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By Vijay Prashad

In early November, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addressed the “horrifying crisis in Sudan, which is spiraling out of control.” He urged the warring parties to “bring an end to this nightmare of violence — now.”

There is a path to end the war, but there is simply no political will to enforce it.

In May 2025, we wrote about the history of the conflict. In 2019, we explained the uprising that took place that year as well as its aftermath. Now, from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the International Peoples’ Assembly, and Pan Africanism Today, comes red alert no. 21 on the need for peace in Sudan.

What is the reality on the ground in Sudan?

On April 15, 2023, war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) — led by the head of the Transitional Military Council, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan — and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — led by Lieutenant General Mohamed “Hemedti” Hamdan Dagalo.

Since then, backed by various governments from outside of Sudan, the two sides have fought a terrible war of attrition in which civilians are the main victims. It is impossible to say how many people have died, but clearly the death toll is significant.

One estimate found that between April 2023 and June 2024 alone the number of casualties was as high as 150,000, and several crimes against humanity committed by both sides have already been documented by various human rights organisations.

At least 14.5 million Sudanese of the population of 51 million have been displaced. The people who live in the belt between El Fasher, North Darfur, and Kadugli, South Kordofan, are struggling from acute hunger and famine.

A recent analysis by the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found that around 21.2 million Sudanese — 45 percent of the population — face high levels of acute food insecurity, with 375,000 people across the country facing “catastrophic” levels of hunger (i.e., on the brink of starvation).

Since the war began, hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people sought refuge in El Fasher, then held largely by the SAF. Roughly 260,000 civilians were still there in October 2025 when the RSF broke the resistance, entered the city, and carried out a number of documented massacres.

Among those killed were 460 patients and their companions at the Saudi Maternity Hospital. The city’s fall has meant that the RSF is now largely in control of the vast province of Darfur, while the SAF holds much of eastern Sudan — including Port Sudan, the country’s access to the sea and international trade — as well as the capital city of Khartoum.

There is no sign of de-escalation at present.

Why are the SAF and the RSF fighting?

No war of this scale has one simple cause. The political reason is straightforward: this is a counter-revolution against the 2019 popular uprising that succeeded in ousting President Omar al-Bashir, who governed from 1993 and whose last years in power were marked by rising inflation and social crisis.

The left and popular forces behind the 2019 uprising — which included the Sudanese Communist Party, the National Consensus Forces, the Sudanese Professional Association, the Sudan Revolutionary Front, the Women of Sudanese Civic and Political Groups, and many local resistance and neighbourhood committees — forced the military to agree to oversee the transition to a civilian government.

With the assistance of the African Union, the Transitional Sovereignty Council was established, composed of five military and six civilian members. Abdalla Hamdok was appointed prime minister and judge Nemat Abdullah Khair chief justice, with al-Burhan and Hemedti on the council as well.

The military-civilian government wrecked the economy further by floating the currency and privatising the state, thereby making gold smuggling more lucrative and strengthening the RSF (this government also signed the Abraham Accords, which normalised relations with Israel).

The policies of the military-civilian government exacerbated the conditions toward the showdown over power (control over the security state) and wealth (control over the gold trade).

Despite their roles on the council, al-Burhan and Hemedti attempted coups until succeeding in 2021. Having set aside the civilians, the two military leaders went after each other. The SAF officers sought to preserve their command over the state apparatus, which in 2019 absorbed 82 percent of the state’s budgetary resources (as confirmed by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in 2020).

They also moved to retain control of its enterprises, running more than 200 companies through entities such as the SAF-controlled Defence Industries System (estimated $2 billion in annual revenue) and capturing a significant share of Sudan’s formal economy across mining, telecommunications, and import-export commodity trade.

The RSF — rooted in the Janja’wid (devils on horseback) militia — tried to leverage the autonomous war economy centralised around the Al Junaid Multi-Activities Corporation, which controls major gold-producing areas in Darfur and about half a dozen mining sites, including Jebel Amer.

Since 50–80 percent of Sudan’s overall gold production is smuggled (as of 2022) — mainly to the UAE — rather than officially exported, and since the RSF dominates production in western Sudan’s artisanal mining zones (which account for 80–85 percent of total production), the RSF captures huge sums from gold revenue every year (estimated at $860 million from Darfur mines alone in 2024).

Beneath these political and material contests lie ecological pressures that compound the crisis. Part of the reason for the long conflict in Darfur has been the desiccation of the Sahel. For decades, erratic rainfall and heatwaves due to the climate catastrophe have expanded the Sahara Desert southward, making water resources a cause of conflict and sparking clashes between nomads and settled farmers.

Half of Sudan’s population now lives with acute food insecurity. The failure to create an economic plan for a population wracked by rapid changes in weather patterns — alongside the theft of resources by a small elite — leaves Sudan vulnerable to long-term conflict.

This is not just a war between two strong personalities, but a struggle over the transformation of resources and their plunder by outside powers. A ceasefire agreement is once more on the table, but the likelihood that it will be accepted or upheld is very low as long as resources remain the shining prize for the various armed groups.

What are the possibilities of peace in Sudan?

A path toward peace in Sudan would require six elements:

• An immediate, monitored ceasefire that includes the creation of humanitarian corridors for the transit of food and medicines. These corridors would be under the leadership of the Resistance Committees, which have the democratic credibility and networks to deliver aid directly to those in need.
• An end to the war economy, specifically shutting down the gold and weapons pipelines. This would include imposing strict sanctions on the sale of weapons to and the purchase of gold from the UAE until it severs all relations with the RSF. Export controls at Port Sudan must be implemented as well.
• The safe return of political exiles and the start of a process to rebuild political institutions under a civilian government elected or supported by the popular forces — mainly the Resistance Committees. The SAF must be stripped of its political power and economic assets and subjugated to the government. The RSF must be disarmed and demobilised.
• The immediate reconstruction of Sudan’s higher judiciary to investigate and prosecute those responsible for atrocities.
• The immediate creation of a process of accountability that includes the prosecution of warlords through a properly constituted court in Sudan.
• The immediate reconstruction of Sudan’s planning commission and its ministry of finance to shift surplus from export enclaves toward public goods and social protections.

These six points elaborate upon the three pillars of the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s AU-IGAD Joint Roadmap for the Resolution of the Conflict in Sudan (2023).

The difficulty with this roadmap — as with similar proposals — is that it is dependent on donors, including actors that are implicated in the violence. For these six points to become a reality, outside powers must be pressured to end their backing of the SAF and the RSF.

These include Egypt, the European Union, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the United States. Neither this roadmap nor the Jeddah channel — a Saudi-US mediation track launched in 2023 that focuses on short truces and humanitarian access — includes Sudanese civilian groups, least of all the Resistance Committees.

Though Sudan has produced its share of poets who sing of pain and suffering, let us end on a different note. In 1961, the communist poet Taj el-Sir el-Hassan (1935–2013) wrote “An Afro-Asian Song,” which begins by commemorating the Kosti massacre at Joudeh in 1956, when 194 striking peasants were suffocated to death while in police custody. But it is to the end of the song that we turn, the voice of the poet ringing above the gunfire:

In the heart of Africa I stand in the vanguard,
and as far as Bandung my sky is spreading.
The olive sapling is my shade and courtyard,
O my comrades:
O vanguard comrades, leading my people to glory,
your candles are soaking my heart in green light.
I’ll sing the closing stanza,
to my beloved land;
to my fellows in Asia;
to the Malaya,
and the vibrant Bandung.

To the people of El Fasher, to those in Khartoum, to my comrades in Port Sudan: walk toward peace.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter.

25 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Amir Nour

In an era where slogans have mingled with blood and reason has been blinded by deceit, I felt compelled to raise and analyze what I perceive as a profound intellectual and moral outcry in my forthcoming work, entitled “The Monstrosity of Our Century: The War on Palestine and the Last Western Man.”

In this study, I have endeavored, with all the effort and clarity I could summon, to unveil another face of Western civilization—one that has long prided itself on humanity, freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. These are the very values the so-called “collective West” claims to have conceived, nurtured, and defended. Yet today, this entire edifice seems to be collapsing in shame under the moral test of Palestine.

As readers will discover, this book is not a historical narrative but rather a civilizational indictment of an entire age—a tracing of the West’s transformation from a beacon of liberty into a silent, if not complicit, witness to genocide; from a champion of human rights into an executioner of silence before crimes so horrific that they defy comprehension, forgiveness, or oblivion.

I began from the war on Gaza in particular, and on Palestine as a whole, to offer a comprehensive vision of our contemporary global reality. I have come—regretfully but decisively—to the conclusion that what we are witnessing today is not merely a “political conflict,” but a historic turning point marking the collapse of the Western hegemony that has dominated the world for three centuries. I call this transformation the dawn of a new era—the Age of De-Westernization—in which power is being redistributed, universal values are being rewritten, and moral balances are being redefined.

The higher purpose of this work is to deconstruct the dominant Western narratives by exposing the falsity of the manipulated media discourse that has inverted reality—portraying the victim as the aggressor and the aggressor as the victim. To this end, I have cited testimonies and reports from within the West itself, confirming that what is unfolding in Palestine truly represents “the monstrosity of our century,” as described by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories—a crime committed before the eyes of the world under the deceitful pretext of “Israel’s right to self-defense.”

Yet this work extends beyond geography. It ventures into the philosophical and existential depths of our time, confronting a profoundly human question: Who is the “last man”? And does he still bear the essence of humanity—or did he forfeit it when he chose silence in the face of genocide, the crime of all crimes?

In this context, I revisit Francis Fukuyama’s thesis in “The End of History and the Last Man.” My reading, however, refutes his conclusion. I argue that the “last man,” embodied today in the modern Western individual, is not a symbol of Western civilization’s triumph, but rather its elegy—a man who has lost his soul, who has traded values for selfishness, conscience for power, and compassion for domination.

Through this work—where geopolitical analysis intertwines with existential reflection on the condition of modern humanity—I have reached a firm conviction: Palestine is not merely the cause of an oppressed and occupied people; it is the mirror of the world’s conscience.

Those who stand today amid the ruins of Gaza do not merely witness a city in destruction, but the moral collapse of Western civilization itself—in what may be the most profound test of humanity and ethics in our time.

Synopsis of the book:

“The Monstrosity of Our Century: The War on Palestine and the Last Western Man” by Amir Nour provides a comprehensive tour from Israel’s massive offensive against Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran, to a projection of the grand transformation of the world that this is bringing into being after more than three centuries of complete Western domination.

Addressing the crimes of starvation and genocide that UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese termed “the monstrosity of our century,” Nour documents the historical events that set the stage for this tragedy, implicating the West for its decisive contribution to conditions of apartheid and the open-air prison that all but made the October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel inevitable and Israel’s genocidal reaction predictable.

The October 7th attack on Israel was a feat of no small moment, described by military analyst Scott Ritter as “not a terrorist attack»., in fact the “most successful military raid of this century.” The claims by Israel and Western media of beheaded or burned babies and mass rapes are debunked.

Disputing the Israeli state’s claims to act on behalf of world Jewry, Nour asks:

• Who are “the Jews”? He addresses the many hotly conflicting and contradictory secular and Judaic components. both within Israel and in the diaspora.
• Who were the historical instigators of the Zionist project, long before the Jews? Nour enumerates the historical markers of Christian Zionist engagement.
• What prevents antisemitism and anti-Zionism from even being discussed and what can happen when its narrative is challenged?

Nour foresees that a process of de-Westernization is dawning. While the West’s triumphal unipolar moment at the fall of the Soviet Union led to Francis Fukuyama’s claims of “The End of History and the Last Man” and the global establishment of liberal democracy, in actuality the wrenching transition from a hegemonic world order now underway is progressively leading not just to the abandonment of democratic values by those countries that pursued its ascendancy, but also to a global repugnance at their flagrant complicity in genocide.

The war on Palestine is providing a more convincing depiction of the trajectory of human civilization, more precisely of the destiny of the “Last Man,” in actuality the last Western man, whose spiritual nihilism, lack of empathy, and unbridled will to power may lead the world to destruction.

Amir Nour is an Algerian researcher in international relations, author of the books “L’Orient et l’Occident à l’heure d’un nouveau Sykes-Picot” (The Orient and the Occident in Time of a New Sykes-Picot) Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2014 and “L’Islam et l’ordre du monde” (Islam and the Order of the World), Editions Alem El Afkar, Algiers, 2021.

25 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By K. S Arsh

The economic embargo of Cuba by the US has now lasted over sixty years, being formally imposed in 1962. It is held together by a number of laws enacted by the US including the Trading with the Enemy Act 1917, Foreign Assistance Act of 1971, Cuban Assets Controls Regulations 1963, Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms Burton Act of 1996. These acts bar US citizens from conducting any trade that may be in the interest of Cuba, from owning or trading Cuban sovereign national debt, and from Cuban banks from operating in the US. US citizens are still able to travel to Cuba yet they are not able to spend money there without a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Recently, in 2021 the US reinstated Cuba into the State Sponsor of Terrorism list, stating that Cuba harbours several fugitives from the US as well as members of the Columbian National Liberation army, which the US has declared to be a terrorist organisation.

The cost of these sanctions, sanctions being what appears to be forefront in the mind of US President Donald Trump, to Cuba over 60 years has amounted to 933 billion $. The United Nations has urged the US to lift its sanctions on Cuba, citing a shrinking of the island nation’s GDP, blackouts, food shortage and inflation. As the political situation stands in the US currently, it is highly unlikely that the sanctions against Cuba will be lifted any time soon as only the US Congress has the power to do so, and while there are occasionally bills introduced in the Congress to repeal the statues, there is presently not enough political will to have them passed.

Beyond immediate economic gains in terms of monetary value, these embargoes also mean that Cuba is denied markets, international aid and technology transfers. This is not restricted to those from the US alone. For instance the earlier mentioned Helms-Burton Act of 1996 allows US citizen to sue foreign companies in US courts who have traded in property that was nationalised by the Cuban government after the 1959 revolution. This has meant that companies in Canada, and the EU have been deterred from trading or investing in Cuba so as to not risk a lawsuit or reputational harm. Another act that has seriously curtailed the facility of international trade with Cuba has been the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992. This act prevents any ship from docking at a US port for 180 after the vessel has loaded or unloaded goods at a Cuban port. This limits Cuba’s access to regular shipping lines and forces the island nation to rely on smaller and more expensive routes.

Perhaps the most serious measure that has curtailed Cuba’s integration into the international financial system is the fact that most international trade and financial transactions are denominated in US dollars. Regulations by the Office of Foreign Asset Control prohibit transactions in dollars for deals that entail Cuban interests. The choice left to foreign banks is to either conduct Cuba related transactions and face massive US fines, potentially losing access to the US financial system, or not to conduct deals that entail Cuban interests. This stark alternative has effectively meant that most international banks, including those based in countries that are friendly to Cuba have chosen the latter. The price of doing business with Cuba for banks have been severe. BNP Paribas for example in 2014 had to pay a fine of nearly 9 billion $ to US authorities for violating such sanctions. This has made it extremely difficult for Cuba to pay for essential imports such as food and medicine, receive remittance (that may be desired to be sent by Cubans living and working in the US back to their family in Cuba), and conduct basic international financial transfers.

Cuba’s main partners in international trade are Venezuela, following agreements formalised by the Hugo Chavez government, China, Spain, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico and Canada. The island nation however also has trade relations with India, which constitute Cuban exports of tobacco, nickel, raw hides and leather and Indian exports of pharmaceutical products, vehicles, chemicals, plastic and food. The total volume of trade between India and Cuba during 2022-2023 was just under 84 million $. India has consistently voted in the UN in favour of lifting the US embargo against Cuba. As recently as 2024, the Indian First Secretary Sneha Dubey reiterated the damaging effects of the embargo on Cuba’s economy, and people, underlining that India, as the world’s most populace democracy, stands with the UN Assembly in its unambiguous rejection of domestic US laws having an extraterritorial impact. In the vote in the Assembly 187 nations voted against the embargo with only the United States and Israel supporting it.

In recent history there appeared to have been a thaw with President Obama in 2014 reopening the US embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in Washington, lifting restrictions on remittances, travel, and allowing the Cuban government to open a bank account in the US. These measures however have largely been reversed in President Trump’s first term itself.

K. S Arsh is an independent journalist who is presently pursuing his PhD.

23 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The authorities in Türkiye have hit their stride regarding international humanitarian law, a subject they are not always consistent about. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defence minister Israel Katz, and others, are facing arrest warrants for genocide from the Istanbul Criminal Court of Peace. This is plucky, assertive, and undoubtedly, from the perspective of the Erdoğan government, stealing publicity. It also brings up that hoary old chestnut of parochial interest and the merits of the accuser.

A November 7 statement from the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office said that as many as 37 suspects were on the list, though not all were named. We know that it includes, in addition to Netanyahu and Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, and Navy Commander David Saar Salama. They are charged under Article 77 (crimes against humanity) and Article 76 (genocide) of the Turkish Penal Code.

Reference is made to the March 21 bombing of the Turkish Palestinian Friendship Hospital, the October 17, 2023 attack on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, the deliberate destruction of medical equipment by Israeli soldiers and the blockading of Gaza and the denial of humanitarian aid to the enclave. The October attack on the humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, and the seizure by Israeli forces of crew members is also mentioned.

This enterprise is not without problems. Türkiye is not particularly amenable to punishing genocide within the context of its own, strictly invigilated history. Such nationalistic, convenient laxity brings to mind George Orwell’s formidable argument made in the October 22, 1943 issue of The Tribune. Reviewing a work outlining the case for trying the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini for war crimes, Orwell trawls through the record of hypocrisy among British figures who saw much merit in the skull cracking antics of Italy’s fascist leader – at least when things seemed rather rosy. He points out the hobbling problems of those making such accusations, given that a trial for Mussolini might well be justified alongside those of the then current Prime Minister Winston Churchill, or former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, and even the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. When seeking to place leaders of a country in the dock, be careful what you wish for.

To this day, it is forbidden to describe the sadistic and opportunistic killing of Armenians within the proto-Turkish state that arose from the stricken body of the Ottoman Empire as genocidal. Power, as always, smudges the record.

Given that Turkish prosecutors are not coming to the table with sprightly, clean hands, any such move will cause not merely discomfort among human rights advocates but stabbing derision from political critics. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was quick to take up the challenge, observing that “in Erdogan’s Turkey, the judiciary has long since become a tool for silencing political rivals and detaining journalists, judges and mayors.” This is not a charge Erdoğan can be easily acquitted of, given his successful efforts to bring the entire judiciary under the control of the executive branch. Independent judges and prosecutors have been imprisoned. Sympathetic Islamists and nationalists have swelled the ranks.

In the United States, guffawing pundits can be found aplenty, poking fun at Türkiye’s charges as “nonsense”. This remains stock practice in an imperium that adulates international law even while battering it, suggesting an often-schizophrenic approach. Michael Rubin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, offers a case in point. Striking in his criticism of the Turkish effort, Rubin is worried about the implications of targeting democratically elected leaders for how they mistreat their own subjects. What of, say, violent acts and misdemeanours committed against India’s Muslim minorities? It becomes clear that Rubin assumes that leaders of democratic societies are above suspicion when it comes to human rights violations, while Islamic states are opportunistic and villainous. “The Indian government,” he broods, “should not ignore the outrage, for what Erdoğan targets Israel with today, he will apply to India tomorrow.”

Were Erdoğan successful in getting any Israeli into court, it would “only be a matter of time until he and his Pakistani, Qatari, and Malaysian allies try to do the same with democratically elected Indian leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and senior Indian diplomats and military officers as part of a similar ‘lawfare’ campaign to pursue their Kashmir and Khalistan ambitions.” (Notice the lazy bracketing of all these states.)

This is not to say that charges of genocide won’t fly. The International Court of Justice in The Hague is currently tasked with assessing Israel’s conduct in Gaza, alleged by South Africa’s submission to be genocidal in nature. While the judges have yet to reach a decision on the genocide question, they have made several provisional orders cautioning Israel to abide by the UN Genocide Convention. The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory was somewhat bolder, asserting in its September 16 report that four of the five elements of genocide outlined in the Convention had been met by Israel’s ruthless waging of war in the Strip. Innumerable civil society and human rights organisations, including the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, have made similar findings.

Governments the world over often misuse international law as a pretext to attack their enemies. This effort by the Turkish court system might be seen as another play in the politicisation of human rights. But States and their legal organs can also exercise universal jurisdiction in punishing the most abhorrent of crimes – crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and torture. The other option, one stubbornly resisted by Israel, the United States and Türkiye, is becoming a party to the Rome Statute and International Criminal Court. In refusing to become parties to the statute, all three are, at least on that score, in violent agreement.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

23 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

Gaza’s health officials report that on Saturday at least 24 Palestinians were killed and 54 wounded in the fresh bombardment, a majority of them civilians, including numerous children. A particularly deadly strike on a vehicle in Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood killed 11 and injured over 20, many of them minors. Other missile attacks struck homes near Al-Awda Hospital and in the central Gaza camps of Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah, killing families and shattering already devastated communities.

The re-emergence of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on November 22 exposes the deep failures of international diplomacy and the ongoing complicity of global powers in the systematic oppression of Palestinians. As a fragile ceasefire, initiated on October 10, quickly crumbles under the weight of Israeli military aggression, civilians in Gaza—especially children—continue to bear the brunt of a brutal conflict pursued with impunity.

This latest escalation unfolds just days after the UN Security Council endorsed a U.S.-driven blueprint aiming to “secure and govern” Gaza through an international stabilisation force and a transitional administration overseen by Donald Trump. While couched in language of future Palestinian statehood, the plan reads like a blueprint for extending international control and sidelining Palestinian voices, offering no real guarantee of peace or justice.

The Israeli military justifies the strikes by alleging violations of the ceasefire, including an incident involving an “armed terrorist” crossing into Israeli-held territory. Yet these claims serve, once again, as a pretext for disproportionate retribution that targets entire neighborhoods and civilians. Hamas denounces these narratives as fabrications aimed at breaking the ceasefire and renewing “the war of extermination.”

The world watches as international actors deploy diplomatic maneuvers that do little to halt or alleviate the suffering, while Israel’s military operations continue unabated. This cycle of violence and repression underscores the urgent need to challenge the structures enabling occupation and to amplify Palestinian demands for genuine liberation, justice, and sovereignty.

23 November 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Craig Mokhiber

The Security Council’s backing of the Trump plan for Gaza ignores international law, punishes the Palestinians, and rewards those responsible for genocide.

19 Nov 2025 – More than two years into the genocide in Palestine, the UN Security Council has finally acted. But rather than acting to enforce international law, protect the victims, and hold the perpetrators accountable, it adopted a resolution that openly flouts key provisions of international law, disempowers and further punishes the victims, and rewards and empowers the perpetrators.

Most disturbingly, it hands control of Gaza and the survivors of the genocide over to the United States, a co-perpetrator of the genocide, and provides for the participation of the Israeli regime in decision making. Under the plan, Palestinians themselves are to be granted no such participation in decisions on their own rights, governance, and lives.

In adopting this resolution, the Council, in effect, has become a mechanism of U.S. oppression, an instrument for the continued unlawful occupation of Palestine, and a complicit actor in Israel’s genocide.

Not since the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947 against the will of the indigenous people, setting the stage for 80 years of Nakba, has the UN acted in such a baldly colonial (and legally ultra vires) way, and trampled so recklessly on the rights of a people.

A resolution from Hell

On Monday, 17 November, the UN Security Council adopted a U.S. proposal to hand control of Gaza over to a U.S.-led colonial body called “The Board of Peace” while deploying a proxy occupation force, also U.S.-directed, called “The International Stabilization Force.” Both will answer, ultimately, to Donald trump himself. And both will function in consultation with the Israeli regime.

Not since the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947 against the will of the indigenous people, setting the stage for 80 years of Nakba, has the UN acted in such a baldly colonial way, and trampled so recklessly on the rights of a people. 

In what will long be remembered as a day of shame for the UN, while both Russia and China abstained, they did not use their vetoes, and not a single member of the Security Council had the courage, principle, or respect for international law to vote against what can only be seen as a U.S. colonial outrage, a ratification of genocide, and a flagrant abdication of UN Charter principles.

The resolution implicitly rejects a series of recent findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), openly denies the Palestinian right to self-determination, and reinforces Israeli regime impunity, even as the genocide continues.

Despite the ICJ’s finding that the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination on their land, the resolution strips that right away, empowering hostile foreign forces to govern them.

Despite the Court’s finding that Gaza (as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem) is illegally occupied and that the occupation must end quickly and completely, the resolution extends the Israeli occupation, endorses the indefinite presence of Israeli regime troops, and superimposes a second, U.S. led occupation on top of it.

And despite the Court’s finding that the Palestinians need not negotiate for their rights with their oppressors, and that no agreement or political process can trump those rights, the resolution nullifies those rights and assigns them to the discretion of the U.S. and its Israeli and other partners.

Even in the midst of an ongoing genocide perpetrated by an apartheid regime, nowhere in the resolution is there a single mention of the crimes of genocide, apartheid, or colonization, of the thousands of Palestinians still held in Israeli torture and death camps, or of the principles of accountability for perpetrators or redress for victims.

Nor is Israel required to meet its legal obligations of compensation and reparations, with that responsibility handed instead to international donors and international financial institutions, in what amounts to a multibillion-dollar bailout of the Israeli regime. In sum, the resolution guarantees the full impunity of the Israeli regime, in addition to advancing its normalization.

A colonial administration

The resolution even welcomes, endorses, and annexes the widely discredited Trump plan (September 29 version), and, while not citing all of its problematic provisions, it calls on all parties to implement it in its entirety.

It empowers the Trump-headed Board of Peace to serve as the transitional administration governing all of Gaza, to control all services and aid, to control the movement of people in and out of Gaza, and to control the framework, funding, and reconstruction of Gaza, and it includes the dangerously broadly formulated authorization of “any other tasks that may be required.” And it grants up-front authority to the Trump board to establish undefined “operational entities” and “transactional authorities,” at its own discretion.

The resolution even envisages a quisling body of Palestinian technocrats taking orders from and reporting to Trump’s Board Of Peace- on their own land. In clear breach of international law, it rejects Palestinian control of their own territory in Gaza until Trump and his collaborators decide that the Palestinian Authority has satisfied the reform requirements set by Trump himself and by the similarly odious “French-Saudi Proposal.” And it contains no promise whatsoever of Palestinian independence or sovereignty.

Instead, in direct contradiction to the findings of the ICJ, it sets back the cause of Palestinian freedom and self-determination with a vague, hyperqualified, and non-committal line that says that AFTER the Trump-led bodies decide that the Palestinians have met UNDEFINED “reform and development” criteria, “the conditions MAY finally be in place for a credible PATHWAY to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

And any shred of hope for progress left within those conditions is finally dashed with the coup de grace provision stating that any such process toward those ends is to be controlled by the U.S. itself. In other words, the UN Security Council has granted a veto over Palestinian self-determination to the U.S., the Israeli regime’s chief sponsor and co-perpetrator of the genocide.

The resolution does not even offer hope that the systematic deprivation of the Palestinian people in Gaza will end. While the ICJ has declared that restrictions on aid must cease, the resolution only “underscores the importance of” humanitarian aid. It does not demand its unfettered flow and distribution.

A proxy occupation force

The resolution also mandates an armed proxy occupation force, labeled the “International Stabilization Force,”  to operate under the Trump-headed Board of Peace. This force is to have a command approved by the Trump Board, and will explicitly operate in collaboration with Israel, the perpetrator of the genocide (as well as with Egypt).

Its members are to be identified “in cooperation with” the Israeli regime, and it is to work with the regime to control the Palestinian survivors in Gaza.

It will be mandated to secure the borders (i.e., to cage the Palestinians), to stabilize the security environment of Gaza (i.e., to suppress any resistance to occupation, apartheid, or genocide), to demilitarize Gaza (but not the Israeli regime), to destroy Gaza’s military defense capacities (but not those of Israel), to decommission the weapons of the Palestinian resistance (but not those of the Israeli regime), to train the Palestinian police (in order to control the Palestinian people inside Gaza), and to work for the (nefarious) objectives of the “Comprehensive (Trump) Plan.”

The force is also mandated to “protect civilians” and assist humanitarian aid, to the extent that it is allowed by the U.S.  (or inclined) to do so. But that such a force, which is to collaborate with Israel, would do nothing to stand up to Israeli aggression and attacks on civilians should by now be self-evident.

The mission of this proxy occupation force is to control, contain, and disarm the population victimized by the genocide, not the regime perpetrating it, and to ensure security not for the victims of the genocide but for its perpetrators. 

And it is to “monitor the ceasefire,” a U.S.-guaranteed ceasefire that has allowed continuous Israeli attacks on Gaza every day since it was declared (killing hundreds and causing massive destruction to civilian infrastructure) but which tolerates no retaliation by the Palestinian resistance. It is safe to assume that any ceasefire monitoring by such a force will be focused principally on the Palestinian side- not on the Israeli regime as the occupying power.

In other words, the mission of this proxy occupation force is to control, contain, and disarm the population victimized by the genocide, not the regime perpetrating it, and to ensure security not for the victims of the genocide but for its perpetrators.

In still another stunning breach of international law, the resolution authorizes Israeli regime forces to continue to (unlawfully) occupy Gaza until the U.S.-led Board of Peace and the Israeli regime forces collectively decide otherwise. And, in any event, the resolution provides that the IOF can remain in Gaza to occupy a “security perimeter” indefinitely.

Finally, both the colonial Board of Peace and its proxy occupation “stabilization force”  are given a two-year mandate and the possibility of an extension in consultation with Israel (and Egypt) but not with Palestine.

The madness of colonizers

Needless to say, this resolution has been rejected by Palestinian civil society, almost all Palestinian political and resistance factions, and human rights defenders and international law experts from around the globe.

As a matter of international law, the occupation of Palestine is unlawful, the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination, and they have the right to resist foreign occupation, colonial domination, and racist regimes like Israel. Not only does this resolution seek to deny these rights, but it even goes so far as to buttress the illegal Israeli presence, and to authorize its own mechanisms of foreign occupation and colonial domination.

What’s more, the Security Council derives all its powers from the UN Charter. That Charter, as a treaty, is a part of international law- not above it. As such, the Council is bound by the rules of international law, including and especially the highest, so-called jus cogens and erga omnes rules, like self-determination and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.  Its blatant disregard for the findings of the ICJ on these matters reveals the degree to which many of the terms of this resolution are in fact unlawful and ultra vires (beyond the authority of the Council).

As such, the ramifications of this rogue action by the UN Security Council will have implications far beyond Palestine. The UN Security Council, if unconstrained by international law, becomes a dangerous instrument of repression and injustice. This is precisely what we have witnessed in this case, as the Council ignored international law and effectively turned the survivors of Gaza over to the co-perpetrators of the genocide.

And followers of the Council will be well aware that the veto has repeatedly been used in the Council to deny Palestinian rights. In this case, when it could have been used to protect Palestinian rights, the veto was nowhere to be found. In one minute of voting, the Security Council has lost all legitimacy.

A path forward

The U.S. attempt to impose a 19^th Century form of colonialism on the long-suffering Palestinian people of Gaza, like the French-Saudi colonial scheme that came before it, is destined to failure. Such schemes are fundamentally flawed from the outset, as they seek to impose outcomes without legality (under international law,) without legitimacy (in their exclusion of Palestinian agency), and without any practical hope of success (given their near universal rejection both in Palestine and across the world).

The U.S. may be able to threaten and bribe enough states to support it in a UN vote, but securing sufficient troops and other personnel to implement the resolution on the ground, against the will of the indigenous people, may well be another matter. And sustaining support as the plan (inevitably) begins to unravel will be even more difficult.

For those committed to justice, human rights, and the rule of law, the task is clear. This plan must be opposed.

In the meantime, for those committed to justice, human rights, and the rule of law, the task is clear. This plan must be opposed in every capital, and at every juncture. Governments must be pressed to end their complicity in Israeli abuses, U.S. excesses, and in this atrocious colonial scheme. The Israeli regime must be isolated. Efforts toward

And when this colonial house of cards falls, another, more just solution is ready to take its place. If the global majority will rise from its knees before the emperor, and assert its collective power, acting under the UNGA Uniting For Peace mechanism to circumvent the U.S. veto, adopt accountability measures to isolate and punish the Israeli regime, and deploy real protection to Palestine, then the UN may live to fight another day. If not, it will almost certainly wither away and die, a victim of self-inflicted wounds, none deeper than the shameful resolution of November 17, 2025.

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By UN News

19 Nov 2025 – Living conditions for Gazans – particularly children – are still dire as temperatures drop and families return to bombed-out homes as the fragile ceasefire holds, UN aid workers said today.

Children’s Fund, UNICEF, highlighted the case of six-year-old twins Yahya and Nabeela who were critically injured by an unexploded remnant of war in the north of the wartorn enclave.

They are receiving mental health support from the agency and tarpaulins to protect them from the cold.

Even though it hasn’t rained for a few days, the many families who live in tents are still struggling to recover from the sudden and heavy downpours at the weekend.

Degraded and afraid
Tess Ingram with UNICEF in Gaza described the plight of one displaced family whose tent was flooded. Wafa is a mother of five who was in tears.

“She said there were times that she wished that she was in the house in her family home with the children when it was bombed,” said Ms. Ingram, who added that Wafa had referred to “the death of dignity that they have experienced in recent days.”

Ms. Ingram said that an estimated 18,000 households were affected across more than 100 sites by the recent rains, but that many more families were likely impacted.

Winter needs outpace aid amid sanitation crisis

[https://twitter.com/ochaopt/status/1991143958110491017]

With winter approaching, UN humanitarian partners warn that shelter supplies entering Gaza remain far below what is needed. Fewer than 60,000 tents and just over 300,000 tarpaulins and bedding items have entered since early September, after a six-month ban was lifted.

“The volume of items going in is simply not enough,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Wednesday at the daily briefing in New York.

Child-protection partners have distributed 48,000 winter clothing kits since the ceasefire, offering some relief to families trying to keep children warm.

Water and sanitation teams have reached around 400,000 people in the past two days with diapers, towels, jerry cans and other essential hygiene supplies.

Sanitation system in ruins
With Gaza’s wastewater treatment system effectively destroyed, partners describe sanitation across the Strip as “deplorable”.

In northern Gaza, the Sheikh Radwan ponds are again at risk of overflowing, forcing emergency measures to drain sewage into the sea. Public health risks are rising, including the spread of bacterial infections linked to contaminated water and waste.

Nutrition partners report a slight fall in malnutrition cases in October, though admissions remain nearly four times higher than during the previous ceasefire in January.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By The Wire

20 Nov 2025 – Israel’s genocide isn’t over. In the days and weeks after a ceasefire was declared, many Israeli soldiers were withdrawn from Gaza — and then deployed back to the West Bank.

Right now, Palestinians in the West Bank are experiencing the highest rates of settler and state violence in recent history, all while the mainstream media continues to push Palestine out of the news.

The Israeli government is rapidly expanding its project of ethnic cleansing, making it abundantly clear that its intention is not simply to erase Palestinians in Gaza, but to erase all Palestinians from their land.

In this Wire, we shine a spotlight on the unfolding crisis in the West Bank.

Settler violence is Israeli policy
As the Israeli state continues to accelerate its ethnic cleansing and mass displacement, it has again made use of extremist Israeli settlers. These mobs surge into a Palestinian village, carrying clubs and weapons, beating people and burning their homes, fields, and olive trees. Children are not spared. Attacks like this are happening multiple times a day in the West Bank right now, as settlers try to disrupt the olive harvest season.

Last week, a group of settlers attacked the villages of Beit Lid and Deir Sharaf, burning vehicles, wounding four Palestinians, and attacking Israeli soldiers who responded. Only a day later, settlers torched and defaced a mosque in Deir Istiya and burned a Quran.

In Turmus’ayya, Israeli settlers descended on the town, one clubbing a Palestinian woman known as Umm Saleh over the head, knocking her unconscious, then striking her repeatedly as she lay on the ground. A freelance journalist caught the attack on video, calling it “the single worst individual act of violence” he’d ever seen.

Settler violence has grown so fierce that Israel has begun to draw international condemnation, reaching such a level that Israeli politicians were recently compelled to make statements claiming these extremist settlers will be held accountable. On Sunday, PM Netanyahu stated that these attacks “do not represent” the majority of the “law-abiding” Israeli settlers in the West Bank. But in reality, extremist Israeli settlers and their ultraviolence against Palestinians is structurally backed by the Israeli government — because their goals are one and the same.

The objective of all Israeli settlements is to push Palestinians out of their land and claim the entire West Bank. These settlements, while baldly illegal under international law and condemned by every legitimate human rights organization in the world, are backed by Israeli military courts, protected by Israeli forces, and represented in the highest levels of the Israeli government. In this process, settlers have been effectively deputized by the Israeli military to terrorize Palestinians.

Settler attacks are only one strategy in this overall policy of forced displacement, attempting to make Palestinians’ lives unlivable and force them out of their homes. Since the genocide in Gaza began, cooperation between violent settlers and the Israeli state has grown even more blatant: The Israeli government is arming West Bank settlers on an even greater scale, transferring hundreds of thousands of guns and other weapons to Israeli settlers since October 2023.

Displacement at a scale not seen since 1967
Settler mob violence is far from the only form of regular violence that Palestinians in the West Bank face under Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing. In fact, the majority of documented attacks on West Bank Palestinians and their land in the last month were carried out by the Israeli military, in the form of direct physical attacks, destruction of homes, villages, and infrastructure, and the uprooting and poisoning of Palestinian olive trees and livestock.

These direct attacks, by both the Israeli state and their settler arm, serve to accelerate Palestinian displacement from the West Bank. After the total destruction of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams refugee camps by the Israeli military, the UN reports that at least 31,919 Palestinian refugees have been displaced from those areas alone — creating the largest displacement crisis in the West Bank since 1967. Operating hand-in-hand with this mass displacement is the further acceleration of Israeli settlement construction, another process that has been turbocharged since the onset of the Gaza genocide — after already ramping up significantly since Trump’s first term in office.

Israeli forces also continue to routinely kidnap Palestinians in the West Bank — arresting 442 West Bank Palestinians in October alone. Released Palestinian prisoners, including the thousands of Palestinian captives freed by the ceasefire deal, have described in detail the conditions of systematic torture and abuse, including extreme physical violence and assault, deprivation of food and sunlight, and sexual abuse. More than 9,200 Palestinians are still being held in Israeli military prisons, the vast majority of whom are held arbitrarily and have not faced any form of trial.

New records for violence in the West Bank
Even before Israel’s genocide began, violence against West Bank Palestinians was already at record levels. By September of 2023, UN officials had already declared it the deadliest year for Palestinian children in the West Bank on record. But once the genocide began and the world’s attention moved to Gaza, Israeli settler and state violence against West Bank Palestinians spiked further — and the last few months have become the worst in recent history.

In October 2025, Israeli settlers carried out at least 264 attacks, the highest number in a single month since the UN began keeping records 19 years ago. Since January of this year, 45 Palestinian children in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces, and more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in total by the Israeli military and settlers since October 2023.

This most recent spike in settler attacks is due in part to the onset of olive harvest season in the West Bank, which Israeli settlers attempt to disrupt by burning trees, villages, and descending on olive groves by the dozens and physically attacking farmers. As a result, non-Palestinian activists and press will often accompany Palestinians to harvest in what is known as “protective presence” — but this is no guarantee of safety. Two Reuters journalists, part of a group of villagers, activists and press attempting to harvest olives, were recently clubbed and stoned in an attack by Israeli settlers, their helmets dented and their cameras smashed.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide: This is Zionism
Whether it’s Israeli settlers attacking villagers or an Israeli military court ordering Palestinians to destroy their own homes, the end goal remains the same: to gain the maximum amount of land for Jewish settlement, with the minimum amount of Palestinians on it. This is the fundamental political goal of Zionism — a politics of eradication and supremacy.

From the West Bank to Gaza, we know what this means in action. The privileging of the rights of one people, and the dehumanization of another, paves the way for genocide. Our work, as a movement, is to grow the fight for an end to U.S. support for the Israeli government’s politics of dehumanization.

Jewish Voice for Peace, with roughly 750,000 members, supporters, and participants, is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world; a national, grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Lee Camp

Colonizers Will Take over 58% of Gaza [they call it Real State], the Rest Will Be Left in Ruins

18 Nov 2025 – In the increasingly noxious world in which we live, a country can make clear precisely how a campaign of ethnic cleansing will advance, and yet it gets barely a mention in the mainstream media. The U.S. military’s planning documents for Gaza’s bifurcation / starvation / degeneration / decimation are now available for all to see.

The Guardian reported:

“The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a ‘green zone’ under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a ‘red zone’ to be left in ruins.”

The key words are “left in ruins.” And the key fact is that almost all surviving Gazans are inside this “red zone.” So it’s not just the buildings that will be left in ruins. It’s the healthcare systems. It’s the food systems. It’s the water systems. It’s the beautiful bodies of Gazans of every age. It’s the families. It’s the hopes and dreams. It’s the future.

Left in ruins.

Yesterday, the UN Security Council unanimously voted to approve this ruinous plan with China and Russia abstaining.

As most people now know, Gaza has been completely razed to the ground by 70,000 tons of explosives, the equivalent of six Hiroshima atomic bombs. Roughly 83% of all structures have been destroyed or damaged. Here’s a map of the ruins justifiably imaged as red, gaping wounds:

If we (or rather the ruling elite) even remotely looked at our world through a humanity-first lens, then 100% of Gaza wouldn’t just be allowed to rebuild, it would be the site of one of the most aggressive humanitarian aid operations the world has ever seen. But we don’t live in that world. And our ruling elite are sociopathic parasites with hair plugs. (Is there such a thing as soul plugs™ to make it appear as if they have a soul?)

Instead, while millions are left to suffer and die just a few feet away, the US military and others will rebuild the 58% of Gaza already stolen by the colonizers. Not just rebuild it but transform it into a giant real estate bonanza for Trump, his family, and countless wealthy investors. This unbridled pillage following a successful genocide is not hidden but in fact was proudly presented a couple months ago.

The above AI-vomited utopian/dystopian image might be lovely if it involved Palestinians and Palestinian sovereignty in any way, shape, or form. But it does not. The 58% of Gaza that has already been stolen by the US & Israel will not be owned or governed by Palestinians. If Gazans are ever allowed into it, it will be under the most fascist surveillance system one could ever dream up. In fact, the plan calls for eight “AI-powered, smart cities” — Not because the vampiric colonizers want Gazans to have the best high-tech amenities, lounging in a life of luxury. No, it’s because “smart city” is euphemistic propaganda-tripe-speak for the highest level of surveillance ever imagined. (Conversely I assume actual freedom & privacy would be termed “life in a dumb city.”)

I must, however, admit it’s a nice bit of honesty that they included the oil derricks in that image just off the coast. Israel has long sought to get its hands on the billions of barrels of oil in Gaza’s waters.

Hamas understandably rejected the new UN proposal to relinquish most of Gaza to the genocidal colonizers. They responded:

“Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation.”

The many countries voting for and facilitating this are now parties to genocide. As I covered in a prior article, Israel’s genocide has required the willing participation of 63 countries over these two years.

But it’s possible Gazans won’t always be trapped in an open-air death camp. Trump’s plan says that they will be allowed to leave “through what it calls ‘voluntary’ departures to another country.” Ah yes, the “voluntary ethnic cleansing.” This was once also used to describe the “choice” of the Native Americans to leave their homelands and relocate to reservations where they were less likely to be outright murdered by the invaders. For those Gazans who “choose” to leave — and who could blame them — it will be done with a literal gun to their heads.

There are no new plans. There are no fresh ideas. The language of colonization, subjugation, oppression, genocide, rape and pillaging might not be identical over hundreds of years, but it rhymes.

Lee Camp is a US stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist, currently host of Dangerous Ideas and former host of Redacted Tonight.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org

By Benjamin Norton

An analysis of Donald Trump’s attacks on Venezuela, the economic impact of US sanctions, and the similarities and differences with the successful Western regime-change war on Syria.

16 Nov 2025 – A Chinese journalist interviewed Geopolitical Economy Report editor-in-chief Ben Norton about the situation in Venezuela, and his analysis was translated into Chinese. The following were his original remarks in English:

QUESTION: Ben, you have traveled around Latin America extensively, including in Venezuela. I would like to hear your comments on Maduro. Is his government well supported by the Venezuelan people, or may he face a similar fate like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad? As you know, Trump is planning attacks inside Venezuela. So do you think Maduro’s government will fall like Assad’s?

MY ANSWER: There are indeed some parallels between Venezuela and Syria, but there are more differences than similarities.

Venezuela is very divided politically, but in general, the Bolivarian Revolution initiated by previous President Hugo Chávez and continued by current President Nicolás Maduro still has a lot of support from poor and working-class Venezuelans. Most rich people and elites are pro-US and anti-government. Many of them have left the country, but there are still some in Venezuela (especially in wealthy areas like Chacao).

In Venezuela, most people are tired of political conflict and violence, and they simply want stability. The right-wing opposition does not have many active supporters inside the country. Whenever they try to hold a protest, only a few hundred people show up. However, while they are small in number, they still have a lot of power concentrated in private companies, media outlets, and Western government-funded “NGOs”.

Maduro will not be overthrown by people inside Venezuela. The only possible way I think the Venezuelan government will fall is if the US military invades Venezuela and/or wages a direct war inside Venezuelan territory, bombing Caracas — like what the US did to Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, Panama, Grenada, etc. (although the tactics used were different in each of those wars).

Trump has already ordered the US military to kill dozens of Venezuelans in illegal, extrajudicial executions in international waters. Thus far, he has not launched direct attacks inside Venezuela, although he confirmed that he authorized the CIA to carry out destabilization operations inside the country.

There are reports that Trump plans to bomb targets inside Venezuela. This would be an extreme act of aggression, and is quite possible, even likely. I don’t think he will send US troops into Venezuela — it is certainly possible, but it would be very unpopular at home, especially among his so-called “MAGA” base.

If I were forced to make a prediction, I would say there is a 66% chance that the US military launches attacks inside Venezuelan territory, with missiles and/or airstrikes; and a 25% chance that US troops invade the country and try to take control of ports, airports, major roads, and/or oil fields.

Polls show that Trump’s war on Venezuela is very unpopular inside the US. A slight majority of Americans, 55%, would oppose a US invasion of Venezuela; whereas only 15% would support it. A clear plurality, 45%, oppose using the US military to overthrow President Maduro; while just 18% support this. However, public opposition has never stopped Washington before.

In fact, scientific studies show that public opinion has no impact on US government policy.

Economically, Venezuela has suffered extreme hardship under illegal US sanctions and an economic embargo, which has blocked Venezuela from accessing the US-dominated international financial system and prevented Venezuela from exporting its oil and fixing/updating its oil infrastructure, causing government revenue to shrink by a staggering 99% (according to the top UN expert on sanctions, the special rapporteur Alena Douhan).

However, Venezuela’s economy is in a better state today than it was during the previous US-led coup attempt in 2019-20, which caused hyperinflation. The inflation rate has fallen a lot. Real wages have risen. Food and everyday necessities are affordable. The economy has dollarized a lot, however, which erodes the monetary sovereignty of the Venezuelan government.

The latest US attacks will likely end up increasing support for the Venezuelan government, because it will make it clear that there are only two realistic options: either Maduro or a right-wing US puppet — like the US government-funded far-right coup leader María Corina Machado, whom Washington wants to put in power, and who has been open about the fact that she wants to privatize Venezuela’s massive oil reserves and sell off the country’s assets to US corporations.

One clear similarity between Venezuela and Syria was the economic warfare waged by the West.

The Syrian government fell in part because the US/EU “Caesar” sanctions had devastated the economy. Syria could not get access to hard currency, and thus had very high inflation. The Syrian military was unable to pay its officers and soldiers, so they were not willing to fight. There were also shortages of food and oil. Syria was blocked from accessing its oil and wheat fields, which were militarily occupied by the US.

One major difference is the Western-sponsored war on Syria, which started in 2011.

The Syrian state was significantly weakened by more than a decade of war. Moreover, Syria had been invaded by multiple foreign powers, including the US, Turkey, and Israel. Large parts of its territory were not under the control of the central government, but rather by extremist groups and mercenaries funded and armed by the US, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar.

The situation is Venezuela is not like that. There were violent coup attempts by US-backed far-right extremists in 2014 and 2017, but nothing close to the levels of violence seen in the war in Syria.

QUESTION: In Maduro’s first and second term, the economy was in very bad shape. Why it is now getting better?

MY ANSWER: The US sanctions on Venezuela started in 2015, when Obama declared Venezuela to be a supposed “national security threat”. The global price of oil also crashed from 2014 to 2016. Both factors caused huge economic problems in Venezuela.

The illegal US sanctions then escalated significantly under Trump in 2017. And in 2019, Trump imposed an economic embargo on Venezuela (like the illegal US blockade of Cuba, which has gone on for more than six decades, in violation of international law).

This means that Venezuela was not able to export oil, which was the source of the vast majority of government revenue. The UN special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, Alena Douhan, reported that Venezuela lost 99% of government revenue due to the US sanctions. The UN expert also emphasized that these unilateral US sanctions are illegal, violate the human rights of Venezuelans, and devastated the economy.

The US sanctions caused a significant shortage of dollars and other hard currency in Venezuela, which meant that the central bank was not able to stabilize the national currency, the bolivar. Moreover, there were enormous attacks by currency speculators based in the US, with the help of Florida-based black market groups like DolarToday. The central bank also tried to maintain a fixed exchange rate throughout these speculative attacks, which meant it bled the little hard currency it had to try to defend the bolivar. Together, these factors caused hyperinflation in Venezuela.

Another very important factor to consider is that the vast majority of the technology and oil infrastructure that had been used in Venezuela for the past century had been designed by Western companies. The oil industry had been nationalized by Chávez, but the technology it relied on was still the intellectual property of US and European corporations.

So the sanctions prevented Venezuela from repairing its oil equipment and buying the new machinery needed to maintain and modernize its oil infrastructure. This caused a huge fall in Venezuela’s petroleum output.

In fact, the US government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) boasted in 2019 — during a US-sponsored coup attempt — that Venezuelan crude oil production had fallen to its lowest level since 2003 (following another US-backed coup attempt). The EIA even admitted that US sanctions were a factor that contributed to this significant decline.

The situation in the past few years has gotten better because Venezuela was able to replace some of its oil machinery with technology from Iran, Russia, and China. Technicians from Iran, Russia, and China also helped Venezuela to repair and update its oil infrastructure.

This meant that Venezuela was able to export more crude, primarily to China. Oil output today is still much lower than it had been before the US sanctions began in 2015, but it is slowly rising, and is now more than 1 million barrels per day, which is the highest level since the last US-led coup attempt, during Trump’s first term.

This means that Venezuela is now earning more hard currency, which it can use to stabilize its own currency and reduce inflation.

The economic situation has significantly improved in the past few years. In fact, inflation has been higher in Argentina, under its US-backed libertarian President Javier Milei, than it was in Venezuela.

QUESTION: Are there other Latin American countries that are helping or aiding Venezuela?

ANSWER: Cuba and Nicaragua have helped Venezuela. But they are very small and don’t have many resources, and are both suffering from illegal US sanctions as well. They are mostly providing political and diplomatic support.

The right-wing governments in Latin America are all extremely pro-US and anti-Venezuela. Many of the left-wing governments are more independent in their foreign policy, but they are afraid of getting too close to Venezuela, because of the threats by the US government, particularly the threat of secondary sanctions; and also because of right-wing backlash at home.

Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia has historically been the most loyal US ally in the region, and its government was dominated by wealthy right-wing oligarchs for decades. Today, for the first time, Colombia has a left-wing government, led by President Gustavo Petro.

Petro has publicly criticized the US and vocally opposed its attacks on Venezuela. In response, Trump imposed sanctions on President Petro and his family. This was a blatant act of aggression against Colombia’s sovereignty, and a clear example of US meddling in the country’s internal affairs. It was also obviously meant as a threat against other leaders in the region, so they don’t speak out and challenge the US war.

That said, Petro is still afraid of getting too close to Venezuela, because of the attacks by the right-wing media outlets inside Colombia, and because elections are coming up in 2026, and he doesn’t want his left-wing allies to be hurt.

US-backed right-wing forces are gaining influence in many parts of Latin America. The war against Venezuela is part of a larger strategy by the US empire to weaken left-wing anti-imperialist resistance, strengthen right-wing oligarchic groups that will serve US corporate interests, and impose US hegemony across the region.

Benjamin Norton is an investigative journalist, analyst, writer and filmmaker.

24 November 2025

Source: transcend.org