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By Alan MacLeod

25 Nov 2025 – Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison’s purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world’s second-richest individual. But Ellison is not alone. Indeed, the world’s seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion.

Media Monopoly

Paramount Skydance– an Ellison-owned company– is in pole position to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery, a conglomerate that controls gigantic film and television studios, streaming services like HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and TV networks such as HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN. This lead is largely due to Ellison’s proximity to President Trump, who will ultimately have to sign off on such a deal.

Ellison has already spoken to senior White House officials about axing CNN hosts and content that Trump is said to dislike, including anchors, Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar. It is this willingness to completely reorientate the network’s political direction that has made him the White House’s preferred purchaser of Warner Brothers Discovery. He is reportedly so wealthy that he can afford to pay in cash.

Ellison, whose net worth stands at a staggering $278 billion, has been on a media spending spree of late. Earlier this year, he provided the funds for Skydance to purchase Paramount Global, another gigantic conglomerate that controls such products as CBS, BET, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Paramount Streaming, and Showtime.

Immediately upon being appointed CEO of CBS News, Larry’s son, David, began drastically reorientating the network’s political outlook, firing staff, pushing it to become pro-Trump, and appointing self-described “Zionist fanatic” Bari Weiss as its editor-in-chief.

The Ellison family, however, is far from finished. In September, President Trump signed an executive order approving a proposal to force through the sale of social media platform TikTok to an American consortium led by Ellison-owned tech company, Oracle.

Under the planned arrangement, Oracle will oversee the platform’s security and operations, giving the world’s second-richest man effective control over the platform that more than 60% of Americans under thirty years of age use for news and entertainment. Trump himself stated that he was extremely pleased that Oracle would be controlling the platform. “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” he said.

The Ellison family’s sudden venture into the realm of media and communications has shocked many, with senior media figures sounding the alarm. Longtime CBS News anchor, Dan Rather, warned that “we all have to be concerned about the consolidation of huge billionaires getting control of nearly all of the major news outlets.” “It is a particularly tough time for anybody working at CBS News,” he stated, citing pressure to change coverage to be more pro-Trump. “I think if [the Ellisons] were to buy CNN, it would change CNN forever, and it might be another very serious wound to CBS News,” he concluded.

Billionaire Capture

Rather is correct. No other period in history has seen such a rapid and overwhelming buy up of our means of communications by the billionaire class – a fact that raises tough questions about freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. Today, the world’s seven richest individuals are all major media barons, giving them extraordinary control over our media and public square, allowing them to set agendas, and suppress forms of speech they do not approve of. This includes criticisms of them and their holdings, the economic system we live under, and the actions of the United States and Israeli governments.

Sitting on a fortune of over $480 billion, Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in world history, and is projected to, within the next decade, become the planet’s first trillionaire. In 2022, Musk purchased Twitter, in a deal worth around $44 billion. The South-African born tech magnate quickly set about turning the platform into a vehicle for advancing his own far-right politics. In 2024, for example, he was a key figure in promoting an attempt to topple Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, spreading misinformation about the country’s election, and even threatening Maduro with a future in the notorious Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

He has also very publicly rewritten his generative AI chatbot, Grok, on multiple occasions, so it would produce more conservative responses to users’ questions. One result of this was that Grok began to praise Adolf Hitler.

Musk overtook Jeff Bezos last year to become the world’s richest man. And like Musk, the Amazon founder and CEO has made several moves into the world of media. In 2013, he bought The Washington Post for $250 million, and quickly began exerting his influence on the newspaper, firing anti-establishment writers and hiring pro-war columnists. This came just months after he bought a minority stake in Business Insider (now rebranded to Insider).

One year later, in 2014, Amazon paid nearly a billion dollars to purchase Twitch, a streaming platform which hosts around 7 million monthly broadcasters. Amazon also owns a wide range of other media ventures, including movie studio MGM, audiobook platform, Audible, and movie database website, IMDB.

French billionaire, Bernard Arnault, meanwhile, has been buying up large swaths of his country’s media outlets. The chairman of luxury conglomerate, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and the world’s seventh-richest man now sits on a media empire that includes daily newspapers such as Le Parisien and Les Echoes, magazines such as Paris Match and Challenges, as well as Radio Classique.

The remaining three individuals rounding out the top seven list all owe their wealth primarily to their media empires. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are collectively worth over half a trillion dollars. Google has become the dominant force in today’s hi-tech economy, and is also a major player in social media, having bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Thirty-five percent of Americans use the video platform as a primary source of news.

Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, owes his $203 billion fortune to his social media and tech ventures, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Like YouTube, Zuckerberg’s companies are major players in the modern news landscape, with 38%, 20% and 5% of Americans relying on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for their news and views.

MAGA Mouthpieces

Many of these wealthy individuals have joined forces with President Trump, in an effort to support Republican policies and push a conservative worldview. Chief among these is the Ellison family, who quickly announced significant changes as CBS News, promising “unbiased” coverage and more “varied ideological perspectives”– widely understood as a shift towards right-wing, pro-Trump coverage.

Larry Ellison holds deeply conservative views, and became a top donor and fundraiser for the Republican Party, and a close Trump confident. Indeed, one Trump insider, noting his influence, went so far as to call Ellison as the “shadow President of the United States.”

Musk, of course, very publicly turned Twitter into a conservative-dominated platform, and was an unofficial member of Trump’s cabinet, becoming de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Zuckerberg has also taken a number of steps to align his platforms with the MAGA movement, including firing his fact-checking team (widely associated with liberal politics) and prioritizing what he calls “free speech.” Content moderation teams, the Meta CEO said, would be moved from California to Texas, “where there is less concern about the bias of our teams.”

Zuckerberg replaced Meta’s president of global affairs, the former Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom, Nick Clegg, with prominent Republican Joel Kaplan, who was George W. Bush’s chief of staff. He also appointed Dana White, the chief executive of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and a close Trump ally, to Meta’s board, despite his complete lack of relevant experience.

Many of these moves were likely made in response to Trump’s threat to imprison Zuckerberg “for the rest of his life” if he did anything to “cheat” him out of a 2024 presidential election victory. Zuckerberg subsequently met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and, alongside Bezos and other tech moguls, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Bezos, meanwhile, pursued similar measures at The Washington Post, announcing that the newspaper would no longer publish opinions skeptical of capitalism. “We are going to be writing every day in support of defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote, noting that readers wishing to see alternative viewpoints can find them on “the internet.”

The decision was widely seen as a major shakeup, and provoked public opposition from Post employees. “Massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into The Washington Post’s opinion section today,” said the newspaper’s lead economics journalist Jeff Stein. “[It] makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there.”

The move was quite the reversal for Bezos, who had once called Trump a “threat to democracy.” Yet, by January 2025, he was sitting with Zuckerberg, Musk, and Arnault in prominent positions behind Trump at his inauguration.

Considering his nationality, Arnault has a surprisingly close relationship with Trump. In 2019, the French billionaire opened a new Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, Texas, a move that some have suggested was an attempt to please the president. Trump attended the facility’s opening, calling Arnault an “artist” and a “visionary.”

Due to their relationship with the Trumps, the Arnault family have become unofficial intermediaries between the French and U.S. governments. They were hosted by the Trumps at Mar-a-Lago in 2023, and, during an escalating trade war earlier this year, Bernard visited the White House to dampen down tensions between the U.S. and France.

Pentagon Contractors

A key factor in the rise of many of the world’s top seven richest individuals is their proximity to the U.S. national security state, with many of their companies growing wealthy in part due to feeding from the trough of Pentagon contracts. Today’s wars and espionage rely as much on hi-tech computing equipment as tanks and guns, and in 2022, the Department of Defense awarded Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle a $9 billion cloud computing contract.

Bezos’ Amazon has long enjoyed a close relationship with the CIA, having signed a $600 million contract with the agency in 2014. Yet both Google and Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, have been intertwined with Langley since their inception.

The CIA bankrolled and oversaw Brin’s PhD research at Stanford University, work which would later form the basis of Google. As one investigation noted, “senior U.S. intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.”

As late as 2005, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist arm, was a major shareholder in Google. These shares were a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth. By 2007, the government was using enhanced versions of Google Earth to surveil and target enemies in Iraq and beyond, according to The Washington Post. By this time, the Post also notes, Google was partnering with Lockheed Martin to produce futuristic technology for the military. There also exists a revolving door of employment between Google and various branches of Federal government.

It would be no stretch, meanwhile, to state that Elon Musk owes his largesse in no small part to his intimate relationship with the CIA. In-Q-Tel chief Mike Griffin helped birth SpaceX, providing support and advice from the beginning, and even accompanied Musk to Russia in 2002, where the pair attempted to purchase cheap intercontinental ballistic missiles to start the company.

Griffin repeatedly championed Musk at the CIA, describing him as the “Henry Ford” of the space industry, and worthy of the government’s full support. Still, by 2008, SpaceX was in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and believing both SpaceX and Tesla Motors would be liquidated. But he was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract that Griffin had helped secure.

Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse. But its primary customers continue to be U.S. government agencies, such as the Air Force, Space Development Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. And recently, the Pentagon has recruited him to help it win a nuclear war. A new SpaceX spinoff company, Castelion, is working on building a network of armed satellites circling North America, designed to shoot down enemy nuclear missiles. A successful operation would give the United States an impervious shield, and allow it to act as it wants around the world, without threat of retaliation, effectively ending the era of mutually assured destruction, and plunging the planet into a dangerous new epoch.

Six of the seven members of Castelion’s leadership team and two of its four senior advisors are ex-Space X employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the CIA, including Griffin himself. Elon named his oldest child Griffin Musk. Another of his sons, X Æ A-12, is named after a CIA spy plane.

No billionaire, however, is more intimately connected to the CIA than Larry Ellison. Ellison began his career by working with the CIA on a database system called Project Oracle. In 1977, he would co-found tech giant Oracle (named after his previous project). The CIA was Oracle’s only customer for some time, before Ellison branched out and began to win contracts with other branches of the national security state, including Navy Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the NSA.

That close partnership continues to this day. In 2020, the company won a 15-year contract with the CIA and 16 other U.S. intelligence agencies worth tens of billions of dollars. And today, its upper ranks are filled with former CIA executives. One example of this is Leon Panetta, former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense, who sits on its board of directors.

Arming and Supporting Israel

Another key attribute that many of the world’s richest individuals share is their passionate support for Israel and its expansionist project.

Nowhere is this more evident than with Ellison, who has made it his life’s goal to advance the Jewish State’s interests, both at home and abroad. Ellison is an enthusiastic supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he vacationed with on his private island in Hawaii. So impressed was he with the embattled prime minister that he offered him a seat on Oracle’s board, replete with a yearly salary of $450,000.

Ellison is the largest single donor to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In 2017 alone, he pledged $16.6 million to build a new training facility for IDF soldiers, whom he described as defending “our home.” At a fundraiser, he explained that:

Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.”

David Ellison is no less ardent a Zionist, and even met with a top Israeli general in order to aid a project spying on American citizens, according to an investigation by The Grayzone. The scheme was aimed at attacking American citizens participating in pro-Palestine activism in the face of Israel’s attack on Gaza. The documents also mention Brin’s name as a potential collaborator in the plan.

Oracle’s Israeli CEO, Safra Catz, is also a close friend of Netanyahu’s, and describes the corporation as on a “mission” to support Israel. Together, Catz and Ellison have enforced a strict pro-Israel stance across the company. In the wake of the October 2023 violence, Catz instructed that the words “Oracle stands with Israel” must be printed on company screens across the world in more than 180 countries.

Unsurprisingly, the support and collaboration with Israel has led to significant pushback among employees. Catz’s response to their concerns was blunt. “We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none,” she said, adding:

This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”

It has been widely reported, even in the corporate media, that the Ellison family’s foray into the world of media was triggered by their desire to help Israel in its public relations battle, something Tel Aviv is keenly aware that they are losing. As Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League said, “We really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem,” explaining that young people around the world are being exposed daily to videos of Israeli aggression, leading to a PR disaster.

Former congressman Mike Gallagher, a leader in the attempts to ban TikTok, explained how his bill had failed, but, after October 7, 2023, and the worldwide outrage at Israeli actions, it found new life on Capitol Hill, and was passed into law, forcing its imminent sale to a consortium led by Oracle.

This pro-Israel sea change has already occurred at CBS News, with the hiring of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Weiss first came to public attention while still at college, founding an organization that attempted to have Muslim and Arab professors fired for their pro-Palestine views. As The Financial Times noted, “Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter.” Last week, at the Jewish Leadership Conference, she stated that she sees her mission at CBS as “redraw[ing] the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in America by sidelining voices like Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson, and elevate “charismatic” leaders like Alan Dershowitz, who represents “the vast majority of Americans.”

Zuckerberg’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – have displayed a no less concerted bias in favor of Israel. As far back as 2016, Facebook was collaborating with the Israeli government on matters of censorship, with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked revealing that the social media platform complied with 95% of her requests for pro-Palestine content to be removed.

The Facebook/Israel partnership was deepened in 2020 when the company appointed Emi Palmor, the former Director General of the Ministry of Justice of Israel and an ex-spy with IDF intelligence group Unit 8200, to its oversight board, a 21-person committee ultimately in charge of the political direction of the site.

Zuckerberg’s platforms have long shut down Palestinian voices on dubious “hate speech” grounds. However, the censorship was drastically increased after the October 7 attacks. Human Rights Watch released a report detailing the “systemic censorship of Palestinian content on Instagram and Facebook.” noting how they reviewed 1050 cases of censorship of Palestinian voices, including those documenting human rights abuses against themselves. 1049 of them, the study concluded, were entirely peaceful utterances of support for Palestine, and did not break any of Meta’s terms of service.

In 2023, Instagram also inserted the word “terrorist” into the bios of thousands of users who mentioned they were Palestinian. When challenged on this, they claimed it was an auto-translation bug.

Internally, Meta staff have complained about systematic suppression of their voices and the creation of a “hostile and unsafe work environment” for Palestinian and Muslim employees.

WhatsApp, meanwhile, is a battleground in more than one sense. The Israeli military is using Palestinians’ WhatsApp data in order to track and target tens of thousands of people in Gaza. It is unclear how or whether Meta is collaborating with the Israeli military in this endeavor. However, it has been suggested that some of the dozens of former Israeli spies now working in top jobs at Meta could be producing backdoors in the software, or simply passing the data onto their former colleagues. A 2022 MintPress investigation found hundreds of former Unit 8200 operatives working at Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft.

Zuckerberg himself is known to be a strong supporter of Israel, and has numerous familial connections to the state. After the October 2023 attacks, he released a statement denouncing Hamas and other resistance forces as “pure evil,” an action that earned him an official thank you from the State of Israel.

Musk has also put himself and his vehicles in the service of Israel. In November 2023, he traveled to Israel to meet with both Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog and offer his unqualified support to their attack on Gaza. Describing Hamas as “evil” and “revel[ing] in the joy of killing civilians,” Musk attempted to publicly whitewash Israeli violence, stating unequivocally that the IDF goes out of its way “to avoid killing civilians.” At the time of his visit, Israeli strikes had killed at least 20,000 people in four weeks of bombings.

Netanyahu has stated that Twitter is among Israel’s “most important weapons” in the war, and defended Musk from accusations of fascism, after he gave a Nazi salute at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

During his visit, Musk also signed a deal with the government of Israel, giving the latter effective control and oversight over Starlink communications portals operating in Israel and Gaza.

Google and Amazon, too, are key players facilitating the hi-tech genocide in Gaza. In 2021, the pair signed a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and AI infrastructure to the IDF – technology that has been used to target the civilian population of the densely-populated strip. The deal has sparked a rebellion among employees, who organized sit-ins and other protests against their collaboration.

Many other Google employees, however, are intimately linked with the State of Israel. There are at least 99 former Unit 8200 spies working in key positions at the Silicon Valley giant. One prominent example is Gavriel Goidel, who was a longtime commander and head of learning at Unit 8200, before being hired by Google to become the company’s head of strategy and operations.

Google has also collaborated in disseminating Israeli government propaganda to tens of millions of Europeans, despite the content breaking its own terms of service.

Part of this may be down to the disposition of Brin himself. Normally avoiding the limelight and refraining from making political statements, the Russian-born magnate bitterly condemned the United Nations as “transparently antisemitic” after it released a report detailing his company’s participation in the Gaza genocide. “Throwing around the term genocide in relation to Gaza is deeply offensive to many Jewish people who have suffered actual genocides,” he added.

Arnault has remained quiet on Gaza. He has, however, invested heavily in Israel. Diamonds and other precious stones are a mainstay of the Israeli economy, and the Frenchman’s luxury brands disseminate the stones globally. Activists have called for Israeli diamonds to be labeled conflict minerals and boycotted by ethical consumers. He also invested in Israeli tech and security firm, Wiz, a company recently purchased by Google for $32 billion. Earlier this month, LVMH signed a $55 million deal with Israeli actress and former IDF soldier, Gal Gadot, making her the the face of their brand.

We are living in an era of unprecedented global inequality. Together, these seven individuals– Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Arnault– control more wealth than the bottom 50% of humanity (over 4 billion people) combined. Sitting on heretofore unimaginable fortunes, they have begun buying up assets, including media outlets, at record pace.

For billionaires, the utility of capturing the press is threefold: firstly, it shields them and their class from press scrutiny and criticism. Second, it gives them a mouthpiece to push the public debate towards even more business-friendly laws and regulations. And third, they can use their outlets to champion any causes and promote any other agendas they have.

We have seen all three play out here, as, collectively, our press is rapidly moving towards more conservative, pro-Trump, pro-Israel positions, shutting out any dissenting voices from their ranks.

The effect on democracy, a free society, and the public’s right to a diversity of opinions has been highly deleterious. When it comes to media, we already suffered from an illusion of choice. However, the supercharged concentration of ownership of American and global media in the hands of just a handful of individuals has only exacerbated this problem. There once was a time that individuals looking for alternative viewpoints would simply go online to find them. But with censorship of dissenting opinions – particularly on Israel/Palestine – growing, this is becoming increasingly unviable.

In short, then, what the planet’s mega-rich capture of our media system shows is that billionaires are not only a serious drain on resources, but an existential threat to an open society and the free flow of information.

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Alan MacLeod is an academic, journalist, and senior staff writer for MintPress News.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Caitlin Johnstone

We’re on a trajectory where soon all our information will be stored and analyzed by artificial intelligence controlled by governments and billionaire megacorporations that can then use that information to surveil, manipulate and oppress us–1984 Redux.

30 Nov 2025 – It’s a full-time job protecting your mental lucidity in this dystopia.

It was hard enough to form a clear perception of reality when all we had to deal with was the propaganda of plutocrat-owned media corporations and the indoctrination of our power-serving education systems. Now on top of those still-persisting obfuscations we’ve got things like Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, imperial information ops like Wikipedia, and an exponentially growing field of AI perception management to work through.

I remember watching Julian Assange give a talk way back in 2017 where he described a future in which artificial intelligence is able to harvest the data of individual internet users and then manipulate the information they see online in a custom-built perceptual prism designed to manipulate their thinking at a level far too subtle to be noticed. He compared it to the way a computer program can play chess with strategies looking 20 to 30 moves ahead at a level the human brain just can’t keep up with, saying that we’ll one day have artificial intelligence that can manipulate public perception with a similar degree of sophistication.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQRZvnGp1Gs&t=693s]

That future is a lot easier to imagine now than it was back in 2017. To be sure, the ruling class is not pouring trillions of dollars into AI so that we can all have free Studio Ghibli-style illustrations of ourselves. There is an understanding that major returns on investment will come largely in the form of these new technologies being deliberately knit into every part of our civilization, driven by the official and unofficial power structures that we live under, and that this will happen in a way that benefits the rich and powerful.

We’re on a trajectory where soon all our information will be stored and analyzed by artificial intelligence controlled by governments and billionaire megacorporations who can then use that information to surveil, manipulate and oppress us. All our medical and financial information. Whole psychological profiles based on what we view and say online. A far more thorough assessment of our personalities than we could ever create on our own.

This information can then be used to determine what sort of advertisements for which products would be likely to work on us, or maybe even produce a custom-made ad on the spot just for us. It can be used to determine what type of power-serving news media or punditry is likely to appeal to our confirmation biases and then make sure it crosses our line of sight at some ideal moment in our day. It can be used to determine how likely we are to oppose the imperial machine in any way, from joining a peace march to starting a union to leading an armed revolution. It can be used to closely monitor our individual path toward political radicalization, and it can be used to feed us information intended to steer that dissident energy toward political movements that don’t threaten the status quo.

Our rulers see AI as an opportunity to recapture the degree of social control that was shaken by the arrival of widespread internet access — a loss of information hegemony we’ve seen oligarchs and empire managers openly complaining about with regard to how social media has spread public dissent on issues like Israel and Palestine.

Journalist Whitney Webb has flagged the fact that Google plutocrat Eric Schmidt co-authored a book with war criminal Henry Kissinger which envisions a future where the public becomes increasingly dependent on artificial intelligence to do our thinking and creative expression for us, allowing our consciousness to become further and further intertwined with these oligarch-owned technologies.

“The Kissinger/Eric Schmidt book on AI basically states that the real promise of AI, from their perspective, is as a tool of perception manipulation — that eventually people will not be able to interpret or perceive reality without the help of an AI via cognitive diminishment and learned helplessness,” Webb warns.

Once we’ve outsourced our cognitive sovereignty to AI, our minds have been captured by the owners of the machines.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvKnD3_Ia44]

So it’s a dark and creepy trail we are traveling down. As a collective we’re going to have to find it within ourselves to start fighting back against this dystopia which is consuming more and more of what’s decent in our world, and as individuals we’re going to have to find ways to maintain our inner clarity despite the empire’s increasingly aggressive efforts to make us vapid, stupid and confused.

Luckily for us there are still large aspects of our humanity which they cannot infiltrate or control, and we would do well to familiarize ourselves with that terrain. Inspiration. Creativity. Consciousness. Spiritual awakening. These are realms wherein the tech plutocrats and imperial social engineers cannot tread.

Explore your own consciousness. Inquire deeply into the nature of self and the mind until clarity dawns on you. Heal your inner wounds. Remove from within yourself all the mental hooks of fear and hatred so that the propagandists can find no psychological purchase with which to manipulate you. Follow the faint whisperings of your muse, and learn to help your inspiration birth new creative expression into the world.

These are the kinds of things we’ll have to do to preserve ourselves as we move into this strange new world, on top of the usual business of staying informed and learning to see through the propaganda illusions. Luckily these things are all good for us anyway; the path toward protecting our humanity also just happens to be the path toward becoming a healthier human being and making the world a better place.

We are being called to awaken, and to transform. We are being beckoned not away from our humanity as the transhumanists imagine but deep into the heart of it, to a widespread blossoming of a bud that’s been waiting within us this entire time. This age invites us to evolve into a truly conscious species.

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Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

19 Nov 2025 – A UN expert today expressed serious concern with the Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2803, warning that it runs counter to the Palestinian right to self-determination, consolidates Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including ongoing unlawful policies and practices, and therefore risks legitimating ongoing mass violence.

“I welcome the UN Security Council’s renewed attention on Gaza and the urgent need for a permanent ceasefire,” said Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

“But I am deeply perplexed. Despite the horrors of the last two years and the ICJ’s clear jurisprudence, the Council has chosen not to ground its response in the very body of law it is obliged to uphold: international human rights law, including the right of self-determination, the law governing the use of force, international humanitarian law, and the UN Charter.”

“Article 24(2) of the UN Charter makes clear that in discharging its duties, the Council ‘shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations.’

“Rather than charting a pathway toward ending the occupation and ensuring Palestinian protection, the resolution risks entrenching external control over Gaza’s governance, borders, security, and reconstruction. The resolution betrays the people it claims to protect.”

The resolution was adopted on Monday (17) with 13 votes in favour and two abstentions from Russia and China.

Albanese stressed that Resolution 2803 replaces clear legal obligations towards Palestinians with a “security-first, capital-driven model of foreign control” that entrenches existing power asymmetries. “The mandate to ‘secure borders,’ ‘protect civilians,’ and ‘decommission weapons,’ focuses almost exclusively on disarming Palestinian armed groups while doing nothing to end the root cause of the violence: Israel’s ongoing unlawful siege, occupation, racial segregation and apartheid, and ethnic cleansing,” she said.

“A military force answering to a so-called ‘Board of Peace’ chaired by the President of the United States, an active party to this conflict that has continually provided military, economic and diplomatic support to the illegal occupying Power, is not legal,” the expert said. “It is a brazen attempt to impose, by threat of continued force against a virtually defenceless population, US and Israeli interests, plain and simple.”

“Essentially, it will leave Palestine in the hands of a puppet administration, assigning the United States, which shares complicity in the genocide, as the new manager of the open-air prison that Israel has already established.”

“If the OPT, including Gaza, requires an international presence, it should be mandated to supervise Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, in line with the ICJ’s 2024 advisory opinion and General Assembly resolution,” the Special Rapporteur said. “Such a presence should protect civilians, guarantee the cessation of hostilities, prevent further displacement, ensure accountability for grave breaches, and support the Palestinian people in exercising their right to freely determine their political future.”

Albanese warned that as long as Israel remains physically present in any portion of the OPT, including the Gaza Strip, it is an internationally wrongful act that all States, including the United States, are bound not to recognise, aid or assist.”

“The ICJ was clear: self-determination is an inalienable right of the Palestinian people and the UN and all States have an obligation to assist in its realisation. This can only begin with the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory. Replacing an abusive trustee with another is not self-determination, it is unlawful”.

The Special Rapporteur said that Palestinians do not need a surveillance force over the ruins of their destroyed homeland. “They need a protective international presence that ends Israel’s unlawful occupation, stops the genocide and restores their capacity for self-governance. Protection means lifting the blockade, ensuring unhindered humanitarian access, supporting Palestinian-led governance, guaranteeing the right of return and enforcing international law in full,” she said.

Albanese also warned that the plan has already been used by some States as a “political pressure valve” to suspend discussions on sanctions and other concrete measures necessary to halt serious violations. “States cannot ignore serious breaches of peremptory norms because a political plan offers temporary diplomatic convenience.”

“I therefore urge all states, especially those that voted in favour of the resolution, to interpret and implement it in a manner consistent with binding international law,” she said. “To sideline international law renders the UN complicit, undermines the UN Charter and can only lead to “intensifying human carnage”.

“This is an existential moment,” Albanese said. “The international community must not allow Gaza’s future – or the future of the Palestinian people to be decided without their agency and consent. Only an approach rooted in justice, legality, and self-determination can lead to genuine peace.”

Francesca Albanese is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967

Special Rapporteurs/Independent Experts/Working Groups are independent human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Together, these experts are referred to as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. While the UN Human Rights office acts as the secretariat for Special Procedures, the experts serve in their individual capacity and are independent from any government or organization, including OHCHR and the UN. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the UN or OHCHR.

Country-specific observations and recommendations by the UN human rights mechanisms, including the special procedures, the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review, can be found on the Universal Human Rights Index [https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/]

UN Human Rights, Country Page — OPT

For more information and media requests, please contact: hrc-sr-opt@un.org
For media enquiries regarding other UN independent experts, please contact Maya Derouaz (maya.derouaz@un.org) or Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org)

Follow news related to the UN’s independent human rights experts on X @UN_SPExperts.

Situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel and Lebanon

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Amnesty International

27 Nov 2025 – More than a month after a ceasefire was announced and all living Israeli hostages were released, Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction, without signalling any change in their intent, said Amnesty International today.

In a briefing released today, the organization provides a legal analysis of the ongoing genocide along with testimonies from local residents, medical staff and humanitarian workers highlighting the dire ongoing conditions for Palestinians in Gaza.

“The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

“The ceasefire risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal. But while Israeli authorities and forces have reduced the scale of their attacks and allowed limited amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the world must not be fooled. Israel’s genocide is not over.”

— Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International

In December 2024 Amnesty International issued an extensive study concluding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza arguing that Israel had carried out three acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, including killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.

Today despite a reduction in scale of attacks, and some limited improvements, there has been no meaningful change in the conditions Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and no evidence to indicate that Israel’s intent has changed.

“Israel has inflicted devastating harm on Palestinians in Gaza through its genocide, including two years of relentless bombardment and deliberate systematic starvation. So far, there is no indication that Israel is taking serious measures to reverse the deadly impact of its crimes and no evidence that its intent has changed. In fact, Israeli authorities are continuing their ruthless policies, restricting access to vital humanitarian aid and essential services, and deliberately imposing conditions calculated to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

At least 347people, including 136 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire was announced on 9 October. Israel continues to restrict access to critical aid and relief supplies, including medical supplies and equipment necessary to repair life-sustaining infrastructure, violating multiple orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to ensure that Palestinians have access to humanitarian supplies, in the case brought by South Africa to prevent Israel’s genocide. In January 2024, the ICJ found that Palestinians’ rights under the Genocide Convention, namely their survival were plausibly at risk.

The objective probability that the current conditions would lead to the destruction of Palestinians in Gaza persists, particularly considering the enhanced vulnerability of the population to sickness and spread of disease following months of famine caused by years of unlawful blockade and months of total siege earlier this year.  This has created circumstances that would lead to a slow death of Palestinians resulting from the lack of proper food, water, shelter, clothing or sanitation.

While there has been some very limited improvement, Israel continues to severely restrict the entry of supplies and the restoration of services essential for the survival of the civilian population including by blocking the entry of equipment and material necessary to repair life-sustaining infrastructure and required to remove unexploded ordnance, contaminated rubble and sewage, all of which pose serious and potentially irreversible public health and environmental risks.  Israel is also limiting the distribution of aid, including by  restricting which organizations are allowed to deliver relief within the Gaza Strip. Simply increasing the number of trucks entering Gaza is not sufficient. According to OCHA, while households are now having two meals per day (up from one daily meal in July) dietary diversity remains low with access to nutritious foods including vegetables, fruits and protein still out of reach for many families, and items like eggs and meat scare or unaffordable.

Israel’s systematic displacement of Palestinians from fertile lands has continued unabated, with Israeli military currently deployed across around 54-58% of the Gaza Strip.  Israel has not stopped severely limiting Palestinians’ access to the sea. It has taken no measures to address the impact of its extensive destruction of farming land and livestock over the last two year. Altogether, this means that, Palestinians are left virtually totally deprived of independent access to forms of sustenance.

“Palestinians remain held within less than half of the territory of Gaza, in the areas least capable of supporting life, with humanitarian aid still severely restricted. Still today, even after repeated warnings by international bodies, three sets of legally binding orders by the ICJ, and two ICJ advisory opinions, and despite Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law and international human rights law, both as an occupying power and as a party to an armed conflict, Israel deliberately continues not to provide or allow necessary supplies to reach the civilian population in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

Additionally, Israeli authorities have failed to investigate or prosecute those suspected of responsibility for acts of genocide or hold accountable officials who have made genocidal statements. Even the ceasefire came about as a result of international pressure, including from the United States, not an explicit change of stance by Israel

“Israel must lift its inhumane blockade and ensure unfettered access to food, medicine, fuel, reconstruction and repair materials. Israel must also make concerted efforts to repair critical infrastructure, restore essential services, provide adequate shelter for the displaced and ensure they can return to their homes,” said Agnès Callamard.

In recent weeks, signs have emerged that the international community is easing pressure on Israel to end its violations. The newly adopted UN resolution on the future of Gaza fails to include clear commitments to uphold human rights or ensure accountability for atrocities. Most recently, the German government cited the ceasefire when it announced the lifting of a suspension on the issuance of certain arms export licences to Israel as of 24 November. A planned vote on suspending the EU-Israel trade agreement was also halted.

“Now is not the time to ease pressure on the Israeli authorities. World leaders must demonstrate that they truly are committed to upholding their duty to prevent genocide and to ending the impunity that has fuelled decades of Israeli crimes across the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They must halt all arms transfers to Israel until Israel’s crimes under international law cease.  They must press Israeli authorities to grant human rights monitors and journalists access to Gaza to ensure transparent reporting on the impact of Israel’s actions on conditions in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Israeli officials responsible for orchestrating, overseeing and materially committing genocide remain in power.  Failing to demonstrate that they or their government will be held accountable effectively gives them free rein to continue the genocide and commit further human rights violations in Gaza and in the West Bank including East Jerusalem.”

“The ceasefire must not become a smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocide. Israel’s pattern of conduct in Gaza, including the deliberate, unlawful denial of lifesaving aid to Palestinians, many of whom are injured, malnourished and at risk of serious disease, continues to threaten their survival. The international community cannot afford to be complacent: states must keep up pressure on Israel to allow unfettered access to humanitarian aid, lift its unlawful blockade and end its ongoing genocide. Companies must immediately suspend any operations that contribute or are directly linked to Israel’s genocide,” said Agnès Callamard.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Belén Fernández

Venezuela doesn’t even produce fentanyl, but Washington is still going forward with regime change efforts in Caracas as part of its ‘war on drugs’.

23 Nov 2025 – On Sat, 22 Nov, the Reuters news agency published an exclusive report claiming that the United States is “poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days”. The report cited four US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. Two of the officials said covert operations would likely be the first step in this “new action” against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

This was less than shocking news given that more than a month ago, US President Donald Trump himself announced that he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela – a rather unique approach since one does not normally broadcast actions that are supposed to be, um, secret.

Anyway, it’s no secret that the US has been overseeing a massive military build-up in the region with about 15,000 US troops currently stationed there under the guise of fighting “narcoterrorism”. Since early September, Trump has also presided over wanton extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean Sea, repeatedly ordering the bombing of what he claims are drug-trafficking boats.

In addition to violating both international and US law, the strikes have produced little to show for themselves beyond terrorising local fishermen.

To be sure, the US has never met a “war on drugs” it didn’t love, given the convenient opportunities the whole drug-war narrative offers for wreaking havoc worldwide, militarising the Western Hemisphere, criminalising poor Americans and all sorts of other good stuff.

Never mind that US financial institutions have for decades reaped profits from the international drug trade – or that “The CIA Drug Connection Is as Old as the Agency,” as an article on The New York Times website puts it.

It should come as no surprise by now that the president who campaigned on keeping the US out of wars and then promptly bombed Iran has now found another conflict in which to embroil the country. And as is par for the course in US imperial belligerence, the rationale for aggression against Venezuela doesn’t hold water.

For example, the Trump administration has strived to pin the blame for the fentanyl crisis in the US on Maduro. But there’s a slight problem – which is that Venezuela doesn’t even produce the synthetic opioid in question.

As NBC News and other hardly radical outlets have pointed out, Venezuelan drug cartels are focused on exporting cocaine to Europe, not fentanyl to the US.

Nevertheless, on November 13, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – pardon, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as per administrative rebranding – took to X to assure his audience that the massive US military build-up off the Venezuelan coast is a mission that “defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people”.

This is the same administration, of course, that was just threatening to starve impoverished Americans by withholding essential food assistance, which suggests that the wellbeing of “our people” isn’t really of utmost concern.

Consider also the fact that Trump slashed federal funding for gun violence prevention programmes in a country where mass shootings have become a way of life. Obviously, massacres in elementary schools are “killing our people” in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with Venezuela.

But it’s so much more fun to blame Maduro for everything, right?

Poverty itself is a major killer in America – as is the domestic pharmaceutical industry (speaking of opioids). However, none of these full-blown crises has merited a remotely gung-ho response from the valiant defenders of the Homeland.

Like his predecessor Hugo Chavez, Maduro has long been a thorn in the side of US empire – hence the current campaign to discredit him as a “narcoterrorist” and thereby set the stage for regime change. He also happens to be a pet target of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is seen as the main architect of Washington’s war plans in Venezuela. Potentially eyeing a presidential bid in three years, Rubio is seeking to curry favour with his Florida constituency, which includes fanatically right-wing members of the Venezuelan and Cuban diasporas.

According to the Reuters report on impending “Venezuela-related operations”, two of the US officials consulted told the news agency that “the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro”. If the plans succeeds, Rubio would join the lengthy roster of US politicians who have propagated deadly havoc abroad in the interest of political gains at home.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the White House had “proposed an idea for US military planes to drop leaflets over Caracas in a psychological operation” to pressure Maduro.

Sounds like a page – or a leaflet – out of the old Israeli military playbook.

And as the Trump administration barrels on with its not-so-covert plans for Venezuela, such hemispheric recklessness will secure neither the US homeland nor anyone else’s.

Belén Fernández is an Al Jazeera columnist and a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ann Garrison

26 Nov 2025 – National Basketball Association (NBA) players are 70-75% Black, so the game is commonly referred to as “a Black sport.” Now the United Arab Emirates are using it to whitewash a genocide in Africa.

The United Arab Emirates is a criminal monarchy of just over 1 million citizens and 9 million harshly oppressed migrant workers. Its royals use their vast oil wealth to further enrich themselves by destabilizing much of East Africa, fueling genocide in Sudan, and using the NBA to whitewash their crimes.

Emirates Airlines, a monarchy-owned enterprise, signed a multiyear global sponsorship deal with the National Basketball Association (NBA) in February 2024, becoming its official airline partner and title sponsor of the Emirates NBA Cup, formerly known as the In-Season Tournament, which is underway now. “Emirates” is emblazoned on the courts, the backboards, and referee jerseys, and Emirates logos and signage abound.

This partnership is not only burnishing the monarchy’s image, but also making it a cool place to travel and invest in luxury real estate. Luxury hotels and rentals line its pristine, subtropical desert beaches, and its cities offer both traditional sights and all the modern architecture that obscenely concentrated oil wealth can buy.

Players including LeBron James, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jaylen Brown have vacationed or visited the Emirates for events like the NBA Abu Dhabi Games, preseason exhibition contests that have taken place every year since 2022.

Last year Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown took the mic at the game’s opener to greet the crowd with “Asalamalaykum, Abu Dhabi!” followed by a brief punchy mix of Arabic and English.

Players like Deuce McBride, Jalen Brunson, and Landry Shamet have been photographed engaging with local culture, and legends like James Worthy and Shaquille O’Neal have made visits related to their NBA partnerships and promotional activities.

Do any of these players know that the UAE severely curtails speech, imprisons dissidents, and ties a migrant worker’s legal residency and work permit directly to an employer in a system resembling slavery?

Do they know that the UAE criminalizes and severely punishes anyone who manifests as LGBTQ?

Do they know that the UAE funds the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a descendant of the janjaweed, in a proxy war for Sudan’s vast gold reserves and agricultural land?

Do they know that the RSF are responsible for war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and atrocities that many now label as genocide?

Do they know that the RSF are geographically African but Arab-speaking and Arab-identifying forces murdering Africans in Sudan’s Darfur Region?

Using a Black sport to whitewash an African genocide

The cruelest irony of the NBA/Emirates partnership is that they are using a Black sport to whitewash the criminal monarchy’s proxy genocide of Africans.

Sudanese journalist Ahmed Kaballo explains the far more complex history that has led to these stark essentials in a nearly hour long interview, The Untold Truth About the Sudan War. One could hope that a socially conscious sports journalist might bring it to their attention. Though the history is complex, the action Kaballo proposes is simple: the UAE must be pressured to stop funding the Rapid Support Forces.

In 2024, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published “The NBA Risks ‘Sportswashing’ UAE Violations,” writing that “these games are part of the Emirati government’s efforts to distract from the many human rights violations it is committing at home and abroad, including its alleged supply of weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan.” HRW has also called for investigations into whether acts of genocide were committed in El Geneina, Darfur.

Fox News then published “NBA risks taking part in UAE sportswashing with new partnerships,” a report on the Human Rights Watch report.

Also in 2024, Refugees International published “NBA: Suspend Your Partnerships with the UAE and #SpeakOutOnSudan,” calling for suspension of the partnership until the UAE stopped funding the RSF.

Yesterday Kwasi Akyeampong, editor of The BlackList, posted to X that “the Emirates NBA Cup is a Genocide Cup”:

The NBA has responded defensively, pointing to the benefits of increased basketball participation in the Middle East. No formal NBA statements have directly addressed the UAE’s human rights abuses or its proxy genocide against Africans.

Is there any chance of the players responding? The sport can’t go on without them, and in August 2020, they refused to play in playoff games to protest racial injustice and the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, by Wisconsin police. The Milwaukee Bucks initiated the boycott of their August 26 playoff game, which led to the postponement of all three games scheduled for that day and was supported by other players and teams. The action was part of a larger movement within the NBA and other sports leagues to align with the principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.

There is vastly more money at stake in the NBA’s relationship with the Emirates, but would the Emirates pull their sponsorship in response to an NBA demand that they stop supporting a Black African genocide? The optics would be very bad, but so are the NBA’s optics so long as they don’t make the demand.

___________________________________

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Stanford University and is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Raïs Neza Boneza

24 Nov 2025 – In recent weeks, international headlines have warned of Mali’s imminent collapse: “Bamako is about to fall.” “Terrorists are at the gates.” Western embassies urge citizens to flee, and foreign analysts speak of an Afghan-style scenario in the Sahel. Yet behind this chorus of alarm lies a more strategic story — one that reveals as much about global competition for resources as it does about Mali’s security. The real struggle, many in the region suggest, is not about ideology or terrorism. It is about lithium — the white metal that powers the world’s future.

Fear as a Weapon

The notion that Mali’s capital could fall within weeks has circulated widely through Western media. But inside the country, such claims are viewed with deep skepticism. For many Malians, these reports amount to psychological warfare — part of a campaign to undermine confidence in the state and to justify a potential “stabilization” intervention.

The truth, according to Malian observers, is more complex. Armed groups remain a threat, but they are far from capable of taking Bamako. Their power has been reduced to sporadic road ambushes and local disruptions rather than the sweeping offensives seen years ago. Still, fear serves a purpose. It weakens institutions, deters investment, and prepares public opinion abroad for renewed foreign involvement.

The Real Battle: Lithium

Mali’s newfound prominence in global headlines coincides with a quiet but profound economic development: the opening of major lithium mines at Goulamina and Bougouni. Together, these sites could produce over half a million tonnes of lithium concentrate each year — placing Mali among the world’s top suppliers. Lithium is indispensable for electric cars, renewable energy storage, and virtually every rechargeable device on Earth. In short, it is the oil of the 21st century.

What distinguishes Mali’s lithium projects is who controls them: not Western conglomerates, but Chinese and Malian partnerships. The Goulamina mine, in particular, involves major Chinese investment. Western companies — and the governments behind them — have been notably absent.

This shift toward non-Western partners represents more than a commercial choice; it is an act of economic sovereignty. It threatens to overturn a centuries-old pattern in which African resources are extracted for foreign benefit, leaving little value behind.

The Geopolitics of Disruption

To understand the intensity of current media coverage, one must see the pattern. Whenever an African nation attempts to nationalize or control a key resource, it suddenly becomes the focus of humanitarian concern, security alerts, or political pressure.

The argument is that this is not coincidence but a long-term strategy — maintaining control through fragmentation. The logic is simple: weaken the state, question its legitimacy, isolate it economically, and eventually reintroduce foreign “assistance” to restore order — along with access to its resources.

History provides painful parallels. In Libya, the promise of African-led oil sovereignty ended in chaos and foreign reoccupation. The same fate, many fear, could await the Sahel if Mali’s attempt at self-determination is crushed.

Media Narratives and Economic Leverage
Recent corporate maneuvers underscore this connection. Shipping giants such as CMA-CGM temporarily halted transport to Mali, citing instability, only to resume operations days later. The sudden suspension — and equally sudden reversal — seemed more like a political signal than a logistical decision. Such gestures contribute to an atmosphere of uncertainty that discourages trade and investment, amplifying the perception of a nation on the brink.

Meanwhile, Western networks feature “experts” who echo the same alarmist narrative — many of whom, Malians say, have little knowledge of the terrain. This is not simply misinformation but information warfare, designed to delegitimize African autonomy.

A New Colonial Equation

Mali’s fate reverberates far beyond its borders. If it falls, the argument goes, the center of West Africa will unravel — destabilizing Burkina Faso, Niger, and the broader region. Such an outcome would invite new international interventions, each claiming to “restore peace” while reasserting geopolitical control.

The pattern is familiar: chaos, intervention, extraction. In each African region, one key state’s collapse can reshape the entire geopolitical map. The destruction of Libya transformed North Africa; the Congo crisis reshaped Central Africa. The collapse of Mali, many fear, could inaugurate Libya 2.0 in West Africa — another externally managed zone of endless “stabilization.”

Between Paranoia and Pattern

Skepticism is healthy. Conspiracy theories often flourish where transparency is lacking. Yet dismissing these warnings outright ignores a long history of foreign interference justified through the language of “security” and “development.” From the Congo in the 1960s to Iraq and Libya in the 21st century, resource-rich nations have repeatedly learned that sovereignty can be undone not only by coups or invasions, but by narratives that make domination seem like rescue.

Today, as Mali seeks to redefine its place in the global order, it stands at a crossroads between vulnerability and autonomy. Lithium is not just a mineral — it is the currency of tomorrow’s world. And whoever controls it will shape not only the global economy but also the very balance of power between continents.

Raïs Neza Boneza is the author of fiction as well as non-fiction, poetry books and articles.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Hilal Elver & Richard Falk

1 Dec 2025 – Just few weeks ago, on October 23-26 in Istanbul, we completed the final session of the Gaza People’s Tribunal. It was a very successful event due to the high quality of expert and witness testimonies, as well as well as the enthusiastic response of the live audience attending the Tribunal. After this very good experience in Istanbul, and an uneventful return to the US we never thought the Canadian Government would challenge our entry to attend another more limited Peoples’ Tribunal two weeks later in Ottawa.

In response to a question as to why we were in Canada, we informed the Canadian Border Security Agency (CBSA) interrogator that we were formally invited to participate in the Palestinian Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility in Ottawa over the course of the next two days, November 14-15. Yet such a possibility was evidently much on the minds of the Canadian immigration authorities who at the outset of the first period of interrogation informed us about the purpose of this detention:

“We have the responsibility for determining as to whether you pose a threat to Canadian national security.”

But this still doesn’t explain ‘why Canada would regard two professors with admittedly somewhat controversial views on the Israel/Palestine conflict as threats to national security?’ It would be reasonable for Canada to view the two of us as marginalized individuals who harbor no wish more dangerous than that their critical voices be heard and heeded by those in Ottawa shaping government policy. It is our core belief that the world becomes less dangerous and unjust when international law is implemented. Israel behaved lawlessly in Gaza for decades, most dramatically during these two plus years of genocide.

At first, we were both amused and surprised by such a framing by the Canadian government. Amused as the charge of threatening Canada’s national security seemed so disproportionately grandiose as compared to our long demonstrated actual capabilities or, for that matter our intentions. There is no hidden agenda. We are proud to be independent scholars relying on nothing other than the language at our disposal to demand justice for the vulnerable Palestinian people, long victimized by a deeply rooted apartheid structure and by the genocidal assault on Gaza in supposed retaliation for the attack on October 7. We were coming to Ottawa to support our Canadian brothers and sisters in their resolve to plan a Palestinian Tribunal on Canadian Responsibility that would depict and reject Canadian complicity with Israel by way of arms exports, and diplomatic support. And finally to remind Canada of its treaty obligation to live up to the expectations of the Genocide Convention that parties had legal duties to seek to prevent and punish genocide, and certainly not act as enabler.

It was our hope that Canada would go beyond its welcome conditional support of Palestinian statehood in recent weeks to reject both Israeli impunity and a peace process that rewards a government that engaged in genocide while further punishing and humiliating the grossly victimized Palestinian people. We were determined in our Tribunal testimonies to get this dissenting message across at the Tribunal. We still wonder how such an exercise of the right of free expression in a democratic country came to be considered a threat to Canadian national security? More correctly understood, such advocacy should be seen as aligning Canadian national security with international law, considering the human interest in regional and global stability, as well as peacefulness.

We emerged from this experience of over four hours at the Toronto Airport quite exhausted. We quickly realized that our detention involved far more than routine protocol at the original immigration window when the official kept looking at his computer until finally telling us to wait while he went to check with more senior staff. After many minutes he finally returned with several questions about the logistics of the Ottawa event. Were we speakers, were we being paid to do so, were our travel expenses and hotel costs covered. It seemed strange to us that nothing was asked about the conference, its themes and relation to Canadian national security. Then, the interrogating Agent indicated that he had to check further with ‘his boss’ on whether we would be allowed to enter Canada.

By then we had missed our connecting flight to Ottawa and were kept waiting for another 90 minutes until the Agent returned with a somewhat different line of questions, but still somewhat peculiar as very abstract and general. Did I realize that I was accused widely of being an antisemite? Were we connected in any way with Hamas? Did I have any connection with Euro-Med Human Rights Organization? We gave straight forward honest answers and expected follow up questions aimed at developing some useful reasoning on why we were security threats, but none was forthcoming. Once more the Agent left for an exasperating further 30 minutes or so before returning to tell us we were free to enter Canada but giving us no further explanation.

In conclusion, this was a puzzling experience. If there was a serious security concern, then why did they fail to inspect our luggage including such devices as smart phones and laptops. Or at least ask questions that if answered in certain ways would be self-incrimination. Their questions were very abstract and vague, not meant to elicit information about the Tribunal nor about concrete concerns relating to Canadian national security. The most reasonable interpretation of the incident was that by keeping us from taking part in the Tribunal it was integral to a broader strategy of harassment directed at those critical of Israel’s behavior in relation to the Palestinian struggle to achieve basic rights.

After our lengthy interrogation at the airport after, we learned that the initial site of the Tribunal at the University of Ottawa was no longer available due to a decision to cancel made by administrative officials. The Canadian Senator Yuen Pau Woo, himself a critic of Canada’s approach to the Palestinian ordeal, responded to the cancelation by agreeing to host the Tribunal event in the Senate building. Perhaps, the backlash caused by our detention will have the unintended effect of having the CBSA operate more carefully in the future. This would means addressing authentic security threats and not using ‘security’ investigations as an excuse to harass scholars and others for adopting views alleging Israel’s responsibility for genocide and Canada’s derivative responsibility by being complicit.

The Tribunal completed its two-day program, we testified as planned, and the event focused its energies on Canada’s distinctive responsibilities rather than addressing the underlying questions as to whether genocide and crimes against humanity can be assumed short of an ICJ decision on the legal allegations. Our detention occurred in this atmosphere, made more confusing by the UN adoption of the US framework for a long-term Gaza solution, which we regard as a furtherance of the original crimes by altered means.

The entire intimidation efforts by the (CBSA) taught us that global civil society movement to defend Palestinian people, stop genocide and ask for accountability have an important impact on the domestic political life of perpetrators and complicit governments. They act to silence hostile voices. These tensions actually are beginning to show that crude intimidation tactics do not work, and we, as civil society members with a global conscience, are gaining influence slowly but surely over national public policy that violates international law and morality. It should be obvious that there is scant prospect of Palestinian self-determination without continuing Palestinian sumud and the solidarity initiatives of activists throughout the world. Without Israeli compliance with judicial orders to withdraw from Occupied Palestine and to refrain immediately from any further interference with the international delivery of humanitarian aid the genocide continues.

_________________________________________

Hilal Elver was a member of the Academic Council of the UN Least Developed Countries (2011–2021) and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from Jun 2014 to May 2020.

Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute.

1 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Drago Bosnic

During my recent visit to China, our hosts presented the catastrophic consequences of gruesome Japanese atrocities during WWII (which started all the way back in 1931 for the Chinese, when Japanese militarists invaded their country for the first time). This includes everything from summary executions to mass biological warfare, which killed anywhere between 21 and 35 million people. Unfortunately, this genocidal campaign, primarily targeting Chinese civilians, is largely unknown (or at least not adequately acknowledged) outside the immediate region. Worse yet, even Tokyo itself never really took full responsibility for these war crimes (let alone apologized or prosecuted the perpetrators).

It’s worth noting that the United States was instrumental in covering up Japanese atrocities, as evidenced by the immunity Washington DC provided to Japanese military officers who were directly responsible for these war crimes. Namely, General Shiro Ishii, the commanding officer of the infamous Unit 731, was granted full immunity from the Tokyo Trials in exchange for the transfer of all Japanese biowarfare findings to the US. Thus, the Pentagon acquired critical information and research for the American biological warfare program (or “benevolent biological research facilities”, as Victoria Nuland described the US bioweapons labs in NATO-occupied Ukraine and elsewhere around the world).

Given this entirely unrepentant Japanese-American partnership in crime and the ongoing militarization of the Asia-Pacific, it’s hardly surprising that China is concerned with the latest sabre rattling from Tokyo. Namely, the new Japanese government keeps escalating tensions with Beijing, with the ongoing diplomatic flare-up taking a nosedive from bad to worse. What’s more, it’s now showing us the contours of what could potentially degenerate into an armed conflict. Namely, on November 23, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited Yonaguni Island (officially part of the Okinawa Prefecture), situated just over 100 km east of China’s breakaway province of Taiwan.

The island houses a Japanese military base, so such a high-profile visit certainly sends an aggressive message to Beijing. Worse yet, it comes barely two weeks after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi supported Tokyo’s potential military involvement in the case of an armed conflict in Taiwan. She unequivocally mentioned that this would “constitute a survival-threatening situation”, becoming the first Japanese top official since WWII to link the US-orchestrated Taiwan crisis to a possible Japanese military involvement (which would be illegal even according to Tokyo’s own law, including the constitution). China’s initial response came in the form of potential economic and diplomatic measures.

“Prime Minister Takaichi’s openly erroneous remarks concerning Taiwan have fundamentally undermined the political foundation of China-Japan relations and severely damaged bilateral economic and trade exchanges,” He Yongqian, a ministry spokesperson stated, adding: “Should the Japanese side persist on its course of action and continue down the wrong path, China will resolutely take the measures required and all consequences shall be borne by Japan.”

However, instead of taking the warning seriously and reversing course, Tokyo doubled down, with its Defense Minister Koizumi announcing the deployment of Type 03 Chu-SAM medium-range SAM (surface-to-air missiles) systems on Yonaguni Island. It should be noted that these air defense assets are deployed only on Japan’s home islands, making this announcement particularly concerning, as it could potentially signal a historic change in Tokyo’s foreign policy and military posturing.

“The deployment can help lower the chance of an armed attack on our country,” Koizumi told reporters, adding: “The view that it will heighten regional tensions is not accurate.”

Considering the growing US/NATO involvement, particularly in recent months and years, this statement doesn’t make much sense, nor could it be taken seriously in China. This is particularly true as Japan still pursues a broader military buildup in its southern island chain. Unsurprisingly, just like in the case of protecting the monstrous Unit 731 and trying to cover up its endless stream of gruesome war crimes, Washington DC offered “unshakeable” support to its vassals in Tokyo.

“Right-wing forces in Japan are […] leading [the country] and the region toward disaster. China is determined and capable of safeguarding its national territorial sovereignty,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated, adding: “The move is extremely dangerous and should raise serious concerns among nearby countries and the international community.”

Beijing has repeatedly warned Tokyo that it will suffer a crushing defeat if it ever decides to directly intervene in the ongoing US-orchestrated Taiwan crisis. And indeed, given China’s growing arsenal of long-range precision-strike platforms, particularly the plethora of hypersonic missiles that nobody (outside Russia) can possibly match, Japan should certainly take such warnings extremely seriously. In addition, Beijing is not insisting on any confrontation, but has demonstrated time and again that all it wants is peaceful coexistence. However, a superpower such as China will undoubtedly take all precautions to safeguard its basic national security interests.

Drawing such red lines is particularly important amid growing American ambitions to either build a new NATO-like military structure in the Asia-Pacific or even push the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel into the increasingly contested region. It’s difficult to say which is worse, but whatever the US chooses to do next will determine China’s (re)action(s). It’s rather expected that the Pentagon would want Tokyo (in addition to other numerous vassals and satellite states) to do its dirty work, just like the Kiev regime does in NATO-occupied Ukraine. We can only hope that Japan (and China’s breakaway island province of Taiwan) will be wise enough to avoid the same fate.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

29 November 2025

Source: michelchossudovsky.substack.com

By Ranjan Solomon

The killing of women in Palestine is not collateral damage. It is not accidental, incidental, or the unfortunate by-product of an over-militarised conflict. It is deliberate, systematic, and emblematic of a worldview in which Palestinian life is dispensable and Palestinian womanhood, in particular, is seen as a threat. The cruelty is not just in the act of killing; it is in the intention that underwrites it. Israel’s assault on Gaza—and the wider Palestinian people—is shaped by a doctrine that collapses civilian identity into an enemy category. In that collapse, women become targets twice over: as Palestinians and as bearers of the next generation.

The brutality faced by Palestinian women stands at the intersection of occupation, militarism, and patriarchal violence. In Gaza, women are not merely being killed by bombs; they are being starved, displaced, widowed, amputated, and stripped of the most basic guarantees of medical care. Pregnant women miscarry in rubble. Mothers die in queues for food. Daughters are buried without names because their bodies cannot be recognized. This level of cruelty is not incidental—it is engineered.

Every war reveals the moral architecture of a nation. Israel’s war on Gaza has revealed a scaffolding built on dehumanization. It is not only soldiers who speak with genocidal intent; it is ministers, parliamentarians, senior bureaucrats, and television anchors who have normalised the idea that Palestinian women are legitimate targets. They are framed not as civilians but as “mothers of terrorists,” as “breeders,” as demographic threats. When a state permits such language, violence becomes an administrative order rather than a battlefield accident.

The killing of women is also a deep political act. It signals an attempt to break the continuity of a people—not simply through demographic erasure, but through psychic devastation. Women hold families together; they are the transmitters of culture, memory, and community. In Palestinian society, where survival itself is resistance, women have historically been the backbone of the struggle. To kill them is to strike at the heart of resilience. Israel’s military planners know this. They know that by destroying women, they are wounding generations yet unborn.

What is particularly cruel is the way these killings occur: not in swift strikes alone, but in the slow violence of deprivation. Hospitals are bombed, maternity wards shut down, incubators stop functioning, and women who should be under medical supervision instead give birth under tents or in the open. The world has seen images of newborns wrapped in plastic bags or laid on the cold ground because the mother has died. These images are not accidents—they are the predictable outcomes of a siege that weaponises everything: water, food, medicine, electricity, and movement. When a pregnant woman is denied safe passage to a hospital and bleeds to death, she has not died of “circumstance”; she has been killed by design.

The cruelty deepens when one examines how global institutions respond. International bodies issue statements filled with moral equivalences and hollow appeals for restraint. Western governments that champion women’s rights in every forum suddenly turn blind, mute, and indifferent. The feminist movements that erupt in outrage at injustice elsewhere fall uncomfortably silent. In the hierarchy of global suffering, Palestinian women find themselves at the bottom, denied even the dignity of recognition.

And yet, women in Palestine continue to embody extraordinary courage. They search for their children in bombed-out ruins. They queue for food for hours, even when the sky rumbles with drones. They tend to the injured with almost no supplies. They mourn deeply, but they do not break. Even in the bleakest moments, they speak of their dignity, their rights, and their homeland. Their grief is political, their resilience is political, and their existence is political.

To write about the killing of women in Palestine is not simply to catalogue horror; it is to expose the failure of global morality. A civilization that tolerates such cruelty stands indicted. The world that claims to protect human rights, gender equality, and international law is collapsing under the weight of its own hypocrisy. If the systematic killing of women cannot trigger moral outrage, then what truly remains of our collective conscience?

The struggle for Palestine is not confined to borders or geography. It is a struggle over what it means to be human in a world increasingly shaped by brutality and indifference. The killing of women is not a footnote in this war—it is its defining signature. The violence inflicted on them must be documented, named, politicized, and remembered. It must harden global resolve, not numb it.

History will ask a simple question: in the age when Palestinian women were being starved, bombed, and erased, did we remain silent? The answer will judge not only states and leaders, but the soul of humanity itself.

In solidarity

Ranjan Solomon

27 November 2025

Source: nakbaliberation.com