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By Nilofar Suhrawardy

Ironically, the year 2025 began with US President Donald Trump declaring himself as a peacemaker. Sadly, the year’s end and beginning of 2026 doesn’t seem to be marked by his diplomatic rhetoric having yielded any results. In fact, one is tempted to say that it is time meanings of certain terms are rephrased. At least, the manner in which they seem to have been interpreted and even abused suggests this. Heading the list, perhaps is the word – ceasefire. Certainly, Trump has the right to take all the credit he desires for having led to their at least being considered during diplomatic talks, summits and finally on paper. But this term’s significance seems to be confined just to paper on quite a few fronts. Who can credit Israel for having respected the so-called Gaza ceasefire, despite it having been given so much importance by its key ally- United States. Interestingly, its key supporter appears to be giving minimum importance to violation of the ceasefire it has appeared to promote so aggressively. Some “belief” about it having been actually implemented is prompting initiation of diplomatic steps towards the next phase of ceasefire.

Virtually dead silence is also being maintained about Israel’s strikes against Lebanon. In contrast, substantial importance was given to Israel’s strikes against Iran. It apparently gave superpower an opportunity to display its strength also against Iran. Or in other words, an attempt was made to display strength of Israel against Iran. To a degree, it was snubbed by Iran’s retaliation and US had to step in. United States’ move was probably not simply against Iran but also against the powers, Iran is aligned with.

The world is apparently being viewed as a chessboard with United States under Trump being fairly frustrated at quite a few nations choosing to prefer ties with Russia and China instead of the superpower. What else does Trump’s tariff-war indicate? Israel led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving along the same path. What else do its strikes in the name of defeating Hamas and similar groups suggest? Israel’s aim is probably to dominate the terrain within its reach. In 2025, Israel carried out at least 10,000 strikes against more than six countries, including Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Qatar and Yemen. Strategic moves exercised by United States aiding Israel cannot be dismissed. Except for Iran and Qatar, the others may be viewed as weak targets without the potential to retaliate strongly against Israel. If Iran is not weak, Qatar has the wealth and is strongly aligned with US. The objective of these strikes is the same- ensure that these countries remain weak and be subject to pressure exercised by US, even if that leads to change of governments in these, aligned with Washington and not with Russia or China.

Of course, Netanyahu loves the literally blind eye turned to Israel’s strikes by US and other western nations. In a way, this is equivalent to their “legitimizing” violation of international law and also adding to credibility desired by Netanyahu where displaying his “power” is concerned. In addition, the media coverage received by Israel’s strikes only further increases this. Notwithstanding the criticism received by these strikes, the fact that they also display the weakness of countries targeted only adds to what Netanyahu apparently aims for. His “war-games” also contribute to diverting attention from perhaps what needs greater attention, of which the most dominant is the Palestinian-issue.

United States’ silence is not surprising. To a degree, perhaps, Israel is just playing a key role of asserting the superpower’s importance and restricting their ties with Russia as well as China. United States’ aggression against Venezuela, including naval blockade, may be viewed from the same angle. At least, this is what Trump desires.

Paradoxically, Ukraine is caught miserably in the war with Russia. Of course, Trump has time and again expressed his desire for “peace” regarding Ukraine as well as other wars. He went overboard in having talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Alaska and on phone several times. Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy have held talks discussing “peace” plan fairly frequently. Zelenskyy has been strongly supported by most European countries. But talks between Trump and Zelenskyy, including the latest in Florida (December 29), have not led into effective peace deal. Perhaps, Ukraine is being used simply as a pawn in the rivalry between USA and Russia. Neither Russia nor China are keen to yield to US on the Ukraine front. Washington is probably hopeful that continuation of Ukraine conflict is likely to only further weaken Russia, which is apparently its key aim. A key aim of its tariff-war is also this. But as of now Russia is not as isolated and weak as US desires it to be and tends to be projected by western media. This perhaps is prompting Trump to strike and/or reach out in as many directions as possible in a bid to display his power to Russia as well as China. The recent United States’ weapons deal with Taiwan, which has not pleased China, may be viewed as a part of this design. War-oriented strategies being exercised by those claiming to have stalled several conflicts certainly demands a new interpretation of what is “peace” really understood by them as? Provoking, prolonging conflicts or what?

Nilofar Suhrawardy is a senior journalist and writer with specialization in communication studies and nuclear diplomacy.

30 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Palestinian Territory – A new investigation by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has uncovered the full circumstances of a mass killing carried out by the Israeli army against the Abu Nahal family in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, last year.

The attack killed 15 civilians, including 13 children and women, without any warning or prior notice, and in the absence of any military necessity that could justify the precise and deliberate targeting of the family.

The investigation, published on Monday, is based on extensive field-based work into an airstrike carried out by the Israeli army on the evening of Saturday, 17 February 2024.

An Israeli aircraft struck a family rest house (chalet) in the Khirbat al-Adas area, northeast of Rafah Governorate, using two heavy, US-made bombs, completely destroying the structure on top of its occupants, without any prior warning or alert that could have enabled civilians to escape and save their lives.

The findings of the investigation, based on months of work that included an on-site examination of the crime scene, cross-checking testimonies from survivors and eyewitnesses, and technical analysis of digital materials, indicate that the targeted site was purely civilian in nature.

It was a chalet rented by the family after they were displaced from their original home. The site was located in an open agricultural area, isolated from any other buildings, making its identification as a civilian object easy and clearly visible to aerial surveillance. The location and its surroundings were entirely devoid of any military presence or activities by armed factions, refuting any potential claims of “military necessity” and confirming that the aim was to kill the largest possible number of defenceless civilians.

The investigation also ruled out any possibility that there were military objectives justifying the strike.

Material evidence and documents obtained by the Euro-Med Monitor team, alongside eyewitness testimonies, confirmed that the head of the family, Ibrahim Abu Nahal, had no political or factional affiliations and spent most of his time engaged in trade. He was a well-known merchant in his community before the genocide began in October 2023 and continued his commercial activities throughout it.

The data presented in the investigation further confirmed that the victim, Ibrahim Abu Nahal, exhibited no unusual behaviour suggesting any form of affiliation. He lived a normal life, managed his business by phone throughout the day, and moved regularly and repeatedly to the Rafah crossing to collect consignments of flour, vegetables, or other food supplies. He took no precautionary measures that would indicate he anticipated or feared being targeted.

In detailing the moments preceding the crime, the investigation recorded that 16 members of the Abu Nahal family were gathered in one of the chalet’s rooms around the dinner table, celebrating the marriage of their son Abdullah, 26, to his cousin Mariam, 20.

At approximately 6:50 p.m., Ibrahim Abu Nahal, 57, arrived at the site from his work at the Rafah crossing, where he was engaged in the trade of food supplies and vehicles. Around ten minutes later, Israeli aircraft struck the location, completely destroying the chalet and killing those inside.

The investigation recorded testimonies from survivors and relatives of the victims that convey the scale of the crime. Osama Ibrahim Abu Nahal, 16, the sole survivor of the chalet strike, said: “We were sitting together as a happy family, celebrating my brother’s wedding. Around 6 p.m., without any warning, missiles struck. I remember being thrown into the air and then losing consciousness. I woke up in the hospital covered in wounds.”

He continued: “When I regained consciousness, I saw burns on my body and platinum pins in my hands and feet. I cried bitterly and asked my brother where my mother, father and siblings were. I just wanted to see them. […] the chalet I was in had been targeted, and everyone who was with me there that night had died.”

In another testimony, Sami Ibrahim Abu Nahl, a family member who narrowly survived after leaving the site just minutes earlier to buy groceries from a nearby shop at his mother’s request, said: “I left and walked to a store less than 150 metres away. As soon as I arrived, the sky lit up as if it were daytime, and I heard two explosions that shook the area.

He continued: “I rushed back and found the chalet completely destroyed, with two large craters in its place. I found scattered body parts instead of my family members. They were all gone.”

Regarding the recovery of the victims, Khalil Ibrahim Abu Nahal, a family member who had been displaced to another area and rushed to the site upon hearing the news, told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “I found myself carrying a plastic container and collecting the remains of my family: my sister’s head, my brother’s leg and his hand. […] I then went to the hospital and found only half of my father’s body, my brother’s headless corpse and the bodies of seven members of my family. The rest had been vaporised by the force of the bombs.”

Analysis conducted by the Euro-Med Monitor team of the scene, particularly the two deep craters left by the strike, revealed that the Israeli aircraft dropped two heavy bombs, most likely GBU-31 munitions (MK-84 bombs fitted with JDAM guidance kits), each weighing approximately 900 kilograms. These munitions have enormous destructive capacity and are designed to penetrate military fortifications. Their use against a simple, unfortified residential structure caused the soil and human bodies to absorb the force of the blast, resulting in the complete destruction of the site and the dismemberment of the victims’ bodies into small fragments scattered across the surrounding area, reaching even the rooftops of neighbouring houses.

The crime did not end with killing and destruction, but extended to the violation of the sanctity of the dead. The investigation documented that in May 2024, during the ground invasion of Rafah, Israeli military bulldozers levelled the mass grave in which the family’s victims had been buried near the Philadelphi Corridor, destroying the graves and their headstones, an act that reflects a deliberate attempt to erase Palestinian existence and violate human dignity even after death.

Euro-Med Monitor noted that, as of the publication of the investigation, the Israeli army had issued no statement clarifying the circumstances of its attack on the chalet where the Abu Nahal family had been staying, nor had it provided any justification for the motives, objectives, or outcomes of the attack. This recurring pattern reflects a complete disregard for civilian lives and a total neglect of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

Euro-Med Monitor stresses that the use of excessive destructive force against an exposed civilian target, without any warning, demonstrates a premeditated intent to kill and to inflict the maximum possible number of casualties. As such, this crime constitutes both a war crime and a crime against humanity and represents additional material evidence of genocide currently under scrutiny by the International Court of Justice.

The international community must immediately fulfil its obligations to prevent and halt the crime of genocide through binding, practical measures that go beyond verbal positions. These include imposing an immediate and permanent ceasefire, stopping attacks on civilians, shelters, and displacement sites, and adopting effective protection measures for the civilian population to prevent the recurrence of Israeli crimes against civilians.

All relevant states and entities must impose targeted political and economic sanctions on those responsible for the most serious Israeli crimes, as well as on parties that enable, finance, or provide practical cover for them. This includes freezing assets, imposing travel bans, halting all forms of military, security, and intelligence cooperation, and suspending bilateral agreements that grant material or technological advantages or trade or research preferences that may contribute to the continuation of crimes or to impunity. Sanctions should also extend to entities and companies that supply equipment or services essential to targeting operations.

States with jurisdiction, including those exercising universal, territorial or personal jurisdiction, must initiate independent and effective criminal investigations into crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This includes issuing arrest warrants where legal thresholds are met.

The International Criminal Court must accelerate its investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine and expand its scope to include all those involved at both the political and military levels, as well as expedite the issuance of additional arrest warrants to ensure that perpetrators do not evade accountability.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor is a Geneva-based independent organization with regional offices across the MENA region and Europe

30 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Kevin Reed

Speaking to reporters in Florida while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, President Donald Trump announced that the US military has struck a dock facility on Venezuelan territory.

In typical form, Trump referred to what he called a “major explosion” at a dock area inside Venezuela where, he claimed, “they load the boats up with drugs,” and boasted, “So we hit all the boats and now we hit the area and that is no longer around … Two nights ago, we knocked that out.”

The off‑the‑cuff remarks were delivered at his Mar‑a‑Lago resort during a photo‑op with the war criminal Netanyahu. The two fascists basked in the announcement of a new reckless military act that threatens the lives of millions through a direct US assault on and invasion of Venezuela.

In response to a question from a reporter about comments Trump made on Friday about the attack, the US president presented it as a continuation of the ongoing “anti‑drug” campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, claiming that US forces struck a “big facility” used to load narcotics onto boats. Neither Trump nor any US military authority has provided verifiable details about the precise location, the nature of the target, the munitions used or the number of people killed, beyond vague references.

The strike appears to have involved air‑launched precision munitions delivered from US forces operating offshore, but the lack of official clarification highlights the lawless character of the operation. Experts have said there is a likelihood that the “facility” was a civilian port or dual‑use maritime infrastructure.

As of this writing, no authoritative source has provided details of what happened.

Despite the extraordinary implications of a US strike on Venezuelan territory, none of the principal organs of the American state—the White House, Pentagon or CIA—has issued a formal briefing or detailed explanation.

Meanwhile, also on Monday, US Southern Command posted on social media that the Joint Task Force Southern Spear had carried out a “lethal kinetic strike” on a vessel at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The US military carried out the strike in the eastern Pacific and destroyed a small boat claimed to be involved in drug smuggling. The attack, which was carried out in international waters, reportedly used air‑launched precision munitions against the craft without warning or attempt at interdiction or arrest.

This latest incident is one of a series of 30 or more such actions in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed around 105 people, in which unknown individuals are killed execution‑style based on unsubstantiated claims of narcotics trafficking.

In the case of the dock strike, however, no Defense Department statements or military social media announcements have been issued acknowledging responsibility. The Pentagon has referred all questions to the White House, and the White House has “not immediately responded” to media requests for information, while intelligence agencies have maintained a studied silence.

As of Monday, Venezuelan officials had not issued a detailed public statement confirming damage or casualties at the dock facility mentioned by Trump. Previously, the Venezuelan government has denounced the boat strikes as “serial executions” and an “undeclared war,” warning that Washington is preparing an invasion under the pretext of drug interdiction. Caracas has also accused the US of seeking regime change to seize control of the country’s vast oil reserves.

Accepting that a land strike has in fact occurred, it is the latest in the months‑long US campaign of terror from the sea and air. Since early September, US forces have carried out at least 30 lethal strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, killing approximately 105 people. These operations, run through US Southern Command and involving an aircraft carrier strike group, an amphibious assault ship and thousands of Marines, have turned international waters off Venezuela into a killing field.

The Trump administration has declared that the US is in an “armed conflict” with “drug‑smuggling” boats run by “narco‑terrorist” cartels. In an October letter to Congress, the Pentagon indicated that those involved in trafficking are being treated as “unlawful combatants,” language that echoes the pseudo‑legal framework for imperialist crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

Survivors’ accounts and independent reporting have exposed that these were unannounced, summary executions at sea, in some cases involving follow‑up strikes after initial hits, confirming their character as war crimes.

US authorities have also been stopping and seizing oil tankers carrying Venezuelan crude, using the Coast Guard and other agencies to enforce a de facto maritime blockade. The campaign has “intercepted” tankers and signaled that any ship attempting to transport Venezuelan oil faces the threat of confiscation or destruction.

Trump officials themselves acknowledge that their objectives include not only alleged drug interdiction, but the removal of Maduro and the restoration of US corporate and financial interests expropriated during earlier phases of the regime.

The Democratic Party has responded to the escalation with a mixture of feigned outrage and essential agreement with Trump’s underlying imperialist aims. House Democrats recently pushed war‑powers resolutions in response to the boat‑strikes, with Representative Gregory Meeks of New York complaining after a classified briefing that the administration had failed to present a “clear strategy” and had not properly consulted Congress before it engaged in international crimes.

Meeks openly acknowledged that the operation does not appear to be “solely about drug trafficking” and voiced concerns that it is a regime‑change campaign that should be openly declared and formally authorized.

Florida Democrats who have close ties to the anti‑Maduro exile community, have issued statements attacking the “brutality of the Maduro dictatorship” while also denouncing Trump for hypocrisy. Their criticisms focus on Trump’s reliance on unsubstantiated claims about “Venezuelan fentanyl” while pardoning major traffickers elsewhere, and on his refusal to seek a Congressional “blank check” authorization for the use of force.

Not a single leading Democrat has denounced the boat and dock strikes as war crimes or demanded the immediate withdrawal of US forces from the region, confirming that their differences with Trump are tactical and not fundamental.

The latest strike on Venezuelan territory is an act of aggressive war, in direct violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force and the sovereignty of states. Aggression—the launching of war without lawful justification—was declared “the supreme international crime” by the Nuremberg Tribunal, which tried, convicted and punished leading Nazi officials, including by hanging, for planning and waging wars of conquest.

The US campaign of massacring boat crews on the high seas and now striking land facilities inside Venezuela under bogus “anti‑drug” pretexts falls squarely into this category, placing Trump, his generals and his accomplices among the imperialist war criminals of the 21st century.

The US has not been attacked by Venezuela and Trump’s claims that the drone strikes are in “self‑defense” against narcotics traffickers are blatant lies. Washington is exploiting its overwhelming military superiority to achieve regime change and strategic dominance in contempt of both domestic and international law.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the assault on Venezuela has everything to do with oil and imperialist geostrategy. US imperialism is seeking to overthrow the Maduro regime and install a government that is subordinated to Wall Street and the Pentagon.

The awarding of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado is a signal from all the imperialist powers that regime change in Venezuela is on the agenda. As the WSWS has noted, Machado’s political supporters openly advocate the use of violence and foreign intervention, and she has coordinated plans with the Trump administration for the “first 100 hours” after Maduro’s removal.

Historically, the US state has repeatedly collaborated with and utilized drug traffickers as instruments of policy, from CIA‑linked operations in Central America to the protection of friendly regimes and paramilitary forces across the hemisphere. The same apparatus that now denounces “narco‑terrorism” has long encouraged and manipulated the drug trade to deepen its control over sections of the Latin American bourgeoisie and to finance covert operations beyond the scrutiny of the population.

Behind the war drive against Venezuela is the broader imperialist strategy of asserting US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. Trump’s own statements and policy directives have included threats to seize control of the Panama Canal, annex Greenland and treat Canada as a de facto “51st state,” an open program of 21st‑century colonialism.

Commentators and strategists have noted that these strategic goals are framed in terms of “national security” and the struggle against rising Chinese and Russian influence internationally. The White House 2025 National Security Strategy has articulated in plain language a so-called “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine that seeks to exclude rival countries from what it regards as its exclusive sphere of influence.

This doctrine underlies the military buildup off Venezuela’s shores and the transformation of the Caribbean into a forward operating theater for US militarism and war. The aim is not only to topple Maduro but to demonstrate that no government in the hemisphere can act outside the dictates of Washington and Wall Street without facing economic strangulation, covert destabilization and, if necessary, direct military attack.

30 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Philip Giraldi and Prof Michel Chossudovsky

First published on October 7, 2023 at the outset of Israel’s act of genocide against Palestine. Revised in April 2024.

There is an ongoing propaganda campaign which categorically denies the existence of a false flag, the objective of which is to justify the genocide against the People of Palestine.

The evidence is overwhelming.

—May 19, 2024, July 27, 2025, October 7, 2025, November 30, 2025

Introduction
Was It a False Flag?

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance. Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack”? Or was it “a False Flag”?

In the words of Philip Giraldi:

“As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case.”

A Tissue of Lies
“A Tissue of Lies” has served to justify the killing in the Gaza Strip of more than 35,000 civilians, of which 70% are women and children coupled with total destruction and an endless string of atrocities.

The cat is out of the bag. Netanyahu has tacitly acknowledged that it was “A False Flag” which was intent upon justifying a carefully planned genocidal attack against Palestine:

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Does this candid statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians?

On that same day of October 7, 2023 Netanyahu launched a carefully planned military operation against the Gaza Strip entitled “State of Readiness For War”.

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance.

Had “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” been a “surprise attack” as parroted by the media, Netanyahu’s “State of Readiness For War” could not have been carried out (at short notice) on that same day, namely October 7, 2023.

South Africa’s Legal Procedure against the State of Israel
On January 11, 2024, the Republic of South Africa presented to The Hague World Court, a carefully formulated legal procedure against the State of Israel predicated on The Genocide Convention.

This legal procedure, however, has not contributed to repealing the ongoing genocide and saving the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.

I should mention that the False Flag issue —which constitutes a crime against humanity— was casually ignored by the ICJ.

Our suggestion is that an investigation followed by a legal procedure pertaining to the “False Flag” should be undertaken.

The heads of State and heads of government who have endorsed Israel’s Genocidal Acts are from a legal standpoint complicit.

The ICJ Judgement was contradictory. The Presiding Judge (former legal advisor to Hillary Clinton) was in conflict of interest:

The ICJ Judgment of January 26, 2024 assigns the Netanyahu government representing the State of Israel –accused by the Republic of South Africa of genocide against the People of Palestine– with a mandate to “take all measures within its power” to “prevent and punish” those responsible for having committed “Genocidal Acts”. (under Article IV of the Genocide Convention)

Sounds contradictory? What the ICJ judgment intimates –from a twisted legal standpoint– is that Netanyahu’s Cabinet which was “appointed” to implement the “prevent and punish” mandate cannot be accused of having committed “Genocidal Acts”.

See

[https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-icj-requires-netanyahu-to-prevent-and-punish-those-responsible-for-the-genocide/5847666]

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 24, 2024

Our intent is to provide a broad and detailed understanding of the false flag issue pertaining to Palestine.

The titles of the videos, articles and texts presented below:

1. Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?, by Dr. Philip Giraldi. 
2. Video: ICJ Hearings in The Hague, 
3. Text of Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum. Planning the Forcible Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland
4. Video: “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”, Interview. Michel Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux
5. “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”, by Michel Chossudovsky
6. Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor? But Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”, by Philip Giraldi 

In solidarity with the People of Palestine.

—Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 11, 2024, September 14, 2024, July 27, 2025, November 15, 2025

Part I

Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”?
They Let it Happen?

Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

by Dr. Philip Giraldi
October 8, 2023

Am I the only one who read about a speech given by Netanyahu or someone in his cabinet about a week ago in which he/they in passing referred to a “developing security situation” which rather suggests (to me) that they might have known about developments in Gaza and chose to let it happen so they can wipe Gaza off the map in retaliation and, possibly relying on the US pledge to have Israel’s “back,” then implicating Iran and attacking that country.

I cannot find a link to it, but have a fairly strong recollection of what I read as I thought at the time it would serve as a pretext for another massacre of Palestinians.

As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case.

And as is also ALWAYS the case Joe Biden is preparing to send some billions of dollars to poor little Israel to pay for “defending” itself.

Part II
VIDEO. ICJ Hearings in The Hague
January 2024
ICJ Hearings

1. January 11, 2024. Click Here to View the ICJ Hearings,
2. January 12, 2024. Israel’s Legal Team’s response to South Africa, ICJ The Hague at 10 am. Video in Real Time

[https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k11/k11gf661b3?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Ryan%20Grim%20Newsletter]

3. Video: South Africa’s Closing Argument against Israel for Genocide. January 11 Hearing at the World Court

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4oRlvP4gsY]

Part III
Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum
Planning the Forcible Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland
by Michel Chossudovsky
October 2023

An official “secret” memorandum authored by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations as well as consultations with the U.S.

The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry … assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip … It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. … The document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the ministry, has been translated into English in full here on +972.

See below, click here or below to access complete document (10 pages)

[https://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/secret-israel-memorandum-768×728.png]

For further details and analysis see:

“Wiping Gaza Off the Map”: Israel’s “Secret” Intelligence Memorandum “Option C” by Michel Chossudovsky

Part IV
Video: “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”
Interview: Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux
October 17, 2023

[https://rumble.com/v3prb44-michel-chossudovsky-false-flag-eradicating-gaza-from-the-map.html]

To comment or access Rumble

Part V

“False Flag”. Wiping Gaza Off the Map
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
October 12, 2023
.
Introduction
Early Saturday October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” led by Hamas’ Military Chief Mohammed Deif. On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War”.

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance (See Netanyahu’s January 2023 statement below). Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack” ?

U.S. intelligence say they weren’t aware of an impending Hamas attack.

“One would have to be almost hopelessly naïve to buy the corporate state media line that the Hamas invasion was an Israeli “intelligence failure”. Mossad is one of, if not the, most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet.”

Did Netanyahu and his vast military and intelligence apparatus (Mossad et al) have foreknowledge of the Hamas attack which has resulted in countless deaths of Israelis and Palestinians.

Was a carefully formulated Israeli plan to wage an all out war against Palestinians envisaged prior to the launching by Hamas of “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”? This was not a failure of Israeli Intelligence, as conveyed by the media. Quite the opposite.

Evidence and testimonies suggest that the Netanyahu government had foreknowledge of the actions of Hamas which have resulted in hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian deaths. And “They Let it Happen”:

“Hamas fired between 2-5 thousand rockets at Israel and hundreds of Israeli are dead, while dozens of Israelis were captured as prisoners of war. In the ensuing air response by Israel, hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Gaza.” (Stephen Sahiounie)

Following the Al Aqsa Storm Operation on October 7, Israel‘s defence minister described Palestinians as “human animals” and vowed to “act accordingly,” as fighter jets unleashed a massive bombing of the Gaza Strip home of 2.3 million Palestinians…” (Middle East Eye). A complete blockade on the Gaza Strip was initiated on October 9, 2023 consisting in blocking and obstructing the importation of food, water, fuel, and essential commodities to 2.3 Million Palestinians. It’s an outright crime against humanity. It’s genocide.

It is worth noting, that Netanyahu’s military actions are not targeting HAMAS, quite the opposite: he is targeting 2.3 million innocent Palestinian civilians, in blatant violation of the Four Basic Principles of The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC):

“….respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects [schools, hospitals and residential areas], the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” [Additional Protocol 1, Article 48]

Ironically, according to Scott Ritter, Hamas’ has acquired U.S. weapons in Ukraine.

This was Not a “Surprise Attack”
Was the Hamas Attack a “False Flag”?

“I served in the IDF 25 years ago, in the intelligence forces. There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming.

A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces. So this??

What happened to the “strongest army in the world”?

How come border crossings were wide open?? Something is VERY WRONG HERE, something is very strange, this chain of events is very unusual and not typical for the Israeli defense system.

To me this suprise attack seems like a planned operation. On all fronts.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that this feels like the work of the Deep State.

It feels like the people of Israel and the people of Palestine have been sold, once again, to the higher powers that be.

Link to video (click here)

(Statement by Efrat Fenigson, former IDF intelligence, October 7, 2023, emphasis added)

Ironically, the media (NBC) is now contending that the “Hamas attack bears hallmarks of Iranian involvement”

History: The Relationship between Mossad and Hamas
What is the relationship between Mossad and Hamas? Is Hamas an “intelligence asset”? There is a long history.

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. It was supported at the outset by Israeli intelligence as a means to weaken the Palestinian Authority:

“Thanks to Mossad, (Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”), Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat’s Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation.

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)”. (L’Humanité, translated from French)

The links of Hamas to Mossad and US intelligence have been acknowledged by Rep. Ron Paul in a statement to the U.S Congress: “Hamas Was Started by Israel”?

“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat… (Rep. Ron Paul, 2011)

What this statement entails is that Hamas is and remains “an intelligence asset”, namely “an “asset” to intelligence agencies”

See also the WSJ (January 24, 2009) “How Israel helped to Spawn Hamas”.

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. (WSJ, emphasis added)

“The Cat is Out of the Bag”
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Does this statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians?

“Support” and “Money” for Hamas.
“Transferring Money to Hamas” on behalf of Netanyahu is confirmed by a Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report:

“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)

The Dangers of Military Escalation?

Let us be under no illusions, this “false flag” operation is a complex military-intelligence undertaking, carefully planned over several years, in liaison and coordination with US intelligence, the Pentagon and NATO.

In turn, this action against Palestine is already conducive to a process of military escalation which potentially could engulf a large part of Middle East.

Israel is a de facto member NATO (with a special status) since 2004, involving active military and intelligence coordination as well as consultations pertaining to the occupied territories.

Military cooperation with both the Pentagon and NATO is viewed by Israel’s Defence Force (IDF) as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.”

The premise of NATO-Israel military cooperation is that “Israel is under attack”. Does Israel’s agreement with the Atlantic Alliance “obligate” NATO “to come to the rescue of Israel” under the doctrine of “collective security” (Article 5 of the Washington treaty)?

In recent developments, U.S. military deployments in the Middle East are ongoing allegedly to avoid escalation.

According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

There is always the risk that nations and/or organisations hostile to Israel will take try to take advantage. And that includes, for instance, organisations like Hezbollah or a country like Iran. So this is a message to countries and organisations hostile to Israel that they should not try to utilise the situation. And the United States have deployed, or has deployed more military forces in the region, not least to deter any escalation or prevent any escalation of the situation. (NATO Press Conference, Brussels, October 12, 2023, emphasis added)

Netanyahu’s “New Stage”
“The Long War” against Palestine

Netanyahu’s stated objective, which constitutes a new stage in the 75 year old war (since Nakba, 1948) against the people of Palestine is no longer predicated on “Apartheid” or “Separation”. This new stage –which is also directed against Israelis who want peace— consists in “total appropriation” as well as the outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland:

“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me [Netanyahu]: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” (Netanyahu January 2023. emphasis added)

We bring to the attention of our readers the incisive analysis of Dr. Philip Giraldi pointing to the likelihood of a “False Flag’”.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 8, 2023, Above text updated on October 12, 2023

Part VI
Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor?
But Who Actually Did What to Whom?
“This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

by Dr Philip Giraldi
October 16, 2023

.“As a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.”

It’s amazing how America’s thought-controlled media is able to come up with a suitable narrative almost immediately whenever there is an international incident that might be subject to multiple interpretations.

Since 1948 Israel has expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes,

has occupied nearly all of the historic Palestine, has empowered its army to kill thousands of local people, and

has more recently established an apartheid regime that even denies that Palestinian Arabs are human in the same sense that Jews are.

Netanyahu-allied government minister Ayelet Shaked memorably has called for Israel not only to exterminate all Palestinian children, whom she has described as “little snakes,” but also to kill their mothers who gave birth to them.

But when the Arabs strike back against the hatred that confronts them with their limited resources it is Israel that is described as the victimand the Palestinians who are dehumanized and portrayed as the “terrorists.”

Media in the US and Europe were quick to label the Hamas offensive breaching the formidable Israeli border defenses as “Israel’s 9/11” or even “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” to establish the context that the Israelis have been on the receiving end of an “unprovoked” attack by a cruel and heartless enemy.

Israel has responded to the attack with a heavy bombardment of Gaza that has destroyed infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, while also cutting off food supplies, water and electricity.

It has demanded that residents of north Gaza, all 1.1 million of them, evacuate to make way for a possible ground offensive but there is nowhere to go as all the borders are closed, and the United Nations is calling it a demand with “devastating humanitarian consequences.” Journalist Peter Beinart has commented “This is a monstrous crime. It’s happening in plain view, with US support.”

And the United States government is indeed typically on the same page as Israel. President Joe Biden, citing fabricated stories about dead Jewish babies, speaks of how Israel has a “duty” to defend itself, while the Palestinians somehow have no right to protect themselves at all, much less to rise up against their persecutors in a struggle for freedom.

And Washington has also unhesitatingly chosen to directly involve itself in the conflict, completely on the side of the Jewish state, asserting repeatedly that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and telling the Israelis that “we have your back” while also dispatching two aircraft carrier groups to the scene of the fighting as well as the 101st Airborne to Jordan and increasing the readiness of Marines stationed in Kuwait.

The White House could have taken more aggressive steps to encourage a ceasefire and talks but has chosen instead to issue essentially toothless calls to let the trapped civilians escape while also backing a devastating Israeli military response.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X

Israel is also hosting the worthless and brain dead Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who will be providing advice along the lines of his insightful comment that Hamas is “evil” and “worse than ISIS.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken is already in Jerusalem, announcing that the US is there to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unity government “as long as America exists” after first saying “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.”

Blinken’s explicit association of his personal religion with his official role as a representative of the US government makes clear that a key element in why he is there is because he is “a Jew.” Perhaps he should recuse himself from policy making involving Israel as being “a Jew” would not appear to be a United States national interest and is likely to produce irrational responses to developing situations.

If all of this sounds a lot like Ukraine it should, except that in Ukraine the US and NATO are fighting against Russia, which is being demonized for occupying what is claimed Ukrainian territory, whereas in Palestine they are supporting the occupier of actual Palestinian territory, Israel.

Funny thing that, and the word “hypocrisy” comes immediately to mind. As it turns out, however, I am somewhat on the same page as much of the media, agreeing that the Hamas incursion is something like 9/11, though I am sure that my take would not be found acceptable to the CNN Jake Tappers of this world.

My thinking is that Israel knew in advance about 9/11 in the United States due to its extensive spying network and chose not to share the information because it was to their advantage not to do so.

Indeed, a pleased Netanyahu even stated several years later that “9/11 was a good thing because it made the United States join us in our fight.”

That the attacks killed 3,000 Americans did not bother the Israeli government as Israel has a long history of killing Americans when it can benefit from so doing, starting with the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 which killed 34 sailors.

So too in this case in Gaza, Netanyahu may have decided to encourage an unexpected development, making it like 9/11, that would enable him to escalate and “mow the grass” as the Israelis put it, in the remainder of Arab Palestine.

And bear in mind that the actual incident that triggered the uprising was a rampage involving at least 800 Israeli settlers in and around the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, beating pilgrims and destroying Palestinian shops, all without any interference from the nearby Israeli security forces. The rioting was clearly allowed and even encouraged by the government.

Drawing on my experience as a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.

Israel had an extensive electronic and physical wall backed by soldiers and weaponry that completely surrounded Gaza on the landward side, so effective that it was claimed that not even a mouse could get in.

The Mediterranean side of Gaza was also tightly controlled by the Israeli Navy and boats to and from Gaza were completely blocked.

Egypt tightly controlled the southern part of Gaza bordering on the Sinai. So Gaza was under 24/7 complete surveillance and control at all times. Israeli military intelligence also certainly had a network of recruited informants inside Gaza who would report on any training or movements, easy enough to do when you can approach people who are starving and make them an offer they cannot refuse just for providing information on what they see and hear.

And then there was a warning from the Egyptian government to Israel ten days before the Hamas attack, with Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally calling Netanyahu and sharing intelligence suggesting that the Gazans were likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” Other media accounts reveal how Hamas trained and practiced their maneuvers publicly. There were also assessments made by US intelligence, which were shared with Israel, suggesting that something was afoot. So, given all of the evidence, there likely was no intelligence failure to anticipate and counter the Hamas attack but rather a political decision made by the Israeli government that knew what might be coming and chose to let it proceed to provide a casus belli to destroy Gaza, vowing that “Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” and then go on from there. And “from there” might well include Lebanon, Syria and Iran, possibly with the assistance of the United States to do the heavy lifting. Iran in particular is already being blamed by the usual suspects as a party involved in the Hamas attack, so far without any evidence whatsoever, which is typical of how these stories evolve.

And Israel has moved far to the right politically to such an extent that it might appreciate a little ethnic cleansing to demonstrate its seriousness. Netanyahu and other senior government officials in his cabinet have recently been making passing references to a “developing security situation” in the country to justify the intensifying of the raids by the army against Palestinian towns and refugee camps. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He has been exploiting his position to call in particular for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza, which is precisely what is happening. Gaza might be of particular interest to Ben-Gvir and others as it uniquely shelters an armed and organized resistance in the form of Hamas, which, oddly, was founded with the support of Israel to split the Palestinian political resistance with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

There is another issue relating to the recent fighting that one would like to know the answer to, namely how did Hamas get its weapons in the first place?

Some were clearly manufactured from parts and scrap but others were sophisticated and, as Gaza is blockaded on all sides, smuggling them in becomes problematical. One argument is that they were supplied by Iran and others to be brought in by tunnels, but the tunnels on two sides would end up in Israel and on the third side in Egypt. The fourth side is the Mediterranean Sea. So how did they arrive? Is there a possible triple or even quadruple cross taking place with different parties lying to each other? And should there be concerns that after the American armada arrives off the coast of Gaza there just might be some kind of false flag incident engineered by Netanyahu that will involve Washington directly in the fighting?

And there is what amounts to a related issue that should be of concern to everyone in the US and generically speaking the “Western world” where human rights are at least nominally respected. The message from almost all Western governments is that Israel has a carte blanche to do whatever it likes even when it involves war crimes to include mass forced displacement or genocide. In this case, the coordinated government-media response which is intended to protect Israel from any criticism almost immediately began circulating fabricated tales of atrocities while also delivering a hit on freedom of speech and association. President Biden, who should be trying to defuse the crisis, is instead adding fuel to the flames, saying of Hamas that “Pure, unadulterated evil has been unleashed on the earth!”

In Florida the arch Zionist stooge Governor Ron Desantis met with Jewish leaders in a synagogue to announce draconian measures against Iran to include sanctions on companies that are in any way linked to that country. One might point out that those businesses have done nothing wrong and Desantis also called for “eradication of Hamas from the earth.” His intellectual depth was at the same time revealed when he said the US should not take in any Gazan refugees because they are “antisemites.”

And in South Carolina, America’s favorite he/she Senator Lindsey Graham is calling for a US attack on Iran as well as declaring the war against Hamas to be “a religious war” and urging the Israeli army to invade Gaza and do “Whatever the hell you have to do to” to “level the place.”

And the Europeans are equally spineless in their deference to Israel. The Israeli president declared the that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, and not long after that top European Union representatives met with him to offer their unqualified support. Meanwhile in France, the spineless and feckless government of Emmanuel Macron has sought to outlaw any gathering that expresses support for Palestinian rights.

And in the UK, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman has proposed criminalizing any protest against Israeli actions or anything in support of Palestine to include banning any public display of the Palestinian national flag, which she regards as a “criminal offense toward the Jewish community in Britain.”

She has also said that “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.” Berlin’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has also classified the use of the expression as a “criminal offense.” The manner in which most Western political elites are lining up unquestionably and even enthusiastically behind Israel and its craven leaders’ desire for bloody vengeance is truly shocking but comes as no surprise.

Beyond the issue of Gaza itself, some in Israel are arguing that Netanyahu has personally benefitted from the unrest through the creation of the national unity government which has ended for the time being the huge demonstrations protesting his judicial reform proposals. If all of this comes together politically as it might in the next several weeks, we could be seeing the initial steps in what will develop into the complete ethnic cleansing of what was once Palestine, in line with Netanyahu’s assertion that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” So all of the former Palestine is now a land to be defined by its Jewishness where Jews are in full control and are free to do whatever they want without any objection, referred to by the Israeli government as “an exclusive right to self-determination.” And it has all possibly been brought to fruition by the enablement provided by the current developments in Gaza.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.

30 December 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

By Prof. Richard Falk

After October 7

24 Dec 2025 – Throughout this period challenging the adequacy of the UN in the face of genocide, there were reasons to redeem its reputation, including an awareness that its refusal to respect judgments of the leading international tribunals (International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court). It needs to be better understood that when the UN was established 80 years ago the Charter design gave the last word on issues of global security to the five winning states in World War, and not to international law as believed by its most ardent champions.

By clear intention despite the priority accorded war prevention in the Preamble to the Charter, the capabilities of the UN to act coercively against aggression, apartheid, and genocide were withheld from the Organization. Instead, the winners (that is, the five permanent members of the Security Council of P5) of the recently concluded war against fascism were also given a right of veto that amounted to a limitless entitlement of any one of the five in the only UN political organ with the authority to make binding decisions, and this provision meant not only an opting out of decisions contrary to their will but of preventing Security Council from acting even when the other 14 members were united in voting for the decision. In practice this meant that prospects for peace and security in major conflict situations were left to the geopolitical calculations and alignments of these most powerful and dangerous members of the new organization.

During the Cold War, which prevailed globally between 1945-1991 the paralysis of the UN in relation to the management of global security was mainly due to the discretion at the disposal of the opposed alliances of the US-led NATO forces on one side of the ideological divide and strategic rivalry and Soviet-led Warsaw forces on the other side. The UN contented itself with being a spectator, or site of opposing propaganda denunciations as regarding the Vietnam War, Moscow’s interventions in Eastern Europe, and other settings of violent conflict involving the strategic interests of the P5. This was partly due to the constitutional framework of the UN, but it also reflected the unwillingness of many leading countries to dilute sovereignty when it came to national security. This refusal was most dramatically illustrated by the rejection of nuclear disarmament and a preferred reliance on deterrence, exhibiting the militarist orientations of foreign policy elites in leading governments. It blends a militarized hard power version of global security with P5 strategic ambitions to reinvent Western domination in a period of collapsing European colonialism.

Against this background, the role of the UN while disappointing was not surprising given the strong ties between the white West and Israel in this encounter with a Muslim majority Palestine in the strategically important Middle East. This lent the struggle an inter-civilizational dimension while also posing a challenge to Western hegemony in relation to energy reserves, arms sales, and more generally, trade and investment. This line of interpretation was accentuated by the anti-Western religiously oriented Hamas, a non-state entity that was characterized in Western media and state propaganda as nothing other than a terrorist organization. Such a posture ignored the 2006 political victory of Hamas in an internationally monitored election and its role as the center of legally grounded Palestinian resistance to an Israeli occupation that consistently violated international humanitarian legal standards as set forth in the 4th Geneva Convention of 1949 governing ‘belligerent occupation.’ UN members complicit with Israel supported the genocide in Gaza for two years, stepping back from support mainly because of the rise of public protest activity in their countries that Israel had exceeded all constraints of law and morality in persisting with its genocidal campaign. It should be appreciated that the ICJ by a near unanimous vote on July 19, 2024 declared continuing Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank (and even East Jerusalem) to be unlawful, decreeing its withdrawal, an outcome that the General Assembly formally supported and Israel and its support group ignored.

This political agenda explains the six ceasefire initiatives that were vetoed in the Security Council combined with the failure of complicit states, above all, the United States, to use its soft power leverage to induce Israel to stop its assault on Gaza and satisfy the legitimate grievances of the Palestinian people. Such a willingness is inhibited by adhering political realism of the pre-nuclear age and the special interests of the arms industries and a long militarized governmental bureaucracy.

The Disgraceful UN Response to the Trump Plan

In my view, the 15 members of the Security Council, disgracefully voted unanimously in favor of the US draft resolution, adopted as SC Resolution 2803 on November 17, 2025, endorsing the Trump Plan for the stabilization of Gaza. The plan emerged with the approval of Israel, significantly unveiled during a Netanyahu visit to the White House at a joint press conference. The core feature of the plan was to reward the perpetrators of prolonged genocide preceded by apartheid and resulting in making a wasteland of Gaza. Not only were there no references in the resolution to Israel’s defiance of rulings of the International Court of Justice, resolutions of the General Assembly, or the assessments of independent scholars and genocide. Neither Israel nor the United States, nor the other complicit states were even obliged to pay reparations for the unlawful damage caused in Gaza, but this was left to be sorted out by the combined forces of vulture capitalism operating freely as if Gaza reconstruction was a real estate venture and the monetary contributions of Arab governments.

In this process, not only was the diplomatic framework imposed on the Palestinians, but the US was accepted as the legitimate ‘peacemaker’ although it was overtly collaborating with Israel in drafting the plan and pointedly excluding Palestinian participation. Indeed, the US Government went so far as deny visas to any Palestinian Authority delegate who sought to attend the General Assembly meeting of the UN or to otherwise take part in UN proceedings shaping Palestine. What makes the resolution a step backward if the objective had been what it should have been, arrangements for a peaceful and just future crafted with the participation of proper Palestinian representation and dedicated to a just and durable peace.

Instead, SC Resolution 2803 if considered as a whole, indirectly exonerates the culprits for their past behavior carrying impunity to an extreme. Beyond this 2803 visibly acknowledges US total control the present diplomatic efforts to replace unrestrained Israeli violence with a ceasefire that Israel ignores at its pleasure. The bloody result has been hundreds of lethal violations of the ceasefire killing up to now of over 400 Palestinians by estimates of the Gaza Health Ministry, without Israel even being reprimanded by Washington for so abusing a ceasefire deal. Why Hamas accepts this Israeli practice of accepting the ceasefire while continuing with genocide at a decelerated rate, and exhibiting indifference to the persistence of widespread severe suffering among the entire Gazan population of two million.

As to the future, 2803 endorses a colonialist transitional arrangement given operational reality by a Board of Peace, of course chaired by none other than Donald Trump and given stability in Gaza by the formation of an International Stabilization Force to be formed by the contributions of troops by UN members endorsing the plan. The US has brazenly acknowledged its own transactional goals by pledging $112 billion to rebuild Gaza as a global hub for trade, investment, and tourism. Governance in Gaza is left in part to Israel that seems to be claiming a permanent security presence in northern Gaza above the so-called yellow line.

Given the highly dubious manner of recovering from the Gaza catastrophe at this late stage, how can we explain its widespread international support, and the disappearance of opposition in the Security Council? The five SC members from the Global South (Algeria, Somalia, Guyana, Sierra Leone, and Panama), made some critical comments about 2803 during the formal discussion that preceded the vote, centering on its vagueness as to crucial details and even its one-sidedness, yet all ended up voting in favor. Did such a vote reflect genuine agreement, or more likely, was it a vote that recognized geopolitical primacy when it came to the management of global security? And why would Indonesia and Pakistan, Muslim majority countries, even if not members of SC, go out of their way to express approval of the 2803 path to the future? More understandable was the approval expressed by the European Union, which again served as a reminder that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is part of Judeo-Christian civilizational long game of sustaining Middle Eastern hegemony.

As troubling was the endorsement of 2803 given by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who not only welcomed the resolution but expressed the hope that its momentum would be converted into “concrete action.” Thankfully, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, 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 Israël’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including ongoing unlawful policies and practices, and therefore risks legitimating ongoing mass violence.” Revealingly, Albanese spoke these words of truth to power, after enduring punitive sanctions imposed in July for her courageous willingness to bear official witness to what was becoming all too clear to the eyes and ears of the peoples of the world. It is ironic that the UN’s response to 2803 was somewhat rescued from taints of complicity by an unpaid appointee not subject to UN discipline. Her words are congruent with those of Craig Mokhiber who resigned from a senior position at the UN because of its failure to deal responsibly with respect to Palestinian grievances, and in the last couple of years emerged as the most informed and incisive critic of the UN approach, reinforcing Albanese’s forthrightness on behalf of law and justice with respect to Palestinian grievances and rights, but the Organization’s own transactional approach in clashed between geopolitical imperatives and compliance with the UN Charter.

It also seems strange that Russia and China, although voicing some criticisms during the discussion, did not use their right of veto to block passage of 2803, especially given the frequent use of the veto on Israel’s behalf by the US and considering the principles at stake. It is likely that they were impressed by Hamas’ acceptance of the overall approach and did not want to be seen as spoilers held responsible for a breakdown of the Trump Plan that would have undoubtedly mean the end of the already tarnished ceasefire. Additionally, China and Russia both seem to regard global stability as dependent upon a degree of geopolitical reciprocity in relation to their trilateral relations. In this limited sense, Trump seems more in accord with how cooperative relations with these two countries would bring stability and transactional gains than did the Biden approach of fighting Russia by way of Ukraine to preserve US post-Cold War dominance, a path that increased the risk of a third world war fought with nuclear war leading to a lengthening of the Ukraine War with heave casualties on both sides. Trump’s approach, although fragile because of his mercurial style, stressing geopolitical stability if it meant accepting spheres of influence as compromising the sovereignty of smaller states and even, as here, overlooking genocide.

The rejection of 2803 by Hamas was not entirely a surprise. It does not explain why Hamas ever accepted the Trump diplomacy at its outset except for its ceasefire and IDF withdrawal prospects. Hamas’ acceptance extended to the whole of the Trump plan, but with this stand against 2803 and its announced refusal to disarm it may now be either the basis of a better compromise or at least a stalemate as to further progress. Hamas, and Iran, the other vocal critic of the resolution, also undoubtedly are reacting to the absence on Israel’s part of any willingness to show signs of embracing a politics of reconciliation, even to the extent of conscientiously upholding the early ceasefire, partial withdrawal, and an end to the rigid constraints on humanitarian aid. For Israel to have shown no mercy to a population living without heat, secure shelter, and adequate food and medical supplies is to send the chilling message that Israel has not even considered abandoning its expansionist ambitions that include further ethnic cleansing in Gaza and a surge of settlement growth on the West Bank.

The US representative insisting that “[a] vote against this resolution is a vote to return to war” was part of the ‘take it or leave it’ Trump approach. Nor is it surprising that Netanyahu hailed the endorsement of 2803 by declaring “that President Trump’s plan will lead to peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarization, disarmament, and the deradicalization of Gaza.”[15] Or that France and the UK sugarcoated their endorsements of the Trump Plan by verbal statements of conditional support for eventual Palestinian statehood as affirmed in its sponsorship of the New York Declaration, envisioning future Palestinian representation under the authority of a reconstituted Palestinian Authority (PA), itself a creature of US/Israel dominated diplomacy that has evaded Palestinian self-determination, but now is being repurposed to implement the Trump Plan. The PA announced support for 2803 is a move calculated to convince Israel and the US that it can be counted upon to go along with their stabilization scenario despite its rejection of Palestinian grievances and denial of Palestine’s right of self-determination. Offering such ‘breadcrumb’ rewards to the PA, while disqualifying Hamas from any role in representing the Palestinian people is emblematic of the next phase of the Zionist end game involving the political surrender of Palestine and the elimination of Hamas and Palestinian resistance.

Concluding Remarks

The maneuvers of states, following their interests rather than supposedly shared values associated with the UN Charter and the international rule of law, is to be expected given the history of international relations and the political realist orientation of most foreign policy elites. Nevertheless, it is regrettable, given the gross disregard of justice and rights, which pervades the Trump Plan and the diplomatic and hard power muscle at the disposal of the US. It does not augur well for meeting other world order challenges including climate change, migratory flows, ecological stability, less inequitable distributions of wealth and income to individuals, states, and regions, as well as a more robust commitment to peaceful modes of conflict resolution.

This saga of 2803 is particularly unfortunate because it shows that the geopolitical management of global security extends beyond the veto power of the P5. For the sake of stability, the UN venue implicitly swallows the Israeli genocide to an unseemly extent of unanimously endorsing a neo-colonialist future for Gaza and impunity plus for Israel and its complicit supporters. Symbolic of this unseemly submission by the UN and its membership is the endorsement of 2803 by the UN leader, an individual declared persona non grata by Israel more than a year ago. Israel’s insulting dismissal of the UN as ‘a cesspool of antisemitism’ and the like should have at least led the Organization’s Secretary General to respond with stony silence to 2803 rather than kneel in submission sending a shameful message to the world that from the perspective of the UN even genocide does not disqualify a state from receiving diplomatic and territorial rewards as long as the geopolitical actors or P5 remain on board. In effect, the dynamics of power politics is still making history, despite the disastrous consequences.

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.

29 December 2025

Source: .transcend.org

By Dr. Vandana Shiva 

Consciousness Symposium (2024)

Can quantum physics help us rethink the nature of consciousness? In this inspiring keynote from A Symposium on Consciousness, Dr. Vandana Shiva—a renowned physicist, author, and environmental activist—explores the profound connections between quantum mechanics, consciousness, and ecological democracy. Introduced by Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín of the Pari Center, Shiva explains how entanglement and non-duality offer transformative insights for science, philosophy, and environmental activism, moving beyond the limits of mechanistic science.

Shiva draws from the wisdom of quantum pioneers like Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, and David Bohm, whose work shows that consciousness is not confined to the brain but instead serves as the foundation of reality itself. Reflecting on ancient teachings from the Vedas and Upanishads, Shiva challenges the illusion of separateness that dominates modern thought and highlights the importance of seeing biodiversity and ecological systems as interconnected living networks.

Her ideas bridge quantum physics with practical solutions for seed sovereignty, sustainable agriculture, and ecological participation. The talk reflects Shiva’s lifelong commitment to social justice and environmental activism. Drawing on her work with the Navdanya movement, she discusses the mind-body connection, the role of consciousness in quantum theory, and the urgent need to overcome ecological apartheid. This keynote invites viewers to explore how consciousness can inspire a future rooted in biodiversity, sustainability, and ecological harmony.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4t8Xt_QqGE]

TRANSCEND Member Prof. Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmentalist, physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, food sovereignty advocate, and an anti-globalization author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy (RFSTN) in 1982 and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers’ rights. Shiva received the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993. She is executive director of the Navdanya Trust.

29 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Richard E. Rubenstein

The Near Death and Possible Rebirth of Human Solidarity

Exactly 70 years ago, when I was a high school senior living in a suburb of New York City, I went with my parents to see a photo exhibit called “The Family of Man” at MOMA – the Museum of Modern Art. I remember it vividly. Some 500 photos by more than 250 photographers pictured people of virtually every culture involved in common human activities: love, childbirth, work, family, education, war, and peace. According to Edward Steichen, the great photographer who curated it, the exhibit “was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life – a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.” For the next eight years the show toured the globe . . . but the ideas that inspired it have long since gone into hibernation. In place of the human family conceived of as our primary identity group we have come to sanctify the ethnic nation.

How did this happen? What (if anything) can be done about it? It may help to put the hope for human solidarity in historical context.

The vision of humanity as a coherent group sharing common characteristics – a society actually or potentially like a family – originated in the religions of the axial age. To Jews, Christians, and Muslims, all people were children of God and descendants of common human ancestors, with each person possessing an equally precious soul. Eventually, they believed, God would fulfill his promise to create a universal world order, peaceful and just, recognizing the implicit holiness of every individual and every people. Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains made different assumptions about the nature of deity and the soul, but they, too, believed that human beings shared a common nature and were part of an overarching moral-spiritual order. Early Enlightenment philosophers, secular as well as religious, based the unity of mankind on the universality of reason, the existence of natural law and rights, and the possibility of human progress. Later analysts in the age of modern science asserted that humans constitute a single biological species, with each individual possessing a common neuro- psychological makeup.

That was the theory – but what about the practice? Despite these commonalities, it was clear that some forms of diversity might trump unity. The potential unity of humankind did not prevent its actual division into tribes, castes, social classes, and nations — divisions that were deep, long-lasting, and often generative of massive bloodshed and trauma. Nevertheless, the prophets of solidarity (for they were prophets, not simply analysts of “things as they are now”) asserted that the destiny of human individuals was to create a peaceful world order based on what Immanuel Kant called “cosmopolitical unity.” Karl Marx objected that this solidarity could not emerge while humanity was divided into unequally privileged social classes, but he insisted that workers’ rule would permit the development of a “species consciousness” transcending narrower forms of identity based on ethnicity and nationalism. A century later, Mohandas Gandhi emphasized that diverse identities of various sorts could be maintained while also being transcended. For him the human journey was headed toward the goal of “unity in diversity.”

These were some of the concepts underlying the Family of Man exhibit. They reflected the optimistic hopes of many progressive thinkers and activists in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Progress, symbolized by the new United Nations building rising a few blocks east of MOMA, meant realizing the potential of all peoples and nations to treat each other with the same sort of compassion, care, and responsibility that one would expect of good friends, if not members of the same family. An implication was that this fellow-feeling would produce some sort of political unity reaching beyond the nation-state and competing blocs of states. The UN was not a world government nor was it expected to be, but commentators from Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell to Winston Churchill and Jawaharlal Nehru believed that it was an important step in that direction.

What shattered these hopes and made them seem so abstract, naïve, and utopian? For years, the standard answer was the Cold War. After one or two years of international collaboration, the postwar world had divided into hostile communist and capitalist blocs, with each side denouncing each other as evil incarnate, threatening its enemy with nuclear destruction, and fighting “limited” but highly destructive wars. But the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, and more than a generation later its promised peace dividends remain undelivered. Not only is there no rebirth of the movement to realize human solidarity, but divisions based on people’s identification with ethnic, religious, and national groups have intensified and become more lethal – even genocidal.

The latest manifestation of these divisions, sometimes called right-wing populism, has seen a resurgence of ethno-nationalist fervor, competition, and violence around the globe, with leaders like Donald Trump (U.S.), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Volodymyr Zelenski (Ukraine), Narendra Modi (India), Viktor Orban (Hungary), and Benjamin Netanyahu (Israel), among many others, implementing economic, political, and cultural policies that strongly favor members of their own ethnic “nation” and disfavor members of other groups, internal and international, that they consider competitors and sources of impurity. The leading prophet of this development was the late Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard University, who argued that Cold War competition between blocs committed to opposed socioeconomic ideologies was giving way to a competition between eight “civilizations” – blocs separated by strongly conflicting cultural values and interests. Although Huntington’s analysis implied a shift from a dual power struggle toward multipolarity, he and others associated with the neoconservative movement believed that the major “clash of civilizations” of the new era would pit “the West against the rest.”

One has to admire the descriptive power of Huntington’s theory. From the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the genocidal Israel-Palestine conflict, and brutal civil struggles in Africa and Southeast Asia, violent conflicts often take place along civilizational or tribal-nationalist lines. What the analysis most obviously lacks, however, is a convincing causal explanation. Why did conflicts between culture-groups come to replace the Cold War struggle? Why have so many struggles pitted “the West against the rest”? Why do so many people around the globe, particularly workers, farmers, and members of the small business class, feel that the only way to secure threatened cultural identities and interests is to conflate their ethnic or religious group with the nation and embrace the dogma of “America First” (or India, Pakistan, Israel, Russia, Hungary, Myanmar, or any other nation First)?

Three related ideas help to explain the rise of ethno-nationalist strife: the irresistible movement toward globalization, the persistence of imperialism, and the inability of late-capitalist economic and political institutions to solve working people’s problems. A brief comment on each factor follows:

1. People are inclined to create and join militant, armed ethnic, religious, or nationalist organizations when they feel that these cultural identities are seriously threatened.  A major source of such threats in today’s world is the movement toward globalization, which is linked to the globalization of capital and trade, but also involves the exposure of every major social group in virtually every nation to the ideas, images, songs, and stories of other groups around the world, as well as to their diseases, medicines, methods of education and communication, and methods of war. Exposure to other cultures alone does not necessarily threaten one’s ethnic, national, or religious identity, but it often does so if those identities are already compromised by poverty or precarity, the loss of political power, or social indignity.  In many nations, for example, “nativist” anti-immigrant passion is fueled by the eroding economic and social status of native groups.
2. “The West against the rest” makes no sense unless one recognizes that in the U.S. the Cold War was immediately followed by the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” declaring America’s intention to remain the world’s sole military superpower and to suppress any potential rivals. This implied the continued maintenance of the U.S. role as the imperial successor to Britain and France in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, as well as continued North American domination of Central and Latin America. Fueled by aggressive oligopoly capitalism, imperialism generates continual violence by empowering oppressive elites in subject nations and by threatening the political and cultural identities of non-elite groups.  Rebels against imperial domination, as well as competitive nations with imperial ambitions of their own, tend to organize resistance by appealing to the ethnic, religious, or national solidarity of aggrieved groups.  Especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the suppression of communist and socialist rebels elsewhere, anti-imperial resistance has emphasized ethnic and religious identities rather than those based on social class.
3. A world troubled by imperialist violence as well as environmental destruction, climate-based disasters, pandemic diseases, mass migrations, and other challenges affecting all humanity desperately needs global solutions to global problems.  But oligopoly capitalism exacerbates such problems rather than solving them. “Late capitalism” generates vast social and political inequalities that undermine the prosperity, power, and social status of working people and threaten their cultural identities.  The system’s fundamental driver, the pursuit of private profit, precludes the public planning needed to deal with climate change, medical challenges, mass migration, and a host of other problems.  At the same time, the masters of the system have sought to protect their privileges by making ideological and political challenges to the capitalist order taboo – unthinkable! – and by controlling the major communications media as well as most educational institutions.  As a result, working people increasingly disadvantaged by soluble social problems are often persuaded that they have been victimized by sinister cultural enemies rather than by profit-seeking, empire-building oligarchs and their political enablers.

To conclude: seldom has the world been more in need of a workable, realizable doctrine of human solidarity.  The antidote to the alarming increase in ethno-national savagery is cultivation of the understanding that our primary identity (in the sense of wholeness, as opposed to partiality) is human, not just ethnic or national.  Regardless of even deep cultural and political differences, we have the inherent emotional and intellectual capacity to treat each other as friends and family members and to build viable institutions reflecting the consciousness of our mutual needs and responsibilities.  But Marx was right: we can’t get there under the aegis of a profit-obsessed system that sets us against each other in the struggle for economic advantage, fails to solve collective social problems, defines our enemies as cultural “others,” and tries to convince us that no better system is possible.

The road to human solidarity isn’t straight or easy.  It is littered with obstacles, including the oligarchy, its political allies, and the rules that a predatory capitalist order imposes on the rest of us.  Changing these leaders and their rules clears the way for real progress toward the only goal worthy of our species: unity in diversity.

__________________________________________

Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the TRANSCEND Media Service Editorial Committee, of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University’s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

29 December 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Ranjan Solomon

India today wears two faces, locked in the same body but living in radically different realities. One face smiles confidently at global summits, speaks the language of rankings and growth curves, and celebrates itself as an emerging world power. The other face does not smile. It queues for work that never comes, buries its dead quietly, negotiates fear daily, and survives on debt, charity, or silence.

This split is not accidental. It is political.

The first face is manufactured through slogans -India Shining, Ache Din, Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar, Vishwaguru. Each arrived with spectacle, promise, and certainty. Each collapsed when confronted with lived reality. Vajpayee’s India Shining failed because the rural poor, the informal worker, and the unemployed refused to recognise themselves in that narrative. Two decades later, Ache Din has followed the same path—only with louder amplification and deeper denial.

Slogans fail when they insult experience

The much-touted dream of “char sau par” collapsed not merely because of electoral arithmetic, but because India itself is cracking under the weight of unresolved structural crises. No amount of propaganda can erase hunger, joblessness, fear, or grief. When the gap between narrative and reality becomes too wide, legitimacy erodes.

The claim that India is now the world’s fourth-largest economy is the latest iteration of this narrative excess. Economic rankings are paraded as proof of national success, yet they float above collapsing foundations. GDP size does not translate automatically into well-being. Growth without redistribution is arithmetic, not justice. Nirmala Sitharaman’s celebratory statistics may satisfy investors, but they do not reflect the India that lives below, besides, and outside those numbers.

That India tells a far more disturbing story

Despite decades of growth, over 60 percent of India’s economy remains informal, and over 90 percent of its workforce lacks job security or social protection. Wealth has concentrated dramatically: the top 1 percent controls over 40 percent of national wealth, while the bottom half struggles to survive on a sliver of the economy. India today is among the most unequal societies in the world, a fact rarely acknowledged in official discourse.

Poverty, despite repeated claims of eradication, persists in stubborn and degrading forms. Conservative estimates suggest over 200 million Indians still live on extremely low daily incomes, while deprivation in nutrition, healthcare, housing, and education remains widespread. India continues to house one-third of the world’s poor, a staggering contradiction for a country aspiring to global leadership.

Nowhere is this contradiction sharper than in rural India

Nearly two-thirds of Indians still depend on rural livelihoods, yet agriculture contributes less than 18 percent to GDP. Farm incomes remain volatile, climate shocks are increasing, and institutional support is weak. More than half of all agricultural households are indebted, borrowing not to expand production but to survive—paying for seeds, fertilisers, healthcare, marriages, and funerals.

This structural neglect has produced one of India’s gravest tragedies: farmer suicides. Since the mid-1990s, over 300,000 farmers have taken their own lives, according to official crime records. Even in recent years, when the government speaks of rural resurgence, thousands of farmers die by suicide annually, crushed by debt, crop failure, price volatility, and the absence of meaningful state support.

These deaths are not accidents. They are policy outcomes.

Migration from villages has become an act of compulsion rather than choice. Entire regions are hollowing out as young people leave not in search of opportunity, but escape. Villages are ageing, feminising, and impoverishing, even as political rhetoric romanticises the “resilient farmer.”

Urban India, meanwhile, showcases the two faces of the nation in brutal proximity. Skyscrapers rise beside slums. Luxury housing stands vacant while over 65 million people live in informal settlements, and at least 1.8 million are officially homeless, a figure widely believed to be a gross undercount. Informal workers build cities they will never own, clean spaces they will never inhabit, and commute through systems designed to exclude them.

Employment—the foundation of dignity—has been systematically undermined. Youth unemployment remains alarmingly high, hovering around 20–25 percent, with even higher rates among educated youth. Women’s participation in the workforce has fallen to around 25 percent, among the lowest globally. This is not empowerment; it is economic erasure.

The government speaks endlessly of entrepreneurship while small and medium enterprises—the largest employers—collapse under credit shortages, erratic taxation, and policy shocks. MSMEs employ over 110 million people, yet receive only a fraction of the support extended to large corporations. Jobless growth has been normalised, and insecurity reframed as flexibility.

Infrastructure is paraded as proof of progress, yet it increasingly reveals the recklessness of speed over safety. India records over 150,000 road deaths annually, the highest in the world. Rail accidents, collapsing bridges, unsafe construction, and poorly regulated highways expose a governance model obsessed with announcements rather than accountability. Development measured in kilometres instead of lives is not development—it is negligence.

The second face of India is also visible in its mounting debt. India’s public debt now exceeds 80 percent of GDP, placing enormous strain on future generations. States borrow heavily not for transformation, but to meet routine expenditure. Household debt has surged, with personal and informal borrowing rising faster than incomes. For millions, debt has become a survival mechanism, not a ladder to mobility.

Several states are now fiscally stressed, struggling to service debt while maintaining basic welfare. Goa stands as a stark example. Often projected as a prosperous state due to tourism and high per capita income, Goa is today among the most indebted states in the country on a per capita basis. Its public finances are strained, its dependence on volatile tourism revenue deepened, and its local livelihoods hollowed out. Youth unemployment is rising, environmental degradation is accelerating, and informal work dominates the economy behind the postcard image. Goa’s crisis exposes a deeper truth: headline prosperity can mask profound structural fragility.

Perhaps the most damning failure of the current model lies in the condition of women and children.

Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao has become one of the most cynical slogans of our time. Crimes against women are reported every few minutes, with over 30,000 rape cases annually and conviction rates that barely cross 30 percent. Violence has become routine, justice delayed, and accountability absent. Safety is no longer assumed; it is negotiated daily.

India’s children—its most repeated rhetorical asset—bear the silent cost of this fractured reality. Over one-third of Indian children are stunted, and nearly one-third are underweight. Learning losses post-pandemic has been severe, particularly among government school students. Child labour, migration, and early dropouts continue unabated. The so-called demographic dividend is being starved before it matures.

The two faces of India also experience democracy differently. One celebrates electoral spectacle and majoritarian confidence. The other confronts shrinking freedoms, criminalised dissent, and hollowed institutions. Protest is delegitimised, civil society constrained, media intimidated, and constitutional safeguards treated as inconveniences.

Nationalism has become a substitute for economic accountability. Communal polarisation diverts attention from material failure. Identity is mobilised to silence questions of justice, redistribution, and dignity. What makes this moment dangerous is not inequality alone, but denial. Surveys are delayed, definitions changed, uncomfortable data buried. But hunger cannot be redefined away. Debt cannot be wished into prosperity. Despair cannot be marketed as pride indefinitely.

India does not need another slogan. It needs an honest reckoning.

Until the two faces of India are forced into conversation – until growth answers to hunger, infrastructure to safety, and power to accountability – the smiling face will continue speaking.And the suffering face will continue waiting.

History will not remember rankings or catchphrases. It will remember whether a nation chose truth over theatre—and justice over denial.

Ranjan Solomon has worked in social movements since he was 19 years of age in Social Movements.

27 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Lawrence S. Wittner

Although Donald Trump’s Department of Labor announced in April 2025 that “Trump’s Golden Age puts American workers first,” that contention is contradicted by the facts.

Indeed, Trump has taken the lead in reducing workers’ incomes. One of his key actions along these lines occurred on March 14, 2025, when he issued an executive order that scrapped a Biden-era regulation raising the minimum wage for employees of private companies with federal contracts. Some 327,300 workers had benefited from Biden’s measure, which produced an average wage increase of $5,228 per year. With Trump’s reversal of policy, they became ripe for pay cuts of up to 25 percent.

America’s farmworkers, too―many of them desperately poor―are now experiencing pay cuts caused by the Trump administration’s H-2A visa program, which is bringing hundreds of thousands of foreign agricultural workers to the United States under new, lower-wage federal guidelines. The United Farm Workers estimates that this will cost U.S. farm workers $2.64 billion in wages per year.

As in the past, Trump and his Republican Party have blocked any increase in the federal minimum wage―a paltry $7.25 per hour―despite the fact that it has not been raised since 2009 and, thanks to inflation, has lost 30 percent of its purchasing power. By 2025, this wage had fallen below the official U.S. government poverty level.

Furthermore, the Trump administration is promoting subminimum wages for millions of American workers. Although the Biden administration had abolished the previous subminimum wage floor for workers with disabilities by bringing them up to the federal minimum wage level, the Trump Labor Department has restored the subminimum wage. In addition, the Trump administration is proposing to strip 3.7 million home-care workers of their current federal minimum wage guarantee.

Trump’s Labor Department has also scrapped the Biden plan to expand overtime pay rights to 4.3 million workers who had previously lost eligibility for it thanks to inflation. And it is promoting plans to classify many workers as independent contractors, thereby depriving such workers of key labor rights, including minimum wages and overtime pay.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on December 18, 2025 that, from November 2024 to November 2025, the annual growth of the real wages (wages adjusted for inflation) of American workers had fallen to 0.8 percent.

Trump’s policies have also fostered unemployment.

Probably the best-known example of this is the Trump administration’s chaotic purge, led by billionaire Elon Musk, of 317,000 federal workers without any sort of clear rationale or due process. On top of this, however, it has shut down massive construction projects, especially in the renewable energy industry. Trump’s recent order to halt the huge wind farms off the East Coast is predicted to cause the firing of thousands of workers.

Ironically, as two economic analysts reported in mid-December 2025, “key sectors of the economy that are central to Trump’s agenda have contracted, with payrolls in manufacturing, mining, logging and professional business services all falling over the last year.” Despite Trump’s repeated claims to be reviving U.S. manufacturing through tariffs, 58,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost between April (when the administration announced its “Liberation Day” tariffs) and September 2025.

Consequently, U.S. unemployment, which, during the Biden presidency, had bottomed out at 3.4 percent, had by November 2025 (the last month for which government statistics are available) risen to 4.6 percent. This is the highest unemployment level in four years, leaving 7.8 million workers unemployed―700,000 more than a year before.

Worker safety and health have also been seriously undermined by the Trump administration. According to the latest AFL-CIO study, workplace hazards kill approximately 140,000 workers each year, with millions more injured or sickened. Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is supposed to enforce health and safety standards, the Trump administration cut its workplace inspections by 30 percent, thereby reducing inspections of each site to one every 266 years.

Similarly, Trump has nearly destroyed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which provides research on workplace safety standards, by reducing its staffing from 1,400 employees to 150 and slashing its budget by 80 percent.

Through executive action, the Trump administration eliminated specific measures taken to protect workers. This process included blocking a Biden rule to control heat conditions in workplaces, where 600 workers die from heat-related causes and nearly 25,000 others are injured every year. Moreover, in the spring of 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would not enforce a Biden rule to protect miners from dangerous silica exposure and moved to close 34 Mine Safety and Health Administration district offices. Although a public uproar led to a reversal of the office closures, the administration then proposed weakening those offices’ ability to impose mine safety requirements and, also, weakened workplace safety penalties for businesses.

In addition, Trump appointed corporate executives to head relevant federal agencies, gutted Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines, and, in March 2025, issued an executive order that terminated collective bargaining rights for more than a million federal government workers. This last measure, the largest single union-busting action in American history, ended union representation and protections for one out of every 14 unionized workers in the United States.

In a special AFL-CIO report, issued on December 22, 2025, the labor federation’s president, Liz Shuler, and secretary-treasurer, Fred Redmond, declared: “Since Inauguration Day . . . the fever dreams of America’s corporate billionaires have come to life with a relentless assault on working people,” and “every day has brought a new challenge and attack: On federal workers. On our unions and collective bargaining rights. On the agencies that stand up for us and the essential services we rely on. . . . On our democracy itself.”

Although Trump’s second term in office might have provided a “Golden Age” for the President and his fellow billionaires, it has produced harsh and challenging times for American workers.

Lawrence S. Wittner (https://www.lawrenceswittner.com/ ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb(Stanford University Press).

27 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Charles Andrews

U.S. capitalism gave us a special gift for the 2025 holiday season – a healthcare crisis for millions of workers.

The immediate issue is the bitterly named Affordable Care Act (ACA), which opened for business in 2014. Headlines warn, “Higher cost, worse coverage: Affordable Care Act enrollees say expiring subsidies will hit them hard.” The Trump administration wants to abolish the ACA. Congressional Republicans, flooded with angry calls from previously loyal voters, want to dismantle healthcare programs slice by slice. Democrats are eager to score “messaging” points while they protect capitalist profit in healthcare. Whatever the outcome of this catfight, workers, their families, and retirees will pay more for healthcare, and many will not get care when they need it.

The ACA, also called Obamacare, oversees a marketplace for health insurance corporations. It is mainly targeted at people who do not have a health plan through their job or Medicare. Several states (California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island) require that you have health insurance, else you are liable for a tax penalty. But the corporations’ premiums are so high that the federal government has propped up the system with partial tax credits. The insurance corporations are moving to raise premiums by 18% in 2026. All in all, if the credits expire, someone with a $28,000 income will see her premium go from $325 to $1,562 a year. A 60-year-old couple with an income of $85,000 would pay $22,600 more than they pay now.

Why Isn’t Care Free and Equal for All?

Why isn’t health care guaranteed, free, and equal for everyone? Health care is a huge source of profit for capitalists. The various bloodsuckers are stacked like a pile of blocks ready to topple down:

The health insurance corporations: UnitedHealth, Humana, CVS/Aetna Health, and others shun people with known health problems. They require you and your physician to convince the corporation when you need a medical procedure. They charge extra if the medical professional you need to see is “not in our network.”

Pharmaceutical corporations: The drug companies make huge profits off medications crucial to your survival and health. One study, comparing three dozen pharmaceutical corporations versus the Standard and Poor’s 500 as a whole, found huge differences in gross profit margin (76% versus 37%) and in earnings before taxes, interest, and depreciation (29% versus 19%). A similar industry is the medical machine and device corporations.

Hospitals and clinics: Most hospitals are in chains like HCA Healthcare (184 hospitals), Ascension (140 hospitals), and Trinity Health (101 hospitals).

Some of them claim to be nonprofit, but that just means they are exempt from property and income taxes. “Nonprofits” are run to maximize financial surplus, accumulate capital, and give top executives princely salaries. The Kaiser Permanente system with its 40 hospitals paid CEO Gregory Adams $12,721,446 in 2023; another 36 executives got anywhere from one to five million dollars.

Medical practices: Physicians used to be independent small businessmen. Today, three out of four primary-care doctors and pediatricians are overworked employees of hospitals and clinics. Other physicians are in medical group practices in which they share ownership with insurers, hospitals, and private equity financiers. Profit rules here, too.

The Remedy Is Class Struggle

In a capitalist society, we only get healthcare through class struggle.

• When workers negotiate a union contract, the bosses say, do you want to keep the health plan or would you “prefer” a wage increase? No, we want both, and we will strike to get them.
• Starbucks boasts that its baristas have a health plan – if they work at least 20 hours a week. Baristas testify that at stores with active union organizing, the bosses reduced their schedules “from working 25 hours to 17 or 18 hours a week and some … only getting five to 10 hours.” 
• In New York, 250,000 city government retirees, especially the 70,000 retired teachers, fought the City, the school system bosses, and the bureaucrats of the United Federation of Teachers and AFSCME, all intent on pushing the retirees into Medicare Advantage. MA is a growing private kingdom inside Medicare that shovels money to health insurance corporations while they confine people to narrow networks of caregivers. The retired workers campaigned for several years and blocked transfer to Medicare Advantage – for now.
• We can’t get good care when there are not enough healthcare workers and when their work suffers because they cannot pay the rent. In November, 40,000 workers at the campuses and medical centers of the University of California, including patient care assistants and hospital technicians, went on strike over these issues. A magazine for health care bosses counted 38 major strikes at hospitals and clinics across the country in 2025.

Improved Medicare for All

Healthcare activists’ programmatic demand is Improved Medicare for All, also called single payer. Everyone would be automatically enrolled at birth, and all care free. Since nearly all doctors, hospitals and other care providers would be in the system, your choice of physician and hospital is not limited to a network. Improved Medicare for All would replace the hated health insurance corporations. The single buyer of health care (the Medicare administration) would have bargaining power versus the pharmaceutical corporations, hospital chains, and other industries of the health care sector.

There were recurring drives to enact Medicare for All in the United States after World War Two, but the American Medical Association and allied capitalists defeated them. Union officials who practice business unionism instead of class struggle also resist Medicare for All. They embrace co-management of a company health plan as a selling point for joining a union.

A single payer plan or something close to it has worked well in Canada, France, Germany and many other countries. Britain after World War Two went one better, placing most doctors and other care providers in a National Health Service. Many physicians opposed single payer, but with experience in it they became supporters.

However, social democratic healthcare programs cannot escape capital’s incessant profit drive. In Britain, for example, the National Health Service was re-legislated in 2012 from a single institution into a collection of Clinical Commissioning Groups that in turn outsource healthcare to private firms dedicated to their “bottom line.” Care standards have weakened, physicians are fighting speedup and larger patient loads, and understaffing of clinics is pervasive.

The Socialist-Communist Path to the Fore

In the 1990s, big health insurance corporations arose and formed health maintenance organizations, each in business with selected hospitals and physicians. Their massive economic clout makes the struggle to win Improved Medicare for All much fiercer today. The campaign for single payer might result in some lesser relief measures, but it will take revolutionary anti-capitalist struggle to guarantee free and equal care for all.

Workers who want to advance the cause of our class will bring agitation for the socialist-communist path to every strike and every political battle where healthcare is an issue. We must overthrow capitalism. We can run society ourselves, including the hospitals, clinics, outpatient services, and pharmaceutical development and production. The purpose of economic activity shall not be profit for a few but rather the well-being of all.

U.S. capitalism is in terminal economic decay, and the capitalist republic is disintegrating. We need a communist party that agitates, educates, and organizes for the mission of our class. No matter how small our numbers are now, we need communist organization ready before the masses decide that enough is enough. The most visionary goal is the most practical one.

Charles Andrews is the author of The Hollow Colossus and other books.

A list of his occasional essays is at http://www.hollowcolossus.com/moreCA.htm

27 December 2025

Source: countercurrents.org