theatre

The Indian city’s Maratha Mandir has been holding daily screenings of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge since it released in 1995.

A theatre in Mumbai is celebrating 30 years of screening a much-loved Bollywood romance that has become India’s longest-running film.

On Monday, Maratha Mandir theatre in Mumbai, the financial capital of India, will mark three decades of daily screenings of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Bravehearted Will Take the Bride), which shot actors Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol to superstardom.

The film, widely known to fans as DDLJ, redefined modern Hindi romance and continues to draw hundreds of cinemagoers to its morning screenings with its tale of young lovers bucking tradition since its release on October 20, 1995.

“I have seen it about 30 times … and I will continue watching it,” Mohammad Shakir, 60, told the AFP news agency as he bought a ticket for 40 rupees ($0.45).

Manoj Desai, the head of the cinema located near Bombay Central Station, told AFP that weekday crowds tend to be made up of university students and young couples.

“On Sundays, you will find around 500 people, even after 30 years,” said Desai.

Clash of values

The film, which far outstrips the five-year run of the 1975 action-thriller Sholay (Embers) at another Mumbai theatre, revolves around the contrast between the more liberal values of second-generation Indians overseas and the conservative values of their parents.

Desai said it was common for audiences to break into cheers and applause during the film’s climax, when the heroine runs alongside a moving train into her lover’s arms.

“This is the goosebump moment,” Desai said. “The father letting his daughter go, saying she won’t find a better partner to spend her life with.”

It is a message that continues to resonate with younger viewers, even those who were not born when it was released.

“In our generation today, we often see transactional relationships,” Omkar Saraf, 23, told AFP. “But in this film, the hero crosses all boundaries to win his love with no expectations.

“We have watched it on television, on our mobiles, but the big screen gives us goosebumps.”

‘Cultural monument’

Desai said one die-hard fan of the movie had been coming to screenings for 20 years, while for others, the film had played a part in their own love stories.

One couple watched it while dating, before inviting Desai to their wedding. “They went abroad for their honeymoon – and came back to watch the movie,” Desai said.

The film’s daily screenings were almost discontinued in 2015, but backlash from fans meant the decision was reversed, the Hindustan Times newspaper reported.

Film critic Baradwaj Rangan said the film had enduring appeal in a country still navigating the tensions between traditional and modern values.

“It represents a certain point in Indian culture, and that is why it is still loved,” Rangan said, adding that it “perfectly captured” the friction between two generations.

“The film has become a kind of cultural monument,” he said. “I think it is going to be playing forever.”

As Donald Trump tries to take credit for a ceasefire in Gaza, Israel continues to kill Palestinians. And as both Israeli and Palestinian captives are released, the glaring double standards in coverage lay bare how this genocide was allowed to go on for so long.

Contributors: 
Tahani Mustafa – Visiting Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations
Mouin Rabbani – Co-editor, Jadaliyya
Kenneth Roth – Former Executive Director, Human Rights Watch
Oren Ziv – Journalist, +972 Magazine

On our radar

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Corina Machado, chose to dedicate her award to Donald Trump. Meenakshi Ravi reports on what motivated the Venezuelan opposition leader to pander to the United States president.

All the president’s women: the rise of the ‘womanosphere’

For years, the right-wing media space has been dominated by men. But the 2024 election shone a light on a rising parallel force within Donald Trump’s MAGA movement: the so-called “womanosphere”. Across YouTube channels, social media and podcasts, conservative women are rebranding right-wing politics for a female audience.

Featuring: 
Annie Kelly – UK Correspondent, QAA Podcast
Nicole Kiprilov – Republican Party strategist
Eviane Leidig – Author, The Women of the Far Right

The old stage at West Hollywood’s Roxy Theatre looks as small as ever to Tim Curry. Back in 1974, the actor spent nearly a year strutting across its boards in fishnets and a snug corset as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the flamboyant, sexually ravenous mad scientist of the musical comedy “The Rocky Horror Show.”

Witnesses to that run of performances still marvel at the spectacle of Curry’s nightly entrance, as he marched from the lobby on a long catwalk, his high heels at eye level with the audience. He would then cast aside his Dracula cape to sing a personal theme song, “Sweet Transvestite.”

“It’s actually really nice to be here because it was another home for me,” says Curry, 79, looking up at the empty stage inside the Sunset Strip nightclub. “It became my stomping ground. I had to appear as though I owned it — and I kind of did.”

At the end of that same year, Curry was back home in England to shoot the feature film version, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” a rock ’n’ roll send-up of old sci-fi and horror B-movies that became both a cult classic and a vibrant symbol for sexual freedom. It is the original midnight movie and is now being feted around the world for its 50th anniversary with a second life as the longest continuous theatrical release in cinema history.

Tim Curry, center, as Frank-N-Furter in 1975’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

(John Jay Photo / Disney)

The role changed Curry’s career forever, and he will be part of some of those celebrations, beginning with a screening of a newly restored 4K version of the film, along with a panel Q&A, at the Academy Museum on Friday.

At the time of the film’s original release in 1975, it tapped into a cultural zeitgeist that mixed glamour and androgyny, akin to the era’s glam-rock movement led by David Bowie. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” ultimately found a cult of fans who gathered for weekly midnight screenings in costume as the movie’s outlandish characters, performing as a “shadow cast” in harmony with the film onscreen.

“It was part of the sexual revolution, really,” says Curry. “Experiment was in the air and it was palpable. I gave them permission to be who they discovered they wanted to be. I’m proud of that.”

Since a stroke in 2012, the actor has been in a wheelchair and most of his work has been in voiceover. He did appear on camera in a 2016 remake of “Rocky Horror” for television, this time as the criminologist. But it was as the lascivious, self-confident Frank-N-Furter that Curry made history.

On this afternoon, he is dressed in black, auburn hair slicked back. In the Roxy’s lobby is a portrait of Curry in character as the mad doctor in pearls. It was a role he originated in London, on the tiny stage upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, where it first became an underground sensation.

“Even for the time, there was a lot of courage that went into that performance,” remembers Jim Sharman, who directed Curry in the original stage productions in London and Los Angeles and then onscreen. “Tim himself was actually a kind of quiet intellectual offstage, but onstage he really knew how to let it rip.”

Curry, center, in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

(Disney)

With a story and songs written by actor Richard O’Brien, who also played the skeletal, sarcastic Riff-Raff, “Rocky Horror” begins with a young couple caught in a rainstorm who approach a mysterious castle in search of shelter and a phone.

Played by then-unknowns Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, the couple find Frank-N-Furter is hosting a convention of partying aliens in formalwear from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania.

The mad doctor is also anxious to show off his latest experiment, the creation of a perfectly formed male, a personal plaything of chiseled muscles and blond hair, as he sings “I Can Make You A Man.” The scene leaves an impression.

“He takes no prisoners — it’s his world and you just happen to live in it,” Curry says with a smile of his Frank-N-Furter. “He doesn’t leave much air in the room. And I enjoyed that because it was so not like me, really.”

Notably, the film shares a 50-year anniversary with “Jaws,” and Curry remembers someone at 20th Century Fox placing newspaper ads that year for “Rocky Horror” with the film’s glossy red lips image and words promising, “A different set of jaws.”

“Jaws,” of course, was a record-breaking summer blockbuster, but as the longest-running theatrical release of all time, “Rocky Horror” really has no competition in terms of impact. It helped establish a culture for midnight movies in open-ended rotation, from David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” to Paul Verhoeven’s “Showgirls.”

At the customary hour of midnight, the restored 4K film will be premiering across the country this weekend, with special screenings and Q&As on Oct. 4 at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and Oct. 15 at the Grammy Museum. The film will then be rereleased on Blu-ray on Oct. 7, with a reissue of the official soundtrack album on Oct. 10.

Also landing in time for the celebration is a new documentary, “Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror,” directed by Linus O’Brien, son of “Rocky Horror” author and composer Richard O’Brien. The 90-minute film explores the making of the movie, the original stage musical and the decades of fan culture that followed.

“When a work of art survives this long, it’s working on many different levels,” says the younger O’Brien, who was a toddler on the set. “You want to live in that house and have those naughty experiences. [People] will be talking about it long after we’re all dead.”

The “Rocky Horror” journey from underground theater to feature film began after Los Angeles music impresario Lou Adler saw the show during a trip to London. Known as a manager and record producer (Carole King’s “Tapestry”), Adler was shaken from his jet lag, instantly recognizing “Rocky Horror” as a potential attraction for his recently opened L.A. club, the Roxy. Within two days, Adler signed a deal to host its U.S. premiere.

At the Roxy, the show was an immediate sensation, fueled by Curry’s wildly charismatic performance. Opening night brought out a crowd that included Jack Nicholson, John Lennon and Mick Jagger. L.A. Times theater critic Dan Sullivan compared Curry to various Hollywood grande dames (Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, among them).

“It was one of the great parties of all time,” Adler recalls during a video call from his home in Malibu. “The acceptance was unbelievable.”

Talk of turning the stage musical into a movie soon followed and a deal was made with 20th Century Fox, with producers Adler and Michael White guaranteeing delivery on a modest budget of about $1 million.

“I don’t know if 20th Century Fox ever understood the film,” Sharman says with a laugh, in a video call from Australia. “They might’ve been relieved that it was going on a low budget and being made on somebody’s lunch money.”

It was the first feature film for many of them. But Adler and White insisted on keeping the stage musical’s creative team together, including Sharman, costume designer Sue Blane and production designer Brian Thomson. With Curry firmly in the lead role, most of the cast members were drawn from the London production. Joining them were American actors Sarandon, Bostwick and singer Meat Loaf.

“I adored her,” Curry says of Sarandon. “She was a witty girl and so beautiful, and a real actress, I thought. You could tell that she had something.”

He also became friends with Meat Loaf, who appeared in the small but impactful role of Eddie, bursting out of a freezer on a motorcycle long enough to sing the manic “Hot Patootie, Bless My Soul.” In 1981, Curry hosted “Saturday Night Live” and appeared with Meat Loaf in a skit that had the actors selling “Rocky Horror” memorabilia. (Curry is still irritated by that one: “Dreadful.”)

Lou Adler, photographed at the Roxy in West Hollywood in 2023.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“When the movie was a definite thing, there were several big stars who wanted to play the part,” Curry remembers. “Mick Jagger wanted to play it and he would’ve done a great job if you saw ‘Performance.’ But [director Sharman] said he wanted me to do it. I don’t think the studio was happy that he turned down Mick.”

Though Sharman was a very experienced stage director, he had made only one previous film, a 16mm feature called “Shirley Thompson vs. the Aliens.” For “Rocky Horror,” he says he was aiming for “a dark version of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’” He was also inspired by old B-movies and German Expressionism along with lessons learned from the stage. Interior scenes were shot at the old Hammer horror films’ Bray Studios just outside London.

“The reason we don’t have great anecdotes from the shoot is we didn’t have time for anecdotes,” adds Sharman. “It was shot in five weeks.”

Bostwick, appearing in one of his first film roles, remembers, “It felt like a very low-budget but colorful, bright and inspiring musical. You knew from the moment you were around the sets and costumes and lighting and makeup and camera people that they were at the top of their game.”

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” evolved in some subtle but meaningful ways in its transition from the stage. For the live performances, Curry did his own makeup. “In the theater, I made it look a lot more amateur, deliberately, like he wasn’t good at it but was making a brave attempt and didn’t care much,” Curry says with a laugh. “In the play, it was just a lot trashier.”

For the film, French makeup artist Pierre La Roche was recruited to refine Frank-N-Furter’s exterior. La Roche had previously worked with Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust era.

“He was indeed very French,” says Curry, campily. “He was brilliant.”

An early sign of the challenges the movie would face arrived at an early screening of the completed film for Fox executives. Curry was there with Adler. “You could touch the silence at the end,” recalls Curry. “It wasn’t a very alive audience. There was really no reaction at all.”

Fox also hosted a test screening in Santa Barbara. The audience was a local mix of retirees and university students, and many of the older filmgoers began heading for the exit, until the theater was nearly empty.

But as Adler and a young Fox executive named Tim Deegan sat on the curb outside, they also met young people who were excited about the film. Adler credits Deegan for finding the “Rocky Horror” audience in an unexpected place: indie theaters at midnight.

Its second life began at the Waverly Theater in New York, where it began evolving into a happening that was both a movie and a theatrical experience. At the time, Curry happened to live within walking distance of the Waverly.

“It was a sort of guaranteed party,” he says of any potential moviegoer. “And if he didn’t bring a date, he could perhaps find one.”

On a recent weekend at the Nuart Theater in West L.A., barely five miles away from the Roxy, it’s approaching midnight and the lobby is filled with fans and volunteer shadow performers in “Rocky Horror” drag. Appearing as Frank-N-Furter is Kohlton Rippee, 32, already in his heels and makeup.

Like many here, he sees the film as both an outlet and a connection to a found family — a way “to see aspects of themselves represented in ways that they don’t see from traditional media. It’s like, ‘Oh, I can see myself in this and find this weird community to be around.’”

Bostwick first heard of the film’s second life from others and word trickled in that his every appearance onscreen was met with an affectionate callback from the crowd: “Ass—!” He didn’t see the phenomenon himself until later at the Tiffany Theater on Sunset.

“What do they say, that Disneyland is the happiest place on Earth? I’ve always thought that a Friday and Saturday night at a theater at midnight was the happiest place on Earth,” the actor says of the many raucous screenings he’s witnessed. “Everybody was just having a ball.”

After Walt Disney Co.‘s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, it turned the House of Mouse into the unlikely steward of “Rocky Horror.” Back in 1975, nothing could have been further from the Disney brand than a rock ’n’ roll musical about a cross-dressing scientist. That year, Disney released “The Apple Dumpling Gang.”

“I guess Walt is kind of revolving in his grave,” Curry jokes.

Even so, Adler says Disney has been a good partner on “Rocky Horror” and is supporting the multiple official anniversary events. “Walt was a breakthrough guy,” the producer notes. “He broke through and made a mouse a hero. So, in a way, he had his own Frank-N-Furter.”

Since their summit with United States President Donald Trump in the White House on August 18, Kyiv’s European and regional allies have begun to nail down commitments to a peacekeeping force that would enter Ukraine after a ceasefire is reached in the war that Russia began three and a half years ago.

They aim to collect those commitments by the end of the week.

Europe is also pushing for further sanctions against Russia.

But the US is not on the same page on either issue.

Here’s what you should know:

What have countries promised?

So far, Estonia has said it was prepared to contribute at least a military unit to the peacekeeping force, and Lithuania had earlier announced it was ready to send an unspecified number of troops.

Romania said it would not send troops, but would make its airfields available as bases for F-35 air patrols enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Turkiye is considering sending troops, and would help de-mine the Black Sea, Ukraine’s ambassador to Ankara said.

Colonel Andre Wuestner, the head of the German Armed Forces Association, told the Reuters news agency that at least 10,000 troops would be needed for an extended period.

“It won’t be enough to have a handful of generals and smaller military units man a command post in Ukraine,” Wuestner said.

A top priority for the Europeans at the White House meeting was to commit Trump to being involved in such a force.

Trump had said on August 18 that the US would participate, but not with troops.

Last month, The Financial Times reported that US officials recently told their European interlocutors that the US would contribute “strategic enablers”, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, command and control, and air defence assets.

Is a ceasefire and plan for a peacekeeping force viable?

“It’s all theatre. Every single European leader, including [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, has had to find a way of keeping Trump on side,” said Keir Giles, a Eurasia expert at Chatham House. “They’ve succeeded in doing so, but it is at the cost of suspension of reality.”

The idea of a ceasefire is not only “entirely unachievable because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is plainly not interested in ending the fighting”, Giles told Al Jazeera, but it is also undesirable.

“Everybody knows still that a ceasefire was among one of the worst-case possible outcomes for Ukraine before Trump arrived in office,” he said.

Ukraine and its European allies have repeatedly scoffed at a truce as a chance for Putin to reorganise his forces before attacking with renewed vigour. Trump, however, made a ceasefire his priority last February.

“The need to humour Trump, and to play along with the fantasy version of reality that drives the Trump world, means that they still pay lip service to these ludicrous ideas,” said Giles.

Will Trump play ball with Europe?

Since August 18, Europe and Ukraine have been working hard to pull Trump back in their direction.

After meeting NATO chief Mark Rutte in Kyiv on August 22, Zelenskyy said they had agreed on the necessity of “Article 5-like guarantees” operating under a blueprint that entails “a crystal-clear architecture of which countries assist us on the ground, which are responsible for the security of our skies, which guarantee security at sea”.

NATO’s Article 5 is the collective defence clause: the idea that an attack on one NATO member is treated as an attack on all.

Would Trump agree to ‘Article 5-like guarantees’, entailing an automatic defence mechanism that would bring NATO forces into conflict with Russia?

“Even when Trump is sounding positive about it, it’s incredibly vague, and it’s not entirely clear whether he means what he says,” said Giles.

“You can never be sure with Trump. He is changeable,” agreed political scientist Theodoros Tsikas, but he believes political reality prevents Trump from straying too far into Putin’s camp.

“First, he wants the Ukrainian war to be resolved, so he can proceed with an economic cooperation with Russia on energy and mineral wealth.”

Reuters revealed late last month that Russia and the US discussed business deals parallel to the issue of Ukraine’s disposition in a summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on August 15.

“These deals were put forward as incentives to encourage the Kremlin to agree to peace in Ukraine and for Washington to ease sanctions on Russia,” five sources told Reuters.

They included ExxonMobil re-entering a joint investment with Russian gas giant Gazprom, Moscow buying US equipment for gas liquefaction, and the US buying Russian ice-breakers.

Secondly, said Tsikas, Trump “wants to free up US troops in Europe to recommit them to Asia”.

In performing this pirouette, “He can’t allow Ukraine to collapse in his hands, because he will have a huge political cost in the States – it will be a bit like [ex-US President Joe] Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. So even Trump has limits. The profile he sells is that of the winner. If he suffers a big defeat, that image collapses,” he told Al Jazeera.

For these reasons, Trump is willing to lend security to Europe, said Tsikas.

Is Trump offering Ukraine a deal?

This aid would not come for free, consistent with Trump’s policy towards Ukraine since assuming office.

The Financial Times reported that, in exchange for US security guarantees, Ukraine has offered to buy $100bn worth of US weapons, financed by Europe, which has already promised to buy 700 billion euros ($820bn) in US weapons for itself.

Will these extraordinary sums ever be spent? Zelenskyy says Ukraine needs US weapons worth $1bn to $1.5bn every month through the PURL (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List), a NATO programme.

European countries have currently pledged $1.5bn in purchases of US weapons for Ukraine through PURL. All this is a far cry from the sums Trump is demanding be committed in memorandums, raising the question of whether they will ever be fulfilled.

Where does Russia stand?

A peacekeeping force would only come into play once Putin and Zelenskyy had agreed to a ceasefire.

Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov has confirmed twice in recent days that the meeting was not scheduled, despite Zelenskyy’s readiness.

He told his Indian counterpart on August 21 that such a meeting would happen when proposals were “well developed”.

Lavrov also told NBC that “no meeting is being planned”, but that “Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit. This agenda is not ready at all”.

Lavrov wanted Zelenskyy to align himself with positions he claimed Putin and Trump agreed to in the meeting in Alaska.

“It was very clear to everybody [that] there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted, including no NATO membership… [and] discussion of territorial issues, and Zelenskyy said no to everything.”

Russia and Europe have fought to bring Trump closer to their positions. Putin persuaded Trump that no ceasefire was necessary for peace talks, and tried to dissuade Trump from backing sanctions, which Europe supports.

Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in an evening address on Tuesday, “The only signals Russia is sending indicate that it intends to continue evading real negotiations. This can be changed only through strong sanctions, strong tariffs – real pressure.”

On August 22, Trump reiterated a self-imposed two-week deadline before he makes a decision on sanctions against Russia. He told reporters in an Oval Office briefing, “I think in two weeks, we’ll know which way I’m going.”

Trump first mentioned that deadline to Fox’s Sean Hannity in the wake of the Alaska meeting with Putin on August 15.

But the tug-of-war means Trump is still midway between Europe and Russia, and not the staunch European ally his predecessor, Biden, was.

European leaders see the Russian aggression in Ukraine in purely political and security terms, and are more sceptical of Russia’s motives.

“I don’t see President Putin ready to get peace now,” French President Emmanuel Macron recently told NBC. “As long as President Putin and his people will consider they can win this war and get a better result by force, they will not negotiate.”

Resource competition has intensified between the two great powers, the US and China, due to trade and tariff wars. Recently, both the countries have made major policy shifts in the strategically significant rare earth sector.

China discreetly issued 2025 rare earth mining and smelting quotas to its state-owned enterprises, exhibiting deepening securitization of this sector. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) previously used to make the announcement public on their website.

The Pentagon became the largest shareholder in MP Materials after buying $400 million worth of stocks. It indicates expanding involvement of the US government in the domestic rare earth industry since MP Materials operates the sole mining facility in the US. This move faces severe backlash, with critics comparing it with China’s approach to market intervention.

Consequently, China has intensified its efforts to maintain overarching dominance over the global rare earth market, and the US strives to claw back its control over strategically important raw materials.

Quick guide to rare earth complexities

Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of seventeen metallic elements. Their requirement in high-tech applications in medicine, the military, and green technologies is indispensable. The REEs are not so rare, as the name suggests. Yet the real limitation lies in locating them in clusters for economic viability. All the more difficult is smelting, separating, and processing these elements.

China is the net importer of REEs, mining 70%, with the rest being extracted by Myanmar, Australia, and the United States. However, China enjoys a near-monopoly in processing 90% of the rare earths globally.

Over the years, China has built self-sustaining rare earth supply chains domestically. That implies managing upstream extraction to midstream processing and, to a greater extent, even downstream manufacturing.

Just as access to oil shaped global geopolitics during the last century, access to rare earths is shaping current geopolitics in this great power competition. And China is weaponizing its preeminence over REE supply chains by tightening its control to offset the US.

China’s control over rare earths came with a huge brunt.

China discovered the strategic value of REEs in the formative years of building the country’s economic base. China has been investing heavily in the R&D since the discovery of rare earth deposits in Bayan Obo, Inner Mongolia, in 1927. Today, it holds the rank of largest known deposit of REEs and constitutes over 90% of China’s entire reserves.

Deng Xiaoping’s signature policy of 1978 is credited for kick-starting the opening up of the Chinese economy and integrating China into the global market. As a cherry on top for Chinese authorities came the “environmental decade” in the 1970s in the United States, marked by dozens of environmental legislations.

Rare earth extraction and processing have severe environmental repercussions. Certainly, US private firms were in search of a scapegoat to outsource environmental costs and exploit cheap labor.

Chinese authorities were willing to face the brunt of ecological damage for speedy economic growth. It turned out that the short-term economic interests overshadowed the long-term strategic interests of America. 

What exacerbated the matter was illegal and unregulated mining of rare earths. The parallel economy flourished as global consumption for rare earth multiplied year on year. Chinese authorities have taken cognizance but struggle to put a stop to these activities.

China has doubled down on its efforts to curb unlicensed extraction and harden the compliance systems facing immense pressure from Trump’s tariff war.

Chinese market manipulation tricks came in handy.

By the 1990s, bifurcating prices of rare earths for the Chinese domestic market and international market had compelled many US businesses to shut down.

China carried out price manipulation in two tiers. First, it made sure to service its domestic needs by selling at cheaper rates than the products that were being exported. Second, pricing it underneath the other global firms in the international market but higher than the domestic price levels.

In the beginning, this created incentive for international companies to establish their manufacturing units in China. But eventually almost all firms went bankrupt, losing their competitive edge against Chinese SOEs.

In addition, China has been consolidating its rare earth assets to raise its global competitiveness and pricing power. In Dec 2021, three mega SOEs were merged to form a megafirm, China Rare Earth Group. Today, only two mega conglomerates are operating: China Rare Earth Group and China Northern Rare Earth Group. In fact, export quotas are entrusted to only these two mega firms.

Export quotas introduced in 1999 have expanded and tightened over the years. Though year-wise mining and smelting quotas have increased, the annual growth rates see a downturn. This time not disclosing the quotas publicly for ‘security reasons’ will exacerbate uncertainties in the international market. It seems like a calculated strategy of Chinese authorities to maintain their stronghold over the global market of rare earths but making sure to provide enough to maintain dominance.

Some scholars do articulate China’s policies to clamp down on its rare earth industry from a different lens, essentially, to address domestic interests. The Chinese authoritarian state is caught up in securing control and increasing production efficiency.

Trump responding vigorously to counterbalance Chinese dominance

The Pentagon becoming the largest stakeholder of MP Materials to cushion a strategic sector is nothing unusual. The US government and its agencies have a history of getting involved in sectors of national and economic significance. This underscores the fact that great powers have historically used market distortions as a tool to uphold their supremacy.

Establishing a cutting-edge supply chain with like-minded states would take over a decade and cost well over a trillion dollars in that period. Americans have to catch up on the long road ahead that the Chinese took decades to build. Therefore, Trump initiated the first-of-their-kind policy measures to hasten up the catching-up process. These policy initiatives are aimed at enhancing collaboration for clean energy technologies, building resilient supply chains, and reducing dependencies.

On April 30, 2025, the US and Ukraine signed a long-awaited minerals deal. Trump’s ambition to gain control over Greenland, a strategically located island in the Arctic, to the extent of using military force wasn’t just about national security. Rather driven by desire to control rich untapped resources, including rare earth minerals, copper, gold, uranium, iron, oil, etc.

Trump’s efforts will take years to bear fruit. Prior to that, the US must build an investment-friendly environment. A report by consultancy S&P Global found that on average it takes nearly 29 years to build a new mine for the critical minerals in the US, the second-longest in the world. The process to obtain a mining permit is lengthy and confusing, which harms efforts to counterbalance China’s near-dominant positioning.

world of weaponized interdependence

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman argue cold war animosity was replaced by a new world of networks that accentuated harmonious relationships. They suggest countries are more entwined than ever, but rather than easing hostilities, interdependence is used by states against their adversaries.

Great power competition is being increasingly impacted by what they called “weaponized interdependence.” China’s dominance over the supply lines of rare earths gives it the edge to fight this battle for long.

In January, just before Donald Trump resumed command of the United States on a bevy of sociopathic promises, incoming US border czar Tom Homan announced that the new administration would be “shutting down the Darien Gap” in the interests of “national security”.

The Darien Gap, of course, is the notorious 106km (66-mile) stretch of roadless territory and treacherous jungle that straddles Panama and Colombia at the crossroads of the Americas. For the past several years, it has served as one of the only available pathways to potential refuge for hundreds of thousands of global have-nots who are essentially criminalised by virtue of their poverty and denied the opportunity to engage in “legal” migration to the US.

In 2023 alone, about 520,000 people crossed the Darien Gap, which left them with thousands of kilometres still to go to the border of the US – the very country responsible for wreaking much of the international political and economic havoc that forces folks to flee their homes in the first place.

In a testament to the inherent deadliness of borders – not to mention of existence in general for the impoverished of the world – countless refuge seekers have ended up unburied corpses in the jungle, denied dignity in death as in life. Lethal obstacles abound, ranging from fierce river currents to steep ravines to attacks by armed assailants to the sheer physical exhaustion that attends days or weeks of trekking through hostile terrain without adequate food or water.

And while literally “shutting down” the Darien Gap is about as feasible as shutting down the Mediterranean Sea or the Sahara Desert, the jungle has become drastically less trafficked in the aftermath of the Trump administration’s machinations to shut down the US border itself, essentially scrapping the whole right to asylum in violation of both international and domestic law.

In March, two months into Trump’s term, Panama’s immigration service registered a mere 194 arrivals from Colombia via the Darien Gap – compared with 36,841 arrivals in March of the previous year. This is no doubt music to the xenophobic ears of the US establishment, whose members delight in eternally bleating about the “immigration crisis”.

However, it does not remotely constitute any sort of solution to the real crisis – which is that, thanks in large part to decades of pernicious US foreign policy, life is simply unliveable in a whole lot of places. And “shutting down” the Darien Gap won’t deter desperate people with nothing to lose from pursuing other perilous paths in the direction of perceived physical and economic safety.

Nor can the enduring psychological impact of the Darien trajectory on the survivors of its horrors be understated. While conducting research for my book The Darien Gap: A Reporter’s Journey through the Deadly Crossroads of the Americas, published this month by Rutgers University Press, I found it next to impossible to speak with anyone who had made the journey without receiving a rundown of all of the bodies they had encountered en route.

In Panama in February 2023, for example, I spoke with a young Venezuelan woman named Guailis, who had spent 10 days crossing the jungle in the rain with her husband and two-year-old son. Among the numerous corpses they stumbled upon was an elderly man curled up under a tree “like he was cold”. Guailis said she had also made the acquaintance of a bereaved Haitian woman whose six-month-old baby had just drowned right before her eyes.

Guailis’s husband, Jesus, meanwhile, had experienced a more intimate interaction with a lifeless body when, tumbling down a formidable hill, he had grabbed onto what he thought was a tree root but turned out to be a human hand protruding from the mud. Recounting the incident to me, Jesus reasoned: “That hand saved my life.”

I heard about bloated corpses floating in the river, about a dead woman sprawled in a tent with her two dead newborn twins and about another dead woman with two dead children and a man who had hanged himself nearby – presumably the children’s father.

A Venezuelan woman named Yurbis, part of an extended family of 10 that I spent a good deal of time with in Mexico in late 2023, offered the following calculation regarding the prevalence of bodies in the jungle: “I can say that we have all stepped on dead people.”

For pretty much every step of the way, then, refuge seekers transiting the Darien Gap were reminded of the disconcerting proximity of death – and the negligible value assigned to their own lives in a US-led world order.

Add to that the surge in rapes and other forms of sexual violence with The New York Times reporting in April 2024 that the “sexual assault of migrants” on the Panamanian side of the jungle had risen to a “level rarely seen outside war” – and it becomes painfully clear that the individual and collective trauma signified by the Darien Gap is not something that will be summarily resolved by its ostensible “shutting-down”.

That said, the Darien Gap has also served as a venue for the display of incredible solidarity in the face of structural dehumanisation. I met a young Colombian man who had personally saved an infant from being swept away in a river. I was also told of a Venezuelan man who had carried an ailing one-year-old Ecuadorean girl through the jungle when her mother, too weak to move at a rapid pace, feared she wouldn’t make it out in time to seek medical help.

When I myself staged an incursion into the Darien Gap in January 2024, two refuge seekers from Yemen complimented me on my Palestine football shirt and did their best to assuage my apparently visible terror at entering the jungle: “If you need anything, we are here.” This from folks who had for more than two decades been on the receiving end of quite literal terror, courtesy of my own country, as successive US administrations went about waging covert war on Yemen.

The Darien Gap, too, has functioned as a de facto warzone in its own right where punitive US policy plays out on vulnerable human bodies in the interests of maintaining systemic inequality. Widely referred to in Spanish as “el infierno verde”, or The Green Hell, the gap has certainly lived up to its nickname.

And while the heyday of the Darien Gap may be at least temporarily over, the territory remains an enduring symbol of one of the defining crises of the modern era in which the global poor must risk their lives to live and are criminalised for doing so. In that sense, then, the Darien Gap is the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

FOR a housewife who started out charging ten pence for after-school drama lessons, Sylvia Young had an incredible ability to spot raw talent.

The 85-year-old, who died on Wednesday, helped hone the skills of a who’s who of the ­British entertainment industry.

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Among those to have passed the audition to join her theatre school in London were singers Amy Winehouse, Leona Lewis, Dua Lipa, Rita Ora and three-quarters of All Saints.

Dua, who has won seven Brit awards and three Grammys, said that she did not know she could sing until a teacher at the Sylvia Young Theatre School told her how good she was.

Actors who attended her classes include Keeley Hawes, Doctor Who’s Matt Smith, Nicholas Hoult, who is in the latest Superman blockbuster, and Emmy-nominated Adolescence and Top Boy star Ashley Walters.

The school was also a conveyor belt for EastEnders stars, with Nick Berry, Letitia Dean, Adam Woodyatt and Dean Gaffney all passing through its doors.

Stage fright

But there were problems along the way. In 1998 one of the drama ­masters was arrested for indecent assault, and the company struggled to survive the Covid shutdown.

The pressures of fame also proved too much for some former pupils, including the late Winehouse and EastEnders’ original Mark Fowler, David Scarboro, who was found at the bottom of cliffs as Beachy Head in East Sussex in 1988.

Sylvia, though, was loved by her former pupils, many of whom paid tribute to the “backstage ­matriarch”.

Keeley Hawes wrote: “I wouldn’t have the career I have today without her help”.

And All Saints singer Nicole ­Appleton commented: “This is going to really affect us all who were lucky enough to be part of her amazing world growing up. What a time, the best memories.”

DJ Tony Blackburn added: “She was a very lovely lady who I had the privilege of knowing for many years. She will be sadly missed.”

Actress Sadie Frost commented online: “What a woman, what a family, what a legacy! Sending everyone so much love and support. She was always so lovely to me.”

And TV and radio presenter Kate Thornton said she “meant so much to so many”.

Sylvia did not boast about the ­success of her students and the school’s website does not mention its incredible roster of ex-pupils.

But it is hard to imagine a single drama teacher ever having as much impact as her. Sylvia’s two daughters, Alison and Frances Ruffelle, who are directors of the theatre school, said: “Our mum was a true visionary.

“She gave young people from all walks of life the chance to pursue their performing arts skills to the highest standard.

“Her rare ability to recognise raw talent and encourage all her students contributed to the richness of today’s theatre and music world, even ­winning herself an Olivier Award along the way.”

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Sylvia made it to the top of the British entertainment industry the hard way.

She was the eldest of nine children born to Abraham Bakal, a tailor’s presser, and housewife Sophie in London’s East End. Born in 1939 just after the outbreak of World War Two she remembered the air raid sirens during the Blitz of the capital.

She was evacuated to a village near Barnsley during the war, only returning home once it was over.

At the local library she was gripped by reading plays and would meet up with friends to perform them.

While still at school she joined a theatre group in North London, but her dreams of treading the boards in the West End were dashed by stage fright.

She said: “I used to lose my voice before every production. When I think about it, they were sort of panic attacks.”

Instead, she married telephone engineer Norman Ruffell in 1961 and stayed at home to look after their two daughters.

When Alison and Frances attended primary school, Sylvia started teaching drama to their fellow pupils. It cost just ten pence and the kids also got a cup of orange squash and a biscuit.

Word spread and when her ­students got the nickname the ­Young-uns, Sylvia decided to adopt the surname Young for business ­purposes.

The first Sylvia Young Theatre School was set up in 1981 in Drury Lane in the heart of London’s theatre district.

Two years later, it moved to a ­former church school in Marylebone in central London, where most of its famous pupils got their start.

Even though it is fee-paying, everyone has to pass an audition — and only one in 25 applicants are successful.

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It costs up to £7,000 per term for full-time students and only has places for 250 pupils aged ten to 16.

There are bursaries and fee reductions for pupils from less well-off backgrounds, plus a Saturday school and part-time classes.

Sylvia was always keen to avoid it being a school for rich kids.

When she took an assembly she would ask pupils, “What mustn’t we be?”, and they would shout back, “Stage school brats”.

Keeping kids level-headed when stardom beckoned was also important for the teacher.

She said: “I offer good training and like to keep the students as individual as possible.

“We develop a lot of confidence and communication skills. Of course they want immediate stardom, but they’re not expecting it. You don’t find notices up here about who’s doing what. It is actually played down tremendously.”

‘Baby Spice was lovely’

A need for discipline even applied to Sylvia’s daughter Frances, who she expelled from the school.

Frances clearly got over it, going on to have a career in musical theatre and representing the United Kingdom in the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing tenth.

Those genes were strong, with Frances’ daughter, stage name Eliza Doolittle, having a Top Five hit with Pack Up in 2010.

The ever-rebellious Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011 aged 27 from accidental alcohol poisoning, claimed to have been kicked out, too.

She said: “I was just being a brat and being disruptive and so on. I loved it there, I didn’t have a problem, I just didn’t want to conform.

“And they didn’t like me wearing a nose piercing.”

But Sylvia did not want Amy to leave. She said: “She would upset the academic teachers, except the English teacher who thought she’d be a novelist. She seemed to be just loved. But she was naughty.”

Other singers were clearly inspired by their time at the school, which moved to new premises in Westminster in 2010.

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Dua Lipa, who went to the ­Saturday school from the age of nine, was asked to sing in front of other pupils shortly after joining.

She said, “I was terrified”, but that the vocal coach “was the first person to tell me I could sing”.

Talent scouts and casting agents would put up requests on the notice board at the school. One such ­posting led to Emma Bunton ­joining the Spice Girls.

Of Baby Spice, Sylvia said: “She got away with whatever she could. But she was a lovely, happy-go-lucky individual with a sweet ­singing voice.”

Groups were also formed by ­Sylvia’s ex-pupils.

All Saints singer Melanie Blatt became best friends with Nicole Appleton at Sylvia Young’s and brought her in when her band needed new singers in 1996.

But Melanie was not complimentary about the school, once saying: “I just found the whole thing really up its own arse.”

Casting agents did, however, hold the classes in very high regard.

The professionalism instilled in the students meant that producers from major British TV shows such as EastEnders and Grange Hill kept coming back for more.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of less well-known performers treading the boards of Britain’s stages also have the school’s ethos to thank for their success.

Those achievements were recognised in the 2005 Honours List when Sylvia was awarded an OBE for services to the arts.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh, who has produced shows including Les Miserables and Cats, said: “The show that provided the greatest showcase for the young actors she discovered and nurtured is undoubtedly Oliver! which has featured hundreds of her students over the years.

“Sylvia was a pioneer who became a caring but formidable children’s agent.”

On July 9, United States President Donald Trump opened a three-day mini summit at the White House with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal – by subjecting his distinguished guests to a carefully staged public humiliation.

This was not the plan – or at least, not the part the public was meant to see.

A White House official claimed on July 3 that “President Trump believes that African countries offer incredible commercial opportunities which benefit both the American people and our African partners.”

Whether by coincidence or calculated design, the meeting took place on the same day the Trump administration escalated its trade war, slapping new tariffs on eight countries, including the North African nations of Libya and Algeria. It was a telling contrast: Even as Trump claimed to be “strengthening ties with Africa”, his administration was penalising African nations. The optics revealed the incoherence – or perhaps the honesty – of Trump’s Africa policy, where partnership is conditional and often indistinguishable from punishment.

Trump opened the summit with a four-minute speech in which he claimed the five invited leaders were representing the entire African continent. Never mind that their countries barely register in US-Africa trade figures; what mattered was the gold, oil, and minerals buried beneath their soil. He thanked “these great leaders… all from very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits, and wonderful people”.

He then announced that the US was “shifting from AID to trade” because “this will be far more effective and sustainable and beneficial than anything else that we could be doing together.”

At that moment, the illusion of diplomacy collapsed, and the true nature of the meeting was revealed. Trump shifted from statesman to showman, no longer merely hosting but asserting control. The summit quickly descended into a cringe-inducing display, where Africa was presented not as a continent of sovereign nations but as a rich expanse of resources, fronted by compliant leaders performing for the cameras. This was not a dialogue but a display of domination: A stage-managed production in which Trump scripted the scene and African heads of state were cast in subordinate roles.

Trump was in his element, orchestrating the event like a puppet master, directing each African guest to play his part and respond favourably. He “invited” (in effect, instructed) them to make “a few comments to the media” in what became a choreographed show of deference.

President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani of Mauritania led the way, both physically and symbolically, by praising Trump’s “commitment” to Africa. The claim was as misleading as it was surreal, given Washington’s recent aid cuts, punitive tariffs, and tightened visa restrictions on African nations.

In one especially embarrassing moment, Ghazouani described Trump as the world’s top peacemaker – crediting him, among other things, with stopping “the war between Iran and Israel”. This praise came with no mention of the US’s continued military and diplomatic support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which the African Union has firmly condemned. The silence amounted to complicity, a calculated erasure of Palestinian suffering for the sake of American favour.

Perhaps mindful of the tariffs looming over his own country, Ghazouani, who served as AU Chair in 2024, slipped into the role of a willing supplicant. He all but invited Trump to exploit Mauritania’s rare minerals, praised him and declared him a peacemaker while ignoring the massacres of tens of thousands of innocents in Gaza made possible by the very weapons Trump provides.

This tone would define the entire sit-down. One by one, the African leaders offered Trump glowing praise and access to their countries’ natural resources – a disturbing reminder of how easily power can script compliance.

Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye even asked Trump to build a golf course in his country. Trump declined, opting instead to compliment Faye’s youthful appearance. Gabon’s President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema talked of “win-win partnerships” with the US, but received only a lukewarm response.

What did capture Trump’s attention was the English fluency of Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai. Ignoring the content of Boakai’s remarks, Trump marvelled at his “beautiful” English and asked, “Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? Where were you educated? Where? In Liberia?”

That Trump seemed unaware English is Liberia’s official language, and has been since its founding in 1822 as a haven for freed American slaves, was perhaps less shocking than the colonial tone of his question. His astonishment that an African president could speak English well betrayed a deeply racist, imperial mindset.

It was not an isolated slip. At a White House peace ceremony on June 29 involving the DRC and Rwanda, Trump publicly commented on the appearance of Angolan journalist and White House correspondent Hariana Veras, telling her, “You are beautiful – and you are beautiful inside.”

Whether or not Veras is “beautiful” is entirely beside the point. Trump’s behaviour was inappropriate and unprofessional, reducing a respected journalist to her looks in the middle of a diplomatic milestone. The sexualisation of Black women – treating them as vessels of white male desire rather than intellectual equals – was central to both the transatlantic slave trade and European colonisation. Trump’s comment extended that legacy into the present.

Likewise, his surprise at Boakai’s English fits a long imperial pattern. Africans who “master” the coloniser’s language are often seen not as complex, multilingual intellectuals, but as subordinates who’ve absorbed the dominant culture. They are rewarded for proximity to whiteness, not for intellect or independence.

Trump’s remarks revealed his belief that articulate and visually appealing Africans are an anomaly, a novelty deserving momentary admiration. By reducing both Boakai and Veras to aesthetic curiosities, he erased their agency, dismissed their achievements, and gratified his colonial ego.

More than anything, Trump’s comments on Boakai reflected his deeper indifference to Africa. They stripped away any illusion that this summit was about genuine partnership.

Contrast this with the US-Africa Leaders Summit held by President Joe Biden in December 2022. That event welcomed more than 40 African heads of state, as well as the African Union, civil society, and private sector leaders. It prioritised peer-to-peer dialogue and the AU’s Agenda 2063 – a far cry from Trump’s choreographed spectacle.

How the Trump administration concluded that five men could represent the entire continent remains baffling, unless, of course, this wasn’t about representation at all, but control. Trump didn’t want engagement; he wanted performance. And sadly, his guests obliged.

In contrast to the tightly managed meeting Trump held with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 8, the lunch with African leaders resembled a chaotic, tone-deaf sideshow.

Faye was especially disappointing. He came to power on the back of an anti-imperialist platform, pledging to break with neocolonial politics and restore African dignity. Yet at the White House, he bent the knee to the most brazen imperialist of them all. Like the others, he failed to challenge Trump, to assert equality, or to defend the sovereignty he so publicly champions at home.

In a moment when African leaders had the chance to push back against a resurgent colonial mindset, they instead bowed – giving Trump space to revive a 16th-century fantasy of Western mastery.

For this, he offered a reward: He might not impose new tariffs on their countries, he said, “because they are friends of mine now”.

Trump, the “master”, triumphed.

All the Africans had to do was bow at his feet.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.