory veiling laws and morality policing. Women have been arrested, beaten and imprisoned for defying dress codes or protesting discrimination. The death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022 triggered nationwide protests led largely by young women under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”, demonstrations that were met with lethal force and mass arrests. Human rights groups claim thousands of political prisoners and dissidents have been executed by the Islamic Republic over the decades, including mass executions in the late 1980s. Iran remains one of the world’s leading executioners, with more than 900 people executed in 2024 alone.

Make no mistake. There are no heroes here. Women bear the cost under regimes that control them and under bombs dropped in the name of saving them. War rooms speak of security and protection. The evidence on the ground is the opposite. This is not about good over evil. Never was. These wars were always about power, land, oil, arms and wealth.”

Dear friends It’s been a while. I’ve gone underground since my father died last March and then my dear friend and poet the beyond beautiful Gilbert Farah O Sullivan died. But as dad’s anniversary comes up the frame clears. The only two things in life that count - Love and Work.
I’m now back with both 🙂 So do join me if you can tomorrow at the Writers Centre, 14 Alcazar Street in Port of Spain from 5.00 as I interview David Lambert on his absolutely gorgeous book ‘ The House in Bacolet’ set in my beloved Tobago. Books, writers, readers, a warm Caribbran March evening, conversation on our islands , a bookshop, a cafe- so much to love ❤️ 📕 ☕️ 🏠 🏝️ . See you then, I hope .
With love, Ira